Day 1 - Helsinki

I went to bed on Friday night hopeful that all of the travel and the walking and the accumulated sleep deprivation from too many nights spent anticipating/worrying would have exhausted me to a degree that I would fall asleep, stay asleep and skip jet-lag altogether. No such luck. When I was finally able to get up the next morning (two hours after my first alarm), I felt like 10 miles (or 5,408 miles) of bad road. Coffee, breakfast (yogurt parfait with fresh lingonberries, tres Scandinavian), and good old fashioned Advil restored me to something resembling human, and I stumbled out into a very foggy Helsinki morning.

I had originally planned to take a walk from my guidebook that is supposed to pass 13 major Helsinki buildings and monuments over the course of 4.5 hours, beginning at the harbor and ending at the Olympic Stadium, but the visibility was so poor I decided to start my day at the Design Museum instead, a convenient 5 minute walk from my apartment.

There were three exhibits on display: the permanent collection, an exhibition of Iittala glass, and one focusing on the graphic designer of the year. The permanent collection was interesting, with a lot of what you would expect: Aalto, Artek, Marimekko, et al, some of what you may have forgotten about: Fiskars and Nokia, and a couple of curveballs like timber harvesting equipment. The graphic designer of the year didn’t really call to me. My favorite exhibit by far was the one about Iittala’s designs over the life of the company. It was interesting to look at the forces that shaped Finnish design as a whole through the lens of a specific product (pun not intended). The exhibition was titled Kaleidoscope, and the exhibit design lived up to it. The cases containing the glass objects had faces that were glazed, or mirrored, or solid. As I walked through the galleries, the light shining on and through the objects was reflected by the mirrors and refracted by the glazing creating an experience that was as dizzying as it was engaging.

From there, I headed out to the start of the walk at the old market square by the harbor. On the way I passed a super cool Möbius strip of a mass timber structure, which apparently serves as a ticketing booth for the Helsinki Biennale, which is out on one of the islands. The market square was fairly touristy, but it had plenty of outdoor dining so I grabbed a hot dog and ate it at the water’s edge. Next up was Upenski Cathedral, an Orthodox Church which was perched on a rocky outcropping overlooking the harbor, striking in its red brick, green copper roofs and golden onion domes. It’s times like this you remember that Helsinki used to be part of Russia. In a city full of elaborate brick work, Upenski Cathedral was by far the most ornate.

Next up: another church. This time it was Tuomikirkko, overlooking senate square, where all the buildings are yellow and neoclassical. The church was up an impressively wide and steep set of stairs, and a street performer was taking advantage of the built-in spectator seating as he unicycled back and forth on a slack line (he became visibly annoyed when the church bells began ringing, very loud, very close and very persistently). The building itself is impressively symmetrical, both axially and radially, presenting the same facade on all four sides, down to the ornamental panels. Impressive on the dominant sides, but downright odd where the building backs into a midrise building downslope.

On my way to central Helsinki, I walked through Esplandin Puisto, a lively linear park full of small cafes, and kiosks and statues and happy Finns. I swung by the Parliament building briefly, which is very ancient-Rome-by-way-of-Scandinavia, but make it pink.

I ended my day at a cluster of arts buildings, the copper-clad music hall (covered in dots), Kiasma art museum (covered in a tent for renovation), the new library (more on that another day, it’s super cool), and a brief first visit to Finlandia Hall. A note on Finlandia hall: it is gorgeous, and once fronted a lake with its major facade, but they are building something RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT. Why?? Why???? Maybe I’ll figure it out later.

The only other thing worth reporting is the odd phenomenon of mealtime paralysis I have been experiencing. It’s a curious mix of the paradox of choice (so many options, so little context to make a decision), and Covid anxiety (people seem perfectly comfortable dining indoors here, but I’m not there yet). A person can never go wrong with bread and cheese from the supermarket, I suppose. At least the rye here is, predictably, very very good.

Day 0 - Travel

It’s finally happening.  I won the Cavin Traveling Fellowship in early May of 2020, and after 16 months, the bulk of a pandemic, a new job and a big move, I’m on my way.

My trip begins in Finland, then to Berlin by way of Copenhagen, then Prague, Vienna and Budapest, and finally Barcelona and southern Spain.  I’ll be home for Thanksgiving.

But first, I had to get into Finland.  They had only recently opened their borders to tourists (late July) and with the rise of the Delta variant, I spent weeks obsessively refreshing the websites of the embassy, the border guard, and any other reliable resource to monitor the situation.  Even then, I wasn’t 100% sure they would let me into the country until they stamped my passport.

The trip was 28 hours, door-to-door but what it lacked in brevity, it made up for in ease.  During my long layover in LA, my brother met me at the airport with two boxes of pastries, one sweet, one savory, and then drove out to Manhattan beach where we ate croissants and croquettes while watching the surfers from the pier.

I still can’t quite decide how I feel about my flight from LAX to Helsinki.  The plane was clean and new, the service was good, and the plane was 7/8 empty.  On the one hand, it was about the safest I felt, COVID-wise, for the whole journey, and I had roughly 40 seats to myself, so I could REALLY spread out.  On the other hand, it was kind of eerie, being alone in a space that was designed to hold that many people.  Shortly before landing, we were served blueberry juice with breakfast, and treated to a cabin light display mimicking the aurora borealis.

It was a perfect autumn afternoon in Helsinki.  The air was clear and crisp, the sun was bright, and the sky was a blue that I had forgotten was possible, accustomed as I am to the Bay Area’s late summer haze and smoke.  I ended up getting on the right tram, going in the wrong direction, so I decided to walk across the city to my apartment, which was the first happy accident of my trip.  The streets were full of people out enjoying the beautiful weather with their loved ones (and dogs, lots of people here seem to own dogs), and Helsinki had that golden-hour glow.  My apartment is in a cheery yellow Art Nouveau building.  It is cozy, decorated with period art and furniture, and has a tiled fireplace in the corner that I am more-or-less totally in love with.

By the time I walked in the door, I was too tired to do much more than eat dinner and go to sleep, so any additional exploring would have to wait until Day 2.