Last day in Helsinki- City Museum and Art Nouveau architecture

Tuesday September 30 was another sunny day with a high of 11C.  We have had wonderful weather all week, with lots of sun and no rain.  The Helsinki light is beautiful and air quality is very good.

We have had a number of adventures with Bell and Apple on this trip.  In a nutshell, our sympatico.ca mail is not available in Finland unless we go through Bell Webmail.  Unfortunately, we had difficulty getting into Webmail as it wouldn't accept our passwords that normally work.  It took three phone calls over two days and two password resets, until it was temporarily solved. 

Then on Monday night, all of a sudden Allan couldn't get into Safari on his laptop, which would mean that I wouldn't be able to do the blog.  So, first thing on Tuesday morning we went to a nearby Apple service store, where an associate was able to assist us.  We were finally able to get into Safari and do a software update.  Phew!  While we were waiting for the software update, we chatted with a Finnish man about our age who was getting a new phone.  He told us that he pays for everything with his phone and carries no cash.  He didn't even have cash for a coffee while he waited for his new phone to be programmed.  The Nordic countries are moving very fast to a cashless society.   

Afterwards we went to Fazer café for a lovely spiced tuna sandwich. We also purchased some of their wonderful small chocolate bars. 

Inside of Fazer Café

We walked down to Senate Square and decided to visit the City of Helsinki Museum, which is free to the public.  We noticed that the cladding from the side of the Helsinki Cathedral was almost removed and we could see the columns for the first time.   It really is an imposing building.

Side of Cathedral with the exposed columns

We made a small detour to a beautiful textile store with a full selection of kitchen, bath, sauna and other textiles.  Lapuan Kankurit- The Weavers of Lapua.  The roots go all the way back to 1917, when the family established their first textile factory.  Today, Lapuan Kankurit is lead by the fourth generation of family entrepreneurs.  They only use natural raw materials, such as linen and wool.  The flagship store was designed by a Japanese company. 

Outside of store

We were enamoured with the beautiful linen towels with designs from Japanese artists.  One artist lives on a small island close to Helsinki and another artist is from Japan.  We bought two bath towels and two hand towels.  My towel is "island" and Allan's is "rain".  

Beautiful linen towels- absorb water and dry fast

Beautiful store- a back room had blankets and pillows

We went around the corner to the Helsinki City Museum, part of which is located in the oldest building of the city across from Senate Square.

Outside of the Helsinki City Museum (both buildings constitute the museum)

The main temporary exhibit was entitled Helsinki Bites- a Guide to the History of the City.  It featured nine perspectives of the city and the life of the citizens in different periods of time.  The exhibit included displays on: the Vibrant City of the 1930s; Leisure Time; At Home in the 1950s; Grief and Drama; The Changing Face of the City; Nostalgic 1970s Bar, The Caretaker's Realm, and ended with a Skate-Boarder's keen eye.

Overview of the Exhibit

1930s display

Artefacts from a Pharmacy

There was a lot of text detailing the topics.  It was noted that differences in standards of living among the classes were vast in the increasingly industrial Helsinki of the late 19th century.  The wealthy lived in spacious homes in the southern part of the city.  Summers are spent at summer villas, often located in the nearby islands.  Workers had little leisure time, and worked up to 12 or even 14 hours.  Physical exercise and promotion of health become fashionable and swimming came to be regarded as a necessary skill.

A summer's day on the seaside.

Many of the "bites" had blown up photos with some accompanying artefacts.  It provided an interesting overview of different periods of the City's history.

There was also a wonderful interactive children's section of the museum.

Children's section-- lots of drawings on the wall and activities

A slide show of Saunas around Finland

We went into the café (El Fant) located at the Museum, which also has a separate outside entrance.  The barista had lived in Toronto for a while and has helped develop the coffee blends being used.

Allan and barista with some beans that Allan purchased

One of the many trams in the city- passing in front of the Museum

Helsinki is a city of trams and the public transport is excellent.  There are also clearly marked bike paths and there are still many people biking at this time of the year.   Traffic moves quickly and the only time we saw a bit of congestion was when trucks disembarked from the ferries.

Tram on the street with the museum

We decided to head over to the Katajanokka district which has an internationally unique collection of Art Nouveau (Jugend) buildings.  Katajanokka is a quiet island neighbourhood with one of Europe's most intact Art Nouveau districts.  One walks over a bridge and first encounters a series of converted warehouses. 

Crossing the bridge-- Uspenski Cathedral (1868), Western Europe's largest Orthodox Church in the background.  It is a symbol of the Russian impact on Finnish history.  Only about 2% of Finland's population belongs to the Orthodox faith.

Lovely waterfront views

We walked along the waterfront-- lots of restaurants in the converted 19th century warehouses.

Yellow boat

Boats in the Gulf of Finland

We then started to hit the Art Nouveau District with many apartments built between 1901-1913.

Corner building with lovely ornamental detail

Katajaniemi- built 1912

Housing Coop-Kotto 1903

We turned into Luotsikatu Street, a full street of Art Nouveau buildings.  Up to the mid-19th century, the area was a wooden shanty town.  Most of the apartment buildings were built in the early 1900s.  Many have pastel facades, iron balconies and animal figures hidden in the architecture.

Luotsikatu Street has been voted the most beautiful street in Helsinki by readers of the largest daily newspaper in the Nordic countries.  The street was also the childhood home of Finnish author Tove Jansson, the creator of the Moomin stories. 

The beautiful preserved block of Art Nouveau apartments

Windows on many of the buildings were very cool

Colours

1913 building

Another corner building

Detail on last house on the block (Luotsikatu 1)-- this is thought to be the inspiration for the Moominhouse created by Tove Jansson who spent her childhood at Luotsikatu 4.

We had been planning to go out for dinner, but we still had some food at the apartment and were very tired after our late evening discussions the night before with Bell.  Allan made a scramble of the delicious in-season mushrooms with zucchini.  We had a green salad and some chocolate with ginger tumeric tea.

The mushrooms are superb.

Wednesday October 1 was a travel day as we were heading to Athens.  We caught the 600 bus about two minutes from our apartment.  It was a 45 minute ride to the airport.  We passed through a number of very green residential areas in the suburbs.   

The Helsinki Airport is very modern and there were a number of interesting shops.

A Moomin Store

Lots of Moomin products

Our first flight was to Copenhagen.  We left Helsinki at 11:15 a.m. and arrived in Copenhagen at 1:00 p.m. (one hour earlier time zone).   

In the Copenhagen airport

We had a bite to eat at Lackagenhuset, a lovely Danish café.

We shared an avocado and hummus sandwich and a cardamom bun

We caught the 2:30 p.m. flight to Athens.  We were about an hour sitting in the plane, but luckily the pilot made up most of the time in the air and we landed in Athens at 7:15 p.m. (there is a one hour time change) and we are seven hours ahead of Toronto time (same as Helsinki). 

Then the real adventure began.  Our host in Athens had told us that there was a 24 hour general strike in Athens on October 1.  A number of unions had called the strike against the government's proposed labour legislation which would allow overtime that could stretch some shifts to 13 hours.  Unions argue that the new rules leave workers vulnerable to labour abuses by employers. "We say no to the 13 hour (shift).  Exhaustion is not development, human tolerance has limits" (Quote from the private sector umbrella union, the General Confederation of Workers of Greece).

We knew that public transport was going to operate on reduced schedules, with the Metro stopping service at 5:00 p.m.   We normally would have taken the Metro to our Airbnb.  We had also heard that taxi drivers were on strike.  Public busses were going to run until 9:00 p.m. and we knew that catching Bus 95X which goes to Syntagma Square (the main square in downtown Athens), was our best chance of getting into the city.  

We collected our bags and got to the bus stop by 8:00 p.m. where we saw the 95X bus crammed with people about to leave the airport.  There was no way to get on that bus.  We moved closer to the curb hoping to catch the next bus.  There was no orderly line and a lot of people had large suitcases.  At around 8:30 p.m. another bus came.  Luckily, we have small carry-ons and we managed to squeeze onto the bus. Many people were left behind.  

The trip takes about an hour and we either stood or sat on our luggage for the duration.  We had a number of conversations with folks including two guys from Brazil and a woman from Wales. We were in constant contact with our host, who had told us that he would not have left us at the airport had we not been able to get on the bus.  We later found out that he didn't have his car that evening and would have had to ask a friend to pick us up.   The bus arrived at Syntagma Square at around 9:40 p.m.   We think it was the last bus from the airport before the 9:00 p.m. stoppage.

Syntagma Square at night-- Parliament buildings

Our host said that we were only about a 25 minute walk to his apartment.  Luckily it was a pretty straight forward route and we made it to his place just after 10:00 p.m.

We passed a number of posters for the strike- opposing the 13 hour maximum work day

We are staying in Excharia, a neighbourhood that was created between 1870 and 1880 and has played a significant role in the social and political life of Greece.  It is where the Athens Polytechnic uprising  against the Greek military junta of 1967-1974 took place starting on November 14, 1973. Forty people were killed by the Greek army and more than 2000 were injured.  The uprising helped lead to the fall of junta in the summer of 1974.

Our host, Antonis, is a documentary filmmaker.  He was born on one of the Greek Islands, but moved to Toronto when he was 8 and lived for a number of years before moving back to Athens.  He told us about the neighbourhood which continues to be a very leftist district with many artists and intellectuals living there.  There are many NGOs in the 'hood and it is totally graffitied.  Recently, it has become a foodie area with many interesting restaurants, both Greek and international food.

Antonis took us on a walk through the 'hood and as we were very hungry, brought us to a buzzy wine bar called Warehouse.   Allan and I had some lovely Greek white wine and calamari and tuna plates.

Graffiti across from the apartment

We also stopped for a moment at the Riviera outdoor cinema, where they were having their last showing of the season.  Antonis greeting the owner and we peeked into the theatre.

Server pouring our wine

First tuna dish-- we ate outside at midnight

One last graffiti

I will share pictures of the apartment in the next post.   We are going to visit the National Archeological Museum on Thursday and check out more of the neighbourhood.