helsinki 28 june - 2 (taivaskallio)

I decided to walk to what seemed like the nearest cafe open on a Sunday from the Park Hotel and a minor deviation into a park en route (and the decision to climb a steep hill - 'climb' seems too much, it was a short path) got me to this. Big surprise. 

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I tried to find the site of this cafe  but it wasn't evident. 

It so gets on my wick that the union jack is used to designate 'English' though I suppose there is sense in it somewhere, somehow. 

helsinki 27 (and a little bit of 28) june 2026

So here's a bit of a photo dump for you from the remainder of Saturday 27/6. This was when I started to get a bit hazy and fucked up from the jet lag etc and wasn't entirely sure what I was doing... i.e. I really thought there was a huge seagull head on the art museum. 

100% chance these guys don't talk anymore:

Big pile:

I am so ridiculously sentimental, so yeah, back to the bear park (Karhupuisto). I reckon the first time I came here, you couldn't take pictures with your phone (I mean, 'one couldn't... with one's'). 

Bear park iconography is so cool 

The kiosk, which was definitely functioning the first time I came here, now looks pretty redundant. There is another one diagonally opposite in the park now which seems very upmarket. 

They have pop-up-pocket-parked the street alongside the bear park (the southern section of Fleminginkatu) in a far more attractive way than this picture suggests. 

Next stop was a wild agricultural allotment area, though purely by accident. My plan was to go to Arabia (again) and walk through the botanic garden area to Käpylä. So, I was almost there and my phone said to get out at the next stop. I did. However what I didn't realise until I'd got off was that the tram stopped not at the stop but it stopped because some city workers had blocked the narrow road that the tram was on (single track). Presumably the driver was going to discuss this with them. A Melbourne tram would never let its passengers out between stops regardless of the reason, but this wasn't a Melbourne tram. So I started walking in the right direction (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing) but what I didn't realise was there was still a railway line to cross before I could go freely in the direction I was planning. Google maps agreeably set me a course and it also didn't realise that there was a railway in the way of where I wanted to go, or at least, it thought there was a bridge or an access way or something when there actually isn't. So I wandered randomly for a while in this wonderful agricultural allotment area not entirely appreciating that there was only one way in and out. 

So OMG there is a allotment garden museum here - I will definitely visit. Open Sunday for two hours.

There is no problem in the world that can't be solved with chinese paper lanterns. 

Except the problem of walking into this fucking sunlight, that can only be solved with sunglasses, which I had left back at the hotel. So by this time I had a bit of a battery problem - I guess I'm putting extra pressure on my phone here. 

I was slightly worried that I would not be able to get to the hotel without my battery running out. So I put my phone in airport mode and took a photo of the google map, and tried to follow that. It worked ok, actually. But of course the time for taking photos was over (sorry kids). 

Except for the rare occasion where you see something so amazing you have to record it. What on earth is going on in this picture?! 

As for this house... too perfect. 

A little bit of Käpylä magic, and this isn't even really a nice bit. 

That's quite a lot of walking for someone who hasn't slept for two days! Now it's 7am and insanely it actually appears that we are prohibited from leaving the hotel before 8. Is that legal? I guess, like the Melbourne trams thing, I have to remind myself that I'm not in Melbourne anymore. Here's the view out my window. 

More later!

helsinki 27 june 2026 - 3 - a few more pictures

 

OK so it pisses me off no end when Americans (usually) laugh or are invited by Australians to laugh at, for instance, the emu war or the Harold Holt Pool, but I just want to say that this is the Helsinki Dance School and WHY is that their logo!? 

Maybe it's just the logo of Helsinki, not of dancing. It's not the city's coat of arms though, though it literally is arms. But no coat. OH I DON'T KNOW. 

finland 27 june 2026 - 2

So I am pleased to report that I was actually able to get through the morning-to-early-afternoon without collapsing in a heap anywhere and made it to the delightful Park Hotel, Käpylä in one piece. I forgot (or never knew) that the tram to Käpylä doesn't run on the weekend, so the route here was rather tortuous, in the least tortuous way anything could ever be tortuous. The most anxiety-inducing thing about getting here was (a) my phone was running out of battery and for some weird-ass reason, my charger wasn't working - so while I was happy to walk all the way from Arabia (iykyk) (not that far - 25 mins at the most) I was facing the prospect of my phone dying when I was so close, yet so far from my destination. 

The most super irritating bit of my journey was actually not that, it was fine (and I stopped en route at the Frangipani bakery cafe, shout out to them, not only did I get a good spinachy pie and coffee and water but also they charged my phone a bit) the irritating bit was finding that the only people talking on the tram to Arabia were old (I say old but be fair - not much older than me or perhaps my age, but dumb boomer attitudes) Australasians. Let me tell you people, Sandy Stone and/or 1950s-70s Edna Everage, and for that matter Barry McKenzie... not at all dead. These people were dumb as shit and didn't think anyone could understand them, I suppose, like they were talking in a tram full of monkeys. Not talking about the people around them, thank god, but crikey christmas what a bunch. They thought it was very, very, very, very funny that they were going to Arabia, although for some reason actually they had no intention of actually getting off the tram - they were just going to go back. I think it was three couples. They were super annoyed that there was a LGBTQ march in town, because it was stopping them getting to the 'sights', I shit you not. The 'sights'. Classic slit-mouthed creeps who can't help but make everything about them. Fuck's sake. 

Yeah so hell is other people, but hell is never really good local birds:

This is the famous former plague cemetery, at least, it is still a cemetery for some but there aren't that many tombstones left. That seagull deserves a post of its own, it may yet get one. 

Yep so I just have no idea about the above. But look at the below, some just gorgeous big pictures, too big to put in a suitcase and take back to Australia, damn it. Just a little too big.  

Which sucks because I really wanted them. 

The market in question. It's really good. I bought a jumper, which now seems like a ridiculous thing to do because surely it will never get cold again?! But anyway, that's what I have - a jumper. It's great and it was cheap. 

Then I went to a few UFFs. I didn't have to but you know - I was filling in time and not really amazingly awake. I bought a couple of shirts, pretty pleased. Short sleeved shirts, which will seem ludicrous when I get back home, but will make sense in time. 

I didn't buy this shirt. I liked it, but it was too small for me. Love that label though. Finnish for 'mister' is 'herra'. 

I don't have the slightest clue what this is or was about. I think I mentioned previously that if I put too many pictures in a post it kind of buckles and falls into the void, so I will stop here and resume soon. 

finland 27 june 2026 - 1

Arrived in Helsinki at 6am, after 25 hours of flying. My waking hours have been aided by three Michael Connelly novels in one big volume, perfect inflight material. I had other novels (which I have to read in the next week because I am going to pass them on to Steve) but I went for the easy reading material on the way here. I like paper reading matter because you can keep reading while landing or taking off, unlike if you have a device. On the way back I imagine I will be reading from the kindle, I have a LOT of stuff on that which is half-read. 

I also watched the beginnings of a plethora of films and tv shows, I can't even remember what most of them were now. A lot of films ordinarily have ups and downs and I didn't feel I could face the downs, even though I knew the ups would come soon enough. There was at least one series that made absolutely no sense to me I think partly because it was all shouty and distorted.

I am writing this at the quiet arty airport station, it feels a bit like the bottom of the new part of the Art Galley of NSW only it has trains running through it. 

I have developed a bad headache presumably because I have not had any coffee since I left Melbourne. Addicts are disgusting and should keep their problems to themselves (is what you're thinking). 

The Finnair plane was delightful though - made last week. 

An hour later

I'm at a cafe called Lazy Fox in a very deserted central Helsinki at 8:30 am. I have that 'what to do before I check into the hotel' thing going on but, also, the 'by the time I check into the hotel the day will possibly effectively be over for me' in terms of falling asleep on my feet probably. So IDK. I have a kind of hankering for going to see a Hollywood film which is what I generally do when in Finland. Something I would otherwise not bother with. Perhaps Toy Story 5. I have heard it is OK. 

useful

They don't make useful things like they used to do they. I have been looking at Building and Construction from 1926 and these items are frequently advertised. Takes me back to my childhood in 1926 when we'd double quick boil, er, stuff and there was always a door within a door. Very good times that actually will probably be back with us quite soon again. 

I remember a boy in school who climbed into the Kaustine tank once. Perhaps he's still there, as Doug Ashdown sang. 

art project

 

Every so often someone lines some stuff up like this at the dog park known as Clayton Reserve which, by the way, is undergoing significant overhaul at the moment. I have no idea if this is an art project or has some other meaning - obviously it has meaning for someone, at least one person, the person that is doing it.