Erratum: Had I read Helsingin Sanomat

Had I bee reading Helsingin Sanomat this week I would not have been able to say in my post earlier today that there was nothing to be alarmed about. A few bits of recent HS stuff to note:

about 500 Helsinki residents were asked questions about, er, it’s not quite clear, but the answers were that almost a half (apparently) want a Guggenheim Museum here. Even more popular, apparently, than this global bränd entertainment, would be a new Helsinki Central Library building. Some replies stated that these new buildings should go on the land around Töölö Bay. Thanks to Arkkivahti for bringing this example of the worst of our only national daily to our attention (though my ignorance was bliss!) The headline then, yesterday 22.2.2011 was

Ensin on saatava keskustakirjasto, vasta sitten Guggenheimin vuoro

Why exactly the story was in the culture pages is not clear.

Then there’s the news about the City’s terrible financial woes, to which the only solution is to sell the family silver. This includes some great architecture and lovely urban background (so comfortable you may not even notice it’s there) like the old Tennis Palatsi (which we mentioned on this blog a few weeks ago) and Lasipalatsi, so special (and so unlikely to have survived!) that if you don’t notice it then you don’t deserve to live anywhere near it.

On 21. February the paper reports that CNN reports (bear with us) that mayor Jussi Pajunen is boasting about MASSIVE rebuilding in Helsinki in the next 25 years.

For the time being however, the traces of brilliant workmaship and exquisite architecture, oodles of good luck (or contingent accident) and a few visionary deicisions, can still be enjoyed in this fair city of ours. Proof of Helsinki’s attractions is reported by HS in English – of course.

The size thing

Is Helsinki cool because

a) it is so far north

b) people here read so much

or

c) it’s a capital city but it’s still “human” sized?

Well, all of the above, of course. And the way you can walk over a little bridge to Uunisaari and turn back to face Merikatu and take pics like this.

Feels like the last century made synomyms of “big” and “cool”. As in LA was cool, tall buildings were cool, gigantic brands were cool. Somehow in spite of that, comparatively little Helsinki gained a bit of a reputation as being cool somewhere around 1999. Retro and techno got a high-ish profile, ditto some freak Finnish quirks like mobile-phone-throwing competitions. No doubt the new consensus on Finland being a knowledge economy or having a National Innovation System (NIS) to rival the best global competitors sounded cool. Though as a “system” the NIS-thing was rather uncool and typically Finnish in a political sense: thoroughly organised, state-sanctioned, virtually monopolistic but with an entrepreneurial and individualistic tone, etc. etc.

Around its edges though, the weirdness and the freakishness flourished, as did the cosmopolitanism. The business-opportunities and jobs (not forgetting the Finnish girlfriends and spouses and occasional boyfriends) brought more non-Finns into the city. Cool! Visitors and residents alike, they agree with older locals, on the whole, that Helsinki’s small size is a fabulous asset. Year after year people comment on the fabulous combination of “small” and “capital”.

P.S. for urban history geeks, films about Helsinki at Bio Rex, Lasipalatsi, this Sunday, 1 euro each.

P.P.S. for planning geeks: as the international fashion for BIG continues, and as the EU’s “spatial planning” policies are put into practice around its capital cities so do the pressures to turn the Helsinki region into something better and bigger. To manage this process we now have a Strategic Spatial Plan (pdf from the link on the right). Er, when will someone really justify the claim that “growth” and “bigger” is actually better?

Food & prices

Food is a very visible topic in this city right now. Tomorrow will bring concerned citizens and inspiring pioneers to the Old Student House (Vanha Ylioppilastalo) to discuss the ways in which the environmental crisis can be resolved through what we consume literally, at table. But I’ll blog about that when it’s happened!! (Don’t mind plugging it though: http://megapolis2024.org/)

Bizarrely, though Vanha has been the backdrop for generations of student debate, debauchery and entertainment, and though it’s open to anyone for a relatively cheap meal or drink, visiting in the virtual world you’d get a rather different idea. Following internet links, Vanha yields a website that’s got some ingredients of a Helsinki site that are becoming a little too standard: an invitation to a local culinary experience. Foodies not food get the spotlight.

On a similar topic a new arrival in the city is a purveyor of local food. Centraly located  in Lasipalatsi (and you can’t get any more central than that, distances to Helsinki are measured to the clock tower next to it, here photographed from the other side, three pairs of shoes hanging off the wires coming off it), this is the Maatilatori, a specialist shop for foodies and, possibly, for greenies. Not cheap but not nasty either. Also, they seem not to have their own website, though information is available via Lasipalatsi’s site, but there’s something quite nice about a shop that’s looking at the basics and highlighting the importance of geography to food production, that doesn’t have a virtual presence.

It’s there, and they were really lovely. Outside and inside. Got 2 different kinds of red potatoes. Look forward to cooking with them, but first, an evening in a restaurant awaits.

Oh, almost forgot. They have a name in the third domestic, though not the second: Eat&Joy. Enough said.