Tag: finland

A War Memorial For The Fallen Finnish Citizen Destroyed

I saw this in the news yesterday- this act of vandalism was performed after Putin Visited Saint Petersburg on the Day of the End of Seige of Leningrad and mentioned that “all our enemies are our enemies, regardless of nationality.”

Details in Finnish and in Russian.

Before

And after

Crossing The Border

I wrote this post yesterday and forgot to post it. I am not pretending I didn’t suspect what was going to happen, but still, what happened today, didn’t happen yet….

A very disturbing thing happened when I went through the border control in Helsinki on my way back. First, I was happy to see they now have the same machines as in London, where you can scan your chipped passport. Then I saw that I still had to present the passport to the officer. On my way back, I never ever encountered any questions. This time, the office started to scroll through my passport pages and asked me which countries I had visited and whether I was in Russia. Just to be clear, since I am a naturalized citizen, my country of origin is indicated in my US passport, but still!

The office kept scrolling, found the stamps from 2019, and looked at me inquisitively. I said – I haven’t been there since 2019. He kept scrolling and finally said: good; I see your entrance stamp. Because if you visited Russia at that time, we would have to question you (and he waved in an unspecified direction).

It was very disturbing but understandable. I know I have my share of guilt with everything happening, and it’s in Finland where I feel it even more.

And since I am posting it today, not yesterday, I want to reiterate – we stand with Ukraine! I saw these flags in the Southern part of State Street, quite unexpectedly:

Helsinki

I was in Helsinki for only one and a half days. On the first (half) of the day, I visited Natasha at her home and met with the whole family – the last time I saw everybody was in March!
This time, the situation in the world (and on the war front) was different, so our conversation was much happier, even in view of the European energy crisis.

On the second day, I did some work, mostly interacting with our London-based team, and then Boris and I biked to IKEA – something he had wanted to do for a while. He already made a couple of solo biking tips there, and he wanted to do it with me as well. We declared a late lunch to be our primary purpose, but it is impossible not to browse what’s out there!

On Tuesday, we had a very early flight to Amsterdam. Since Boris has Finnair Gold, we could hang out in the Finnair lounge and have breakfast there (and I forgot to take pictures :)).

Also, I upgraded us to Finnair Plus, so we had these cool seats with lights and elevated leg rests 🙂

Smells Can’t Be Captured

Since early May, I meant to blog about the smells which follow me on my bike rides in Chicago, how the lilacs were heavenly, and how now they are gone and everything smells with linden. In Helsinki, lilacs were still in bloom when I arrived, but in the past two days they were almost gone and the strong smell of jasmine started to dominate. It’s one of my childhood smells, strongly associated with July. That’s how the second session of the pioneer camp smelled :).

Small Things

When I am in Finland, I always admire many small things which are just done right! There are many big things which are done right as well, like. Oodi library, or the way the trees are re-planted after major streets’ reconstructions or medical services. But sometimes, it’s these small things:

A garbage can located at the train exit

The Military Museum and The Prison Museum

There are two more museums in Hameenlinna, which are situated on the Hame Castle grounds: the Military museum, which is dedicated to the history of everything war-related in Finland, and the Prison museum, which is located in the building that served as a prison until 1993. Both of these museums are very educational, and I want to come there one more time, to learn more about Finnish history. When we were there, it was a sort of information overflow. I know that I can look up most of the topics which are covered by the museum exhibits, but it’s different.

Below are just some photos, to give an idea of the museums’ collections (and the Military museum has a huge outdoor exhibit, which was close to impossible to attend in the midday with +86 F.

The view of the Hame Castle from the Military museum
I was shocked to learn that using artillery against people was considered a sin!
The Prison museum
Solitary confinement
Force-feeding chair
Continue reading “The Military Museum and The Prison Museum” →

Hameelinna – Part 2

They say that the castle has been built for 700 years and it is still in process since the current restoration work is considered to be a continuation of the building of the castle. We spent a lot of time, exploring different rooms; unfortunately, there were no English tours offered the day we were there, so we often could not map the rooms to their website descriptions.

Continue reading “Hameelinna – Part 2” →

Hameenlinna – part 1

The Hame Castle was built sometime in the middle of the 13th century (there are several possible dates of when it was founded). It had its ups and downs and was rebuilt multiple times. In the middle of the 14th century, the castle was rebuilt with bricks (rather than greystone in the beginning of its history). It is the first brick castle in Finland, and thereby the graphics representing bricks can be seen everywhere as a symbol of Hameenlinna.