Hervanta, Tampere

Hervanta is a satellite city/suburb of Tampere about 10 km from the keskusta (that means city centre, OK? I’m learning, slowly but surely, things I will have completely forgotten of course the minute I don’t need them anymore).

I went there primarily because I was told it was the entry point to Tampere (or I suppose Finland) for refugees, and I wanted to see if it was some kind of multicultural hub. It wasn’t. How many freakin’ K Markets and S Markets are there in this country!? I saw something that claimed to be an Italian restaurant, but wasn’t ready to test that out.

What Hervanta does have, however, is this truly extraordinary city centre buildings and shopping centre which (wikioldmate tells me) were designed by Reima Pietilä and Raili Pietilä between 1979-89.

I'd say the civic centre stuff is older than the shopping centre, but that's just a guess. Here's the civic precinct:

 I had to walk this staircase to assure myself it was possible. It was a bit claustrophobic.

 Shopping centre:

From here I walked under this bridge then

through forest (not depicted) and some suburbs (also, in the main, not depicted). Saw a bear

You’re probably sick of seeing these allotment houses but I’ll chuck a couple more in just because I love them and it’s my blog.

Now I write these words in the pizza shop just around the corner from my accomm where I have been presented with a pizza the size of the table and frankly I was satisfied with the gratis salad… to think until recently I'd never eaten even one grati. Commercial radio is playing some of the worst music I have heard in a long time. It’s great!!! Sort of like the kind of thing you’d hear on late night radio when you’re between cities in the south-west USA. Except some of the songs are in Finnish and the announcer and the ads are in Finnish too.