I love Helsinki

Yesterday I had the most wonderful day of photographic wanderings in Punavuori, and once again my heart was filled with tremendous love for Helsinki. It sounds a bit dramatic, like how the characters speak in Victorian novels. But it's true, it's the place where I want to be - and luckily am!

Punavuori, Rödberget in Swedish, translates as 'Red Mountain'. It's one of the (locally) legendary inner city districts of Helsinki in the southern part of the city (map). The district's name comes from shore cliffs that used to be between the modern Sepänkatu and Punavuorenkatu streets and were called Rödberget in 17th century documents due to their reddish hue. Punavuori, though, did not become the official name of the district until 1959. The eastern part of the district has long had apartment buildings, whereas the western section, 'Rööperi' (city slang, comes from the Swedish name), was in the late 19th century an area of low, wooden working class housing. The wood houses were subsequently replaced with apartment buildings. Punavuori was still in the 1970s a restless working class district.

Nowadays the rough past is romanticized, which I'm sure is one of the reasons why the wealthier, trendy folks want to move there and add to the long-established local population. Their desire was probably not abated by Rööperi, a film that was made last year, about the professional criminals of the neighbourhood in the 60s and 70s. It's fictional but based on real events,  on a book called 'Rööperi - the years of crime 1955-2005', by crime novelist Harri Nykänen and Tom Sjöberg, a former criminal who was himself born and did business in Punavuori. In reality there's nothing romantic about a city district controlled by criminals. Even so, this sort of a past gives Punavuori a certain edge and excitement, which are lacking for example in the otherwise similar neighbouring Ullanlinna, with its more upper-classy character. You have street cred if you can say that you have a place in Punavuori. The district's popularity is reflected in things like the proliferation of trendy design shops, cafes, bars, vinyl record stores and such. 

The district is completely gentrified, but it remains an area of urban diversity. It also has an open and friendly, lively and young mood - not least because of the young student population for whom the area's many small apartments are ideal. The mood is why Punavuori is my favourite district of Helsinki, along with Kallio. The open mood seemed to me yesterday to be reflected in the open arch ways to the inner courtyards of the 100-year-old apartment buildings. The courtyards are sometimes almost labyrinthine, with other archways leading to other parts, narrow passages, edges and niches. Closed off from all sides (apart from the archways of course), you have the tall building walls rising up towards the sky around you, with balconies and windows. These buildings are not terribly tall, seven storeys at most, but one gets the impression of tallness and narrowness, as  if of a chute. It's wonderful to go in the courtyards and look up and around and think about things. What was it like for a child 70, 80 years ago to grow up in such a place? What is it like now? They are their own world, these interiors of inner city blocks, so different from the 60s blocks of flats of the suburbs, let alone the single-family houses of the countryside.
  

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The previous time when I was thinking about how happy I am to live in Helsinki was on sunday. It was another day of walking and finding things - a fan's dedication, misspelt, oddly moving, to Michael Jackson, written on a bench by the Töölönlahti bay; in Kamppi, a neighbouring district to Punavuori, behind a closed kiosks and close to a public toilet, a small, wooden stand which someone had humorously named 'Griin Stage'; a big, pink heart and the message 'love each other', painted on the wall of the aforementioned kiosk. In between my wanderings I went to Kiasma, the museum of modern art, and as usual found something that elevated my spirit. I was particularly impressed by the video installation of Finnish and Swedish artists, with a series of video screens hung up as if in a forest, each of the screens showing in turn a conflict situation in different professions. The installation seemed to me a powerful comment on the modern working life. I was also affected by the exhibition of Denise Grünstein, one of Sweden's foremost photographers, especially the series depicting human figures in nature, sometimes mysterious, sometimes even threatening. Click HERE for one of the pictures. My day ended perfectly with a free concert of the youth choir Cantores Minores in one of the churches. I'll just repeat what I said in Facebook: "Moved by the glorious, beautiful music; amazed that human voices can create such complex, magnificent worlds of sound. And Sibelius' Finlandia as third and final encore."

To end, one thing (one of the many things) I'm amazed about is the (seemingly) sudden explosion of green in the city. It is green everywhere where there are trees lining the streets - like there are in the pedestrian section of the Iso-Roobertin katu street in Punavuori. Of course they are there in winter too but you sort of don't register them because of the bare branches. It's quite amazing how the green, especially the exuberant green of spring and early summer, changes a street.

The Odyssey

This is an old picture of mine, one that I took in November 2008 and I've posted it before. But it's related to something I've been thinking of recently. I originally named the picture A Shopping Cart's Odyssey, jokingly, to give the shopping cart's adventure in the woods an appropriately Homeric character - as befits someone like me who dabbles in ancient things by way of work. Recently, though, I was thinking that it actually fits what is going on these days. The Enron scandal, the absurdly large bonuses of industry execs, the depression, and so on. You could certainly say that the capitalist economic system is looking for direction, couldn't you?

Money's a weird thing isn't it? The way I see it, money in itself has no negative or positive moral or ethical value. It is simply a medium which enables people to obtain the necessities and pleasures of life, to buy services and goods. Money only acquires a moral or ethical value depending on how it's obtained and used. I'm not against money nor do I think it is evil.  I very much enjoy the pleasures that money can get when I happen to have it (conversely, now I don't happen to have that much money, and I don't mind that either). I don't mind some people being richer than others, as long as the acquirement of wealth and its use has not caused suffering to others. Even so, it is very absurd that money has very much become a value in itself. It's always been so in the whole human history of course, and I know this is not a new thing to say, but that is where the problems stem from. Money as an independent value has become more and more emphasized in the past couple of decades, with the multinational corporations aiming for greater and greater profits at any cost. It's as if the race towards bigger and bigger profits has become some sort of a sacred objective that justifies any means.

I could really rant about this a long time, but I'll end this with some wise words by Douglas Adams:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Miniature sun

Lesser celandine, one of those small flowers so modest in form compared to the flowers of the tropic but somehow I like it more because it grows wild here. This, though, was in the botanical gardens where they grow in large mats. They're so beautiful aren't they, like tiny little suns.

Time, where doth it go?

Do you ever get the feeling that days should be twice as long as they are? I don't mean only in the sense of too much work but in there being so many things you'd enjoy doing but there isn't time for all of them in a day? Right now, for instance, I would like to get photos edited but the warm days are tempting me to just go out and spend most of the day outside in the park reading. I shall of course do the latter, as the book I'm reading is wonderful - Doris Lessing's The Sweetest Dream - and it makes no sense to waste a brilliant day away by sitting indoors at the computer.

So, I indeed did make the sea journey to the city during the weekend. A warm, sunny summer day sitting on the roof of the boat, a refreshing yet warm sea breeze in my hair and on my face. Just wonderful. I have been to all of the places the boat passes (well, excepting the stretches of shore that are private property) but it's so very cool to see your home city from a different angle. Here are a few pictures.

And now it's off to the park with the book, not forgetting sunscreen and a bottle of water!