I love you – & inanimate objects

July 26, 2016 / Mel_inHelsinki / 13 Comments

While Finnish people do feel emotions, they don’t tend to express them as often as we do in New Zealand or other parts of the world.

Finnish Nightmares by Karoliina Korhonen

In fact, my Finnish friend told me she finds it over the top when foreigners express their love for inanimate objects like coffee, or a town they have only visited once.

Finnish Nightmares by Karoliina Korhonen

So, I’ve already told you that I love Kiasma and I’m sorry, but I’m going to say it again.

Miko and I visited Helsinki’s museum of contemporary art on a cool and wet summers day recently and really enjoyed (loved?) the interactive exhibitions.

Happy Together by Choi Jeong Hwa runs until September and features colourful, tactile pieces for adults and kids to enjoy.

The works of Brazilian artist Ernesto Noa are so big you are encouraged to move inside them and to lie down in his giant crocheted hammocks.

There’s also a room of scents, held in beautiful earthen jars. We had fun guessing and recoiling as we sniffed our way down the row.

We spent a couple of hours looking around, which is quite good for my four-year old companion, before descending to the cafe on level one.

I had my usual favourite, the Moroccan haloumi salad, but not before gushing to the waitress, ‘I love this salad. I think about it all the time when I’m not here.’

To which she returned a small polite smile and no doubt wondered at my over the top confession of feelings for these inanimate objects.

Kiasma

I was gifted a Museum Card a while back and recommend it for anyone interested in visiting museums. Pay 59€ once and receive free entry to 200 museums in Finland for one year.

A new island home

September 26, 2015 / Mel_inHelsinki / 7 Comments

Not content to be winter’s plainer cousin, autumn was showing her beauty in Helsinki today with blue skies and earthy colours.

We enjoyed her show on the island of Seurasaari. Connected to the mainland by a footbridge, this open-air museum is home to buildings from around Finland from across the ages.

We’ve been at Christmas and at Midsummer but hadn’t yet visited at this time of year.

Even though most the buildings are now closed for winter it is still worth a visit for a walk and a picnic and the trails are popular with joggers.

We enjoyed walking around and choosing which house we would live in (as long as it has good insulation).

Despite having been before, we found new things to enjoy, including signs of Finnish ingenuity from time gone by.

Autumn was all around us and as always, nature was left untamed and free to grow.

We were soon joined by the island’s residents, who I assume are starting to squirrel away stores for the Nordic winter.

Autumn showed us that she is no shrinking violet – and her display will only get stronger between now and November.

And we finally found the house we might like to live in – or at least have as our summer home.

Where the Animals Never Sleep

August 1, 2014August 18, 2014 / Mel_inHelsinki / 4 Comments

One thing about visiting the zoo is that if you go at the wrong time of day you’ll find most the animals are snoozing. Not so at the Finnish Museum of Natural History, where the animals are stuffed and permanently alert.

You can’t miss the building as it has two large giraffes drinking coffee on the balcony. It was originally used as a gymnasium for Russian students in 1913 and was adopted by the University of Helsinki ten years later.

Inside the foyer an imposing African elephant stands next to the ticket seller. As with many attractions in Helsinki, you can enter for free for the last two hours of the first Thursday of every month.

The ground floor holds The Story of Bones. I found the monkey skeletons quite creepy, until I opened a cupboard and found a human skeleton, curled up in a corner and that creeped me out even more.

Moving upstairs to the World Nature display we were greeted by a giraffe and two red pandas. I felt a bit sad seeing a stuffed orangutan swinging from a tree, next to a mandrill baring his teeth to us from behind the glass.

Seeing the Australian section was quite strange for me. There were stuffed animals that I’ve seen very much alive in the wild – echidna, small marsupials, sugar gliders and native birds of all descriptions.

The African section was impressive with many natural scenes recreated, including a night room full of nocturnal creatures. It dawned on me that for many Finnish children this may be the only way they see some of these animals as they are not housed at Helsinki Zoo.

The Finnish Nature section was really impressive and moved through different seasons, showing arctic foxes and bears in the snow and rivers, feasting on salmon. There is of course a collection of specimens in jars and large shells from the world’s oceans.

The top floor holds the History of Life exhibition which Miko loved as it was dominated by prowling dinosaurs. This level was quite interactive and the aquatic section was cleverly done with lights instead of water.

To be honest, it was a fascinating experience but it left me feeling queasy. Miko loved it and I realised sadly that if we lose more animals to extinction this will be the only way many children get to see them.

So we really must be grateful for the research and preservation of these animals I suppose – otherwise we’re all stuffed aren’t we?

Finnish Museum of Natural History