There was a gauze tent that you walked into and a shrouded form lay on a cot inside. And there was a room playing some sort of ambient music. It was a relief to move down one floor to the more realistic 19th Century artists.'
On the second floor, we are in the 1880s, with more self-evident art. There is a painting, 'Christ with Mary Magdalene.' The part of Mary is performed in modern dress. There is a nice triptych by GallenKallela of Vainamoinen in love with the young woman Aino, who drowns herself--a story from the KALEVALA. (Gallen-Kallela did the KALEVALA murals in the National Museum as well.)
There are also some bird paintings that have nice detail. Ferdinand Von Wright has a delightful painting, 'The First Surprise,' of a new-born calf finding three geese, and his sons Wilhelm and Magnus also had avian paintings. Collectively they could be considered the Audubon of Finland.
When it was all over, we were a bit surprised that the museum was as small as it was, though it was actually bigger than any other museum we'd visited in Finland.
That whetted our appetites for KALEVALA material, but when we went to the museum shop, we discovered the net result of:
1) art books are expensive
2) books in Finland are expensive,
which is:
3) art books in Finland are outrageously expensive.
Rather unimpressive-looking books would cost something around US$100. There also seems to be a de facto tax on any book having content related to the KALEVALA. As we noted, a British edition of the KALEVALA which was labeled 7.99 (about US$13) would cost FIM 139 (about US$26). Other British books were not marked up nearly so much.
Also, when you get a book in Russian, you have a fighting chance of figuring out what a given section is talking about. You can sound out the words and often they sound like words you know. They're cognates. Finnish goes out of its way to avoid international roots. If a new device comes along, like the telephone, they don't transliterate 'telephone'--they pick Finnish roots with a similar meaning ('pahulin'). This may make figuring out what a new word means a little easier, but it is probably tougher for Finns to deal internationally and for the visitor Finland is a verbal fruit cocktail of incomprehensible phonics.
Dinner was at Lokran Grill (another 'Lonely Planet' recommendation). Mark ordered more or less at random off the menu. Evelyn saw a salmon plate coming out of the kitchen and ordered that. Mark's turned out to be something like Wiener Schnitzel stuffed with a blue cheese and cream sauce. He says his only regret was that it was a bit too much like food he'd already had this trip, because it was certainly tasty enough.
It came with a salad, soup, and dessert. You pull the salad out of a chilled case. Mark saw what looked a little like dressing, so he put it on the salad. Yes, it turned out to be a nice honey Dijon dressing. The soup was potato, and good. There was very good bread pudding in vanilla sauce. With drinks it cost about FIM 130 (about US$25). (Since service is included, by the way, the United States equivalent includes tip.) The place was basically a bar with a television going and no atmosphere, but it still was a good choice.
There is a trolley route that takes you past some of the major sight-seeing spots for what the brochure calls a 'semi-guided tour' of Helsinki. It was interesting, but there really isn't time to see much from a trolley. Trolleys are expensive here (for FIM 9 you get to ride any trolley for one hour). The sight-seeing trolley was just long enough that we could not get another trolley back to the Eurohostel on the same ticket. Just as well--you see more on foot, though our feet (all four!) were very tired at this point.
Mark noted, 'As we got off the trolley a young dog had been tied to some fixture in the wall while his master shopped. Most people just heard the howling. The first thing I thought about is how terrified that dog must have been to see his master walk away and when he tries to follow his collar stops him. He feels this frustration and stress that he will be abandoned and on his own, perhaps never able to get himself free of this wall. You wish you could tell him that in a few minutes his master will return, but there is little you can do. I think relationships are very important to dogs--probably to most mammals.'
'I have been told that close to the western summit of Kilimanjaro there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude. But maybe he wasn't hunting game. Maybe he was searching for a parent or mate or cub that he had lost and was trying to find,' Mark concludes.
Back at the room we packed, wrote logs, and went to bed early. We also tried three times to call Hannu. The books say to put in at least FIM 5 before making a long-distance call since they charge at a faster rate. A little window shows how much money you have left to spend. And it diminishes a lot faster if it is a long-distance call. We called his office, got a recorded message, and so got only FIM 1.6 worth of call, but the machine ate the whole FIM 5. Eventually we reached him at home and arranged for him to meet us in the morning at the train. All this calling had involved making sure we had enough coins for the telephones, since we didn't know how much the calls would cost and couldn't find a credit card phone. The result, of course, was that we had enough coins for E.T. to have phoned home. But they're only PMUs anyway.
Oh, yes, PMUs. We have a friend Guy who was telling us a story about being in the Caribbean and something cost N PMUs. 'What's a PMU?' 'A peculiar monetary unit.' Well, the expression caught on, so now we speak of PMUs when we travel.
We should probably also explain how we came to be doing this calling and so on. When we first decided to go to the Baltics, Finland, and Sweden, we posted a message on Usenet on the Internet asking about places of Jewish interest and about science fiction fans. We had originally mentioned only Helsinki in Finland, and got a message back from Hannu asking why everyone who goes to Finland goes only to Helsinki and skips Turku, which was full of both history and science fiction fans. We replied that we had in fact visited Turku when we were there in 1986, said we were perfectly willing to visit it again if people wanted to get together, and mentioned in passing the 1827 fire that had destroyed most of the former capital. The latter was mostly to show off and at least give the impression we were not boorish Americans. It must have worked, because Hannu wrote back that, yes, people wanted to meet us. We could stay at his place and he would even show us around. In fact, the Turku University Science Fiction Association wanted to know if we would be willing to give a short talk. Apparently a fair percentage read Evelyn's science fiction reviews and Mark's film reviews. The Internet seems very closely tied into science fiction fandom in Turku, which means they see what we write and as a result they seem determined to treat us as if we were celebrities. We aren't, but it was nice to be treated as we were.
May 25, 1994: Mark woke up about 3:30 thinking about the speech he would be making, throwing out all of what he'd prepared and starting over. (He worries too much.)
So he dozed a little bit, but was up at 5:15 so we could catch the for the 6:50 train to Turku. We took the 6:10 trolley to the train station. The streets seemed oddly deserted.
There was a film crew with a camera dolly in the train station. Presumably they were setting up to film something, but we couldn't stick around to find out. Does anyone in Helsinki know what they were filming? Unlike our experience with the film crew in Zagreb, there were no well-known actors and we would have had no chance to talk to them anyway.
There is a peculiar system for choosing seats. For FIM 15 extra you can get an assigned seat. If you don't have an assigned seat you sit anywhere, then if asked to move by someone assigned that seat you move. We got on the car and sat down. We were the first and second on the car. The third person came over and said we were sitting in her seat. What are the chances?
It is possible we moved to someone's seat who just did not have enough English to ask us to move. In any case, Evelyn waited until we had passed all the suburban Helsinki stops and were scheduled to run non-stop for a while before going to the cafe car for coffee and an exceptionally greasy doughnut.
Finland was able to escape being absorbed into the Soviet Union, as is abundantly obvious just by looking out the train window. Get out of the city and you do *not* move into poverty. You don't see *any* ramshackle chicken farms. To all outward appearances the Finnish economy was, is, and will be prosperous. You see more poverty from a train window while traveling in England or the United States.
Eventually the train came to a stop at Kupittaa. That is about four kilometers from Turku. Hannu was there to meet us. He somehow recognized us. Well, first of all, we had sent him a description, but also we were the only tourists with luggage to get off at this basically industrial stop outside Turku.
Mark explains, 'Actually, I can say in a little more detail what is happening. The United States has the highest concentration of organized science fiction fandom and the greatest number of communities, by a wide margin. Fan groups in Scandinavia are more widely separated, often with international borders between them. The Internet is nothing more or less than a device for removing distance concerns from information exchange. From my office at work I can inter-office-mail a memo and it will get three offices away in about a half a day. Or I can post a review on the Internet and it will get to Finland in about a half an hour. You are two jumps from massive libraries of news, information, or literature. THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS (a.k.a. THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED) was about a group of children who all share the same experience. What one finds out they all know. That was how we got a lot of the information we needed for this trip. For hotels in Stockholm we could tap into people who live in Stockholm. They tap into Evelyn's knowledge of books and mine of film. And when we travel seven time zones from home, there are people interested in meeting us.'
Anyway we ended up being treated like royalty the whole time. Hannu took us first to his apartment. Immediately you could tell this looked like it belonged to a science fiction fan. The shelves are full of science fiction books, magazines, comics, and--a related interest-- war games.
We dropped off our bags and Hannu served a meal more elaborate than we were ready for, including yoghurt, herring, cheese, vegetables, and a lot more we did not try.
At 10:00 we went to Turku Castle, the major historical site of Turku. In fact, it was the only site in Turku that we had gone to in 1986, but since then they have renovated it. Actually, 'renovated' is probably the wrong word; they had done a lot of work on it and there were a lot more parts open and displays within. It is a huge medieval castle turned into a huge museum. The floor space must be at a minimum 50% larger than any other museum we have seen this trip and probably more. Of course, the biggest exhibit was the castle itself with its vaulted ceilings and many restored rooms.
And of course there are models of what Turku Castle looked like at various times in its past.
In the rooms there is much of what you would expect. You see a collection of arms, you see paintings of some of the incredibly ugly people who lived in the castle. Some of these people were very powerful, no doubt, but the artists who painted the portraits had the last laugh. One hall showed 19th and 20th Century fashions for women.
It took us about three hours to see the entire castle and we *know* we didn't spend that much time the last trip.
This must be the time of year for school field trips. |
