on boats

 

my dear readers, I shall now embark on the telling of two different adventures that I have had recently, a weekend apart from eachother. except for the fact that they both include boats, they have rather little do to with eachother and should really be in seperate blog posts, but alas.
 

as for the first one, two weekends ago, it so happened that Ayla (the only other person in my chapter here, a truly lovely soul from Germany) was to be accompanying her host family on a steamship on which her hostfather works, and they had room for one more, so she invited me. it was marvelous. the ship (S/S Heinävesi) was from 1906. it left from Savonlinna and took us to an island on lake Saimaa, where there was saunaing, lake-swimming, and musicing. there appear to be quite a lot of songs about Saimaa, as many such were sung that night, in the belly of a steamship over cold, black water and below a black, starry sky.

 





the linna of Savonlinna



 



I found a friend in the cabin we slept in onboard.

one has to watch out for accordions in this country. they seem to appear out of nowhere.

 

Ayla and I on the island.

and now to tell of the second trip. this one was last weekend, during syysloma (autumn vacation), which was friday through monday for our school. we went to Tallinn, Estonia.




the ship's mirrored stairwells with Tuuli

...and Tiina.

our ship left on saturday early evening from Helsinki--a stylish, bustling, wonderland of a city of which I failed to take pictures. we toured a bit of the city and ate lunch at a Fazer café (one hasn't seen chocolate displays until one has seen the windows of this place) before catching our ship. having never been on a cruise ship before, I have to say it was a little overwhelmingly vast.




I think this boat may have been bigger than Tallinn.



Estonian lights!

playing with Baltic rain in the ship's light.

on board was a buffet (at which we ate an unseemly quantity of food), cosmetic, candy/liquor, and souvenir shops, a sauna, at least two discos, and, of course hundreds of sleeping cabins (we slept on the ship at port in Tallinn). one would not have noticed that one was in the Baltic sea if one didn't consciously remind oneself.
 

the café at which we breakfasted is the rightmost building here.



 Tallinn, o, Tallinn! for starters, Estonian is an incredible language that I want to learn. it's like Finnish that has taken its silk off in favor of wool. it actually bears many resemblances to the Karelian dialect of Finnish (spoken in my area).

outside the church.



inside the church.




atop the church.

 

atop the church with Tallinn layed out below.

the city itself will remain in my memory as a cluster of cobblestone streets, old women selling woolen mittens in accented Finnish, and medieval church spires disappearing into the fog. that is, of course, only the old part of the city (vana linna). we spent pretty much our whole time in Tallinn bouncing between vana linna and the shopping centers on its perimeter (goods are cheeper than in Finland, apparently). it's probably a combination of the remarkable lack of crowds, the general cleanliness, and my never having been in a medieval city before, but I had to keep reminding myself that everything I was seeing was real.

Tallinn's got some pretty interesting walls...



...and doorways...

...and layers...



heippa, Tallinn.

another ship by our side on the way back.

 it is truly a magical feeling to walk the deck of a ship using the wind as a crutch, and tell yourself: here I am, with Estonia behind me, Finland ahead of me, Russia somewhere over to my right, and the Baltic sea all around me. nobody was outside (probably because of the cold) and I made several loops of the huge, deserted deck, feeling incredibly small and balanced on top of the world. when we got back to Helsinki, the sun was waiting for us, and by the time we got back to Savitaipale, the clear sky had brought us rime on the grass, which crunched under our feet when äiti and I took Eddie for a walk under the white stars and the black sky and the stripes of silver clouds. this week it feels winter is coming to Savitaipale.




selfportrait in the window of the return ship.

tampere

is a beautiful city, whither I went saturday and whence I returned sunday.

to get there I took an InterCity train from Lappeenranta (through birch forests and misty lakes) to Lahti, a commuter train (which has a plush purple interior and on which the announcements are only in Finnish and Swedish, as opposed to the Finnish, Swedish, and English of InterCity trains) from Lahti to Riihimäki. thence I was supposed to take an InterCity train from Riihimäki to Tampere but as I was on said Riihimäki-bound train, watching the landscape (many small (and sometimes abandoned) red farmhouses with white trims in the middle of silver woods and orange fields), I thought I need some extra adventure and as we pulled into the Riihimäki station I remembered my talent for getting lost.

I hurried up and, after wandering the platforms for a few minutes (as a warm up), hopped on a Helsinki-bound train, rather than my designated Tampere-bound one. since the two left the station at the same time, it would have looked like an honest mistake by a confused foreigner to any observant stranger present.

this Helsinkiin train was a commuter train, which I hadn't anticipated, but the lack of English announcements made my adventure all the more wonderful. C:

I showed the conductor my ticket and asked Finnishly if I was on the wrong train, recieved an affirmative answer and a (very friendly and helpful!) shove off the train at the next stop (Hyvinkää) just as the doors were closing. I took the next train back to Riihimäki and easily found another to Tampere. hopefully some of you can relate when I say this: there is nothing more satisfying than getting lost in silence and finding your way back asking (fairly unnecessary, as the train system is very logical) help of everybody you meet just for the fun of asking for help in Finnish. it probably the most relaxing and refreshing getting lost experiences of my career.

at any rate, I arrived in Tampere an hour after I had originally planned. but Nacho (the Argentinian exchange student who had invited me to Tampere for the weekend) was a gentleman and met me there when I arrived. we set off right away and wandered the city aimlessly at a breakneck speed. it's the biggest Finnish city I've yet visited, with gorgeous old buildings and wide cobbled streets and squares.

the marketplace by the river. there was a puukko stall.

 

an example of what seems like typical Tamperelainen architecture.

 

a city of captivating facades.

 

speaking of which, this is the front door of the library, a Howl's Moving Castle-esque creature that I think pays homage to Tampere's history as an industrial city. unfortunately, it wasn't open while I was there, but Nacho and I ate our improvised sandwiches under its awning with our backs to the rain and on I spent nearly all of sunday in its basement with Nacho's host sister Sini (who spent an exchange year in New Zealand which granted her a lovely accent and the nickname of Kiwi) at the Muumi museum there, looking at original (Goreyesque and wonderful) Muumi sketches and original (no-particularly-Goreyesque, but also wonderful) models of the inhabitants of Muumilaakso. they were giving away free posters...

 

 

...one of which now graces my bedroom door. c:

 

 

on the trainrides back, the landscapes had changed--haybales that had been lying in the fields before were now wrapped and piled, and trees that had been green only the day before now bloomed fantastic golden yellow. autumn in finland is a quiet explosion of gold and green and silver, like a slow, misty smile.

 

a very happy october to you all!