The Further Adventures of Moominblog

It has been a while but unfortuntely real people/ Ash (in case you don't think he is real) and Vienna in all her glory and also rain have taken my precious morsels of free time. But fear not electronic voyeurs! I have finally returned to tell you tall tales and short sagas of a land so full of finnish people the world knows it as Finland (although the finnish themselves know it as Suomi).

When we last left our intrepid hero he had just endured temperatures of OVER 60 degrees and DRAMATICALLY JUMPED into some snow to escape them. After which he ate some pancakes, played a game which involved piling up wooden animals and then went to sleep...

Leaving the summer house we encountered some somewhat less pleasant spring weather, temperatures hovering around zero and constant drizzle/sleet. However I'll be honest it was all so new and unusual that I didn't really mind that it was raining when we pulled up in Savonlinna to go look at the castle. Savonlinna castle is a rare example of a really old thing in Finland, and as with most such things it was built by the swedish, on their border with Russia.

You can wikipedia it as well as I can, so I will leave the history out, as I didn't really know much as I was looking round. What I did notice was that it's a pretty great looking castle, situated on a little rounded, glacially scratched lump of bedrock poking out of the lake (which joins with the thousand or more other lakes and streams in the area and would therefore allow you to travel by water all the way to the sea!). And the towers have these wonderful flared, porthole-like cannon ports. I enjoy anything which is different, and this was definitely stylistically slightly different to the UK castles I have been to. In common with the UK however it was originally what I think of as a 'poper' castle, ie one that was actually built to defend stuff not for some toff to live in! Savonlinna is pretty small but it does apparently contain the best pizza restaurant in Finland, where we ate before Mirva, Outi and I clambered aboard a bus for the long journey to Jyväskylä.

I didn't really look around the city the next day, I had a free day of train travel from the interrail pass I had bought (for ease and cheapness) so I spent the day visiting Tampere, Finland's 3rd larges ciy and largestoutside the immediate area of Helsinki. With a population of 200,000 the size of the place isn't overwhelming, but the setting squeezed between two lakes with (of course) trees all around and a glacial moraine hill at the back, it was a very pleasant place. More importantly there was a lot to do, I managed to fill a day even though I arrived on the one day of the week all the museums were closed...

I will try not to write this much about everything I saw but I think the first location I visited, Tampere Cathedral, is worth a mention. It was built at the beginning of the 20th Century and dates from a time when Finland was starting to be more proud of being finnish, featuring murals and stained glass windows by two famous finnish artists. The building itself is refreshingly diferent to the gothic encrusted cathedrals of central europe, retaining the shape but made out of solid grey granite rather than smoke-dirtied sandstone. As the photos show (poorly) the entrance and inside pillars were carved with some really nice looking decoration, and the stained glass windows were beautiful, not traditional but also not just a boring random scatter of colours. The main thing that made the inside really impressive were the murals, a set of 12 naked boys (apparently representing the disciples) carrying or dragging a wreath around the edge of the balcony, thorn motifs twisting up the arches, and a snake surrounded by huge pale angel wings at the apex of the dome.

The painting of the resurrection above the altar is simply good art. Even more modern churches seem to either go for minimalism or the old traditional depictions of the bible. Frankly in terms of 'looking good' as opposed to historical worth and biblical allegory (and gold content) I much much prefer 'modern' art. The colours, the people, the size, everything about the picture really fitted together.

I saw a lot more churches throughout the day, a (sadly closed) orthodox church and a Lutheran brick church with some nice wooden stuff going on inside. For the most part I just wandered around looking at stuff, this being the first finnosh city I had really explored. My photos show everything at least as well as I could describe it, so I won't say much more. Towards the end of my visit I climbed the harju and found the observation tower. It is getting to the point where if I haven't climbed an observation tower I haven't properly visited a place... Anyway it was great to get a bit of a long distance view of the landscape. The trees along the roads and railways give you a sense of the amount of forest (well commercial plantations) around, but they block any opportunity for uninterrupted views that really allow you to appreciate the extent, and the way the landscape might be low, but it is emphatically not flat.

I ate a tasty home made doughnut in the cafe and travelled back to Jyvaskyla, spending the whole journey talking to a guy who worked for a paper machine selling company and had endless stories about Indian, Singaporean, American and other nationalities' first visits to the sauna on business trips. You could not get much more finnish if you tried really...