Tuesday, July 31 – Turku and Handicrafts Museum

As you can see, the band is growing. Little My (Pikku Myy) jumped on board from Moominworld, she’s a little overgrown, but quite Little My-ish. (Apparently she was voted as the best Moomin character, with Snufkin a close second, I tend to agree).

I didn’t end up doing much in Turku. I was overtired from Moominland and getting up early, so I spent most of the day sitting in parks watching people. But I had a few small adventures.

My adventures in Turku started with attempting to second a package through the post. It was scary, but the person at the counter was very helpful and patient, considering my cluelessness. Though I think the biggest part of the post adventure was finding the post office because it wasn’t on any map, it took a little wandering and detective work.

My other main adventure was the Handicrafts Museum, which is a place where crafts-workers (shoemakers, bakers, crochet’s ancestor, potters, violin makers, weavers etc) worked in period-style houses and period-style clothing.

 It felt like going back in time, but also a little empty, because there weren’t many people working there day I went. I talked with a shoemaker and watched a weaver for a bit, but there was no potter or violin maker, though I did get to go see their shops.

After the Handicrafts Museum, I walked along the river for a while, which, in Turku, is gross and brown, probably the only place in Finland where the water is gross and brown (at least from what I’ve seen). There were also some super-weird creatures floating in the water. They were right in front of the modern art museum, so I think that they were art.

Then, lots of shop-lurking. I found a really nice second-hand shop and another nice vintage shop. I also went into a department store and looked at ballgown-type things for the fun of it. Some of them were pretty nice.

Then, I took a train to Tampere, walked out of the train station and fell in love. I really don’t know why, it just feels right.

The Tampere hostel was probably the friendliest place I’ve stayed my entire trip. I ended up have a long discussion with someone from Japan who was studying Finnish at the University of Tampere for the entire summer. We shared Finnish books and discussed the peculiarities of Finnish grammar (singular vs plural partitive? Yack). It was lovely.