An Interesting Day in Helsinki

Today was Alex’s first day off from work since our arrival.  So we decided to walk around a bit, try out the underground Metro and visit the Itis Shopping Centre.  Itis is the largest shopping centre in the entire Scandinavia.  The morning was particularly cold at -6 °C.  When we went outside we took these two interesting pictures of drainage pipes from the gutters of the Hotel.

 

A few blocks on, the “boete bessies” were doing their job by writing out tickets for illegal parking.  See the photo below.  Ene noggals toegedraai in ‘n Jiffie sakkie!
 

 

THE MONUMENT OF JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG

As we walked through Espaladin Park on our way to the Metro station we came across the Johan Ludvig Runeberg Monument.  See the photo below.

 

Johan was the national poet of Finland and mainly wrote in the Swedish language. Many of his poems deal with life in rural Finland during the 19^th century.  The best known of these is “Bonden Paavo” (Farmer Paavo or “Saarijärven Paavo” in Finnish).  It is about a peasant farmer in a (back then) poor part of Finland called “Saarijärvi” (Island Lake).  It’s about how he struggled with the harsh climate and years of bad harvests.  For three years frosty nights destroyed his crops. Every time he would mix double the amount of tree bark into his bread to avoid starvation and works even harder to dry off marsh into dryer land that would not be as exposed to the night frost.  After the fourth year of hardship, Paavo finally gets a rich crop.  As his wife exults, thanks God and tells Paavo to enjoy full bread made entirely out of grain, Paavo instructs her to mix bark into grain once more, because their neighbour's crop has been lost in a frost and he gives half of his crop to the needy neighbour.  In the end his wife dies of starvation herself.

A poem that he wrote entitled “Vårt Land”, which means “Our Country” was used as the First National Anthem of Finland.

A Finnish band called Ensiferum used two versus from Johan Ludvig Runeberg’s work “The Cloud’s Brother” in one of their songs.  It deals with a dead lover and his girlfriend showing her loss.  Read the two verses below:

“Sweeter far than life from I found that love was”
“Sweeter far than love to die as he did”

KAISANIEMI METRO STATION

Before we could make use of the metro we had to buy access cards, load them with money and then figure out how the system works.  The photos below are of the metro pass one can load with money (green card).  The other card is reflective so that a bus driver can see you during the day and night and know that you need a ride.  We mannaged to get a free ride on the Metro as we did not know how to use the card, so we just went through the gates without paying (hey, we are from Africa!)  What’s very convenient is that one card works for everything; trams, Metro, busses ect.

 

Here are a few photos of what the Metro and Metro Station looks like.  To get down into the station one needs to use a veeeeeeery long and steep escalator.

 

We arrived at the Itäkeskus Metro station where we found the Itis Shopping Centre.  There we bought a GPS (TOMTOM) from a shop called Giganten, a huge electronics warehouse.  We checked out a few gyms that Alex wants to try out, had some lunch and then came back to the hotel.  One very interesting item that we saw at Giganten is in the following photo:

 

Can ANYBODY take a guess at what this weird looking electronic contraption is meant to be used for?  We know, but we want you to guess...hie-hie…

On our way back to the hotel we came across a few more interesting things.  The photo below is of a loading truck (left) and ice scraper (right) which clears the roads of snow.  Apparently the workers get a lot of freebies from the loads and loads of snow that they collect.  The most often found items?  Frozen bicycles!   

Our stomachs made growling sounds after our long day trip so we stopped for rye bread hamburgers at Hesburger.  It’s almost the equivalent of Burger King.  Yes-yes, we know it’s not very healthy.  See the photo below.

 

As we walked along the main road going to our hotel we noticed a bright blue beam of light projected through the sky.  The light is a laser projected from the Observatory in the City Park all the way across town against the Helsinki Cathedral.  It illuminates the white Cathedral to a glowing light blue at night.  See the photo and map below.

Our final photo is very sweet.  We took is just before entering the hotel.  In Helsinki one does not only see baby’s being pushed around in strollers, but also being pulled by their parents on small sleds (sorry, the photo is a bit shacky).

 

So that was our Saturday!  We had to say goodbye to Rudi today as he’s flying back to South-Africa to work at Head Office.  Thank you very much Rudi for all your help during the past week, all the advice, driving around and orientation.  It is very much appreciated!