Weekend 7: Turku - the previous capital of Finland

Last weekend a friend and I went to visit Turku, the previous capital of Finland. The two-hour train ride from Helsinki passed uneventfully, at least once we realized that seating is assigned on trains so we couldn't just plop down wherever we wanted (as, in fact, we originally did). Fast, clean, efficient...a little expensive, but otherwise a very easy travel experience.

First impression of Turku: cities with rivers running through them are nice.





Also, big cathedrals on the waterfront are a big plus.


One oddity about cathedrals in Finland: they all appear to have ornate model boats hanging from the ceiling as part of some tradition I don't yet understand. Here's one.


I guess if I were paying more attention I would probably know more about the boat story. As a really poor student of history, I also wasn't paying enough attention to remember this guy's name, though I do remember that he created the written Finnish language. Any guesses as to his name...anyone?


Another highlight of the trip was a visit to the Handicrafts Museum -- actually more like a Handicrafts Village with ~30 huts where people continue to produce crafts as they did in the ~1800's.


We got there right before closing so there weren't a lot of handicraft-makers still about, but we managed to see an original paper-printer and the room where the violin-maker works. The crafts produced here are actually used or sold throughout Turku (and possibly beyond), no doubt carrying a significant premium for the additional amount of hand-labored work that went into them.



Finally, we walked about ~30 minutes down the river to check out Turku Castle.




The castle primarily consisted of mostly-empty rooms, sometimes with a small display of furniture or old knick-knacks from the appropriate time period. They did make some efforts to jazz up some of the displays -- not quite sure what the short witchy-woman in the frayed dress is doing here by this desk, but I'm sure whatever it is, it is historically accurate.



And the strange "hanging boat" tradition continued in the castle church as well.


One of my favorite "knick-knacks" was this small statue of a knight totally kicking the ass of this one poor dragon. Take that, dragon! And that! Yeah, that'll teach you to mess with Turku!

Really fresh vegetables

Buying salad greens and herbs is a different experience here. To make sure they are fresh, many items (including lettuce, and basil which is far more common and cheap here than back home) are sold still growing in their own cute little plastic pots, complete with dirt and roots.

I would have thought this was a gimmick and a little ridiculous, but the truth is that back home we end up throwing out a fair amount of salad greens because they don't get eaten fast enough. Two weeks ago I bought too many greens for a dinner party I was hosting, and yesterday the remaining greens (still with pot and dirt) were doing just fine in my fridge. Some gimmicks work.

American food invasion at Stockmann's

Another funny picture from the "New York State of Mind" theme at the Stockmann's, the major department store here. Outside one of their entrances they have a window with a detailed display of all the American-style foods they are selling to get people into this New York State of Mind.

I notice that most of these foods are junky and not of particularly high quality. When did we become more known for our graham crackers and cheesecake-in-a-box than California rolls, avocado salads, and canned-soup fixation? (I mention the last because it didn't occur to me earlier than canned soup would not be international, but the only canned soup I can find is some kind of pea concoction. In fact, cans are used so rarely that my apartment doesn't even have a can opener, forced me to pry open canned tomatoes once with a corkscrew and a small knife when I was preparing for a dinner party and didn't have time to hunt down an appropriate can-opening substitute.)

Weekend 5: Crayfish party

In Finland there is a ritual celebration known as the Crayfish Party, known in Finnish as Rapujuhlat and in Finnish translated to English sometimes as "the crab feast". It turns out to actually not be that different than a regular crab-eating picnic you might have in the Chesapeake Bay area, except in this case the crabs are really really small, bear some resemblance to insects, and to have very little meat within them that qualifies as food.

For our work party they rented out a nearby villa so everyone could take a traditional sauna prior to the eating festivities. Even the setting for eating these little critters differs -- a combination of formality and paper bibs.

Given how many of the pesky things you have to eat to feel remotely placated, the dining process takes a while. To ease things along, you have a wide assortment of beverages at your disposal, including Koskenkorva, a dry Finnish Vodka drunk at toasts.

Perhaps as a result of much Koskenkorva drinking, or perhaps also from happy Nordic tradition, there is also much singing at Crayfish parties. One person starts and then everyone else (who speaks Finnish or Swedish) joins in to a rousing chorus of songs that appear to be about anything and everything. And then the eating and drinking continue. All in all, much fun, particularly when the crayfish are gone and they let you hit the buffet where the real food was secreted away.