trip to europe: tampere 2023 (a month ago)

So our Monday 6/2 was a complete write-off (we knew that would be the case) just travel between Hamburg and Tampere, extended ridiculously for reasons that can only be described as stupid. Not our fault (some my fault). However we made up for it in spades in Tampere on the 7th.

Tampere is just like the greatest place on earth, so, hard not to have a good time there. Just check out the library (above). We also went to the Lenin-Museo, which is located in the actual exact place where Stalin and Lenin met for the first time. I really don't want this account of the trip to be all pictures (particularly as the pictures are always going to be of things or at a pinch animals not people, as is my wont) but of course the other problem is when you leave it a few days to write your impressions, you rely on the pictures to jog your memory of the moment and you're just captioning. 

But on the other hand you don't want to be like the archetypal/stereotypical dad on vacation, unable to enjoy your holiday unless you're recording every moment of it, so I dunno... 

After all that, the fact is I didn't photograph much in the Lenin-Museo. I did love every minute of it though. Considering how little space they have to work with, they achieve an excellent synthesis of the Tampere context for the beginning of a revolution and its impacts in what became the USSR and how they then reflected back on Finland. Overall, very impressive and a great range of objects. 

Sugar bag. Also let it be recorded that this was the day I purchased three great jumpers at the vintage UFF. I wish Laura would blog about her UFF experience. 

I am writing this at 7am on 9/2 in the breakfast room of our hotel in Jyväskylä and I am having the amazing experience of hearing old man's classic pop in one ear (Frank Sinatra, 'Here Comes the Sun', though not Frank Sinatra singing 'Here Comes the Sun', btw - I am not sure if he did) and some really beat-heavy track in the other, which is playing in the kitchen and which, all due respect, sounds like a popcorn machine. Loving it. Today is going to be great I bet. 

trip to europe (a month ago)

This is the (early morning) view from the window of the bedroom of our airbnb apartment in Hamburg, of a courtyard that we did not ever once see a person walk in (though we walked in it ourselves, mainly because I was determined to find out what a small white thing wagon the ground, it turned out to be a bit of paper towel). 

You tell me what word has been erased here. 

On a (my) random whim we walked a little way towards the canal area south of where we were staying, we found guess what a canal, also some allotments that were in the process, we later discovered, of being resumed for some city project. 

This is a hill of rubble. We were told that this rubble is remnant of the ruins of housing burnt in the war. 

There are three war memorials here in a row all giving a different take on memorialisation and contradicting each other really. The presence of the other two (not pictured here) allowed this one to continue to exist, it was going to be demolished. 

Steve and Franziska were our gracious guides for much of our Hamburg time (information and advice even if they weren't with us) and this is where they have their allotment. They kept saying this was not the time of year to see these places but wow, I love the whole thing. 

Doors of the apartment building. We're leaving today for a day of shitty transit to Tampere. 

trip to europe (a month ago)

4/2 Too much has gone on yesterday and today for me to properly put it in to words, as we have gone all over Hamburg - to St Pauli twice and to Ohlsdorf Cemetery and other places besides, I am presently so exhausted I can't really describe what we've done or where we've been, so, I will put it off or rather the events will remain never recounted and then will be lost to history forever, a great shame as it has been a really good time that one day I would like to relive / remember.* I have some pictures though. 

Kunsthalle

Demolished kebab shop

Bunker, recently adorned with greened upper floors. 

Zardoz records

Australian tourist finds finding Australian things in a 'foreign' context unusual. 

Flea market

Sort of extraordinary to see the way that a huge amount of personal photographs (+ photograph albums) become just ephemera at the flea market. Not only do all these people have a story - there's a story about how their images, presumably all one-off images, become just so much ephemera to be looked at and why the hell would anyone buy it?! 

Vegan breakfast (for lunch)

Ohlsdorf Cemetery

Kleinhaussiedlung Langenhorn

* seems likely at this point that my diarising of the days will recede a little, too but who knows. 

trip to europe (a month ago)

 2 Feb 9:35 pm

 

We are presently flying above somewhere in the middle east (there is a graphically super impressive guide available to where are are right now so we can’t claim that we are being kept in the dark but I find it dazzling and the way that it zooms out to show that we are just tiny specks on a stupid uncaring planet, makes me feel a bit uneasy). We are currently on the second leg of a three-leg journey. Melbourne to Singapore was, if not fine, at least there was novelty; this part, Singapore to Frankfurt, is just fucking gruelling dude. We were blessed with that most rare advantage of having three seats between us, but it is still really hard to get comfortable, as you know, in such a circumstance. 

 

Who knows how we got an empty seat but if it is due to the insane boarding practices at Singapore I wouldn’t be at all surprised – just a huge crowd of people milling around doing nothing at the boarding gate, and someone calling out seat rows and the sign flashing ‘last boarding call’ – like, no-one was in charge (it’s organised chaos, an English woman said to us, which it wasn’t, it was disorganised chaos. But whatever). I said to Laura that it felt like it had the makings of a riot which was as she pointed out overegging the pudding as there weren’t enough people to riot but still. Crowds.

 

Now we have been on this flight for I genuinely have no idea how long, as I am so disoriented, it seems like a lot longer than it probably actually has been. 

 

So far I’ve read a bad English detective novel, watched a pretty unexciting German film full of 70s morality and stereotypes and not in a good way, watched about 2/3 of The Untouchables, a film which of course I have seen before and might one day watch again from beginning to end, and started unsuccessfully a few other films that just straight up confused me, and watched the ‘Quilloughby’ episode of The Simpsons, which made a (pretty obscure in the scheme of things, but not insubstantial) point that you can really like things from long ago, but the people involved don’t stay the same and indeed might end up horrendous. The storyline is thus: all the kids are obsessed with some spotify-like app (I don’t think its ‘snatchify’ but something like that) and Lisa uses it to find something that doesn’t suck, and happens on Quilloughby and his band whose name I also forget but it’s a version of The Smiths obviously. Quilloughby himself becomes Lisa’s imaginary friend and educates her in withering put-downs. But then she goes to see him irl at a festival and he’s a gross boorish fat ractist who shoots raw (?) sausages at his audience. There’s a second plot running throughout wherein Homer gets a new truck – big fucking deal. 

 

The Quilloughby storyline is pretty terrible but maybe mainly because The Simpsons is really terrible nowadays (I can usually hardly get through an episode). There was certainly nothing to laugh about. I think the fact that there is no recognition of The Smiths in the wider (US) culture that makes it really satire-worthy – they have to set up all the situations to knock them down. If I was any of the other Smiths I’d be very offended that they are caricatured at the end of the show as a reformed group and they are seen as just a backing band apparently happy to go along with whatever racist, pro-carnivore nonsense Quilloughby says. Anyway long story short, I could have done a lot better myself. 

 

It's a bit ridiculous that I harped on about this for so long but what else do I have to do on this flight lol. Still got 6 hours and 23 minutes to go. 

 

So far on this trip I have made the uber driver turn back because I couldn’t find my glasses in my bag (which led to him telling a story about a nurse who made him turn back for something crucial and it turned out to be a cup of coffee – I just hope I don’t end up being his next story about why he never turns back for anyone, because I did find my glasses in the bag). I did something else ridiculous too but luckily I can’t remember what it was. Oh I remember it wasn’t me doing something ridiculous but it was a bit of a farce, my car broke down earlier in the morning. Something to do with the alternator. I don’t know what that means, but I also do know what that means - $$$.