trip to europe last month - goodbye kuopio (again), hello helsinki

16 February - so - this is an odd thing I saw yesterday:

I don't know what it was, but I'll tell you what it looked like - a bunch of police, some with guns, at a door to a home in Kuopio. No voices were raised, they all went inside. 

This is nothing, just an interesting looking asian cafe. It was open. 

Laura had noted how few cats we had seen on our journey - like, about four. None of them outside. Until this one, which I saw and she didn't. It was a happy story because I got to see a cat but also its owner was just arriving home when I photographed him/her. 

Kuopio apartments. 

Intriguing graffiti at Kuopio station. 

We had a four and a half hour journey Kuopio-Helsinki then got a taxi to our accommodation, not much has happened since then, maybe tomorrow huh. 
 

trip to europe, a month ago - goodbye kuopio

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. 

trip to europe a month ago

Finnish television is completely terrible in almost every way imaginable. Well, I suppose I don’t mind Simpsonit (I’m surprised to realise how much of the first few seasons are completely lodged in my brain) but ffs, I said to Laura this morning I was going to watch an episode of Simpsonit and just turned on Star TV (channel 12) and there was… an episode of Simpsonit (well, actually about five minutes of the same three ads they show on that station, but essentially yes, that was the next thing that came on). It’s actually quite depressing. Most of the locally made shows as far as I can tell are idiotic game shows, etc it’s pathetic. That said, if they do have local drama or something I wouldn’t know where to find it or even necessarily recognise it, so I should probably shut up.

This afternoon I walked into central Kuopio to see what I could see. Most things were closed, I went to this ‘flea market’ which had a lot of crummy things and possibly some great things but I was not in the mood. Amazing how Moomin stuff gets such a guernsey here – I was surprised to find a Moominpappa mug which I have two of (why?!) was on sale for (I nearly wrote ‘was worth’) 26 euro.