Walking tour, part 2

Though I love to walk/run around the small bay near my house (Töölönlahti), I hadn't spent much time walking around the actual seashore yet. And of course, Helsinki is surrounded by water:


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Plenty of paths cross the seashore for Helsinki residents to use during the warmer months (or for the hardier of residents to use all year round, if they have spikes on their shoes to dig into the inevitable ice). The first stop on the seashore tour: the Sibelius monument.


Jean Sibelius is the best-known Finnish composer, with his name gracing pretty much anything that is both Finnish and music-related. His monument, below, caused some controversy.



Some people apparently felt that the monument did not clearly convey Sibelius' genius, or perhaps at the very least, that the set of organ pipes was actually a monument to a man. They commissioned the artist to create a mask of his face to sit alongside the monument to clarify the matter for all those unused to seeing monuments to people that were not actually pictures of those people. Though I am from the Washington DC area, it has never occurred to me to check if there is a similar little statue of Washington sitting alongside his monument, which doesn't really resemble him as a person either.



That was pretty much it for the monuments on the seashore, but there was plenty more beauty to be seen.

Walking tour, part 1

A friend came to visit for a few days and managed to see more of Helsinki in about twelve hours of walking than I had seen in the six weeks before she arrived.

Shamed, I started hoofing my way around the city, alone and with friends, to catch up. Below is one of the main streets in Helsinki, notably NOT during Saturday afternoon when all streets in the city center are crowded with people gleefully shopping away the last week's worth of salary.



First stop: the Lutheran Cathedral, also thought of as the center of Helsinki. Location: approximately 1.5 blocks from where I work.


There are some nice statues in front...




Including one which shows that Finns do in fact have a sense of humor...

Crazy Days!

Stockmann's, the main department store where everyone in Helsinki seems to shop, goes out of its way to prove that a Price Club/Costco outlet in Finland would make a killing.

Twice a year they host "Crazy Days" for Wed-Sat, where literally all of Helsinki turns out to shop at Stockmann's and try to save a few euros.

Rather than mark down things in the store (though there is some of that as well), they instead truck in large quantities of lesser brand names and sell them off big pallets on their ground floors (sound familiar to any Costco shoppers?) To help stir people into a frenzy, they also advertise bargain-basement travel deals and other attractive sales, fill the store full of friendly and unrattled salespeople, and blanket the store with the signature bright yellow of Crazy Days: signs, bags, clerk aprons -- it's all done up in Big Birds' signature sunshine color.



I walked past on the first day they were open at 8:30am, thirty minutes after Crazy Days started, and literally saw a stream of people flooding out of the store with their yellow bags. These were the smart ones who tried to avoid the crowds. I wasn't able to get a good picture because trying to extend my arms away from my body during the busy times wasn't an option, so I could only snap a few pictures near closing time.