11 july - last day in helsinki

So today was one of those days we had to have, it wasn't exactly the biggest success though it had its interesting points. 

I was staying at the Hotel Haaga, which is somewhere out in nowhere, but easy to get to, cheap, and had a good breakfast. The building itself dates to about 1960 I think (judging from the archive pictures in the hallways). I was neither impressed or unimpressed really. As it was I couldn't sleep, I was very enervated at night and then woke up around 4, ridiculously, so the whole day I have been a bit scrambled, not really knowing where I was going or what I was doing and constantly getting on trams and trains and going the wrong way. Or going to the wrong tram stop. Ugh. It was also really hot today. 

So the first thing I did was take my case to the airport and drop it off. I had been a bit worried for a long time that it might exceed 28 kilos or whatever it was meant to hit and in fact it was somewhere between 27 and 28 so, good for me well done. I still had a heavy backpack to carry round for the day but you know, I am kind of tough. Here's a self-portrait showing how tough:

I decided to pay Puu-Käpylä another visit because even though we went there for the conference field trip I didn't feel like we checked in on the good bits, and I wanted to do that. It's still amazing. 

While for a lot of today I was thinking, yeah nah I am not going to come to Finland in summer again, thanks, it sucks, still I admit that Puu-Käpylä looks very good at this time of year. 

Another selfie

At the roundabout and Meurmanpuisto they were having a trash and treasure (they probably don't call it that) - pretty wild. There was nothing there I wanted. But I wanted them to have a good time and they seemed to be.

I didn't even look at these records. I couldn't have fitted them in my backpack anyway. 

Yeah so... a while later you could find me at a few other second handy places really just filling in time/getting out of the sun. I had a kind of plan to go back to Jätkäsaari and the vietnamese vegan restaurant and then I thought (a) not that hungry and (b) am I just going back because I'm sentimental about... last week?! So I didn't. Nor did I buy this Airbourne patch for three euro. 

I did go to this famous market where there has never been a bargain, and bought a vintage marimekko mug. It's a rare one with a squirrel on it. 

I was still kind of like... how do I fill in the time? How? My flight wasn't until 12:30 in the morning (still two hours away as I type this!). I didn't want to just fluggle around at the airport, though I had paid a little bit of money for the privilege of sitting in the business lounge (which I am doing right now) mainly because it promised the possibility of having a shower. Which I am so glad I was able to do. Because it was a fuckin' hot day and 24 hours in transit...

Anyway on the topic of stinky humans I thought maybe I should pay a visit to the cemetery, or one of them. They have one quite close to town near the water, and I thought it would have to be special. It was. It was also quite shady, and the shade made the afternoon generally bearable. 

I  hung around the cemetery for a while but I didn't take many pictures, sorry if you feel you would have enjoyed seeing that. You can go anytime yourself. 

Some time in the last few days I have mused with someone about the populations of certain islands around Helsinki. Now I know for sure that someone lives on this one:

Saw this squirrel:

Some people were having a dejeuner sur l' kivi across the water:

A man goose (I am guessing) protecting his gooselets. 

Stopped in at the Regatta where they very specifically tell/ask you not to feed the damn birds

Last stop - the Sibelus monument where apparently the people were not happy with the abstract nature of the work until his detached head was added, and it all made sense. 

Then I went to the airport. 

So in the final analysis, how was my trip to Finland/Estonia? 

Here are a few things I have noted.

1. In Melbourne, I often find it harder to breathe than I did in either F or E. The air seems a lot cleaner and user friendly. I also had almost no problem with stomach pain which happens quite often in Melbourne/Australia. Lucky I didn't suffer that because I somehow lost my antacid tablets really early in the trip. When I say almost no problem - the problem I did have, I fixed with a bit of preserved ginger. 

2. I do feel really at home in Finland, which I know is ridiculous. I hope I am not somehow responding to the monoculture (it's not a monoculture, by the way, but the language thing makes a big difference). I would never want to live here though - I like living in Australia and I like all the things I have in Australia. I do appreciate having the opportunity to pop over to Finland every year or two, it's really great, I'm incredibly lucky. 

3. I would rather travel with Laura than on my own, but that wasn't possible this time around. It was great to spend some time with Steve and Franziska in Helsinki and Tallinn. 

4. I need to get my phone battery and my computer battery both fixed, replaced, whatever. ASAP! 

5. When I travel, I eat from boredom/ the opportunity to sit down.

6. Coffee in Finland and Estonia are difficult. It is difficult to get them before 9am, too, which is bizarre. We saw cafes in Tallinn and Helsinki that didn't open till 2pm. 

7. In the last two weeks, I have averaged over 20 000 steps a day. I am not even joking. 

8. When I get home, I may 'crash'. 

oulu walk this morning (two weeks ago)

These are images from this morning's long walk from where I'm staying, Kaarratie, to Kuljasilta and thence to the Oulu CBD. Once again for its own (no doubt good) reasons, blogger has uploaded the pictures time's arrow-style and once again, for reasons known only to me, I can't be bothered going through and swapping them all around to create the correct impression. I mean it's still all things that happened in the past, right? The further you go, the further back they happened in the past, so that kind of makes sense really doesn't it. This is the route I took to Karjasilta, anyway, more or less: 

This is, um, well, it's something I saw in the centre of town. I can't explain any of it. 

Centre of town. It was I guess around 8:30 am so things hadn't really started to get going yet. I bet it's turmoil now (9:12 am). 

I enjoyed these two doing their whatever-the-two-person-version-of-selfies is, under the nonsense bubble. 

Have you ever seen the timelapse video I did of these birds in 2011? I mean wow, can't believe you haven't seen that. Well, here they are from a different angle than in that video. You saw it here first. 

It was probably the same year, 2011, that I made a quite funny video about the school that this sculpture is out the front of. I'll try and dig that video up, see if I'm still pleased with it. 

I don't know what the Finnish interest (won't call it an obsession) with the American wild west is, at all, but it inflects this little playground. Yippie ki yay kusipäät!

I l.o.v.e. love though the particular buttoned-up nordic style of 'sheriffs office' though. Can't you just imagine some of the little Finnish kids, the ones with the big round owl glasses, just wanting to go and sit at a bench and shuffle papers on behalf of the sheriffi? 

Cool ragged house. 

Dog graffiti. 

A building which I think houses electrical infrastructure. This was also in my 2011 video and it hasn't changed a bit. 

Made a little (fair-weather) friend

Cemetery. It's probably too late to warn you that the first monument is actually really disturbing. 

So you'll remember we're going backwards here. The wall above was unexpected and inexplicable to me - it's the cemetery wall - because mapsonmyphone was really keen that I go straight through it, as per below...

As it transpired I walked around, path of least resistance, and I eventually found a way into the cemetery, and I still don't know whether there was a path like the one above that just happened to start on the other side of the wall, or not. I muddled through fine. 

OK so the buildings above, nice looking residential blocks in open space, come with this slightly confusing plaque. 'Intiön asuntoalue' means 'residential area of India'. They were built between 1973-83 (you could have figured that out), there are 554 homes and the companies that built them were the Postal Bank and a company called Sampo... I guess. 

You gotta love it. Well, I gotta.