Fiskars Ruukki

Today I visited the Fiskars Ruukki for the first time. It's one of the attractions that has been on my to-visit-list for long time, but finally I managed to take the time and get there. The trigger for visiting Fiskars this week was the flower exhibition that my sister participated. She had two pieces on the show, this one being themed in a futuristic way for the Paper House of Fiskars - she had made the frame for the flowers from 800 paper circles! Unfortunately my camera run out of battery, so I didn't get a picture from the other piece. But I'm a very proud big sister.


Detail of the flower setup made by my sister


River being calm

The story about flower exhibition actually explained already what Fiskars Ruukki is all about today: art and handicraft surrounded with beautiful nature. Many artists have residence in the village, and there are shops selling handicrafts. Unlike in many tourist attractions, the food in Fiskars is good too. We had a delicious lunch at Restaurant Kuparipaja (Copper workshop) by the river, and coffee at Petris Chocolate Room. Petris Chocolate Room is something I can warmly recommend: beautiful handmade pralines with perfect chocolate and smart flavor combinations. My absolute favorite was the black currant praline. Petris's artisan chocolate is available in Helsinki too, the shop at Museokatu 11, Töölö is open on weekdays, and they'll have a chocolate bar at Helsinki Design Open event in couple of weeks.


Petris Chocolate Room

Delicious pralines: black currant, lime-coconut and pistachio

Fiskars Ruukki used to be an iron mill, it was founded in the 17th century by the river. All kinds of iron tools were made there - so that's the home of the orange Fiskars scissors too. The beautiful old industrial buildings have been nicely renovated and many of them serve nowadays as shops or exhibition rooms. One of my favorite details in the industrial buildings were the dark bricks in some of the houses: they were made of the blast furnace slag - recycling the industrial waste of the mill. The wooden houses were built for the workers of the mill, and some of them are still in residential use.


Black bricks


Residential buildings


Another residence. The lady of the house at the door (too bad there are no other bees in the pic to give the scale)

Nice experience. I recommend visiting Fiskars for anyone who's staying in Finland for a bit longer, and for the locals as well.


The trees in Fiskars were amazing

Animals - budget vs. premium

Helsinki provides us with two nice places to watch animals: Haltiala farm and Korkeasaari Zoo. At least 3 years old kids were thrilled about both of the places.


Real animals

Horses, cows, lambs, pigs, chickens, roosters and an ugly gobbler - those are the animals of Haltiala farm (sorry, they don't have English website). Haltiala farm is owned and maintained by Helsinki City. It's located in Northern Helsinki, near Jumbo shopping center. The public transportation is not impossible: bus 650 takes you to few hundred meters from the farm.

In the summer time the animals are out around the clock. The ice cream kiosk and restaurant have more limited opening hours. No entry fee. The farm is growing flowers and peas - and the citizen can pick them for free (whenever they're ready for harvesting). Isn't that nice?

Lazy lions 

Helsinki Zoo is located on an island, Korkeasaari. You can get there by metro (+ couple of kilometers walking), bus or boat. If the weather is good, I recommend the boat - but take it from Hakaniemi instead of Kauppatori. And they sell tickets in the boat too, so you don't need to queue and miss the boat because of pre-sold tickets.

There is quite a variety of animals in Korkeasaari. Not the farm animals, though. And no elephants, polar bears nor giraffes either. But there are lazy lions, a tiger, snow leopards, lynx, bears, baboons, all kinds of deers, camel, owls, otters and small apes and parrots. On a summer day you should be prepared to queue everywhere. If you're not in a hurry, postpone your zoo visit to September - then the animals are much more active.

Design machines

As I wrote earlier, it was a surprise for me that the ice hockey world championship games were hosted in Helsinki. I was equally surprised when I saw the construction work of European athletics championship at Helsinki Senate Square - are we hosting those as well? Obviously I'm not the primary target group when marketing sports events, since these Helsinki sports events keep coming as a surprise to me.

The Helsinki happening that I haven't missed is the World Design Capital year. I've spotted WDC logos, ads and events everywhere. But that's ok, I feel I belong to the primary target group of WDC fuzz. To be honest, I think the WDC marketing has been even a bit too active, I think they've tried to put word "design" into places where it doesn't belong to.

Anyway, today I visited HI Design exhibition at Kaapelitehdas. The exhibition is part of the WDC and it presented design, industrial art and wonderful Finnish machines. There were automatic forklifts, nice elevators, new tram, building automation system running on solar power, the device history of Nokia phones, etc.



There was also an armored vehicle. I believe for many Finns it is perfectly normal to present a tank as a crown jewel of Finnish design. But I can also imagine that armored vehicles in general may not be 100% politically correct piece of design in some other cultures. Well, in some cultures you don't consider tractors either as top design - but we do.



The exhibition is free, and it's open from Thursday to Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm until September 2nd.

Tramsformers

In Helsinki city center you should keep your eye on the ground, especially when crossing a road on tram rails.

The other ones rule the hoods of Kamppi, Urho Kekkosen katu.




And the others' territory is at Kluuvi, Aleksanterinkatu.

Now this is the kind of sightseeing I like!

Imatra

Imatra is a small town in South Karelia, about 300 km to North East from Helsinki. Imatra is living upon paper mills, ruled by social democratic party and the demography of the citizens is heavily turning to the senior side. I’m not sure which of those three characters are causes and which are consequences, but they are definitely going hand-in-hand. Due to the paper mills the smell in the town is sometimes quite thick. The aboriginals don’t care about the stink – ”it’s the smell of the money”, they tend to say.

The paper industry originally landed on Imatra’s soil because of lake Saimaa and river Vuoksi. And those are definitely the most beautiful things in Imatra. River Vuoksi has been dammed for energy production, but in the summer time they open the gates and let the river run wild every night.

The basic tone of Imatra is a bit depressive for the most of the year, although in summer the town starts blooming. The tourist guides always highlight the river Vuoksi and its white waters, hotel Valtion Hotelli and the Church of Three Crosses as the best tourist attractions, but in my opinion these are the best sides of Imatra:

• Virkkukoukkunen – adorable, colorful and cheerful handicraft/design shop at the center of the town. Really one of the kind.
• Enso/Svetogorsk border crossing station - the money of the Russian tourists keeps the local business alive.
• The visa services of Itämatkat – professional visa services for Russia with more affordable prices than what you get in Helsinki region.
• Vuoksen piirakat – the best  commercial rice pies (nothing beats self made rice pies, of course). You can find Vuoksen piirakat also in the freezers of the grocery stores in Helsinki region.
• Restaurant Buttenhoff – the best restaurant in Imatra. Their vegetables come from local farmers. It’s not fine dining, but the place really stands out from the crowd of the local competitors: 5 pizza-kebab-places, Rosso, Café at ABC gas station and McDonalds.

Vappu in pictures

Vappu is the only real carnival in Finland, and therefore it deserves its own post in pics. Pictures tell more than words.



It all started on May Day's Eve at restaurant Allotria. Good swing, good food, good mood.



Vallilan vapputanssit, dancing in the park at Vallila.



Puhvetti stands for affordable home-made snacks.



Watching the May Day's Eve over the roofs of Helsinki.



Please don't pee on the street.



Sitting Bull crossing the Pitkä silta with quite a speed. I wonder if he's a working class hero or capitalist.



Manta a.k.a Havis Amanda bathing in the morning sun on the first of May.



Julkku magazine, made by teekkarit, sold by teekkarit for teekkarit.



Kaivopuisto and Ullanlinnanmäki in Vappu morning.



Yes, Vappu is the celebration of students and other folks wearing overall.



These were invented long before OnePiece and other trendy jump suits.



Retuperän WBK playing newer French horn music.



People, take off the cardboard stiffener from your hat! Nobody's cap is that stiff in real life.



Delicious picnic sandwich.



Some doughnuts and pavlova.



Now that's what I call uniform! Cap, beige spring coat and a glass of bubbly.

It was a hauska vappu!

Staycation in Helsinki

During my holiday I've been mostly wandering around Helsinki like a tourist.




View from Tähtitorninmäki (observatorium hill?) to Kallio church along Unioninkatu. The church is 2,5 km away.




"On siis kevät..." - scene of a song.




Had coffee at the market place.

Looked through gateways into quadrangles.

Went to see my favorite statue, the Mouse at the National Archive. The statue is only 12 cm tall.

Road trip to Karelia

About a year ago I did a road trip back to my roots, to Karelia, to the places that used to be part of Finland but got under the Soviet reign after WW2.


We crossed the border at Imatra / Enso, stopped by at Kirvu (my family from dad's side is from Kirvu) drove by Lake Ladoga, stopped for the night at Sortavala, then went to see Kollaa, one of the most intense fighting fronts of the war between Finland and Russia. Eventually we got back to our side of the border at Värtsilä.


It was amazing to see how the time had almost stopped there. Most of the houses had not been touched since the Finns were evacuated in the mid-1940's.


I don't know if it was the weather, but it was somehow misty, nostalgic and a bit spooky there. For example the forests in the old Karelia were really wild and wanton. In Finland the forests are clean and like economic pine fields.


Yes, the nature was wild indeed. A lamb joined us when we were having picnic in Kirvu.


Roads and other infrastructure were really bad from time to time.


Quite many churches were demolished on the soviet times.


But the pearls of the soviet architecture were still standing tall.


This was the garrison where my grandpa from mom's side was called right before the war begun.


And the same building from the inside. Houston, we have a moisture problem.


Trenches and dugouts at Kollaa where my grandpa was fighting in 1941 - 1944. There were pieces of metal everywhere - you only needed to kick the ground a bit and you could hit your shoe into a boot of a Russian soldier.


Our hotel in Sortavala. Not exactly five star residence, but it wasn't that bad from the inside.


You could spot this particular shade of blue everywhere: in railings, window frames, doors, benches, cars, bus stops... Didn't feel like leaning on the railing though.

Why did I want to post these pics? Well, I wanted to show that even though some (usually older) people see Karelia as the golden dreamland which they want back and where they want to return to - the current state of affairs is far from romantic. We were actually quite lucky. On the other hand, I also wanted to show that there are exotic resorts right next to you. You don't need to search for adventures too far.