Today was (is) our last full day in Kuopio, after which we spend a lot of time on a train to Helsinki tomorrow and then leave to return to Melbourne on Sunday. I realise my account of activities has trailed off a little in the last few days but really the intention has been to just chill in a town - for a few days - and that's what we have done - it worked.
I bought a bit of tat here and there and some probably awful LPs as well, additionally some possibly great ones. Although I did buy some non-Finnish LPs in Germany (because like they don't have them there much) like the Family Fodder greatest hits, which is something I have long wanted to own, I basically bought Finnish records here. But I don't really know what I'm doing.
I also bought a few silly old magazines, etc just for fun. Also perhaps to help me learn Finnish a bit, though I am not entirely sure how to best facilitate that - do I sit there with a dictionary and piece it all together? That won't help me get the grammar, surely. It might help me remember words, slowly.
Anyway, the last couple of days I have walked around Kuopio quite a bit, I'd like to see it when the lakes are not so frozen, which they are right now, completely. 
At the cultural history museum today we saw a 1943 film (no sound, oddly - probably had a soundtrack talking about how great Hitler was) of a boat trip I think to Kuopio which ended with a shot of the market square, which answered a question for me, sort of, about whether the market building which is at an odd angle to the town hall at the other end of the square, was ever part of a complex of other buildings. The answer is - sort of, there was another building there, but it was always (or at least since 1943) just exposing its flank to the square. It's a weird arrangement.
Speaking of flank exposure the Finns used to, and perhaps still do, love images of themselves naked doing extraordinary nation-building/mythological things. Here's one from the museum which is btw the third oldest museum in Finland.
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