Missing in Action...

I'll be away studying sauna design for the next few days... no, I mean really. We're going to be staying at a summer cabin about 40 km north of Helsinki. My understanding is that there is no internet there so I may not be updating for a while. No worries! I'll be thinking of all of you while sitting in, I mean studying, the saunas. Yea Finland! :^)

Weird #5: Blue Rooms

We Cycle Oregonians have a special relationship to "blue rooms", the porta potties we stand in long lines to enter. The Cycle Oregon daily newspaper has published odes to the blue rooms and has sponsored blue room haiku as well. But in Finland I found a whole different kind and reason for blue rooms. The men's bathroom in a couple of the libraries we've visited have been lit by a harsh, weired blue neon light. It is really hard on the eyes. Turns out, this is designed to prevent heroin junkies from shooting up in the bathrooms. Apparently the blue light makes it difficult to find their veins. Just as well I didn't know the reason behind the blue light until someone explained it to me.

ALotta Aalto

One of the big reasons to study architecture in Finland is that this is the home turf of Alvar Aalto. Aalto's career lasted from the 1910s to the 1970s and includes dozens of successful and beautiful buildings still standing today. We visited the town of Jyvaskyla last week, Aalto's home for many years, and I added a significant number of Aalto photos to my collection from this trip. So far there is not much in the way of captions, they just add up to ALotta Aalto!

Turkeys and Fishes

Last week we did a two-night overnight tour of Tampere and Jyvaskyla. At Tampere, we visited two buildings designed around animal plans. Weird hunh? The first was the Tampere library designed to look like a Metso bird. A sort of small turkey here. You can see the model of the library here.
Then we went to see the Kalevan church which was designed around the shape of a fish. This church is over the top height wise. It was designed in 1953 but not completed until 1966 because it's modern design stired up so much controversy. The area shown in the plan to the left is just one big open volume. The book doesn't say how high it is, although it does answer other, much less obvious questions such as the tones of the three bells in the bell tower (e-g-a).

Photos of both of these buildings area here...

Weird #4: Pay-by-Phone

It turns out that in Finland you can pay for lots of stuff by calling a phone number and the price is automatically deducted from your phone. Or at least I think that is what is happening... here at my apartment, I call a number, listen to a recorded message in Finnish that makes no sense to me whatsoever, and the washing machine turns on. You can pay for the bus or train too. You call a number and it text messages back to tell you that you have a 1-hour ticket.

A friend of one of my classmates works for a construction company locally, and they had a bunch of old used phones (all made by Nokia of course!) , which they gave to us. At the local R-Kioski store (sort of a 7-11 except there are more of them) you can buy a "SIM" card (Subscriber-Identity-Module) which plugs into the back of the phone under the battery. We have the same thing in our phones back home, just that most of us don't know about them because we pay via annual contracts with a service provider. Anyhow, the SIM card gives you a phone number and comes with a prepaid amount of service on it, you plug it into the back of your phone and away you go. You can use the service value for phone calls, or for laundry, or for buses, or whatever. And when it gets used up, you buy a refill so that you can keep the same phone number you were using. Nice!

A Day At Suomenlinna

Suomenlinna is a historic island fortress in the Helsinki harbor. It has been listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. To be perfectly honest, we didn't really have any idea what to expect out there, just thought it sounded like a good place for a picnic and a day to wander. Today was cold and rainy in the morning again, so the picnic idea wasn't sounding so hot to start off with. We took the train into Helsinki and located the ferry to the island. A city ferry... covered by our transit passes!

The island, or rather islands, turned out to be a wonderful, beautiful place full of nooks and crannies and old buildings to explore around. There are some 900 people living there, some are prisoners who work on repairing the walls, some make their living on the island working or producing crafts, some were just lucky enough to land an apartment there... there are some 500 applicants for each apartment opening. The buildings are wonderful, old, lovely colors, wildflowers here and there, brick, stone. Something different around every corner.

I'll definitely be back here later in the summer to take more photos. But here are some to start!

Weird #3: BIke Shops & Bike Lanes

With as many people as ride bikes around here, you'd think it would be easy to find a bike shop right? It isn't that they don't exist, but they are all these little tiny hole in the wall places. A bunch of bikes jammed into too small a space and a very oily repair shop all run by one guy. There is supposedly a bigger shop on the south side of Espoo, the town where I am living, but I haven't made it down there yet. Will do after the girls head back, I need to have my headset tightened and need to find some more maps of the area with bike info on them.

The big difference between biking here and at home is that bikes here are treated as pedestrians where at home they are treated as vehicles. This means that nearly every sidewalk is split with one side marked for bicycles and the other for pedestrians. But you also end up with many of the problems of riding on the sidewalks at home... peds in your lane, difficult paving jumps at each driveway or street crossing, generally slower travel. You can get out into the street sometimes, but it is clear the cars don't like it much. I haven't been out into the countryside much yet, but the roads I've seen are narrow and have little shoulders. On the other hand, there is very little sense of road rage here. Drivers seem to respect each other and the bikes. People are much less stressed out somehow.

Chapels in Turku

Been a busy couple of days in Finland. We did trips to Alvar Aalto's Design Studio and his home here in Helsinki, then spent a day on the bus exploring Turku and back. Visited three churches in Turku, all of which were amazing. Perhaps the best, and least able to be captured in photographs, was the Chapel of the Resurrection. This is a funeral chapel built around the second world war. In fact, construction was delayed during the Winter War with Russia just prior to WWII. You enter through heavy bronze doors adorned with cast vines, at the end of the chapel in front of you is the altar space with a tall window hidden to the right, on the South wall. The sun splashes down at an angle from this window across the wall behind the altar. Vines grow up along the wall towards the sun. Absolutely beautiful.

Next we visited the Chapel of the Holy Cross, also a funeral chapel in the same cemetery as the Chapel of the Resurrection. This chapel, built in the 60s, was also stunning in a totally different way. Where the first was warm and reassuring, this was cool and somber. Greys and blues rather than tans and browns. The two chapels cannot be seen from one another, they sit on low hills separated by a small valley. But the graveyard is filled with enormous trees which block the view. But they both toll bells and you can listen to them calling to one another across the valley. A very powerful place.

Finally, we visited the very recent St Henry's Ecumenical Chapel. The interior of this is like the framing of a ship turned upside down. Only two years old, it has become the favorite wedding chapel in Finland. One of the most interesting things about this visit was the way the architecture of the three buildings provided a very different feeling and atmosphere related to the activities they were intended for. The funeral chapels felt like funeral chapels. St Henry's was warm and friendly, it was a place you could get married in. All were beautiful. All were very different. I think they give the best idea yet of why we are here in Finland. More photos here.

More Happy Campers...

Emily, Erin and Carol on the Ferris Wheel at the Linnamaki Amusement Park in Helsinki. Which, by the way, was invented by George Ferris, an bridge building engineer, who responded to a call for something more spectacular than the Eiffel Tower to appear at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, 1993. Remember, this is a trip to learn about architecture, right?!


I believe here that Erin is responding to my holding my arms aloft and screaming on the Ferris Wheel descents. I am glad these people are smiling because it cost me 5 euros a pop to get them up there! Ouch! More views from the Ferris Wheel...

Weird #2: Spending change...

The smallest denomination euro bill is a 5. But there are both 1 and 2 euro coins. Which are pretty heavy. In the US you tend to ignore the change in your pockets because it is normally never larger than a quarter. So you cart it around and shove it in your dresser drawer at the end of the day. After a few months you cart it off to the grocery store and are amazed to discover you have $50 plus dollars worth of coin! Well here, if you did that, you'd easily be putting away 5 to 10 euros per day! What a savings account! You have to remember to actually use the coins in your pockets because they add up in value very quickly.

Weird #1: Mustard in Tubes

I've decided to start a list of what we've found oddly different here in Finland... and the first item is that Mustard and Mayonnaise come in tubes likes toothpaste! It is very interesting to go shopping when you cannot read *any* of the labels. So it took us all quite a while to figure out what mustard was here. Now we are all experimenting by buying different tubes of it. Green, Red, or Black label? Turns out Green is mild (very), Red is a bit spicier with a touch of honey flavor to it, Black is a bit spicier still and browner but still pretty mild (except that Erin about exploded when she took a taste).

Tomorrow... Save your Change!

Two girls in Finland...

So far they are smiling...! Erin and Emily on the train out to my apartment upon arrival.

Family Arrives!

The girls arrived this morning after a fun ferry boat ride from Stockholm. I had planned to have us go to big water park here in Espoo where we are staying... but you know, we were all really tired. So we lay low and played cards this afternoon instead.

Mom & Carol arrived this evening. Everybody got checked into the hotel apartment which is about 5 minutes walk from where my apartment is. It looks great. So all is well here.

- B -

This is how my bike ride today looked! Before it started raining that is. In Finland, when they say "scattered showers" they really mean "scattered downpours with thunder and lightning and short intermittent sun breaks". I rode to Porvoo, a pretty little historic town east of Helsinki. I think I logged about 40 miles but I don't really know as I broke the mounting for my bike computer when I was stuffing the damn'd bike into the damn'd suitcase before I left! Anyhow, I don't have any pictures of Porvoo because I got there just as the ferry back to Helsinki was heading back and I opted for sitting three hours on a boat rather than three more biking in the rain.

The day before yesterday, however, we visited a beautiful local library designed by a Finnish Architect God named Juha Leiviska. Leiviska came and gave a talk to us on... Tuesday? A very nice person. I've posted a few photos of his library at Vallila, a neighborhood in Helsinki, here. And here is one photo as a teaser...

Welcome to Finland!

Well, it took me a while to get here. I've not posted for several days because my only internet access was at the pizza place around the corner from my apartment. Nice folks, but there is only so much hacking you feel like doing while sitting at a table with a pizza in front of you.

But now we are turned on at the apartment! I've been touring around Helsinki quite a bit this past week. It is a very nice city. I've got the Bike Friday rolling nicely and have been in to the heart of the city three times now already. Some areas are busy... but there are bike paths most everywhere. Some in parks, some at the edge of the sidewalk. You almost never have to ride on the street pavement... which is just as well because the cars don't like you much there either. From my apartment I can follow bike paths along the railroad into downtown or down the nearby ring road to the university campus. Downtown is about 45 minutes. The campus is about 20.

I've also taken a good number of photos. Here is the current web album for your viewing! These are mostly architectural images... but then that is what I am here for isn't it?

- B -