Bright days

Taking a break from the London pictures for a while. I've got a few more but I'll leave them until later. I'm back in Helsinki now, though these pictures aren't from Helsinki but from my parents' place a few days ago.

I had such a good day today. Was a similar day as in the pictures: cold but sunny, the sort of day when, if you dress properly and warmly, the cold nibbling on your face is a good feeling, a fresh feeling. I think so anyway.

So, I got off the metro one stop earlier and walked a bit, taking pictures. When I was in one of the parks in central Helsinki, called Kaisaniemi, taking pictures by the skating rink, an older gentleman went by walking his dog. He stopped and asked to see the pictures I had taken, and we had a short but lovely chat. He told me he was born in 1939 in Kallio, the former working class district, part of the core city - a real "stadin kundi" in other words - and had recently seen a large exhibition of photos of the 60's and 70's Helsinki which made him realize in amazement how completely the city has changed from when he was young; said you don't really realize it that profoundly, just living your life. The gentleman then started reminiscing about his youth, among other things how the skating rink by which we were standing used to be fenced off and how they used to have bow skating events for the youth there: numbered bows, usually red for girls, blue for boys, then each were supposed to find the person holding a bow with the same number, and they'd skate in pairs. His parting words were a slightly melancholy note how now the park is a dangerous place at night (it's true, it has that reputation at least, though I don't know how truthful).

Explanation on stadin kundi. This is a slang expression. Stadi means "city", comes from the Swedish word "stad". Stadi is only used of Helsinki. Kundi means a "bloke". So a stadin kundi is a person born and lived his whole life in Helsinki, and not just anywhere in Helsinki but in the core city. There's a clear distinction between identities among the residents of Helsinki, a distinction that is stronger in the generations who were young adults in the 50's and 60's; it may apply still in the 70's: on one hand between those who were born and have lived their life in Helsinki and those who moved to Helsinki from elsewhere, on the other hand between those who were born and have lived their life in the core city and the inhabitants of the suburbs. To make the distinction even clearer, the natives of the core city used to have their own slang, very distinct from mainstream Finnish, with many of the words deriving from Swedish. This gentleman used some slang words, as far as I could recognize. It's not really spoken anymore, and those who know it are getting old. Well, I suppose the young generations of Helsinki now have their own, different sort of slang, or slangs. I guess there are similar distinctions in cities everywhere, each with their own variations. This is how it is in Helsinki.

After this pleasant encounter I made my way to the library and made quite good progress with work, which made me feel even better. Hope everyone else has had a good day too!