Architecture in Helsinki

The morning of Sunday, August 5 we arrived in Helsinki

hey it's Helsinki!


and promptly made a mess of our fantastic double room.


Then we got some lunch, wraps and umm...? This was our first lesson in "what the hell is Finnish?"

We took the bus back to the harbour area...

The market.


That's the ferry we took

We went to explore the brown church...looked very Russian



see?


I find this funny, you may not. To quote Fried, "look how long that word is!"


At the church. Look how amazing the building is.


From the brown church (aka Russian Orthodox Church) you could see the competing white church. They're rivals like the greasers and the socials...or I made that up.

From there we climbed back down to get to the white church.

hahahah...what is the little penguin selling? or is the ice cream selling penguin?

We went over to it in order to see the indoor market:


Back towards the white church

I met these two lovely people. I'm not sure if I was doing this just to embarrass Ina or because I thought it was necessary.


No worries, I won't be touching that.


Because we're losers, we took these photos. Ina is a much better photographer than me it seems.






Seriously, the buildings of Helsinki are amazing.





I guess that's why Architecture in Helsinki is playing there.

Since it was Sunday, the churches were all closed, so we headed to the design museum.




Scandinavia is all about design, check out the building.


random building.

After the design museum - no pics allowed! We got some groceries and made some dinner.

The lettuce came with soil...


Ina cooking up something.


We're prostars! check out what we made.


At first I wondered why I took this picture and then I realised, can you tell on which side the German is sleeping?

Monday, August 6


More examples of hilarity in Finnish. We were staying in the dorms of this school actually.

Monday morning? Let's go to the beach.



It was about 10 minutes from the hostel and really nice. Ina inadvertently bought a postcard of the beach, actually.


Art is sad.


Rock Church! The concept? There's a huge boulder in the middle of the city, they blew out the middle and made a church on the inside with puddles of stinky stagnant water on top of it.


Inside. It was photographic dream.








Finnish bible inside the podium.



From there we headed to the museum of contemporary art, but it was Monday and it was closed. Frig.

While there though, I managed to get this...

you can see Ina walking around. you'll have to turn up your speakers.


We think he was important.


Kiasma: The museum of Contemporary Art


The national museum


The national museum


Ugly Betty: Finland

We wandered down to Finlandia Hall, the only ugly building in Helsinki, home to the orchestra, but it's reknowned.

That's the amusement park.


There were boats near it too.


What are you advertising?


Lenin made big plans here.




We had some coffee had this fantastically nice cafe in the park in the middle of Helsinki.


We took the time to learn some things about the park.


City Hall was amazing.


I am in love with Helsinki.


This woman's art was in the design museum, this is a piece about the world.

The White church, I can't remember the name right now



The saint of agriculture?


hahahhaa


With an SLR this would have been amazing.



Then we went to check out the train station, Helsinki does not disappoint.




From there we went shopping for a bit and here's some stuff we saw along the way.





hahahha, watch out for that!


good pic Ina!

After dinner, we headed back to the beach.



That's two girls that I intentionally shot to look like one fat girl because they had a digital SLR and were just taking pictures of each other splashing around, with a towel, just hanging out, etc. and it was really annoying since they were ruining our pictures. We found out that this was the place to be after dark.


We asked at the hostel about drinking in public, officially, no, but everyone does it anyway.


so nice!


another pic by Ina.

After getting mildly intoxicated and it being sufficiently dark for us, we headed back to the hostel and slept until morning.

Tuesday, August 7
First order of business, the old cable factory, which now houses a photography museum. The main exhibit was being put together, so it was free. Sweetness.


Students make great art. Do you understand the impact of this piece?

Photos from the photography museum. I took a lot and really, these are some of the neater ones.



hahah rotting cabbage is art. I love you Helsinki.




Kaapeli, the old cable factory. It also has a restaurant inside, which we cut through in order to get to the sea!


Who do I honestly think I am?

After the museum, we headed back to Hostel Academica to get our bags.

Some people are made of pure genius. Ina waded through that and got our stuff.

We took our stuff to the train station and checked it and headed off to Kiasma, the contemporary art museum

The museum was an amazing building, which distracted from the mediocre exhibits.


I liked this, "I used to be a poster child" I'm not sure if Ina understood the expression. It's hard to explain such a concept.


see the building was nice.. that's the national museum reflected in a random door.


there was a store within, but it was closed which made us sad, they had some neat things. This is their website: http://www.com-pa-ny.com/






Ina got some pics to show you the architecture in Helsinki.



This was really cool:



It's a time out kit. You set it up anywhere and have a break.

Pretty much after that we caught the train to Kuopio and began our journey to the north.