Spring Break: Scandinavia

Last week was our spring break and being the ambitious gals we are, we (Anne, Heather, Maggie and myself) planned a bustling 8 day journey through Copenhagen, Andalsnes, and Oslo.  Along the way we saw plenty of architecture (there are more than a few ‘nerdy’ pictures to prove it), met great people, enjoyed Norway’s landscape and of course experienced all the sightseeing and nightlife the cities had to offer.  I think the DFDS ferry said it best, “Oslo is Nature, Copenhagen is Culture and in between you can enjoy the pleasure of slow travel’.  Ha, what a slogan!  There are so many stories to tell, so instead of diving into the details of them in this post, I’ll list what dominated our entire trip, the many forms of transportation we took!

A summary of our journey via mode of transportation:

HELSINKI
tram
bus
plane plane
train
bus
walk
COPENHAGEN (sleep in heaven, hostel)
BIKE!
bus
car
ferry
train
walk
ANDALSNES (private cabin, with tv!)
WALK 12 mile ‘hike’
train
OSLO (anker hostel)
train
plane plane
car
HELSINKI

-jcs

With all the traveling we were bound to have some close calls.  The pictures are from when we almost missed our ferry.  Boarding closed at 4:30 (see picture on left.  Maggie and Heather’s reaction (see picture on right!)

Concert 101

Wednesday I was walking home at 8 pm and a song by Florence + The Machine came on shuffle and I suddenly remembered that she was playing at a sold-out concert at Tavastia, a club a few blocks from our house. I rushed home, showered, and then dragged Jen with me to see if we could finagle some tickets or sneak in. I asked the guy at the door if there were any tickets left and of course they were sold out. I turned around prepared to pout all the way home, but a girl right behind us gave me a free ticket! What luck! Now we just had to find a ticket for Jen, which actually only took a few minutes of standing awkwardly outside until we met a guy who was selling an extra ticket. Already this night was a success! The concert ended up being fantastic, except the entire crowd stood still most of the time (unacceptable for such an upbeat performance). At one point Florence had to teach the entire audience how and when to jump up and down…it was like Concert 101 (kind of embarrassing.) We also befriended a (jumping) Finnish Florence fan and so the spontaneous night was truly a success! Now, we are in the search for the perfect music, djs, concerts (to go along with the search for the perfect meatball*)

*Mags already mentioned our trip Kolme Kruunua, our next stop on the meatball list. I’m not sure if it was because I was starving, or because we had just gone to the public sauna, but these meatballs were GREAT. They are winning so far in the competition, but we still have a long way to go…

Why I love the Sauna…

Since I don't have a picture of the sauna, here's my first attempt at pancakes. They taste alright, but they aren't supposed to bubble like that!

Last Saturday, Jen, Heather, Elizabeth and I went on an adventure to a public sauna in Helsinki.  We went to one of the last public wood-burning saunas in the city.  It is popular now in Helsinki to have your own private sauna in your own home.  There used to be a ton of public saunas but now there are very few.  Apartment blocks also used to be built with a common sauna in the courtyard for residents to use, but now they are more commonly built with a sauna in each apartment.  Our palace of an apartment has a nice communal sauna in the courtyard.  We have an hour of sauna time every Thursday night followed by my (most often failed) attempts at making Finnish style-pancakes.  This makes Thursdays great days.

Our adventure at the sauna was supposed to follow cross country skiing.  Actually, Heather and I were going to go downhill skiing but we decided to it was too much money for not enough time.  So we opted to go cross country skiing instead.  When Saturday rolled around, it was about +5 Celsius outside and that plan was nixed as well.  Instead we went to school, worked for a healthy 2-3 hours then made our way to the sauna.  Kotiharjun Sauna is in a neighborhood called Kallio, where we really haven’t been much so we naturally got lost a few times.  We finally found it, paid 7.50 Euro (student discount!) and went upstairs.  We were greeted with a loud, boisterous dressing room of Finnish women.  They were drinking champagne and cider, drying their hair, putting on make up and running around in bras and nylons.  We found lockers and made our way through the shower room into the sauna room.  This room was HOT.  All saunas are hot, that is their obvious purpose, but this was the first time we visited a wood-burning sauna and the heat is something entirely different.  The air is incredibly hot in wood-burning saunas so it is almost difficult to breath.  In electric saunas, it is as if it gets more humid when water is thrown on the stove.  It is tricky to explain.  We started on the top bench (where it is hottest) in the first sauna round, but ended a few benches down after that.  The most important thing to note is that women of all shapes and sizes use the sauna.  Seriously, there was even a pregnant woman.  One older woman sat on the top bench the whole time and then poured a whole bucket of water all over her.  Overall it was quite an experience and I’m sure we’ll go back.  We’ll just have to remember two towels, water and beer (called Sauna Olut in these occasions).

It’s also best to follow sauna trips with a visit to Kolme Kruunua for incredible meatballs.

http://www.kotiharjunsauna.fi/

http://www.kolmekruunua.fi/

-mls

All the way to Santa’s Village and he’s out to coffee!

Moi!

Last weekend we went on the much anticipated Finland North Excursion. We did more on this trip than it’s possible to write about in one post, but we really had a great time.  We were shuttled around in a bus a little bit too much (had a few flashbacks to my Israel trip) but it is certainly better than walking from place to place in -33 degrees Celsius.  I also managed to fall asleep on a few of the bus tours and while standing up in the Oulu town hall designed by Alvar Aalto, but what’s new?  Here is everything that all/most/a few of us managed to do in 3 days.  Be prepared for lots of exclamation points.

• Take a 6:30 am train 6 hours North to Oulu, Finland & sleep most of the way with scarves or jackets covering our faces
• Arrive in Oulu, drop off bags at the hotel, walk to the Architecture school (Northern most architecture school in the whole world!!!!!) and eat lunch in the cafe (student lunch: 1.90 Euros!)
• Listen to a presentation on the Oulu school of architecture followed by a presentation on algorithmic architecture from a few of the students
• Dinner at a traditional Lappish restaurant with a few of the algorithmic architecture students….sauteed reindeer (DELICIOUS!!)
• Friday bar at the Oulu school…which is their equivalent of our happy hours back in St Louis but with a really great DJ.  We interacted with actual Finnish Architecture students here! Then we went out dancing with them and now I have two Finnish Facebook friends!
• Huge Finnish hotel breakfast and then bus tour of Oulu
• Take a bus to Kemi to see the snow castle!  Peter MacKeith went tubing down the ice slide!
• Take a bus to Rovaniemi
• Socialize with the cultural and intellectual elite from Rovaniemi
• Go out for drinks and dancing with the cultural and intellectual elite from Rovaniemi….and sadly decline a invitation to an after party
• Huge Finnish hotel breakfast and then a tour of the Aalto buildings in Rovaniemi
• Reindeer Races! This was the best part of the day…Anne will be elaborating in a post later.
• Free Time!
• Board overnight train back to Helsinki

It was quite an adventure.  I’d really like to go back again to see what it is like when there is mostly daylight and no snow on the ground.  We also made a friend who goes to art school in northern Norway and discussed a possible roadtrip/spring break plan to visit him and other Northern cities.  But that plan was made at around 2am so we’ll see if anything comes of that…

If there are two suns this far north, then why is it so cold???

mls

Really? We’re committing…

This is going to be short….

Jen and I (Maggie) are going to run the Helsinki Half-Marathon! Hopefully by writing this on Hel. frozen over we’ll actually follow through! It’s on May 8th and will end outside the Olympic stadium. Clearly by the selection of photos below, I’m mostly just using Jen to help me run the whole thing…

http://www.helsinkicityrun.fi/eng/index.html

More details to come!

mls

examples of Maggie and Jen’s athleticism

Happy Hour, Kippis!

Considering the residents of our apartment include 2 former social chairs, we believed it was our responsibility to continue the tradition abroad.  Following our first official week of classes we gathered at Fredrikinkatu 22 to eat, drink, and congratulate ourselves on making it through orientation.  In typical fashion we prepared a poster to advertise the event.  This poster only alludes to the eccentric furnishings in our apartment- which among other things includes the dolls and more than a few portraits of what appear to be body builders.

Attendance at happy hour was spectacular and so was the array of goodies available to snack on!  There were at least 4 varieties of cheese, crackers, fazer chocolate, grapes and of course a glass or two of wine.  We were also joined by Julie, a Wash. U graduate who is now a furniture designer and living here in Helsinki.  She attempted to help us in our quest to learn Finnish but we have a long way to go!  The exception is kippis (cheers) which we all seem to remember.  During last Friday’s happy hour at 24 Huvilakatu there was once again a spread of cheese and crackers accompanied by good conversation and music.  This time there was also a fire to add to the cozy atmosphere.

Until next time,

Kippis!

JCS

poster courtesy of Alex Harner

cloudy, with a chance of meatballs

We have finally settled into our apartment and our neighborhood. We have familiarized ourselves with the public transportation and with our school in Espoo. And so now we can take the first steps to accomplishing our true goal: find the best meatball in Finland.

We have had a busy two weeks, and so have only just begun the taste-testing tour of Finland! My first truly authentic Finnish meal was after our sauna night on Uunisaari Island. We ate at Seahorse Ravintola, and although I was unsure about what I ordered, it turned out to be superb: cabbage rolls stuffed with mushrooms and rice on top of a potato cake (what a pleasant surprise!), and for dessert, iced cranberries with a warm and rich caramel sauce. I didn’t have the chance to taste the other  hit dish of the night, fried pike-perch. Jen claimed that the dish was “too buttery,” a combination of words that I didn’t think existed. (I think Julia Child would have been somewhat appalled, and I am certainly disappointed that I didn’t have a bite.)

Last Friday, February 5 was Runebergin Päivä, a holiday named after the famous Finnish poet. The holiday revolves around the tasty delicacies, Runeberg Tarts, a heavy pastry flavored with rum and almonds and topped with just the right amount of raspberry jam and sugar icing. It sounds like my kind of holiday, except there is something crucial missing: chocolate. I think I could write a novel about Karl Fazer chocolate, so I’ll spare you. Each time I get the chance to travel to Europe, I scope out the best chocolate and then I become so embarrassed that the “Great American Chocolate Bar” is the Hershey bar which, compared to Karl Fazer, is like eating a piece of cardboard (or, in the spirit of architecture school, a piece of basswood or styrene)

Now that we are focused and hungry, we can talk meatballs. This past weekend we went to restaurant on Uudenmaankatu, Rafla, with meatballs on our mind. Lambmeatballs and vegetables with sage butter and garlic sauce. The lambmeatballs were good, a solid base for future comparisons, but the vegetables were the real winner in this meal. We have a lot more neighborhoods and restaurants to explore, a lot more Finnish dishes to try, and maybe we will attempt to cook our favorite dishes (my parents will certainly laugh at that statement)

Let the meatball crawl begin!

HLM

Hyvaa paivaa!

Hello! I decided to take the plunge and start a blog about our travels in Helsinki, Finland this semester.  After all, if I can jump into a hole in the ice and go swimming, I can probably manage this.  With some help from my roommates.  I’m hoping that there will be some guest posts as we chronicle our journeys in this frozen city.

First of all, it’s not really that cold.  But it is also not warm.  There was about a 3 day stretch where it was very very very cold and another 3 day stretch where it did nothing but snow, but overall it is not that much different than temperatures at home.  The amount of snow is really amazing though…it’s really too bad I didn’t have this much snow when I skipped off to Colorado a month ago! The city functions pretty well with the snow.  Streets and sidewalks are plowed, but they don’t use salt.  There are a few cars still on the street and I am very happy that I do not own them.

My roommates and I definitely lucked out with the location.  We are pretty much right in the center of the city.  We are around the corner from several cafes, restaurants, bars and shops.  If we need to either get our hair cut or buy a wedding dress we can probably stop twice on every block near our place to do so.  Today I walked to the Cafe Ekberg, where Marjo-Kaisa told me lots of famous Finnish philosophers hang out to buy some traditional pastries for my roommate’s birthday.  There are trams and buses that stop right outside our apartment and the bus that takes us to school everyday is right up the street.

The best night I had so far was our big Sauna night.  We went to the Uunisaari Island and used the sauna for two hours.  When it got too hot, we ran outside barefoot down a snowy path to some steps which led to the bay and jumped into a hole in the ice. Now that was cold!!! But there was something really beautiful/terrifying about jumping in by yourself and glancing (very quickly!) back at the city in the snowy darkness.  Then the moment ends and you run as fast as possible back to the sauna.  Quite an unforgettable experience.  We lucked out because our apartment has a sauna too, so we get to use that every Thursday night at 9pm.  There won’t be an ice hole to run into, but there are plenty of snow banks!

Alright, time to head off to the first official day of class!

Moi Moi!

MLS