Skip to main content

A Few of my Favorite Things


I just came back from a trip to Estonia. It was my first trip where I was completely alone the entire time. No travel companions, no friend anticipating my arrival, no one else dictating my schedule, unless you count my rather overbearing couchsurfing host. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is a pretty town to visit but I think the biggest thing I learned was that I prefer traveling with people. Places are more fun to see and food is more fun to eat when the experience is shared.

That being said, I don’t think I would have done what turned out being my favorite thing from the trip if I had had anyone else with me: taking pictures of doors. To be clear, these aren’t just any doors. They are colorful and happy. Each door I saw was unique, either in color scheme or detailing.

Here are a few examples:







And here is a collage of some of my pictures put together. 


I took 30 door pictures so this is only about half. This whole project started when I chanced upon a poster in the Tourist Center that looked like my collage. I decided that instead of spending 10 Euro on buying such a thing, it would be cooler to make your own.

And now, on to my other favorite things. Some of these are quirky things I’ve found about Finland but have come to love. Others I wish we could have in the US.

1.     Cars actually stop and wait for you to cross when you’re trying to cross the street instead of speeding through the crosswalk so they, heaven forbid, have to wait for you. They often even slow down well before they get to the crosswalk.

2.     Speaking of waiting, people hold the pedestrian crossing signs to heart. If it says wait, people will wait even if the street is mostly deserted. This is not true in Helsinki and it isn’t true of everyone in Turku either but many people do wait.

Image result for dish drying cabinet3.  Above every kitchen sink there is a cabinet to put your clean dishes to dry. Not only do these cabinets function as effective storage spaces for your dishes, they don’t take up extra room and they keep the counters from getting all wet because of large clunky dish drying racks. This is not unique to Finland, I’ve seen them in several European countries. The US needs to get with the program. A Finnish woman named Maiju Gebhard invented these to save time spent on washing dishes. Apparently the idea for these was originally patented in the US as well but I’ve never seen one.

4.     There is a cute amount of attention to detail. In the parking lots, for example, there are giant cherries (or apples, I can’t tell which) all around the Student Village to block cars from entering certain areas. A parking lot in Helsinki is marked off by giant stone turtles. It’s much nicer to have a cherry blocking your path than a barricade.


5.    And finally, Finns accept silence. I am a quiet person and tend to not talk a lot. Here this is the cultural norm. Oddly enough, I’ve become more outgoing, relatively speaking, since coming here and I attribute this in part to the fact that I feel I can be myself, reserved or not.

Comments

  1. beautiful doors! an experience waiting behind each one! <3

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finnish Differences

Time is a funny thing. It seems to move in leaps and bounds at times and at times it moves slower than molasses. Right now it's doing both. I can't believe it's only been a week and yet I can't believe it's already been a week. Sunset in Helsinki This week I've been in Helsinki for our Fulbright orientation. We learned a lot of information and it would be impossible for me to fit all of it into a reasonable amount of space so I will leave that summary for another day. But a week has given me some time to notice some differences in how things work in Finland and how they work in the US. I thought I would highlight five here that encompass a fair variety of my experiences so far. I have to give credit to my friend Marie who helped me with this list. Many of these are her ideas. 1. Nature is Everywhere This one is first because I think it is the most important one for Finns. Finnish people love nature and it shows in the way cities are built (at least th...

Summer (Cottage) Fun

This is a very selfish post. I am writing it purely to relive memories because, even though I have absolutely loved being at home for this week, eating my mother’s cooking, meeting friends and remembering what 30 ° (90 ° for my American friends) weather feels like, part of me misses Finland. I probably wouldn’t miss it so much if it weren’t for a weekend trip I took before leaving to a friend’s summer cottage. It was quintessentially Finnish. (And then later that week we made hernekeitto and pannukakku . You can’t get more Finnish than that.) The cottage was tucked away in the middle of woods. Though there were two other cottages not far from ours, we couldn’t see or hear anything from our neighbors, thus giving the illusion that we were completely secluded from the outside world. Cottages are generally located near a body of water, either a lake or the ocean. This cottage was by a lake. It actually belongs to my friend’s mother who spends almos...

Story time

I want to use this entry to write some of the stories that I think have been important or interesting while here in Finland. They aren't necessarily related to each other or even remotely profound in any way but they are all important to me for various reasons. The first is not even a specific moment but a place and a feeling. Right in front of the cathedral there is a bridge that crosses the Aura River. It is a beautiful bridge, with a cobbled stone path running parallel to the busy street. The cathedral stands tall on one side of the bridge and around it is a small square, also with cobbled stone. On the other side of the cathedral, running all the way along the river to the harbor is a promenade speckled with coffee shops and benches. One day when crossing the bridge I heard the unmistakable sound of bagpipes. Sure enough, there was a man playing them while standing close to the bridge. Hearing him filled me with a sense of gratitude for how many people ...