‘You can say sorry all you like but …’

As the rain beats some of the recent weeks’ snow into submission and horrible slush, life retreats indoors. Some feel that’s where Finns should stay anyway if they can’t have a whole forest or lake to themselves. So slowly are we still learning to live shoulder-to-shoulder in the (relatively) busy city.

There’s a very old story about the Finn in a busy street (or was it railway station) in Australia (or was it London) who, from the bottom of his (for he surely was a man) backwoods Finnish heart said:

“sori mitä sorit mutta älä törki perkele”

“you can say sorry all you like but don’t bloody push me”

You may also have experienced some of what remains of this legacy of expansive personal space. Have you ever held doors open in Helsinki shops? Does anyone ever thank you for it? Has anyone ever held a door open for you? (When yours truly notes with horror that she has failed to keep to civilized urban rules of mutual negotiation of space … she comforts herself by recalling that she is, after all, a Finn, only just getting to grips with etiquette as a major lubricant of social interaction.)

Two news items in today’s issue of The Usual touch on the theme. In the first Anna-Sofia Berner takes a tongue-in-cheek perspective on the impact on pedestrian etiquette of the abundant snow. As it piles up everywhere, and as pavements turn into single-file gulleys with ankle or knee-deep snow either side, the Helsinki pedestrian can no longer proceed as usual:

Siis kiireisin askelin, vastaantulijoita sulavasti väistäen, suupielet vaakatasossa ja katse jossain kaukaisuudessa.

or

That is, in hurried steps, deftly giving way to others, corners of the mouth in neutral, gazing somewhere into the distance.

So writes Berner. The conundrum of who give way to whom isn’t just nice fodder for the Sunday paper. In times like these it is a real drain on Helsinkians minds.

Elsewhere tempers are being tested to media-worthy effect. In that most civil of Helsinki’s civil neighbourhoods, on the beautiful Merikatu itself, which parked cars and snow have reduced to one-way traffic only, a mutually agreeable, not to mention amicable, resolution to the who-gives-way-to-whom conundrum failed to materialise. But we are not talking pedestrians. After screaming at each other for some time on the roadway, the drivers of a car and a lorry ratcheted the squabble up to motorised proportions. The lorry driver (on snow-removal duty) got back up into his vehicle and simply rammed the smaller of the protagonists out of its way. According to today’s HS (as revealed to them by the local police) neither party “saw it as their place to reverse out of the other’s way”.

(Not nice from either of them – personally I’d have thought the private car should make way for the public service vehicle. But then that’s a JHJ leaning that may be out of date and out of touch.)

Not still falling – being carted away

While international news reminds us here at the top of Europe that bad stuff routinely happens here too, the other news today makes us here at JHJ realise withs some surprise that thus far we have not taken up the topic of sisu, Finns’ favourite word according to the New York Times. Actually, with such illustrious wordsmiths covering it, we’ll leave discussing sisu to others.

The Deputy Mayor responsible for Public Works and Environmental Affairs Pekka Sauri, however, wants us all to show a bit of it (sisu) in these difficult times.

With record amounts of snow everywhere, Sauri has finally come out of his comfort zone where he has actually (according to taxi drivers) been quietly enjoying the misery of Helsinki’s car-driving public. Their needs (according to the same taxi driver) don’t matter to this Green politician. Whether or not one holds Sauri and the Greens responsible for record amounts of snow, for insufficient or badly managed clearing or for not allowing climate change to happen fast enough, the enormous amounts of weather we have been having once again in Helsinki are certainly a talking point.

Last week I finally heard a rumour that Sauri (or someone else, the taxi driver hesitated) was doing a reconnaissance trip into the city to find out what was going on. Everyone else knew. Buses, lorries and cars skidded around, dozens of trams got stuck behind illegally parked cars, hundreds of people parked illegally because their owners are very important and must leave their cars sticking out into the roadway and tram lines even if it means causing the whole tram network to be snarled up. A few people have been seen cycling, old ladies have screamed themselves red in the face at helpful ushers and porters who have not been able to either procure better taxi service or get the snow to stop falling, and another taxi driver (age about 21 1/2) complained to me today that folks aren’t what they used to be. In his childhood people would get off a bus and help push or at least lighten the load (I must have missed that episode of Life in Helsinki).

Finally, finally, Sauri announced special measures, operation snow fight. But this is where that old-fashioned spirit of collaboration (and the sisu) are needed. We must all work together to cope with the weather! Car drivers in particular must show solidarity!

To get a handle on all the offending snow, the staff of Stara (rebränded municipal environmental services) who are doing the clearing, have been given permission to tow parked cars without the usual warnings (but only to within somewhere close by so that owners don’t all go getting heart attacks when they can’t find their cars). Owners must nevertheless do their bit and grab those shovels!

Meanwhile, Sauri the Green reminds Helsinkians that public transport would be so much more sensible than the motor car. I doubt anyone is listening. Never seen Mannerheimintie so clogged up as tonight, and the clots in the system weren’t piles of snow, but piles of metal.

Where the snow has been cleared and where people aren‘t screaming at or blaming others, the city is as gorgeous as ever, not least in its old mini-imperial centre. Like here, at the University‘s Topelia, early 19th-century architecture flexible enough to have served as a school for poor children, a hospital (until the 1990s!) and a work-place for (poor) social scientist.

p.s. a letter in  the usual suggests that car owners be charged a levy to pay for whatever equipment is still needed to avoid the city going through such frustration and silliness.

Better slipping

The Finnair stewardesses have ended their strike leaving both business types and holidaying families, and even the odd anachronistic Finns who think you need to travel abroad to buy decent Christmas prezzies, to slip away from Helsinki with the ease to which the late 20th century accustomed them.

The staff may have returned, but flight departures may be delayed. All kinds of journeys are likely to be disrupted. The snow gods have not stopped their mischief. The white stuff continues blanketing the city in its charms but it also makes for challenging travel conditions. White mounds hide cars and many smaller evils, making life just that much more exciting for Helsinki residents.

Should you be unlucky enough to have a fall as a result of the snow and ice, HUS accident and emergency services will no doubt sort you out. Rather delightfully I also discovered that Finland’s Association of People with Disabilities, Invalidiliitto, publish a website (in Finnish and Swedish) called, more or less, “Wintry Tales of Tension: Introduction to Slipping” (Talvisia jännitysnäytelmiä) which encourages you to wear sensible footwear, know where to step and to fall softly if you must. Remember, a tense faller-over will hurt themselves more badly than a relaxed one.

Should you nevertheless need to or wish to venture out into the world, a new opportunity has arrived: a high-speed train to St. Petersburg. When those “spaces of flows” that modern technology helped create become less fluid, when they get clogged up by strikes, snow or acts of god(s) or rising fuel prices, geography will come to matter again for Finns. Maybe different conventions of moving about will have to be adopted.

It’s possible that the world will become huge again. Then again, older technologies may be adapted to newer needs. Fast trains may replace slow ones, even in Finland (and Russia, whence Finland’s wide railway gauge originally came). It used to take an overnight train to reach the truly stunning classical architecture and urbanism of St Petersburg, but as of next week the train should [sic] only take three and a half hours. Then again, you never know. Apart from the possible effects of excess snow, there are quite a few ambiguities on the website itself, including this:

Finnish Sibelius and Russian Repin trains are longer operated on Helsinki-St. Petersburg line as Allegro services start. Russian night train Tolstoi continues to run between Helsinki and Moscow.

VR’s grammar aside, St Petersburg is a site/sight to see, particularly for anyone interested in architecture. According to the website Chto Delat (“What is to be done”) its Imperial cityscape (which Helsinki mimics in miniature) will be spared a garish 21st-century skyscraper. The city is finally saying goodbye to its controversial Gazprom tower scheme.

Pictures of geography

Finnair staff remain on strike. As support strikes spread, pessimists quip that the company may go bust. Others (optimists?) discuss the merger of trades unions in the transport sector (note: geography matters for a country like Finland!) Petrol prices are rising. The snowy weather continues to preoccupy. The Greens have been held responsible for the very generous amounts of snow to be seen, felt and suffered all over the city [as in, there isn’t the equipment/manpower to clear roads]. They are also responsible for a baffling start to parliamentary election campaigning. The widening gap between Finland’s poor and its rich continues to animate conversation (interviewees at the President’s Independence ball, for example) but there are few signs of anyone doing anything about it at a political level, only charitable individuals and groups catering to soup kitchens, once again growing in Helsinki. Only the extreme right appear to consider taxation to be a matter of social justice. Swine flu may be back. Britain sees university politics get ugly. Finnish academics smile as they muse on how one might even begin to convince an ignorant barbarian to cherish free enquiry. Helsinki is beautiful.

For a few days there was no wind. The snow stayed just where it had fallen.

The National Museum is beautiful.

Katajanokka is particularly beautiful particularly in the sunshine.

The last picture is of Kauppiaankatu 2, by our old friend Usko Nystrom.

Dreaming of pi(a)zza

S Stefano di Sessino from flickr by a kruder396

People keep telling me that former mayor Pekka Korpinen is behind the efforts to “enliven” or “regenerate” Helsinki’s street life, urban vibe and architectural blandness [what the f***!]. I do remember his name cropping up over and over again in relation to some architectural scheme or other, usually in the vein of glass-and-steel supposedly transparent corporate mediocrity.

Then again, I can’t remember a single one of those many examples.

So, I wonder whether the new urban myth has any truth to it. What I keep hearing is that both the strenuously un-mediocre ice-hotel by the Swiss Herzog+deMeron (which was a Korpinen initiative and which he defends here) and the still hardly-talked-about crimes-in-the-making along the side of the Senate Square, have their roots in Mr Korpinen’s liking for piazzas. Apparently he got to really like piazza life while living in Rome for a while. (This biographical detail suggests that there is some substance to the story, no?) Though maybe he is inspired by the wise patrons and philosophically inclined architects in some parts of Italy who planned towns and cities in the 1400s. Or maybe he is blithely unconcerned by the short-termist havoc wreaked by many of his 15th-century predecessors in the adminitrations of Italy’s market towns.

How does one say plus ça change in Italian?

Whatever the answers to all these pertinent questions, there are plenty among the elite of today’s governing classes who are hooked on Tuscany at least. Must digress enough to say my heart does go out to the citizens of L’Aquila whose wheelbarrow protest, see a film here, speaks of the planning madnesses of our times (there’s a sad story about exploiting a natural event to exploit a local population there!) Anyway, I like piazza life in Italy and southern France myself. I also like a sunshade when the sun is beating down from almost directly overhead.

I also like to think that the substantial inconvenience of Eyjafjallajokull’s eruption could be a reminder to anyone still lost in a fog of digitally enhanced unreality and blind faith in technological progress, that the world is not ours to mess with endlessly. In fact, I have much sympathy for those who set up the facebook fan-club of the Icelandic volcano. On the other hand, wouldn’t we all prefer video-conferencing to enforced business flying anyway?

I also had considerable sympathy for the chaps at VR (national railways) whose work was a nightmare (I’m speculating) last winter as a result of blind faith in a lean, mean, just-in-time and utterly unresilient railway network operating in a country with a substantial history of substantial snowfall.

So, here’s to old-fashioned nature, the kind that does what it will, sometimes to the rhythm of familiar seasons with the sun shining from really quite predictable angles and sometimes doing less predictable but, for most of us, still not crisis-inducing things. So, while some dream of piazzas, let’s remind ourselves of reality with a few pics of befores and afters.

That’s the bar, Loop, with Aalto’s energy building in the background on the left. Then there’s the future cycle lane, former freight train shaft running down at the bottom of Eteläinen Rautatiekatu, lovely in the snow, less so without.

And then there are the bikes. The mind still boggles as to how all the abandoned ones were recouped and refurbished after that long, cold, lovely winter.

Some things you want to lose, some things you don’t

Marketta Kyttä, an environmental psychologist from the Technical University, now rejigged into Aalto Univrsity, was on the radio this morning. On this blog we have often referred to children’s visible presence in Helsinki – gaggles of school kids of various ages using public transport, primary school kids who know how to negotiate traffic, the cultural conventions of (sweet) shopping and playground etiquette, walking on their own or in groups, gradually learning to inhabit and, hopefully, to enliven their city with their very presence. Well, according to Kyttä’s research (which she has been working on for a good many years, her Doctorate was awarded in 2003), parental paranoia has already meant the beginning of of Finnish kids being confined to cars, timetabled hobbies and, one assumes, consumerism. After all, the new careful, carful city is irrevocably a privatised city.

I asked a taxi driver the other day if there was a post office in Munkkivuori shopping centre. He wasn’t sure. “Taitaavat olla katoavaa kulttuuriperintöä” (“I reckon they’re disappearing cultural heritage”) he said. It does have one. Though finding anything through the piles of snow was a challenge as I wandered around this rather sweet and successful “ostari” or shopping centre.

The phrase “going, going, gone” suggests itself. (spot the helping hand in the 2nd photo).

Spring – that flexible Finnish concept

Bang, boom, swish, crack, thud, thuddud, whoosh. These are weak efforts to convey in writing the sounds of a Helsinki spring. In an almost record-breakingly snowy year, workmen have been kept busy clearing roofs of snow, car breakdown services called on to rescue snow-bound vehicles and ordinary citizens have alternately helped each other to push cars over banks of snow or cursed each others’ thoughtlessness in parking wherever there is almost enough space. Snow and ice are falling all over the place off rooftops and through drain pipes – it can get noisy, and dangerous if you don’t keep an eye on what’s going on overhead. Might be an idea in places to walk in the middle of the roadway.

There is a slight change in the weather now – it’s been above zero for a couple of days now. Spring?

Challenged by long, dark winters, Finns tend to try and sidestep awkward reality by using the word spring to mean anything after Christmas! But in truth, last week did already have something of a spring-like feel, and of course, tomorrow is the first day of March, a word that for mainstream cultures of the northern hemisphere does conjure up something like nature’s awakening from the slumber and rest of winter.

Obviously, however, for one who knows this country, the picture above was taken in the SPRING. This next one, taken but a minute later up the road at Taidehalli proves it. The sun was shining and it was actually warming up the earth, helping the caretaker bring forth the hard landscaping.

Meanwhile, here are some images of the roof cleaning. With excess snow a problem across the country, there have been many falls and injuries, mostly among owners of detached homes. The men dealing with Helsinki’s buildings are, according to a taxi driver, mostly professional roof builders, so have a good grasp of safety.

The buildings: Old Town Hall/Bock House by C. L. Engel from Aleksanterinkatu and then from within the courtyard. Then Innotalo or the Board of Patents and Registration, 1976 by Einari Teräsvirta.

Meanwhile, another typical Helsinki scene this winter, bikes – before the thaw.

P.s. A highly-rated education Finland may have, but much remains to be done. We cannot resist reproducing for your delectation this from today’s Usual

Senaatintorilla on Aleksanteri II:n patsas

Suomalaisia terroristeja käsitelleessä kirja-arviossa lauantaina 27. helmikuuta sivulla C 1 väitettiin, että Senaatintorilla olisi Nikolai II:n patsas. Torilla on Aleksanteri II:n patsas.

or (my translation)

The statue in the Senate Square is Alexander II

A book review about Finnish terrorists in Saturday’s paper on page C1 claimed that the statue in the Senate Square is Nicholas II. The square has a statue of Alexander II.

“Aleksanterinkatu to be torn up again”

Nobody likes their street being ripped up. Nobody, except a speculative investor with a certain amount of confidence, likes renovations or maintenance to disrupt normal service.

Well – we here at JHJ don’t know if it’s good news or bad news. The Paper (new readers unfamiliar with our patois should be told that this and The Usual, Pravda and similar monikers refers to Helsingin Sanomat) in this country comes out in the wee hours and gets delivered to your doorstep. (Unless you opted for the Centre Partyist’s favoured mode of habitation in which case you have to trudge knee-deep in fresh snow to get it out of the post-box). Actually, it’s just as easy to read online if you subscribe, and even if you don’t you get some stuff.

Interestingly, this morning’s issue was able to report that

Aleksanterinkadun raiteet siirretään nykyistä hieman pohjoisemmiksi, ja pohjoinen jalkakäytävä kavennetaan 3,5 metriseksi. Käytännössä tämä tarkoittaa Aleksanterinkadun rakentamista kokonaan uudelleen katulämmityksineen, raitiovaunupysäkkeineen ja kivetyksineen.

Which is to say:

The tram lines on Aleksanterinkatu are to be moved slightly northwards and the pavement to the north of them to be narrowed to 3,5 metres. In practice this means a total rebuilding of A.katu with its street heating, tram stops and paving.

Besides noting the budgeted cost of this, 14 892 00 euros (we believe they mean to add a zero, making it 14 892 000), it says pretty much nothing – nothing about the plans to revitalise the old partly vacant buildings in the area, (and so risk killing off the remaining vestiges of small-scale or non-commercial activity) nothing about the hassle caused to the tram network of the entire city, nothing about the damage to the historic shape of the square not to mention nothing about the heavy-handed and homogenising handiwork of the brand-consultants whose gentrifying efforts were quietly and outrageously passed by the Planning Committee before Christmas.

What, you might be thinking, did we expect.

Well, we were not expecting the news to break when the meeting of the Planning Committee had not yet even taken place. That was scheduled for 15.00 today, 25.2.2010. Accessed on this same day at 22.50, we find it’s still there but of course the minutes aren’t. So we can assume that the machinations of city government and planning continue on their merry way behind closed doors in the usual cabinets. Except we have been startled by the difficulties that Helsinki seems to have in deliberating about the future of shared and valuable assets. (Oh, and by the way, the City Board is supposed to OK these kinds of things before they are considered policy. I guess it’s called rubber stamping to distinguish it from serving the citizens.)

Has Helsinki always been run like this? In the wake of not just this example of anti-democratic (as well as uncivilized – but that’s a slightly more subjective view point so we put it in brackets) decision making but with Katajanokka’s designer hotel debacle fresh in our minds, and the ugly spectre of Sipoo becoming Helsinki too, to be governed from afar. We wonder. We wonder.

Meanwhile property owners and building managers in this part of the world are having to cope with more snow than has been seen here since 1941. The media is full of pictures of snow on roofs, on trucks, cars, anything and everything, and of stories of why, how, by whom, how not and by whom not to get excess snow off your roof before it either collapses or causes damage. Drains in the mean time are being steamed off to stave off disaster, as here in Hallituskatu a few days ago.

I wish I could say my concerns about the Senate Square are just so much hot air. I fear a battle may be in the offing. Even more I fear that I will have to work out whether or not my stand on it will make me a snob. And then I’ll have to work out whether or not that bothers me. All things considered, that’s a minor concern compared to ripping up everybody’s history in the most literal possible way.

P.S. for today: skating on organic ice

Dear Reader(s),

The camera got FIXED. If I was in love with Helsinki this morning, right now (I can’t believe it – it’s snowing again!) I am positively infatuated. The chaps at Kamera-Apu are not just affable but clearly professional and efficient, tucked away as they are in a tiny shop around the corner of the no-place-in-particular SAS hotel on Runeberginkatu.

So I can share with you this, now commonplace, view in Helsinki:

And this:

Which was just a while ago – before the snow started again.

On Sunday, we had this. First, some ice with snow on it. Soon, ice with no snow and lots of cheerful skaters.

Thinking of the prefix ‘re’ in wonderful, beautiful, snowy Helsinki

The snow fall has been spectacular. A slight accident last Sunday involving a camera lens and ice explains why we are having to rely on old photos and therefore cannot bring to you the rows of white mounds to be found along the streets of Töölö this morning. One of last night’s more amusing pastimes was prodding them to find out whether underneath the smooth whiteness might be a car or a motorbike.

And why the accident? Because we went skating in Munkkivuori where the good locals somehow all converged on a small iced rink at the same time and found the tools with which to clear the ten or twenty centimetres of fluffy precipitation (and then the camera fell). The big freeze means we could go to a free venue rather than an organised, paying version, but we also needed to get skates from somewhere. No problem: Sportti Divari in Hermanni to the rescue!

Recycling and reusing are alive and well in this town, with or without the aid of the internet(cycling). So for some folks certainly, the old has its value.

Including old buildings. Here’s another gem from near the Senate Square. In the rear is Arppeanum, built 1869 in a somewhat neo-gothic style reminiscent of many English university facilities of its time, now the home of the University Museum and some delightful interiors as well as a decent place to have lunch (particularly since the loss of our dear Engel across the square). By the architect C.A. Edelfelt, known in Häme province for railway stations and everywhere else for his surname – the far better known Edelfelt, Albert the painter, was his son.

The building on the corner is later, 1887, architect unknown. Decent job. The lights often glowing in its windows suggest office work here too. Perhaps some part of the university has spilled out here, as it has in so much of the rest of Kruunuhaka – the academic ghetto, you might say. And below, a lecture theatre in Arppeanum – a feature of university buildings that some think is bound to disappear, others feel that if it does, one of the university’s most precious assets – live interaction – will have been lost.

But then it’s what’s being lost all over the place, not least due to misplaced urban policies that prefer to serve up nicely packaged heritage instead of supporting everyone’s right to history. Fortunately, critiques of “regeneration” are now abundant even if they’re not heard enough, perhaps because critique itself fell out of fashion some years ago. Mute Magazine in the UK still does critique – we are grateful and suggest a read here. Owen Hatherley writes about the now taken-for-granted principles of urban development, known in the UK as “urban renaissance” or rebirth, renewal, what have you:

In terms of architectural artefacts, the urban renaissance has meant … ‘centres’, entertainment venues and shopping/eating complexes, clustered around disused river-fronts (…); in housing, ‘mixed use’ blocks …, the privatisation of council estates, the reuse of old mills or factories; extensive public art, … usually symbolising an area’s phoenix-like re-emergence; districts become branded ‘quarters’; and, perhaps most curiously, piazzas (or, in the incongruously grandiose planning parlance, ‘public realm’) appear, with attendant coffee concessions, promising to bring European sophistication to [anywhere].

Helsinki even. Except, oops, Finland always had a coffee and a cafe culture – just not the kind that everyone recognised.