We arrived in Helsinki for the second time in our trip. The first being our stopover from Nepal to Poland. This time, we arrived by ship. We drove off the ferry and found a place to leave our car, so we could go sightseeing. Our hotel was by a beach about 10km out of town, so we decided to go there at the end of the day.
Our first stop was the tourist information centre, to get an idea of where we were and what there was to do. After some deliberation, we decided that the best way to see Helsinki would be by the 'Hop On, Hop Off' bus, that most cities offer. The bus left pretty soon after we arrived, so we got straight into our sightseeing.
Our journey around Helsinki was very interesting, and we had audio guides in several languages, so that we could hear all the information about the places we were passing. The switch for changing the audioguides was on the back of the seat in front of you, Artur and Loren had a great time switching each others headsets to other languages when they weren't looking. It was pretty funny waiting to see how long it took them to notice. Everyone else on the bus must have been wondering what was so histerical.
The bus took us past the Senate Square, the Lutheran Cathedral which were both really impressive! We drove along Mannerheimintie Street, then went past Parliament House and the Olympic stadium from 1952.
Temppeliaukio Church
Soon we stopped at the Temppeliaukio, which is a church cut out of rock. It was a really impressive building, and very modern in style. The walls were left raw, as unpolished rock, and the roof was made of glass, with a big copper dome at the very top. The pews were very simple, in an unembellished, straight cut design. The whole placed conveyed a natural, earthy feel to it.
We were lucky enough to hear the acoustics of the building tested out in real life. A girl was in there playing a few songs on the violin. She was really talented, and the music sounded so beautiful in the church.
Sibelius Monument
The bus stopped again not too long after, so that we could see the Sibelius Monument. It was a huge cluster of vertical steel pipes, of all different lengths and widths. we are not sure what the artist was trying to express by it, but it looked pretty bizarre and modern. Nearby there were some faces sculpted out of metal too.
Finnish Lunch
After our tour on the bus, we decided to stop for lunch. We found a place right opposite the Senate Square. It was a themed restaurant, in the old Finnish style. There were rustic, wooden tables and chairs, the waitresses were dressed in old fashioned Finnish clothing, and the plates were old and mismatching. One of the plates that we got was dirty, but it was initially dismissed as ageing, by one of the waitresses, until we insisted and she saw that it was food stuck to the plate. This particular waitress was quite off-with-the-fairies, she did everything with the air of someone that doesn't care in the least what anyone, including the customers, think of her. She flounced around from here to there, occasionally remembering to bring the things that we had ordered.
The food was ok, it was typical of what you get if you eat at a place that serves medieval style food. You get a lot of weird cooked grains, bread and in this case sliced meats and pate-like mushes of meat. There were some nice caramelised onions though.
The lighting was so low, that it was difficult to tell what you were eating most of the time.
Senaatintori and Tuomiokirkko
After lunch, we went across to the Senaatintori (Senate Square). It was really huge, with identical buildings on opposite sides. On the far side, lay the Tuomiokirkko (Lutheran Church), which rose imposingly into the sky. It was really quite a beautiful building, with obvious Russian influence in it's dome style roofs.
While we were in the courtyard, we saw a statue man, standing near the main statue in the middle of the square. He was the most impressive one Artur had ever seen. He was painted in light green paint, and his posture was very realistic.
Next, we went inside the church, to have a look around. The decor was fairly simple, mostly white, with minimal decorations. The altar was quite pretty, but still fairly simple, and there was a beautiful organ mounted on the back wall of the church.
The church is quite high up, as there are a lot of steps to climb to get there. The view from it onto the square and the other buildings around, was really nice. The pillars at the top were a great feature of the church as well.
Helsinki City Museum
After the church, we decided to check out the Helsinki City Museum, which wasn't too far from where we were. We managed to choose every wrong street possible, before getting there, but eventually we made it. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a lot smaller than we were expecting, and we didn't look at the name closely enough to realise that it was only about Helsinki. We enjoyed it though, we didn't spend a lot of time there, but it was good.
The museum explained the history of the city, and about the development of Christianity there, the time of Swedish rule over Finland ( 1550-1809), and the time of Russian rule (1809-1917). We heard the Finnish national anthem, which was written during the periods of occupation. It has a sad tone to it, as they were not yet free at this time. It was probably the coolest national anthem Loren had ever heard. It was very moving to listen to, and she could understand how it could rally people to together in an effort to protect their independance, or to celebrate what they had been through.
We passed by the huge shopping chain, 'Stockmans', after we left the museum. Stockmans is so big, that they have the slogan, 'If you can't find it in Stockmans, you don't need it!' Pretty cool slogan to have. We didn't end up going in to have a look around though, because we wanted to see another museum or two before everything closed for the day. There are so many museum in Helsinki, that you could spend weeks just looking at just museums and you still wouldn't see them all.
Museum of Design
The next museum we saw was the Museum of Design. It was difficult to find, but we made it . It was a very modern museum, with the kind of feel to it that modern art galleries have, of open white spaces with a couple of exhibits here and there.
There were displays of clothing, in interesting designs, and using unusual materials. There were also a lot of interactive exhibits that involved listening to music or commentary on the piece, using earphones attached near the exhibit. One pretty cool exhibit was a video that showed people dancing to techno music.
Another exhibit was about a guy's design of a water bottle. He was trying to make something environmentally friendly, so he created this bottle, which was shaped like a donut, with a blue screw on lid in a starfish shape. There was a video playing nearby which had a comedy sketch involving God, washing machines and the special water bottle. Interesting...
There was another interesting exhibit, that we thought was a pile of junk at first. It turned out to be a little hut that some artists built and lived in inside the Museum of Design, while they created their artwork. It was decorated in scraps of magazines, odd bits and pieces that they had left behind them and lots of rubbish too. Artur wasn't very impressed by it.
On the bottom floor of the museum, there was a program that enabled you to wander through a church using 3D glasses. You could navigate yourself through like a video game. We all had a go, and had a lot of fun messing about with it.
Kansallismuseo
Our last stop for the day was the Kansallismuseo, which is the top historical museum in Finland. It had displays on archaeology, prehistoric times, and about the history of the Sami people, who also lived in Finland. The museum was also well known for its beautifully frescoed ceilings.
We saw some displays on church relics, which was not particularly interesting to us, but Artur's parents enjoyed it. There were sections of paintings and altarpieces, along with lots of other iconographic pieces.
The most interesting section of the museum was the display of modern history through clothes and other household items. At the beginning of this section, there was a video that showed all the major events over the 20th century. It was really interesting to see all the events displayed one after the other on the screen. There was also a piece of paper that showed the dates of each of the events that appeared, so you could watch the progression of time.
After watching the video, there were exhibits of clothing from each decade, along with typical items that you'd find in the possession of people from those times. There were examples of the first hairdryers, playing cards, first cameras and videocameras. There were even displays of holiday wear and sports equipment. It was funny to see the really recent sections, and what they considered to be typical clothing for the 90s and 00s. There was a display of sports clothes from the current time as well, which were probably the most current items we saw. We see people wearing those brands and items while we travel.
A cheap hire bike that never got returned. Someone should give it a funeral.
Back at our Hotel
After the museum, we headed back to the car. After some fiddling around with the GPS, we managed to find the hotel. It was beautifully situated in the middle of a forest, near the edge of a bay. The hotel building itself wasn't spectacular or modern, but it was comfortable enough. It had a sauna of course, but it was aimed at business conferences with lots of people, so it cost much more than we could afford.
We had dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was suprisingly nice, and then we went for a walk around the hotel grounds. Artur's parents went back to the hotel, but we continued to walk down to the bay. It was really pretty, and was so calm that it looked more like a lake. There was a boat house nearby, and it looked likek people make the most of the water for canoeing and other watersports.
The next morning, Loren woke up feeling extremely ill. We think it might have been the food at the traditional Finnish restaurant. She was not able to go anywhere, so she sent everyone else off sightseeing, with the promise that they would bring back photos to show her. She slept almost the whole time they were away.
Uspensky Cathedral
Artur and his parents went off to do some more exploring, as we only had half a day left, before taking another ferry for Estonia. The first thing that thay went to visit was the 'Uspensky Cathedral', which was a big red brick Orthodox Cathedral. The view from the port nearby was spectacular.
Inside the Cathedral, the decorations were breathtaking. The ceiling of the main dome and some upper sections of the walls, were blue with gold stars. It looked like the night sky. Every inch of wall or ceiling space was covered in patterns and colours in intricate designs. The effect was rich, and the deep colours looked a lot like the decorations used in many royal palaces.
The church was held up by huge marble pillars, whose deep green fit in well with the dark and luxurious colour scheme. The wall behind the altar was covered in paintings of the saints, each one framed in gold. Overall it was a spectacular building, and worth its status as a hallmark of Helsinki.
After the Cathedral, they headed down to the market. Each person had a few good souvenirs in mind. Artur's dad was interested in buying some of the Finnish daggers. In Poland, these hunting style knives are called, 'Finka', which comes from the word Finland or Finnish, so it made sense to buy one in Finland. He ended up buying 3 them! He gave one to Artur as a gift, and another one later to Konrad. The cases for them were very beautiful. They were made of leather, and had pictures of reindeers and other Finnish icons branded on to them.
Soon they headed back to pick up Loren from the hotel. We had to check out and pack the car, ready for the ferry later on that day. Loren was woken up and greeted by Artur, who came bearing a gift of a little stuffed toy. It was a reindeer with a Finnish flag on its chest. It was very cute, and it assisted her recovery very quickly.
Kiasma Modern Art Museum
We still had some time to kill before the ferry, so we decided to see one last museum. We chose the Kiasma, the Modern Art Museum. The museum was 'a curvaceous and quirky metallic building', and the interior was as unusual as the exterior. The staircases were like pieces of art design in themselves, as they stretched across the levels as huge, curved white planks.
We weren't expecting much from the museum, as most modern art museum require a lot of imagination to guess what the intent was of the artist. The first few exhibits left us wondering why someone's dirty sock on a wall was so impressive, or why a can of spilled paint was so inventive. As the exhibits progressed, so did our appreciation of them.
There was a great exhibit on park benches. Although it sounds incredibly boring, it wasn't! These benches were all white, but they were made in extremely weird positions and shapes. The artist placed them out on the street, and photographed the way that people used these new concept chairs.
Artur's favorite exhibit was a room that had an interactive camera. As you moved in front of the lens, it would fragment your image and send it across the big screen in patterns. He played around in here for a while, fascinated by it.
There were some cool photo exhibits about normal people, and also funny pictures of normal people. One guy was riding a bicycle and carrying a tray with a pot of tea and some steaming hot cups full of tea. 
Our very favorite exhibits were the video exhibits. The most moving one that we saw, was a video of a middle aged man dancing and leaping into the air in the middle of a square. He was so graceful, and his movements so beautiful, despite his lack of dance training or effort to produce anything that resembled trained dancing of any kind. There was another young man in the film, who was crying his eyes out, absolutely miserable for some reason, and it was almost like the man had seen him there and decided to try to cheer him up by dancing for him. The man started laughing or smiling at one point, briefly encouraged away from his misery. Other passers-by joined him for a few seconds, whether in jest or seriousness. The man himself was such an optimistic expression of liberty, in the pure way he danced.Another film that we watched, was a funny one. This one showed a woman in Spain being followed by a marching band. We were not sure if she was famous or not, but she was being paraded along the street with a band in full uniform, playing at full volume. She kept looking over her shoulder as if to double check that they really were following her, not someone else. She walked a lot faster at the beginning, trying to outwalk the band, and still look cool and collected. However she started to run soon after, trying to escape her paparazzi-like pursuers.
Soon we headed off to the ferry. This time it was only a trip for a few hours, and the ship was not as fancy as the first one we were on. The outside of the ferry was very colourful, the paint looked almost like a candy wrapper.
To see the photos from the post in slideshow mode, click on on the link below:
Helsinki pictures
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