17 October 2019

Yes, a year ago I was in Helsinki. I had an air bnb house for a couple of days in one of my favourite places in the world, Puu Käpylä. I don't know for a fact but I imagine that this was one of those situations where the home owner(s) just disappear to their weekender whenever someone wants to book their house. Because the house was clearly lived in, but sort of lived-in lite, if you know what I mean. Like they treated it like an air bnb too. 

Love the caged Moomin, though, I'd forgotten about that. 

It was a small house and looked out into this communal garden, shared with I think two other homes (not sure about that entirely, it wasn't obvious). I didn't see another soul. 

This is me using the google translate camera to figure out how to use the washing machine. What did people do before... civilisation? (That said, wtf is 'take up space'? Just don't select that option, I guess). 

If I remember correctly this is just a yard (or space) as seen from the street outside. Not sure why it appealed but it did and on reflection it still does. 

One of two or three statues outside (I think) (or at least near) a school. It might not have been this moment, but I do recall a little kid wanting to pat one of these pigs. 

I'm as sick of the 'I could be wrong's as you, but I think these are some of the 1950 Olympics apartments, which are just nearby Käpylä (actually maybe a part of it; I have trouble distinguishing Puu Käpylä from regular Käpylä and I think for many the distinction is a bit amorphous). Just regular housing today and while they were a bit of a showcase for, I guess, post-Nazi, USSR-resistant Finland in the early 50s, they don't stand out massively now from hundreds of thousands of similar buildings (at least from the outside). 

A place. 

Another place. Or the same place. You can see it's getting twilighty. 

I am the worst for letting the mundane get me sentimental / sentimotional 

A 'koulukasvirtarha' is a 'school nursery' which I think means a nursery school, not a school for people who want to learn about how to work in a nursery. 

I only remember that the cool tower was somehow a marker for me, I was heading for that across this open space, some of which, as scrubby as it looks in this picture, was in use as gardening allotments. 

This was funny. This bell end in monkish garb (munkin vaatteet) shooed me away from taking photographs of whatever the fuck was being filmed here, secret fool's business (sailaisen typerän liiketoimintaa) I suppose, under the overpass which was to the left of the above picture. 

I think soon after this time it either got too dark to photograph anything or I got preoccupied by whatever I was doing - tbh I don't remember - to take more pictures of my 17 October, 2019 but it was wonderful and just to keep restating the bleedin' obvious, one bleak afternoon in suburban Helsinki is worth a year in most other places I can think of, in my opinion (minun mielestäni).