As mentioned last night, Moomin and I have a new companion.
My roommate is an older Finn and language teacher, and she walked in last night
while I was fight with the internet and dumped Pippi and a Little My shirt on
my bed. Still trying to think of the best way to thank her, not just for this,
she’s been an excellent resource as well, because she used to live in Helsinki.
Anyways…
There’s this thing going called Helsinki is the World Design
Capital. The Finns are really into design. They love elegant, beautiful,
pretty, etc. things, but only if those things are also useful, and that’s kind
of the point of design. It’s everywhere – Marimekko shops, glassware shops,
vendors at the open air market, tourist shops, the works. So today, I went to
the Design Forum, which is one of the centers of the whole thing. It was a
pretty tiny room considering the amount it packed in: Chairs, mugs,
unidentifiable (and identifiable) glass things, clothing, wooden shoes,
“normal” shoes, these adorable plastic pony-things, jewelry, books, notebooks,
pencils, embroidery kits, basically, everything.
After lurking around there for a while (it feels like
lurking, I just slouch my way into stores, look at one price tag for amusement
and then wander around hoping no one will notice and think I’m considering
stealing something, the backpack does not help) I went off to the Päivälehti
museum. Päivälehti was the first Finnish newspaper, until it was censored and
replaced by the Helsingin Sanomat.
Moomin enjoyed the bathroom mirror. He thinks the Snork
Maiden looks lovely with lipstick.
I, on the other hand, really enjoyed the exhibit because the
subject matter is distantly related to my NHD (which I now want to reread). The
problem was that this was really not a tourist museum, and almost the entire
thing was in Finnish, so I spent about half an hour decoding things on
censorship with my dictionary and then, head aching, went through the rest of
the exhibit without catching a lot of it. When I know more Finnish, I am
totally coming back and doing more research.
After lunch, we found a Moomin store!
There’s Moomin dollhouses, and kitchens, and lunch boxes,
and bags, and puzzles, and music boxes, and mini-soccer balls, and and and…you
get it…
Next stop was “Akateeminen Kirjakauppa”, which is kind of like Barnes and Nobles and Borders combined and then put on a lot of steroids. Kind of. There was a HUGE shelf of books of Finnish for foreigners, like me! I had a lot of trouble not buying every single book (well, I had one of them already). No worries, I only got one book, full of lots and lots and lots of grammar exercises, woohoo!
A sign had told me there was going to be this concert at the Pavilion (this wooden structure that’s part of the Design Capital events) and it sounded cool, a violinist and a juggler. So, I took a new bus and got my way down there, it was a huge adventure, and there was no concert. But there was really good rhubarb juice, so I guess it was worth it, one of those amusing incidents that happen while travelling.
Plus, when I walked back, I got to see special trucks wash all of Market Square once the market was gone.
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