Summer cottages are big in Finland. They’re often small, but they’re important. If your Finnish family doesn’t own a summer cottage, someone you know does. And getting away for a weekend or longer is an important part of being a Finn in the warmer months.
The Finnish summer cottage can range between a full-service second home and a rough-it outpost. Cessi’s father has something akin to the former in a suburb outside Helsinki, her mother something closer to the latter outside of Vaasa. We stayed in her father’s for one night upon arrival in Helsinki.
I didn’t get a wide breadth of summer cottage activity in Finland (for shame, for shame), so here’s what I’d like in my idealized weekend trip to an idealized cottage:
- A three room cabin with water and power that might work, might not. If not, candles and water that tastes slightly of iodine.
- A john boat that’s flipped upside down on the bank of a lake that we’ll awkwardly flip over, splashing algae-scum on the person nearest the lake.
- Barbecue-ed foo-ed. I’m not a vegetarian anymore, so this is fine by me. Let’s eat.
- Sunlight glancing off the water to the west as the sun sets late in the day. Warm, flattering orange light from above and below. Sitting on a porch the width of the cabin with sunglasses on at 9:00 PM.
- The sound of a singular, slow moving vehicle on a semi-distant gravel road. Maybe it’s bringing friends, or groceries. Or more beer.
- Wearing plaid. Or hoodies. Plaid hoodies?
- Cool nights and heavy blankets. They can be scratchy heavy blankets, so long as they’re heavy.
- Something between a beer advert and a four-wheel-drive vehicle commercial. Don’t drink and drive, kids.
The other part of my summer cottage fantasy: everyone turns into a golden retriever.
Cessi’s dad, Tom, lives in a flat in Helsinki for the majority of time, but he and his wife Anu visit the cottage regularly throughout the year, which is about an hour outside of the city by bus – just enough distance to get away without requiring a huge effort. The cottage is comprised of a common room/kitchen, one bathroom, sauna room, bedroom and guest/utility room.
After about a five-hour car ride from Vaasa via Tampere, we arrived at the cottage. Anu and Tom prepared a delicious dinner of grilled vegetables and tandoori-style chicken (perhaps slightly in honor of Cessi’s/my time in India?) which we enjoyed outside in the slightly humid but cool evening air.
In the summer, blueberries grow wild in the backyard here – only about ten feet away from the rear wall of the cottage in a mossy, enchante northern forest type of setting. Wild blueberries seemed an everyday phenomenon to Cessi, but a source of silly, childlike joy for me. Did we really have to go pick blueberries? Yes, of course!
“We’re just going to pick one berry,” I lied. Cessi rolled her eyes and located a plastic container big enough for at least two berries.
Berries collected, Cessi announced matter-of-factly that she was going to bake a pie, a proclamation to which I almost fell over. How nice, how unexpected!
Her dad started up the wood-fired sauna in the cottage and we split up by sexes for sauna time.
You can wear your swimsuit in the sauna if you’re bashful, but I’m not – so I got naked and sweat it out with her pops. We discussed Saudi Arabia, Orwell’s “1984”, Japanese businessmen nervously and obligatorily jumping into icy Finnish waters during business trips. The wood-fired heat was, as I had been told, a nicer, more even heat than the electric saunas in many Finns’ homes.
The ladies’ sauna time was next, so we wrapped up in towels and drank cold cans of Karhu beer on the deck. Reunited with the womenfolk shortly thereafter, we consumed what we could of Cessi’s blueberry pie and followed it with 12-year Scotch and extended silent pensive gazes into the night sky.
ASIDE: I’m getting jealous of my past self just writing this. Thanks Tom and Anu (and Cessi!) for making me feel so welcome and giving me a really fantastic intro to summer cottage life in Finland!
The next morning, we were off to Helsinki proper for a bit of sightseeing via a clean public bus. It was an overcast day in the capital, and the city was crowded with summer tourists.
An easy place to start in Helsinki is the Kauppatori (Market Square). The area is fully geared to tourists (and there were plenty), but it’s still definitely worth a visit.
Fishy snacks abound near the waterfront. Cessi guided us towards a muikut (fish name in Finnish: “muikku”. In English, “vendace”) stand and we bought a supply of little fried fish with an orange sauce on top. It’s fun, inexpensive, slightly greasy finger food which is eaten bone-in, and it tastes how it looks. I’m a fan. Try it if you get to Helsinki!
When smiling for a picture in Finland, you say “muikku” like Americans might exclaim “cheese!” Accordingly… muikku!
There are a variety of boat tours departing regularly from the Kauppatori to nearby Suomenlinna fort (a UNESCO world heritage site) which I’m told are quite nice on a sunny day. But the sky remained an uninviting sheet of grey, so we shrugged it off and meandered instead.
Muikut a meal do not make, so we supplemented with small plates at a Lonely Planet-recommended cafe called Kitch. In a city where food and drink prices are fairly high, this light lunch in an inviting space hit the spot.
lunch at Kitch…
with good company.
Helsinki serves as the 2012 World Design Capital, and throughout the city there are new permanent and temporary exhibits and activities to participate in and redesigned public spaces. Events continue throughout the year, see the webpage for detail.
Finnish design is respected and admired well outside the country – think of brands like Iittala and Marimekko.
This is about as Finnish as Finnish design gets: the Aalto Vase (aka Savoy Vase), designed by Alvar Aalto in 1937 and produced by Iitala. Still current, shapely and attractive, even in its seventies.
We didn’t have a lot of time to observe the World Design Capital goings-on, but managed one design-oriented stop – Kiasma – Helsinki’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
Modern art galleries are a sometimes infuriating thing to me, so when we entered Kiasma, I braced myself. I think some curators may quietly be in the business of making contemporary art inaccessible and/or imposing to the casual gallery goer – like they’re playing some kind of cruel, sadistic trick upon the viewer. And sometimes the sheer volume of permanent collection works can be mentally and physically exhausting to the tourist. I expected this type of semi-negative experience from Kiasma, but got a pleasant surprise instead.
Kiasma’s interesting edifice was designed by American architect Stephen Holl, who (interestingly enough for my fellow Missourians if none else) designed the Bloch expansion of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City as well as a number of other buildings you might recognize.
The layout of Kiasma was inviting, and provided enough physical and mental space for the viewer to not feel crushed by the volume of works within. It was fun and interesting, not stuffy. Plus, the amount of artwork within was economized enough that I didn’t feel like I needed a nap afterwards. I could see all of Kiasma, then continue my day afterwards? Crazy, right?
We visited during the “CAMOUFLAGE – Visual Art and Design in Disguise” exhibit, which was a fun mix of art and design in a wide array of mediums. A few samples:
As of Autumn 2012, admission to Kiasma is ten Euros per adult, and free for those under the age of 18 years. See website for more visiting info.
Helsinki is a city of about 600,000 people, and the majority of the city is on a south-jutting peninsula, surrounded by the waters of the Baltic Sea. By geography and by size, it’s fairly easy for visitors to get a grasp on the place in a few days.
Stockmann, a large department store, serves as a recognized center of town (example: when you search “Helsinki” on Google Maps, the pin gets dropped right at Stockmann). From here, it’s an easy walk to the aforementioned Kauppatori, Kiasma, the train station, and other points of interest. The clock/entrance on the north side of the building is a regular meeting place for Finns.
In the basement of Stockmann is a market, where Cessi and I acquired another required-eating Finnish food item: mustamakkara (blood sausage) with lingonberry jam.
I know what it looks like. And maybe white porcelain isn’t the best method of presentation for something that looks like it does. Photogenic or not, we consumed it, and it wasn’t bad!
Mustamakkara is best (and most famously) found in the city of Tampere. It took us a few stops to find in the capital.
New Jersey invaded Helsinki on our third night there. You’d think that crossing the Atlantic would get you further away from the much-maligned state, but no. Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band was in town, capping off their 2012 world tour.
Why does such a large portion of the US speak ill of Jersey? Does it have something to do with problem-wracked cities like Camden and Newark? Is it television shows like The Sopranos and Jersey Shore that cast the place in a bad light? The fact that most people that pass through Jersey just wish they were already in Manhattan or Philadelphia (as if either one of those places was paradise)? It seems like the only positive thing anyone has to say about the Garden State is that Springsteen is from there. Poor little Jersey. (You may wonder why I ask these questions. Am I from Jersey? Oh god no, could one imagine such a horrible fate? Naturally, I’m from USA’s eternal cultural capital, Missouri!)
By all probability, I should not have been in attendance at the concert. The show was sold out, and there were only three tickets between the four of us (Cessi, her father, her father’s wife Anu, and me). Anu super-graciously offered me her ticket.
“Go, go. You will get more out of this than I will” she said without reservation, and more or less pushed me out the door.
I gave her a big hug. How cool of her, and how memorable for me! It would be my first Springsteen show. Kiitos Anu!
Heading out, tickets in hand.
Arrival at Helsinki’s Olympic Stadium. Completed in 1938 and used as the center of activity for the 1952 Olympic Games.
The three of us (and Anu, in spirit) arrived at Helsinki’s 1952 Olympic Stadium around 7:00 PM on July 31, 2012. Cessi, her father and I piled into the floor of the venue and stood in the sunshine, drank draft Tuborg and clandestinely puffed small “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” style cigars when security wasn’t looking our way, chuckling like we knew something they didn’t. Bad kids.
Springsteen came on stage around 8:00 PM and led the band into a historic enduro-set of 33 songs.
Light show? Tough in Finnish summer – the sun didn’t set until 9:53 PM. Accordingly, the big light display that the stagehands so painstakingly built hardly got any use for the first two hours. But that was only half of the set that Springsteen played, which would go on for a record-breaking four hours and six minutes – the longest set of his entire career. And there was hardly a break for the band – at the few moments when we expected to enjoy quieter songs like “Devils and Dust”, Springsteen would summon his musical army back at full force. And no intermission of any sort (and thus no apparent beer breaks for us!).
Four hours is a long time to sing or strum a guitar – and it’s a long time for an audience member to stand, too! We balanced our weight against one another on the stadium floor in shifts to alleviate our isometrically-generated leg pains.
Contrarily, Bruce, age 62, ran around the stage with vigor, power-serenading the ladies of the front row, shaking long lines of audience members’ hands, visiting/rallying members of his band dispersed across the massive stage, belting out song after song. He closed with a cyclical rendition of “Twist and Shout” that went on for over ten minutes. I started feeling like Groundhog Day about five minutes in. Could we have had two five minute songs instead? Or five two minute songs? (I may be a complainer at times, but I don’t mean to complain in this case – I still had a great time!)
our view from the floor.
Earlier in the 2012 tour, controversy erupted when the power was cut on Springsteen and Paul McCartney as they moved toward the finish of the London tour stop. The city council killed the power at 10:40 PM, three hours and ten minutes into the show. London city council immediately got all the bad press it could ask for – fans and artists alike came away angry and confused.
Springsteen mentioned the London shut-down during the Helsinki show with disdain, wielding it like a sword. He might as well have said “Helsinki, I double dare you to kill the power on me tonight.” Accordingly, he stormed past the city’s 11:00 PM curfew time for large outdoor concerts with abandon, finally closing out at 11:59 PM. Even then, it didn’t seem like he wanted to leave the stage. We weren’t sure if he was going to!
ASIDE: A super-long set like this is great for fans and appropriate for a world tour finale – and Springsteen and McCartney are rock royalty at this point – but does that make them immune from city regulations and common courtesy? People that may or may not be fans of the music in question live and work near the large outdoor venues that these concerts require. If an artist knows he/she is going to play a long set, why not schedule the start time of the event appropriately early to be amenable to the promoters, venue and city regulations? Or, contrarily: should rules be set aside for one-of-a-kind artistic legends? Rabid fan and venue-area homeowner will most likely come to loggerheads over such a topic.
The trams had stopped running, so we hoofed back to Cessi’s father’s Helsinki flat (not in earshot, but in a reasonable walking distance) after a much needed post-show beer at a grimy hockey pub. The sidewalks were empty, so we filled them with an extended, superstitious session of “step on a crack, break your mother’s back”, jumping fractures in the concrete to ensure proper maternal posture.
The following morning came fast. We loaded our backpacks and Cessi’s father drove us to Helsinki’s seaport for transit to Estonia by ferry. We were about to become proper hosteling, public transit-using backpackers.
voila, packed!
one last coffee with Moomin before leaving Finland.
At the ferry drop-off. To Tallinn!
Tallinn, Estonia would hit us like a ton of bricks. Alcohol-filled bricks. Two early August days in the small Baltic country meant my 32nd birthday and one of the most unexpectedly devastating hangovers of my life – the grade that only surly pleasure-seeking Australians in party hostels can conjure/guarantee.
NEXT POST: TALLINN, ESTONIA
Lovely post! Even more excited now for our trip to Finland in…2014! Must save more!