Back in Finland (guestblog)

Apologies for the long pause. Tytto is back in Finland, after jaunts in Paris and Amsterdam.

This is Töölönlahti reporting. Guest reporting. Guest blogporting. Tytto is busy, determining which clothes are clean and which are not by smell. We are in a lovely apartment in downtown Helsinki, a hop skip and one jump to the Esplanade and the water. "Katu" means street in Finnish.

I have been up and down Helsinki, and back and forth, hitting the main spots. I have been to the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum (architect: Holl), a lovely building with fine art inside. There is art all over the place inside that building.

I have gone to the various churches. They are lovely. Tuomikirkko is lovely, in the Russian sort of way. It is made of stone. Uspenski Cathedral is made out of lovely brick. Both buildings sit on their own individual hills near the water, like two sitting sisters on top of hills (gigantic sisters made out of churches.) The highlight church is Temppeliauko Church, HEWN FROM SOLID ROCK in 1969 by two Finnish Architects, Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen. They hewed it bravely. By the way, can one hew anything besides STONE or ROCK? Can you hew a cup of coffee from the coffee beans? Can dwarves do this better than humans? If you asked a dwarf to write you a memo, I bet he would screw it up, but if you asked him to HEW the memo from SOLID ROCK, it would be a totally awesome memo. Your client would be like, "Damn"

The churches made from wood and straw were nowhere to be found. Did you know that Finland got really screwed in WWII? First the Soviets were like "hmm, let's take over Finland." Russia owned Finland til the Communist Revolution in 1917. (Lenin really liked Finland and he was like "totally be your own country.") The Soviets wanted it back. The Finns were like, "No" and there was a nasty war, called the Winter War. They got help from the Germans. Then the Germans wouldn't leave, and the Finns had to fight them too. And before all this 20th century nonsense, Finland was basically getting traded back and forth between Sweden and Russia, as if it were some valuable baseball trading card, like Honus Wagner or something. But Finland is worth a lot more than that baseball card, so you can imagine how crazy things were.

But now they are super independent and the country is totally awesome because of it.

I also went to the Design Museum, which wasn't that great, considering Finnish Design is pretty nice. You should know about it.

I also went to Suomenlinna, the ISLAND FORTRESS built by King Gustav of Sweden. That could be a wrong fact. It's very pretty. They have two artists colonies AND the naval academy there. You think they would do that in Annapolis? They should, think of the awesome paintings and experimental films about Nuclear Submarines there would be if they did do just that.

Did you know Tolkien based a great deal of his writings on the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland?

There is a section in the Finland Lonely Planet called "Beaches and Cemeteries." It's after "Candy and the Plague" and "Hugs and Rats."