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...