Ha, see what I did there in the title?

Anyway, this is probably my last post from these travels. In about 8 hours I will be on a plane heading homeward (via Hong Kong… better make sure I have my yellow umbrella handy) so I can’t imagine much else exciting will happen here in Finland in that time.

I spent my last free day relaxing and packing. The only plan was to meet my colleague Lauri in the city for dinner, apparently at an old school traditional Finnish restaurant, so late arvo I hopped a bus and made my way in. I had a little time to casually wander, and the city seemed a little more lively than usual for a Sunday. Not sure why. Again, it was a nice day, so people were out and about. I couldn’t resist snapping a last picture of the harbour, complete with giant urinating boy again.

I also snapped a pic of the Uspenski Cathedral as I wandered by. It was clear to see the Russian heritage in it just from the outside.

It was time for dinner so met Lauri at Restaurant Savotta. On entering it was clearly designed to be old school, being very much log cabin influenced. Browsing the menu I knew I would be in for a treat. I had some advice from Lauri as to what to order that I would be unlikely to get anywhere else. Having already sampled quite a bit of local food, we went for the elaborate shared starters, and I went the Vendace for my main.

The starter was amazing. It was a sample of about 10 different things that we shared. In amongst it were local delights including cranberry soaked salmon, a white fish I can’t recall which, reindeer in a few forms, wild mushrooms, goats cheese, and other delicious things that I should have written down. My favourite was the reindeer salami and the mushrooms. Superb! Apologies for the crappy iPhone 4 picture.

That was tasty as was the local beer that washed it down. Then it was on to the main. Vendace is a small whitefish found in lakes in Northern Europe. I had actually had a small sample at the market in Helsinki not long after I arrived, but this was a big plate full of the little guys. They were crumbed and deep fried and were nice and tasty. I needed the cucumber (and something) dressing to dilute the fried taste a bit, but I love eating a fish where you aren’t worried about bones… you just pop those suckers in whole. They were good, but by the end I think I had had my fill since it was a big pile.

With that and a glass of wine, I was super full so dessert wasn’t happening. Lauri gave me a going away present, a cool book on Finland, which was a lovely gesture. It has been a great experience to be working alongside other researchers internationally for such a long period of time. Hopefully it is not too long before I bump into them all again (cross your fingers, maybe at a conference next year!).

Now to head home. You may get a final update depending on my adventures in Hong Kong on the way home!

Sadly, this is a report from my last few days in Finland. It will be great to head home after being away for so long, but who knows when I will be back to Finland again?

My Saturday started a little differently to normal. Watching AFL! The local Eurosport TV channel showed the game live, so my day started lounging about the apartment, enjoying the footy. Well, not so much enjoying. I didn’t care who won, but I would have liked a close game. Instead, what I watched was (sadly) one of the most amazing team performances I think I have ever seen. For a game against who I thought was the best team of the year, Hawthorn just did a clinical demolition job. A begrudging well done to the Hawks.

As the game wound up, I wandered to the bus stop for a day out and about. Not Helsinki, but the old capital of Finland. I was bound for the medieval city of Turku in the south west. About an hour and half on the bus later, and I was in a new city.

Turku proved to be quite a nice city to wander, on yet another sunny (but pretty chilly) Finnish day. In the last week the weather had started to stay in single digits, but the sun was out, so it was still great to be out in it. Turku is based mostly around the Aura river, where it is located right at the mouth of. The river then flows through the city, with the main hub being the cafes all along.

On the way to the city centre, I passed the Turku Cathedral. It was quite a nice one actually, being pretty statuesque but not overwhelming, and was quite nice inside as well, being a nice mix of old religious motif but still quite modest.

One of the domes was really nicely painted, and there were some nice paintings about.

The most imposing element was the dramatic organ at the back of the cathedral. They were some serious pipes that would be pretty cool to hear.

I then ventured back outside and began meandering along the river. It was about 4km to walk along from the cathedral to the end, and I expected to see lots of people being out and about, given the nice weather. But in fact, there seemed to be very few folk out, and even less tourists. Like I have experienced a bit over the past few weeks, it seems tourist season is well and truly over. While it was nice for it to be quiet, I imagine it would have been much more fun if it was lively.

I wonder if this place gets a lot of action on a weekend? But seriously? Aussie bars everywhere, even in Turku?! Maybe I should have been watching the footy here this morning.

There were a number of nice bridges along the way. I was quite enamoured with the flotilla of large ducks. Very cool. As you can probably expect, I also sniffed out a local record store where I picked myself up a cool silver coloured Wilco 7″ that I didn’t have. Wilco in Turku. Of course.

As I made my way along, there were lots of statues and art works along the path. Some freaky, some a bit more normal. I liked these two dudes, the one on the right who clearly had troubles with the sun in his eyes.

I was then getting close to the end of the river (or start depending on how you look at it). This nice flower greeted me as I arrived and added to the sunny disposition of the day. Seemed like a good place to stop at a cafe for a rest.

From there I made my way to Turku Castle. It was built over quite a period of time, starting in the 1200’s, and had a fair amount of history inside the walls. Over that time it was Swedish, Russian, and finally Finnish (and bouncing between them over those years too).

The castle interior was split into a number of sections. The main two were the primary keep, where outside of some important restoration, it was left fairly much intact. It was actually pretty cool to wander through. Not like many of the more impressive castles around Europe, but it was a well preserved and displayed castle museum. I even found this feathered little guy just hanging out. He just seemed to stay standing there strangely.

The second part was the Renaissance Bailey, and it was much more of a different vibe. it was much more like a museum, with the focus on displays and preserving what rooms would have looked like over the centuries. It was quite nice to have two quite different experiences within the same castle complex. The rooms ranged from large banquet halls with tapestries, to smaller sitting rooms, still decked out in the furniture they would have had.

The castle soaked up a good couple of hours, and alas, I didn’t really have that much time in Turku, so it was time to wander back toward the bus station. On the way I visited the other main museum, the Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova museum. This was quite an odd one. The Ars Nova museum building was commenced only 20 years ago, intending to be an art gallery. But during building works, they discovered some preserved remains of the old city that used to exist in Turku. So what began as one museum, became two.

The Aboa Vetus is a museum dedicated to showing parts of the uncovered underground city. While it is a lot of crumbled walls and brick, it is still fascinating. You descend down into a main room where you walk amongst the remains and have a number of exhibits detailing life during that time. Pretty cool for a museum that they didn’t know would exist only 20 years ago.

I was a bit confused that they had arcade machines back in the 1200’s, but who knew hey?

The Ars Nova gallery is more of a traditional art space. One section is dedicated to changing exhibitions, while the other space seemed to have some more permanent works. The current exhibition was the work of a contemporary art couple, being mainly found objects. Not my cup of tea really.

The other space however had a good collection of Spanish artists, including some Picasso and Dali which is always nice. Lesser known works, but still cool. I really liked the Dali lithographs of work designed to accompany some Hans Christian Andersen. I hadn’t seen those before so that was a score.

The one real oddity was this nice big blue rock. Yep, it’s a rock. Apparently an artist exhibited at the gallery in the past, which was comprised lots of rocks painted in the classic Yves Klein blue. This one was donated to the gallery and left in this bathroom, so there it stays. Hhhmmm.

Alas, my time had fast disappeared and it was back to the bus station. I got one last selfie with the Turku Cathedral, and with that jumped on a bus and whisked back to Espoo and my waiting apartment (and my packing).

Believe it or not, my month at Aalto was coming to an end, with my last week in the office. My week at work was another productive one. I made some good headway into data analysis and writing with Paivi and we are getting a good project steaming along, which is a good outcome to be leaving with.

Another great link up here at Aalto has been chatting with Perttu Hämäläinen, a professor in Computer Games. He is a fairly recent addition to Aalto, but in just a couple of years he has really set up both a great teaching and research community here. I got to chat a lot about teaching philosophy for games students, and also see his research.

What you see here is a very cool set up. Yep, it’s a trampoline. Using Kinect and other sensor technology, he and his team have built up a fun physical environment, with a trampoline and rock climbing wall being the centre. The sensors are then used to monitor participants and insert them into a virtual game world.

The trampoline was a fun one that I had a go of. You need to jump up platforms that get increasingly difficult. The aim is to teach key movements and see if it helps. Me, I just found it super fun and exhausting! Perttu also linked me up with another researcher, so plenty of good things coming from the trip! I will be super busy when I get back making sure it all continues.

Oh, and the picture at the top? While I typically watch either BBC World News or Eurosport (where they have been playing T20 and AFL this week!) I do like to channel surf and find oddball Finnish shows. In this one I truly have NO IDEA what is happening 🙂

Welcome to week 3 here in Finland!

It has been another productive week researching. I have made some good headway into some projects and in particular my work with my colleagues here at Aalto is coming together. So all in all I’m being super productive!

Anyway, you’re not interested in work. What have I been up to?

When I arrived I looked into the local football schedule to see if getting to see some Finnish Premier League was an option. As it turned out I had a couple of options actually… the try and see the main Helsinki team (who are the dominant force in Finnish football), or to support my temporary home, and see Espoo’s team, FC Honka. As it turned out, I had a chance to see Honka at the local stadium mid-week, so I was now an official FC Honka supporter.

As it turns out FC Honka (honka being Finnish for “pine) are struggling this year and trying to avoid relegation, so I felt good going to support them. I wasn’t sure exactly how the football support would be here, although I expected a good crowd given it is the main sport here. When I got to the “stadium” (see how it is in quote marks now), I was a little surprised. What I found was a local football pitch with a couple of small stands, to hold a few thousand people. I felt I was back seeing the Morwell Falcons!

I arrived about 20 minutes before the game and all was quiet. I got to watch my newly adopted team go through their warm up. Seems they have some interesting warm up exercises here.

I was worried it was going to be a tiny crowd, but by kick off one stand was pretty full, while the other (to be fair looking directly into the sun) had a smattering of people. It also housed the FC Honka die hard supporters (all 50 of them) and they were in fine voice throughout the whole game. They were super passionate which was great. it also seemed as though football songs transcend global barriers, as although I couldn’t understand them, the tunes were very familiar.

So how was the quality of the game? It was so-so. I think most A-League teams would do pretty well against both teams (Honka were up against another mid-table team in MYPA). Well except for Sydney FC he he he. I guess it also explained why the Helsinki team is the one making it into the Champions League pretty much every year.

But it was an entertaining game nonetheless. In a must-win game, Honka got the job done, coming out 2-0 victors. The result didn’t seem in doubt at all after the first 5 minutes, with Honka controlling the game. Really they should have gone home winning by a couple more goals. But it got them off the bottom. I was very happy to have done my part 🙂

The rest of the week was pretty quiet. With no James to keep me entertained on the weekend, my work colleagues stepped up which was nice.

Saturday was another day in Helsinki, but this time I was meeting up with my main research colleague Paivi, who was going to take me to the modern art museum and for some lunch. I was up fairly early, so rather than bus it in to the city I decided to walk the lazy 9km in. What?!? Well, 9km is not that far, and much of the walk was quite nice, hopping across islands to get to the city centre. In fact the walk took no time at all and it felt great to stretch the legs out.

I met Paivi and we visited the Amos Anderson museum, which is the main modern art gallery in Helsinki. Paivi knew of an interesting exhibition at the gallery, work by Finnish artist Tommi Toija that seemed pretty interesting.

When we went in, his work looked instantly familiar… he was the artist behind the huge peeing boy at the main harbour. It looked familiar because the exhibition consisted mainly of dozens of smaller statues of figures much in the same vein as the one on the harbour. But even creepier if that was possible.

But I gotta say they were fascinating. We could walk amongst them and get nice and close. Most looked either sad or scared as they congregated in the exhibition space. It was fun to examine them all, finding the ones that stood out because of some funny look on their face.

There was also another room of smaller figures that were displayed on their own pedestals. Most were too small to be part of the larger group, and only one seemed to have a bit more going on, one clearly inspired by Hitchcock.

We also explored the rest of the museum, which was actually quite a good collection. It was predominantly the private collection of Amos Anderson, who asked that his house (that we were in) be turned into a museum on his passing. The top floor were rooms left as they originally were, including a chapel with some odd religious art and a mini pipe organ. Sadly pictures weren’t allowed in the rest of the gallery.

A couple of hours zipped by, so it was time for a coffee and cake. We went to a nearby cafe where I had my first great coffee in a while. Given the Finns drink so much coffee, finding a great one had proven a bit difficult. But I got to savour a pretty decent latte.

It was then time to bit adieu to Paivi, and I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering and exploring some shops, even finding a good record store. I decided not to walk back the apartment, rather jumped on the bus and enjoying a quiet night.

Sunday I was graciously invited to my colleagues Lauri and Kertu’s house to join them for dinner, so I had the day to chill and relax. Rather than stay in the apartment all day, I decide to head to the Edvard Munch exhibition at the nearby Didrichsen Art Museum.

The Didrichsen is a private gallery, normally filled with the private collection of Marie-Louise and Gunnar Didrichsen, however it has been closed for the past few months, and has reopened with a small exhibition dedicated to Edvard Munch.

Called “The Dance of Life” it was comprised of works from a number of galleries, including the Munch Museum in Oslo. After getting through some VERY strict security, I got to explore the work.

It was a very modest exhibition, made up of less known works. The centre piece was a large work entitled The Dance of Life, of which I had seen another version, either in Oslo or at the Munch exhibition that the NGV held in Melbourne a few years ago. Most importantly, they also had a version of one of my favourite Munch paintings (if not my favourite) controversially titled “Vampire”. Apparently he did 4 version of this, and this is at least the 2nd, if not the 3rd, different version I have now seen. It is quite a haunting work, and I say controversially titled Vampire, as Munch himself apparently titled it “Love and Pain” which is exactly what I see when I look at it, not a vampire at all. But to each their own.

With upstairs consisting of about 25 paintings, downstairs was mostly lithographs and other prints. They seemed to be less worried about people taking photos downstairs so I snuck a couple, one of the obligatory Scream, and another of a print of another of my favourite Munch paintings, “Madonna”.

In no time I was through the exhibition. Small, but worth a visit on a cloudy Sunday morning.

There was little else to see in the gallery. There was a cool/dodgy, “morph your face into the Scream” type installation that only seemed to half work. But just in case you ever wondered, I guess this is what I would look like. Freaky huh?

The rest of Sunday proved quiet, with a bit more walking and relaxing, until it was time to visit Lauri and Kertu. As I expected, they were amazing hosts, treating me with a delicious dinner. It was nice to spend the Sunday evening, chilling out with them and enjoying the great Finnish hospitality.

Now, time for bed and my last week in Finland…