We got off the bus in Noormarkku and walked a short ways through the forest to the villa. The light shining through the mist at such a low angle and silhouetting the trees created this fantasy world of moss, mist, and silence. Hobbit jokes abounded.
I was particularly excited to see the Villa Mairea, as I spent the better part of a week last year studying it for an architecture project. After having to spend hours hand-drawing all the plans, I felt like I was qualified to give tours of the place. Unfortunately, my services were not required, as there were superiorly-qualified guides already there. The inside of the house was pretty much exactly as it had been for decades; very little had changed. Sadly, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, as the house still functions as a vacation getaway for the family, and they don't allow tours to take photos for privacy reasons. The inside of the house is hard to describe -- there are many fine details, but in general, the ground floor is just one big room that flows from space to space. Despite being in one of Aalto's most reknowned works, what impressed me most was the family's art collection. I knew from my research that the owners of the house were fabulously wealthy and that Mairea herself was a big art collector, but I still wasn't prepared. As we entered the house, we were greeted by a Calder mobile overhead, and as we passed into the main living space, we passed a Kandinsky. The walls were adorned with Matisses, Picassos, and a couple from Juan Gris, and a cast of Degas' Little Dancer Aged Fourteen stood quietly in a corner. It was like being in a museum.
Outside of the house, the landscape was still draped in the mist that seemed to cover all of Finland at midmorning. Eventually, however, the sun broke through, casting the forest in a completely new light. Because the sun comes in at such a low angle, it's easy to lose track of time in Finland. It always seems alternately like early morning or late afternoon, and the transition between the two is impossible to notice. We reveled in this as we walked from the villa to a restaurant for our lunch. We passed through fields, down tree-lined lanes, and even across a wooden bridge, and the combination of the cold, the silence, and the foliage reminded me of Thanksgiving (remember, this was more than a month ago). We were treated to a delicious buffet in a Finnish town meeting hall of some sort (or maybe a real restaurant, but it was difficult to tell), and we spilled out into the crisp air with full stomachs and high spirits. At the time, I wrote in my journal, "Is there anything better than putting on a sweater, traipsing through the mid-Fall mist and cold, and then eating a hearty meal and basking in the sun? I think not. Needless to say, Finland is awesome." And it was.
After lunch, we piled back onto the bus for another drive, which took us to traditional Finnish church built from 1763-65. Again, the landscape was incredible, as the church was built on a small peninsula that jutted out into a coldly serene lake. The church itself was actually really neat too -- this coming from a guy that has been subjected to enough chapels and churches for a lifetime -- and was an impressive display of traditional Finnish craftsmanship. A couple of us were able to climb into the belfry, which was pitch black despite the weak flashlight we held in front of us. We had to feel around for the rungs to the ladder, which was difficult as it wove and spiraled all the way around the inside. At the top, we could barely see anything, but just for kicks I set my camera up for a 60-second exposure which illuminated most of the room and captured the brief flashes of my peers' cameras.
The highlight of that first day in Finland (and perhaps the whole trip) was the activity we had planned for that night. We stayed in a hostel in the middle of rural Finland, and DIS had rented out a sauna on a lake that we would be using for the night. On the way there, we made a quick stop at a supermarket to pick up food for the night -- we all would be responsible for cooking our own food in the kitchen or on the fire at the sauna -- and we all spent a bit of time trying to figure out what the word for "reindeer" was in Finnish. Hey, when in Finland, do as the Finns do. We never ended up figuring it out conclusively, but we grabbed some meat and vegetables and planned to do some roasting over the fire.Once at the hostel we dropped our stuff and made the short walk to the lake and the sauna. As it turned out, there were two large saunas and locker rooms inside this main house, which also held the kitchen and gathering area. A fire was built in the main central fireplace for cooking, and while some people started preparing their food, I went straight for the sauna. Saunas are a huge part of Finnish culture -- the country has 1.6 million saunas for 5 million people -- and are a part of both social gatherings and general relaxation. Although a room intended to make you sweat seems like the last place you'd want to consume alcohol, apparently this is common in Finland. We had been made aware of this fact ahead of time, and we stocked up on the some beers when we bought our food.
Most of the night was spent running between the sauna, where we talked, drank a couple beers, and nearly suffocated ourselves from the amount of steam we created by throwing water on the rocks, and the lake, where we sprinted down the dock, jumped in, and tried to make it to the ladder before our bodies succumbed to complete paralysis. It was probably about 40 degrees outside, and the water couldn't have been much warmer. Nevertheless, it was an awesome experience, and as I became completely obsessed with the sauna I forgot to eat most of my food for the night. By 11:00, it was time to clean up, shower off, and return to the hostel, where many of us talked for a couple of hours before retiring for the night.
The next morning I awoke, my skin feeling great, but my head...not so much. I had wondered what the effects of drinking alcohol and serious dehydration would be, and I soon found out that while the perspiration from the sauna keeps you from feeling drunk in the moment, by the next morning your body knows what happened. Thankfully, all it took was a couple glasses of water to offset my severe dehydration before I was ready to go and got back on the bus prepared for another day's adventures.
Our first stop was Saynatsalo, the site of Alvar Aalto's famous town hall complex. It was pretty nice, but by this point in the trip, I was getting tired of looking at architecture. Instead, I wandered around outside and took advantage of the cold air. I was immediately rewarded for my wandering ways, as I stumbled upon a series of posters that depicted the various candidates for Finland's upcoming municipal elections.
A word on Finland: While Finland itself is a gorgeous country, the same cannot be said of its people. Where Sweden and Denmark are truly Scandinavian, replete with the required beautiful blondes, Finland seems to be under more of a Russian influence. The people are odd, to say the least. I had first noticed it in the grocery store the previous day (quite frankly, it was a Finnish equivalent of a Wal-Mart, which should say it all), but the Finns as a people seem to be the kids to who spent too much time at the mall during middle school. Finland is essentially an enormous mall food court, where alternating groups of kids with bad haircuts, awkward facial hair, and too many piercings walk around decked out in heavy metal shirts, chain wallets, and nearly anything else you can buy at Hot Topic. I'd like to say that I'm just stereotyping, or that my sample size is far too small, but nearly everywhere I went, that's all it was: metal shirts and prolonged pubescence.
Many of the candidates for the Finnish municipal elections fit the stereotype, and I laughed out loud at several. The Kommunist party took the cake, however, and if you look at the picture below (it's worth clicking on and really inspecting each person individually), you'll understand what I'm saying. I really hope some of them got elected.
Eventually we left the town hall and went to Jyvaskyla University, another Aalto design. Again, I puttered around a bit, mostly disinterested, before we grabbed lunch in the school cafeteria and moved on to the Aalto Museum, which was nearby. In the Aalto Museum I perused the gift shop for Christmas presents or souvenirs, but most things were prohibitively expensive. Around this time I also came to the conclusion that Alvar Aalto probably makes up 25% of Finland's GDP through tourism, design, and souvenirs. The guy is everywhere.That night we had dinner on the harbor in Lahti before taking a short bus ride to our hostel in Helsinki.
The next morning I awoke refreshed, having turned down the chance of a night on the town in Helsinki in favor of a good night's sleep, and had my daily breakfast of ham, cheese, cucumber, and tomato sandwiches before we set out for our first stop, Hvittrask, the home of Eliel Saarinen and his more-famous (at least in the US) son, Eero. Hvittrask was an enormous complex, because it was the home and working quarters of Saarinen and two of his colleagues. I thought it would be fun to live and work with one's best friends, and things seem to have worked out well for all those involved. In fact, at one point, two of them decided to swap wives (seriously), and the whole thing went down with no drama at all. Impressive.
After Hvittrask we went to two chapels...yada yada yada...and then we went to Paimio to look at another Aalto building. The Paimio Sanatorium was another one that I had studied previously, albeit in less detail than the Villa Mairea. During our tour, I found it interesting to see in person, but something about walking around a hospital as a tourist isn't all that comfortable. We were happy to make it a short visit.
That night we had dinner on our own in Helsinki, where I was finally able to sink my teeth into some elk (as mentioned previously, we were all jonesing for some Finnish game animals), which was delicious. Afterwards, a couple of us set out for a college bar, which would have been cool if we knew anyone, but was otherwise less than satisfying. It did, however, provide another good opportunity to make conclusions about the appearance of the Finnish populace.
The next day -- our last in Finland -- we took a train to another chapel, which of course I will not desribe here. The experience itself was hilarious however, as we were treated to an audio tour of the chapel which beamed down from the heavens, it seemed, along with a nicely-illustrated chapel brochure. The only reason I mention the brochure is because it was apparently exhaustively researched, citing both "The Bible" and (direct quote) "The Internet" in its expansive bibliography.
Later, we returned to Helsinki to look around the Kiasma art museum, where we took in the structure itself and some works from Richard Serra and Olafur Eliasson, among others. After that we had a few hours on our own (I spent my time looking for gifts and taking pictures that I could not-so-cleverly caption as "Architecture in Helsinki") before again meeting up with the group and getting ready for Viking Line: The Sequel.
See my Finland pictures here.
1 comment:
Is passing a Kandinsky anything like passing a kidney stone?
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