july 5 tampere - still!

Dropped into the Finlayson shop - they are having a sale. 

Also, got on a tram and went here, which is an internal reserve off Vesakonkatu, but I'm going to give more details of that on my internal reserves blog - which I plan to reanimate any day now.

It was super raining by this time so I felt it was probably time to give it more or less away. I actually walked 30 000 steps on the 5th, and I am not sure that what I've put here entirely proves the veracity of that, but it's veracious, what more can I say. 

tampere 5 july 3 (pispala)

So I will say this shabby house did catch my eye mainly because it's shabby. But that was before I noticed it has a sign on it saying something like this:

The single-family house-type residential building... dates back to the 1890s. It was probably a so-called communal kitchen type of apartment in terms of its floor plan. The building represents the oldest strata in the area... the residents of teh house had a duty to maintain and sand the section of the road in front of the house, called Pispala's Narrow Road, which was previously much steeper than the Pispala main road.

That's me trying to make sense of a slightly garbled google translate version. I could have got some of it wrong. 

I just love the mickey mouseisation of a local landmark such as this, madness, it's a reference to this, which I may have shoved in your face before, sorry if so. A shot tower. 

Do you want to know about it? No? Too bad.

The Tampere Shot Factory began operations in 1856 on the southern slope of Pyynikki. This unique industrial facility consisted of a tall, wooden tower with a wooden cabin at the top, the upper foundry, and another building at the foot of the tower, the lower foundry. The molten shot dropped from the high uper foundry formedinto rounds on their way in the air current and, as they cooled, solidified into their final shape. The lower foundry was where the shots were post-processed. 

I never want to argue with the men and women of long ago because I bet they know better than me but this seems like an incredibly involved process for some round balls. I suppose they needed them very round and very... untouched by human hands? I really don't get it. Couldn't they have just put them in a tray? Why do they need to be so round anyway? Anyway, the real question you're asking is, why isn't that a wooden tower? Here's why...

In 1908, a steel-framed shot tower was purchased from Germany and transported in parts to Tampere. It was erected in Pispala....[it] is 55 meters high.... The shot factory's workforce consisted of two families, the Heinänes and the Järvensivuts. A liftetime contract was made between these families and the shot factory management, which obliged the families to keep everything related to the work at the shot factory secret. The work was passed down from father to son. 

OK, so there's a secret. I shouldn't have judged it as being easy or simple or lame.

The shot tower business closed in 1973 and the city bought the structure, so it's a monument of sorts but as far as I know, not used for anything. The above information by the way was grabbed out of this book:

So anyway the trip to the cafe involved ascending the insane stairs which are basically a rite of passage here and I guess everyone does it, constantly, without thinking. It reminds me a bit of Wellington, where people are all used to gamboling up steep hills like goats, but I'm from Melbourne, you know, we expect the next step to be the same level as the previous ones and we think that's normal. 

This wasn't just an uphill, it was a bit of a downhill-with-the-knowledge-that-this-downhill-would-later-be-an-uphill too, you know, when you come back. I mean it was possible to get a bus (I'm not sure where to) back but that would be quitting wouldn't it. 

This is the cafe. Full of people (so why don't they open earlier!!!) and great pancakes, I am a fan. 

Gave me adequate strength to tackle this again... 

tampere 5 july - 2 (niemenranta)

Moving on from the interesting old summer house, I came to this newish residential development (Niemenranta) presumably on former industrial land or similar. I love how Finns (probably not just Finns) have these amazing enclosed verandahs that are a bit like half-rooms, so you feel like the building has had part of it sliced away. Of course it's not like that really because they keep the outside world bit very schminck and presentable - mostly. There's a bit of variation between these buildings.

This is the Ulkokuntosali - streetworkout at Niemenranta. 

Then it was more or less time for me to walk back in time for the Pispala cafe to be open so that is what I did.

tampere 5 july - 1

So this morning I had a lo-o-o-ong time before any decent coffee was available, at you know a cafe, in fact, I had until 9:30 am until that was a possibility, so I went walking towards Lake Näsijärvi just to, you know, walk. I'd never been around there before and I was up for something new. 

So the above picture is the enclosed bridge you can travel across to get into a lift which takes you a few floors down to the road. The lift is part of an apartment building. 

Houseboats are cool. It was cool to see these. 

They're not bad are they. I photographed these from the lift. 

This is the building in question, with the lift on the left. You can see what kind of ascent we're talking about here. Last time I was here, a couple of years ago, I found a way through a tunnel. That was fun, but elevator's better. The next thing I encountered was a mole:

It's quite good but I don't know what anyone would do with it. Anyway, it's not going anywhere (except the bits that are falling in the water). 

This pumphouse is less interesting than most pumphouses, don't spend too much time on it. Things get more interesting...

See, like this place: 

Or this place:

It's a cellar and shed!

Bit creepy in a way...

4-5 july tampere

You've heard me go on about Tampere before, so I won't do it now. This was a big couple of days, and I will break them up into bite-size pieces, notwithstanding no-one will read this ever, unless maybe some of it gets mashed up by AI for something else, I don't know what, and even then the person reading it will actually be an eye in a cube with no brain. 

So, I got to Tampere, and stayed in a small apartment in Pispala, which is kind of on the backbone of the span of land between the two lakes, which also includes the train line, a tram line, and a highway. The Pispalan Pulteri is an old restaurant (almost sixty years old) in the suburb of Pispala which is just delightful and was really working class and is now, you bet, not. 

The menu is kind of gross but it does have a (gross) item on it called 'Finnish way of life' which I found moderately amusing. 

Anyway going to Pispalan Pulteri (btw I haven't got a clue what its name means, or why it has a big catapult on the all outside) was an experience that reminded me I am not Finnish or really on the same wavelength as most Finnish people, any more than I am on the wavelength of anyone, really, except Laura. 

Finland, or at least the parts I go, is riddled with these olde worlde sepia photographs of Finland like it was the wild west, that's their schtick (it's Australians' schtick, too, of course - I know that). 

This is the rad library, a shopfront a few doors down. They are having a sale at the moment, I wasn't there any time they were open, lucky for me. 

And this, I'm pretty sure, is a bar I went to almost 10 years ago and had a wild time (that's an overstatement let's just say a good time) and walked back from it afterwards for about 1.5 hours quite drunk talking to Cameron Logan on the phone all the time, he was in Belgium. Good times! 

Anyway this was the 5 July, Sunday, I will talk about that properly starting in the next post. Wait. 

july 3-4: helsinki/tampere

OK so the Helsinki Public Library is out of sight. Libraries, generally, rock and this one is superb. 

So after that, and noting that there is a sign saying a lot of ordinary people don't like to be photographed (my bad) I went to the Sen restaurant again - the Vegan Vietnamese restaurant in Jätkäsaari. It's just really good!!! Sorry! 

Like the last time (which I probs didn't tell you about) there were no other customers there, but the woman who runs it and her kids were there, the kids doing homework I guess. Food was excellent, and it overall just seemed super wholesome. 

Move on to this morning: here's a hare I saw out the window of the airbnb this morning at... god knows what time. Oh, the time was recorded on the photograph. 7:44 am. 

It's really nice to see a hare looking quite unafraid but always leaving you in no doubt that it's unafraid because if there was any threat it could outrun anything you can set after it. 

So many times in the past week I have passed a cafe called Morton which was always closed, but this morning as I was en route to the station to go to Tampere I was late enough in the day to find it open. So I tried it out. Not disappointed. Staff delightful, food excellent. There's just that little problem of why can't I ever get a decent coffee that's not in a thimble, but as someone said (I can't remember who but not a Melbournite),. 'well, you're from Melbourne', like that explained it. And actually it does. 

Wonderful place. 

Thence to my spiritual home (yuck, I hate myself for feeling this way, perhaps that's part of it) Tampere. What a divine city. Look at this...

I had to not buy this fucking amzing painting of these ridiculous women skiiers. I love it though. So Tampere. As is...

This...! 

So, this is where I'm staying today and tomorrow, and it looks good from the outside but wow...

It's heaven inside. More soon.