The Mediterranean

I like my white balcony in sunny summer days, because it makes me feel like being in Greece, with its blazing sun and the traditional white-chalked houses with their blue doors and windows.

I hereby declare summer officially opened

Yesterday I biked all the way to the easternmost part of Helsinki, to Vuosaari and there to the Kallahti peninsula. Clear, blue sky, sun, warm. I took off my sandals and walked on the beach, the warm sand delightfully tickling my toes. Then, with trouser legs rolled up, I splashed around in the shallow, clear water by the shore, the coolness and the gentle waves around my ankles just as delightful as the sand had been a moment before. I present these pictures as evidence of my toes in both environments. Yes indeed: it's summer!

(Note: no swimming was involved as of yet. The Baltic is far too cold for that this early in the summer.)

The best thing about biking

The best thing about biking are long, straight, downhill-sloping stretches. You can just let go and the wind howls merrily all around you. You can almost imagine taking off and flying any moment. Biking really does make you free as a bird, excuse the overused image, free from bus and train time-tables and traffic jams. That sense of freedom is condensed in those long, straight, downhill-sloping stretches.

More morning mood

Dew drops on blades of grass. Time: around 6 am.

Asleep

I gave this a Finnish name when I uploaded it on Vastavalo, and the name, a single word, means both 'dream' and 'sleeping'/'asleep'. Could be either, depending.

And yesterday a fog rose...

I AM going to post more sunrise pictures, but just had to put these up. I couldn't believe my luck yesterday! Feeling a little childish, I decided to bike to the zoo which is actually an island not too far from my place, to look at the tigers and stuff. Towards the evening, when I was leaving, this amazing, thick, white fog rose on the sea. What an opportunity for a photographer! I was excited beyond belief! I took lots more pictures than these two, but these produced just the perfect result as this little boat happened to come out of the fog.

4.30 am

I got up at 4 am this morning, in order to reach the nearby park by the sea by 4.30 am which is when the sun rises now. Right in the moment of sunrise the sky was clouded, but the water on the bay began to shine in silvery hue. About one hour later the sun came out, the most brilliant sight one could see. And the morning dew! Dew drops on every blade of grass! I was very sleepy but was happy that I went, not least because of the marvellous concert of birds which seemed to come from every tree around the path that follows the shore to the park. As I was walking, a blackbird flew onto a branch two, three meters away from me. It was not afraid of me - perhaps not anticipating one of the upright-walking creatures at such a time in the morning - and as it sat there, it sang! As common as the blackbird is, its singing is among the most distinct and beautiful among birds.

I'll post more pictures after I have sorted them out.

The kingcup

Two bikers stop to marvel: 'How beautiful those kingcups are!' I share their joy: the bright -yellow kingcup is like the rays of the sun in physical form.

Free your toes

Why does the sound of my feet on the gravel path feel so immensely pleasing? Perhaps it's because of the weather, warm enough for bare feet in sandals, the liberated toes. Free your toes!

Rainy day moods

A proper downpour, with thunder right above, surprised me (and others) just as I was leaving the university library the other day. Rain or sunshine, I love the spring!

The spring has also encouraged me to get my bike out and put it to use. On most days, if it's not raining, I'm biking the 8 km or so to the university library. It feels fantastic, though my decision to start biking was also motivated by a concern of the tendency of extra "layers" to gravitate to my thighs and bottom. ;-) I naturally have a biking helmet - of the pot model, it's actually a skater helmet - because a person who is not concerned about safety in the traffic is a fool. Even if you are super careful and never make mistakes yourself, accidents can still happen because you can't control the behaviour of others.

Sounds

I am sitting in a children's swing on the sun-embraced beach, letting the warmth caress my face. Eyes closed, I am listening.

The sound of the gentle waves coming to the shore. The cry of a gull, then a splash as it catches a fish from the surface of the water. A duck quacks somewhere. The warm hum of a bee as it happily buzzes by. Birds in the forest, four... no, five different songs. I wish I could recognize birds by their singing. A crow decides to break their concert with its hoarse croaking. A pheasant joins in, no less coarse. Now a boat's motor is buzzing somewhere beyond the nearby islands. People's voices. Perhaps at the nearby school yard? The hum of traffic, but distant, muffled...

My solitude is broken by the arrival of two mothers with baby carriages and the excited cries of a toddler as he hurries to inspect the play ship 'Antti I' which is set up on the beach.

Water

Yep, I've taken water pictures before but only now with the kind of success I wanted: my aim was to photograph the fast-moving water of a fountain with fast shutter speed so that the water droplets and movement of the water would be frozen in a kind of sculpted state, with surface shapes, contours and so on clearly visible. The problem was that the digital compact I used to have wasn't up to the task. The Canon Eos 450D clearly is. This is taken with 1/2500 shutter speed, f5.6 and ISO 800, then did a bit of fine-editing of the original RAW.

Btw, don't forget to check out the Vappu pictures in the link at the end of the previous post!

Vappu

So, I've been quite enjoying Vappu, which is the name of the Finnish celebration of 1st of May. At least in Helsinki Vappu is a huge two-day carnival of revelry, during which tens of thousands of people get out on the streets. Nowadays Vappu is above all a celebration of students, and it begins at 6 pm on May Day's eve with a ceremony by the harbour, followed by immense crowds, where a student guild (a different one each year) washes the statue of Havis Amanda (above) and places a student cap on her head. The statue was sculpted and set up in the early 20th century at which time it was found to be rather controversial, no doubt due to the nudity. This ceremony is actually well in accordance with ancient traditions, come to think of it: in ancient Athenian religion there were cults that involved re-clothing of the statue of the goddess. I can't recall if washing of the cult image was involved. In any case, I don't know - or don't remember - how this ceremony started, but it's rather a nice pagan-ish rite of welcoming the spring. :-)

I witnessed the ceremony, and subsequently left before people's state of drunkenness got too emphasized. The drinking factor can be a problem, causing disturbances - Vappu is the biggest business of the year for the state alco company - but I do like this stuff, the happy and joyous revelry. There's not much of that in Finland (in public)! There are lots of things tomorrow too, for instance as much as 50 000 people gathering in the central park on the May Day morning for picnic. There's also a big Vappu march. Everything starts pretty early though so I'm not sure I'll make it.

Happy May Day to all!

And here's a small set of photos of the event: http://picasaweb.google.com/mr.wisty/Vappu2009#

I meant to add the link before, but forgot. Btw, if someone wonders about the overalls the students are wearing in the pictures, and the cloth badges on the overalls: all student groups (of the departments of the university) have these uniforms, everyone a different colour, usually got in the first year of study. The various student organisations sell cloth badges which are collected and sewn onto the overalls. You can usually conclude how active a student is in the parties and functions by how many badges he or she has sewn on the overalls.