Skip to main content

Christmas is here!


This post has a lot of pictures, which means really bad formatting on my part. Apologies!

Christmas tree lighting! Notice the huge crowd?
This week I have my first visitor. Ironically, he lived on my floor two months ago and had been living in another dorm in Turku for six months before he moved back to his hometown in Italy. So Turku isn’t exactly new to him and he told me as much. In fact, he complained that there wasn’t really anything to do in Turku (to which the appropriate response would have been to say that he was here to see me so that shouldn’t matter. But that is now a lost opportunity).

The truth is that Turku is completely different now than it was two months ago, much less in August when I first arrived. I have said on multiple occasions that I love being in Turku and Christmastime might be one of the best seasons to pay a visit. Shops have put Christmas lights up. Kauppatori has a pathway cutting right through it that is adorned with lights, creating the illusion of a canopy covering part of the square.

And there is the majestic 20-feet-tall Christmas tree in front of the cathedral. I had the fortune of walking by moments before they lit the tree a week ago. The square in front of the cathedral was packed with the largest crowd I have seen gathered in Turku thus far, showing how important Christmas is to the city.

But my favorite are the bridges.

There are several bridges that cross the Aura throughout the city. Throughout the year, these bridges have colorful lights glowing in the darkness, making it a little more bearable when the sun already sets at 4 in the afternoon in early November. Two bridges in particular, though, for whatever reason, have been decorated especially elaborately for Christmas.

The first bridge


One is very simple, in both structure and decoration. Year round this bridge is lit up with a soft shade of green and blue light so it glows in the darkness. In honor of the holidays, the city has put small speakers that are tucked away in the railing. All day long, these speakers play music for the passers-by. This includes a variety of classical music, sometimes Christmas songs, sometimes upbeat tunes and sometimes pleasant orchestra pieces.





I’ve always wished that my life could have a soundtrack like there is in the movies and walking across this bridge makes me feel like I do.






A view of the second bridge from afar

Standing on the second bridge





The second bridge is much more elaborate. Like the first, it also includes music and lights but there are also pine trees that have been lined all along both sides of the bridge. The trees exude a faint smell of pine and there are always at least one or two people taking pictures or video as they walk across. When there is snow on the ground the bridge feels like a winter wonderland.










I love the amount of care and holiday spirit that has gone into the bridges, tree and city lights. It’s as if the city is saying that, even though the days are dark and the sunlight seems to be permanently be hidden behind clouds, there is still plenty to be cheerful about.


Ornaments at the mall





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Working Identities

The halls of a TC building where I must be a doctoral student It’s been a while since my last post. To be honest, I haven’t done much besides school work, to the point that the I no longer know what to tell people when they ask me what my hobbies are. Which also means I feel a constant looming pressure of knowing I live in a big city with a reputation for never sleeping yet I spend my weekends holed up in my room or in the library (and the occasional coffee shop). This is not to say that I spend all of my time doing doctoral work. I have found two outlets in the form of jobs that have enriched this semester in ways that I didn’t expect. One is at a preschool, the other is working at the Graduate Writing Center consulting students working on academic writing projects. After not working for two years, I had forgotten what it feels like to be part of something that allows for change that you can actually see. Teaching is always rewarding as you watch children grow and marvel...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spot of Tea

I didn’t like tea for most of my life. Mami, my aunt, very strongly discouraged us from drinking tea, telling us “gitte reh jaoge (you will remain short)” any time we voiced a desire to have some. This was said so many times that we regarded it as a cold, hard fact. Unfortunately for Mami, seeing her only once every two years meant that we grew older rather quickly between visits and she didn’t have many opportunities to continue telling us this piece of wisdom before our heights were pretty much set in stone and could no longer be threatened by a cup of hot chai. For Western children, they outgrew Santa Clause. We outgrew Mami’s alarmism. My parents drinking their afternoon cup. But Mami’s efforts did not go in vain. Having never drank tea habitually as children, we didn’t feel any affinity to it as young adults. I was accustomed to seeing my parents’ elaborate morning ritual of going for a walk, making tea, and drinking tea while reading the paper. Every aspect of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Waltz

At a Finnish wedding, the tradition is for the newlyweds to dance to a wedding waltz during their reception. It doesn’t matter what kind of wedding it is, the waltz is an essential part of the program. I hate the waltz. Compared to the Latin dances that I have been learning, the waltz is too stately and prudish to be of much fun. So I have jokingly told my boyfriend that at our wedding we will not be dancing the waltz. In part this is to gauge his response to my presumption that we are getting married (a bit sneaky, I know). In part it is also to make sure he knows that I am most definitely not Finnish (though I tell him that I am 50% Finnish, 50% Indian and 40% American). When I last told him there would be no waltz at our wedding, my boyfriend didn’t flinch at this challenge, to his immense credit. He just laughed. At which point I realized I didn’t even know how to waltz, which only made him laugh even more. Somehow, after this exchange, he decided to put on some wa...
Post a Comment
Read more