Continued from Part 1.

Arrival

We arrived in Finland at the end of July.

July is a good time to visit the country. Weather is as stable as you can hope for in the short and volatile Finnish summer.

We flew through Istanbul, spending a few hours at Ataturk airport waiting for our connection flight. I feel I could write a book about Istanbul airport alone. It is a place where you can spend hours in silent observation. It is both an international hub overflowing with people from across the world and a reflection of modern Turkey at the same time. Ataturk airport fascinates me and makes me uneasy the same way Turkey fascinates me and makes me uneasy. This fragile balance between being a western democracy and an eastern despotic state is reflected in everything in Ataturk airport. Whether you look at the modern yet Ottoman and kitsch hyperbolic architecture or the mix of westernised and ultra conservative people in the corridors, the bipolarity of modern Turkey is evident. And then there is the ever present nationalism, fierce and non negotiable. Nationalism along with religion and populism fused into a modern myth of ethnic superiority with a touch of persecution syndrome. It is like a more intense version of our own Greek national narrative. I don’t like it. It makes me nervous, disappointed and eager to fly away from it.

And fly away we did.

Helsinki was straightforward and uncomplicated from the first moment. Despite our early arrival, we had planned to spend the rest of the day in the suburb town of Vantaa to give some time to our tired boy to gather his pieces after a voyage which started at 3:00 in the morning. It was a good call since Vantaa gave us some glimpses of Finnish life that we would have otherwise lost if we rushed to hit the road.

Travellers usually measure a trip’s merit based on their success ticking major tourist sites off their lists. Over the years I learned that soaking in subtle everyday life moments can weight-in equally or even more to the overall trip experience. For example during our Australian trip, seeing Uluru in central Australia was awe inspiring and will stay with me forever but also walking in a local taxi drivers’ canteen after being lost around Sydney airport and enjoying Asian fast food among Arab and Pakistani taxi drivers will equally stay in my mind as a unique part of the trip.

Vantaa was a bit like this. It felt like there is not much to do apart from going to the super market, wonder aimlessly in the streets or go with the kids to the playground.  But exactly doing such things in a foreign country can be immersive in itself.

Meanwhile just a stone’s drop from our apartment, a “block party” was taking place. We later figured out that block parties are a usual occurrence of the Finnish urban landscape in summertime. A stage is erected, a few local bands are called to perform and people gather to enjoy the precious summer sunshine, drink some beer and listen to music. Sort of a “neighborhood concert”.

So, we followed the current of events. We did some shopping, wondered a bit aimlessly in the streets, went to the playground with M and joined the block party in our backyard.

While M was enjoying some trampoline fun on the playground I couldn’t help noticing how multicultural our surroundings were. I was half expecting our family to stand out like a self-conscious dark skinned trio amongst pale fair-haired Finns but instead I found out we were sharing the playground with people from every conceivable part of the world with Africa and Asia having a respectable representation in the mix. More interestingly I could see many mixed race families. The extent of this impressed me and immediately I wondered if this is a general trend. Was I seeing a country experiencing an sharp increase in foreigners? Were they attracted by job and welfare prospects? Was the racial mix starting to shift to less homogenous phenotypes? Allas, no. I was later told that I had probably experienced a skewed picture, localised in Vantaa.  Being a small town near Helsinki, Vantaa allows daily commuting to the capital but is much more affordable (and thus attractive to immigrant and low income families). In any case, it looked and felt good to be in that playground mostly because there was no discernable feel of separation or ghetoing among the young participants. I could not help but think that a place like this would be a good place for M to grow up.

Meanwhile I was observing the very design of the playground. Nordic countries are obsessed with design and Finland seems to be proudly upholding this tradition. Everything appeared precisely crafted and well made with a lot of thought put into its design. The playground was especially delightful to observe in that respect. Conventional wisdom dictates that it really difficult to make a toy that is enticing to a child, fun to play with and at the same time beautiful to the adult eye. More often than not, these attributes are counter acting. The finer the taste, the less attractive and fun a toy usually is. And yet this playground in Vantaa managed to pull it off. The games were finely crafted demonstrating high quality of fabrication and attention to detail. Metal, synthetic and organic materials were all used in unison but the absence of cheap polymers was characteristic. In fact, the toys were looking like modern art but at the same time they were apparently fun to play with (all kids were having a blast). I felt a slight disappointment of not being able to join in all the climbing, jumping and running taking place around me. Mostly I am a bit sad that didn’t take a single picture of this playground, thinking that all playgrounds in Finland will look like this. Only later did I realised this was some sort of really cool special concept playground.

Our time in Finland coincided with the hottest summer month ever recorded in the country. It quite quickly became apparent that 30 degrees Celsius in Finland was much harder to deal with than 40 degrees at home. The people seemed to behave in unfamiliar ways too. Everyone acted as if oblivious to the fact that in order to protect yourself from the hammering sun you simply have to avoid it. I was bewildered by watching the locals staying for hours in the direct sunlight during the hottest hours of the day exactly when they needed to look for shelter. I found that equally perplexing and amusing. I am not sure if Finns are as unaffected by the heat as they appear to be or if they simply don’t realise how high temperature work on the body and don’t know how to deal with it.

Surviving the heat indoors was a greater challenge. Houses are built to keep every possibly joule of heat inside the walls and not vise versa. Air Conditioning is rare (no wonder) and even windows are often not designed to open. At 30 degrees Celsius our apartment was a stuffed greenhouse with little chance for effective ventilation. Even the spacious veranda overlooking some beautiful pine trees was a fully enclosed double walled glass trap with little option for open windows.

All of this was of course hardly surprising. And to an extend it made me feel that all this cheerful summer atmosphere was somehow bearing the silent looming presence of the harsh Finnish winter. You could see it in small subtle details like antislipadge pavements and the double-glass panels present everywhere. And you could see it in the absence of non-human life in the streets. For sure, I was not expecting to see stray animals in a country like Finland. But somehow this deafening urban wildlife silence made me feel that a stray animals would not survive a Finnish winter even if they were allowed to roam. It was somehow a grim thought.

Our first night in Finland was not the smoothest possible. M was tired to the point of hyper excitement and the raging guitars of the block party were not exactly relaxing either. But eventually we managed it, and with the break of dawn (well not literally since that happened around 3am) we were waking eager for our to drive to our first destination.

Olhava, Repovesi National Park.

Olhava and Climbing

There is indeed a town called Olhava in Finland, But we were heading to a completely different place, a climbing crag of the same name located in Repovesi National Park.

The road to Repovesi was our first taste of non-urban Finland. The country is known for its lakes but in fact Finland is predominantly a vast forest. The prominence of trees in the landscape becomes evident when you start driving around. They are everywhere dominating and defining the landscape.

When in familiar ground, I pride myself of having a rather acute sense of direction. Finland, with its seeming lack of poignant landmarks challenged this sense, leaving me initially disoriented and confused. It usually takes a while for the mind to get used to the orientation challenges of a new landscape. Orientation is an unconscious procedure depended on the mind being able to discern distinct characteristics in the surroundings and keeping track of them as a person’s visual field moves around them. In a new landscape, such mental reference points are initially hard to discern and as a result sense of orientation is reduced. Once you start to comprehend the new environment more effectively and become able to discerning differences, orientation gradually returns. It is an amazing effect that I have observed every time I experience a radical change in surroundings.

While driving in this new fascinating wilderness my mind wondered on the first foreigners that might have been visiting this country hundreds of years ago. I could not even fathom how a missionary of the middle ages would be navigating this forest mazes with no reference point. How would he keep his  direction and how would he measure his progress. And to where? It would feel like moving almost blindly in a largely uninhabited land where only the tiniest of  tribes -not larger that big families in fact- were the only clusters of humanity in a vastness of forests. I can’t begin to imagine how disconcerting this might have been.

I also started to think how such environments of limited visual perspective can affect a person’s character and lifestyle. A paleolithic hunter living all his life in forests comes to mind. Compared to another hunter of the same period spending his lifetime in mountain landscapes roaming mountain tops and highland meadows. I can hardly imagine how these two people could ever be develop the same character traits. The former’s vision would be constantly limited to a few tens of meters, in semi-permanent low light and in a super cluttered surroundings full of distractions. The later’s vision could roam endlessly to tens if not hundreds of kilometers away and to the end of the sky. The first hunter would be able to move in constant stealth but at the same time feel vulnerable to surprise attacks from equally stealthy predators. The later’s presence would constantly exposed, striking out of the barren landscape like a lone tree in a desert, but so would be his potential enemies. Could two people with such different concepts of what reality looks like, can ever be the similar in character?

Lost in these thoughts, I drove while D seemed lost in her own. M on the back seat was engaging in his usual happy chattering with himself. Now and then some request of reaffirmation  coming from the back seat would wake us from our thoughts.

And so in less that 3 hours from departing Vantaa, we reached Repovesi, or “Fox Water” in Suomi. We met V in the parking lot at the entrance of the forest and a bit later J waiting for us in the forest cabin. I haven’t seen the guys for a while so it felt good to meet in such a nice place, this time in their home soil. Reunions with my Finn friends are never particularly flamboyant but that suits me well since I am not exactly an extrovert either. We mostly greed each other with a smile and a clumsy hug. Appreciation is mostly expressed through actions instead of words.

The national park had a policy of no car inside the park. The only exception was for the owners of cabins located inside the park and their guests. Conveniently we were such guests so we could drive the distance to our hut on the first day.

Our cabin was located in a serene location overlooking one of the park’s lakes. The place was more than I could hope for. Perfect solitude, quiet nature, beautiful surroundings. What more a person  could ask for his family holiday? From the very first moment I felt sad that we only had a day in this place before having to move. I felt like I could spend a week but we had proven unlucky with cottage availability while trip logistics did not permit for carrying tents and camping gear on this trip.

So it was and so we set off to make most of our limited time in Repovesi. J and V had already been here for a day and had already climbed their asses off. With our arrival our friends kindly decided to dedicate the rest of their time in the park to demonstrate their hospitality and act as guides for us. They took care of everything, from dinners to route selection and guiding. From our part we brought some sweets and a bucket of blueberries we bought from the supermarket. The later was slightly comical once we realised the forest was carpeted with ripe delicious blueberries 🙂

Being so close to the arctic cycle in summer time means you never have to stress about daylight. You can literally go climbing at 20:00 and still have plenty of time to enjoy a full climbing day. But at the same time, being in the company of J while climbs are nearby means that you cannot keep away from the rocks for long :). So after a late lunch/ early dinner we set for Olhava crag, for my first taste of Finn climbing and only the second time I have ever climbed on Norse granite.

In a few words, it was wonderful.

Olhava had all the characteristics of a world class crag. Aesthetic 5 start classic climbs, and beautiful unspoilt nature. Combine with fairly easy access and a friendly local scene, it was fantastic.

I felt Olhava was to Helsinki climbers what Lagada was to Athenians. A beautiful climbing location inside a nature park, on a 3 hours drive from the city (meaning just about ok for a weekend trip) where climbers meet to camp and enjoy classic climbs in a beautiful landscape.

The routes I tried felt like routes worthy travelling for. They had this very special air of classics, this gravity of old school lines, sandbagged, with lots of exposure and scarce protection, lines that everyone seeks doing not so much for the technical challenge but for the aesthetic value. In Olhava, climbs had an additional element of uniqueness due to the fact that they are above water. Not any water but the most black mirror-like water you have ever seen, creating a striking visual contract between the rock, the sky and the lake itself. The dark waters are creating a sort of intimidating feeling as you climb above them since can see no bottom, cannot fathom the depth. Is like climbing perfect compact granite lines above a light-sucking abyss.What’s not to like?

Bolts were as scarce as possible in Olhava and the few existing where located on commiting moves very high above the water and in places that was truly impossible to place natural gear. Three bolts on a 40m climb is not exactly sport climbing. Most climbs were completely free of bolts.

That meant top roping for me. J was kind enough to lead the lines we climbed and set some ropes.

Grade wise everything felt significantly harder than stated in the guidebook. That was hardly surprising. This had little to do with my extended hiatus from real rock but mostly  with my total inability and stubborn refusal to hand jam or finger lock on those perfect granite cracks. I was made fun by my friends for my childish stubbornness and rightly so. Interestingly so, 5c’s felt harder than 6b’s due to this utter lack of hand jamming skill and instead trying to climb all lines using miniscule crimps. It was real fun nonetheless.

After two sessions of climbing I cannot praise climbing in Olhava enough. This place has everything. Wonderful world class lines, beautiful environment, fantastic camping location (or hut accommodation if camping is not your thing) and from what little I have seen a positive local community. I would love to come back some day and next time maybe be a little bit more technically and mentally geared to properly lead those climbs.

On our first climbing evening we returned from the wall around midnight just as light was starting to fade. D and M were frmly asleep by then. We had a quick swim in waters of total blackness (with intense feelings of “what lurks beneath” terror excitement) in our “private” lake. Then we spent some time talking with my friends, before finally going to bed.

It felt like our tip was already maxing out…

Vitassari – V’s Place

Next day, after morning climbing we had to depart. We were sad to leave this beautiful place so fast. I was thinking it was impossible for our next destination, V’s summer cabin, to be nicer.

I was wrong.

On our way to V’s cabin we went through the town of Jyväskylä, where V lives and works. Home to 139,000 inhabitants it is a very “human-scale” place. V referring to an old conversation we had compared Jyväskylä to Sparta but in terms of infrastructure and interestingness it felt like a big departure from most small cities in Greece. Funnily enough Jyväskylä has been referred to as the “Athens” of Finland.

Jyväskylä in accordance to our guidebook was notable for its architecture and design being the theater of operations for famous Finn architect and designer Alvar Aalto. We didn’t have a chance to see much apart from the highway and the views across the river from the nice restaurant we had lunch at. We dined next to the university with V and his wife A whom we met for the first time. It was a pleasant lunch and A seemed a very knowledgeable person with a super interesting job.

After lunch we moved out of the city and towards our final destination in Viitasaari town (village?). It turned out that village can mean something different in rural Finland. Instead of the packed house clusters we are used to encounter in Greek traditional settlements, Viitasaari was a large area scattered with houses among fields, the distance between houses being anything between a 2 minute walk and a 5 minute drive in a thick network of dirt roads. Quite the opposite of “packed” and a testimony to the country’s great empty spaces. I wonder how it would feel to grow up to a place like this and then move to a Greek island town where houses literally merge to one another and where personal space and privacy are by default limited. 

As soon as we reached V’s place my sadness for leaving Olhava disappeared. It was a wonderful place better than anything we might have wished or planned for. Having been told that the cabin was built by V’s father I was expecting a nice but humble wooden cottage but instead we found a small paradise of tasteful and elaborate wooden buildings next to a serene lake. A couple of days later after meeting V’s ingenious father all this would make perfect sense but for now we were stricken by the beauty and the good taste of everything built by a someone single handedly. Or as D rightly commented said “everything built by a someone single handedly plus with the silent assistance of a very capable wife taking care of everything else 🙂 .

D was particularly happy with our place and in constant appreciation of the ton of small details added to everything. Attention to detail is a quality D appraciates particularly and a quality found abundant in Finland. We have a specific word for this sort of attitude in Greece. Mεράκι describes the passion of a person to create something in a way that goes beyond its practical and functional purpose to be also beautiful and invested with part of the creator’s soul. It’s a very anti-21st century world mostly belonging to an era where physical belongings were supposed to stay around much longer (if possible for ever) and therefore investing lots of time and effort to make something really beautiful and personal made sense.

I wonder if Suomi has a similar word.

So, in this wonderful place we spend the next three days mostly unwinding and doing things Finns do (or at least V’s family does) on their holidays. Some physical activity was part of the daily schedule (kayaking, rowing to a nearby island and even windsurfing for the first time) plus some cooking and chatting with a lot of staring-in-the-horizon, daydreaming and listening to the wind moving between the trees. M looked very content in this setting too and I was even more content watching him gradually turning feral. After a short while he was confident and comfortable enough to walk alone barefoot in the forest (under our distant supervision) picking blueberries on the way and eating them on the spot.

Walking in the forest was another thing I wanted to do in Finland and particularly walking out of trails (for maximum immersion 🙂 ). I got a single chance to do it while in V’s place. Despite the fact that it was ingloriously interrupted by a mosquito onslaught I was satisfied. Part of the satisfaction came from the fact that I was walking in a narrow peninsula between two lakes known to be frequented by bears. This added a lot to the experience despite the very slim chance of meeting one. It makes a huge difference to know the forest is alive with something overpowering and potentially (but very very highly unlikely) dangerous. Just makes you more awake. Even more interestingly it triggers a consciousness-related phenomenon known as pareidolia. This is essentially the erroneous response of our brain to an external stimulus perceiving it for something recognisable that it is not. The interesting is that this phenomenon fires more intensively in situations where a perceived danger is lurking in a high-stimulus and confusing environment. My personal anecdotal experience is related to walking. I have been seeing numerous imaginary “bears” lurking in my peripheral vision everytime I have walked in Valia Calda, a mountain valley in Greece famous for its bears. I never “see” bears in the mountains of southern Greece since my brain knows beforehand that bears do not exist in southern Greece. Similarly I have been “seeing” lions all the time while walking in South Luangwa National Park. And I have been “seeing” bears again in Viitasaari. To makes things even more confusing for the brain, bears are adapted to forest surroundings essentially meaning they “look like the forest”. This time I found out that pareidolic bears can be captured on film! I thought this is not possible and certainly it is not as intense as in real life (since pareidolic bears lurk mainly in your peripheral vision) but yet they can be captured and still look like bears. ITs nice that I can share photos of my delusionary friends.

Coming back from the forest walk half devoured by the flying vampires of the Finn countryside there was no better way to mend my aching skin that a hot sauna. Have I mentioned the sauna already? Sauna is BIG in Finland. I was reading this in the guidebooks but I was a bit sceptical and not particularly eager to try it. Mostly because such traditions are a bit esoteric and it seems vulgar to me -an outsider- to simply “go and sample” them. I am not particularly enthusiastic about the practice of the tourist industry to sell “authentic cultural experiences”. I feel it degrades cultural heritage to satisfy customer demand and “experience ticklists”. The phenomenon is growing exponentially with social media’s ever growing hunger for self-glorification (read: posing)

However when V’s sincerely and enthusiastically offered to share the family sauna, I was more than happy to give it a go. I was no longer invading in people cultural habits but instead I was willingly and consciously invited by our host to participate, in the knowledge that I am still an outsider but at the same time a visitor thus a sacred guest. This way, cultural exchanges feel right. Your host is excited to share something from his lifestyle, something important and loved. This fits my idea of travelling this is why I practiced couchsurfing for many years (before the community was diluted by a surge of free riders with no interest neither for sharing nor for learning). I was happy that after all these years of sharing my Athenian life with people from all over the world I still had the chance to ripe the fruits of this past life. After all, in a loose sense, we were having this holiday thanks to couchsurfing.

So what about the actual sauna thing? Well, sauna was great! Much better than I expected. While sweating like pigs in the heavy steam we could totally relate with Finns inventing something like this. Sauna felt exactly like the thing you would wish for after a very cold day outside. When you have been feeling so cold for so long that the only thing you wish for is something “to warm you up to the bone” as we say in Greece. In winter time, I cannot think of anything better than a sauna to accomplish that.

What is really key in the sauna business is practicing the full procedure which involves spending some minutes in the super hot environment before going out and dipping yourself in freezing water (ideally a hole in an iced lake or sea). Prior to trying the hot part I thought the freezing water part would be out of the question for me. After being in the steaming boiler for 10 minutes it suddenly sounded like a very good idea. Of course lake water was much warmer in summertime so I don’t know if I would remain brave enough to do it in winter.  At least from a safe distance I can boast that I would not chicken out to dive into an ice hole after a super hot sauna 🙂

While in Viitasaari we had the pleasure to meet V’s parents. I can’t tell if V’s family is representative of the typical rural Finn family but if so it means that Finns really love outdoor life and sports. V’s father, age 68, was exactly the age that my father died 2 years ago. I could see how similar and yet how different they were. They were similar in their love and dedication on building stuff, on discovering their “personal kingdom” and forming them into family paradises, one step at a time. On working slowly but methodically and with unshifting focus. Similar they were also in their love of being outside, foraging and appreciating what the land can provide. The first day we arrived, V’s father was in Lapland foraging cloud berries. This so much reminded me of my father foraging kapari around his home village or his long solitary summer morning walks in search of figs.

And yet I am pretty sure they were very different in their understanding of what a joyful life composes of. V’s father seemed to be seeking communion with nature through physical challenge (e.g spending his first months after retirement kayaking a staggering 2600 miles to Lapland and back). My father on the other hand was a sworn practical mind, a sort of a cynic, not fathoming the utility of such vain exercises and preferring socialising and discussing as a means of entertainment. This is interesting. Although I am sure I learned my love for nature from my father he was the last man that would feel joy from the physical exertion and intense body stress found in rock climbing. Physical exertion was pointless (if not stupid) for him unless it was related to some form of productive work. He was very fond of toiling in the fields to the point of trembling but never understood why someone would put effort on something as futile as climbing or running.

For sure, Vs family was living a good life. I kept playing in my mind some typical southern european stereotypes like “northern people don’t know how to enjoy life” or “northern people are not warm people” or even “northern people are not hospitable people“. There we were in Finland, grateful to be part of these people’s life for a few days, laughing at the crude naivety of such stereotypes

And then, like always happens, we had to move one.

Return was anticlimactic as returns usually are. The warmest July ever recorded (just officially announced) was over and we had a few days to cover before flying home.

Tampere and Helsinki (again)

On our way to Helsinki we decided to stop at the city of Tampere for the night. Tampere gave us the impression of a small hip town. I later learned it has a population of 221,000 making it much bigger than Jyväskylä. We wanted to do something specifically for M at this point of the trip and Tampere was home to the Moomin Museum so we figured out we could split driving to Helsinki by spending a night there. The museum turned out to be too elaborate to earn the full appreciation of a two years old boy, yet M had a great time running around in his usual unstoppable manner, disappearing in dark corridors (much to our dismay) and interacting with the various multimedia projectors (we did too). His mom, a long time Moomin fan was more mesmerised in the dreamlike environment. Overall we were positively impressed by the museum. The creators had done a good job recreating the beautiful universe of Tove Jansson and honoring the childhood memories of million of people across the world.

Other than the Moomin museum we didn’t do much in Tampere. Just a hasty walk in the market and quick dinner. We were already in “return mode” and the mood was kinda low. Our hotel didn’t help, being somewhat claustrophobic and impersonal. And hot. Very hot.

And then we returned to Helsinki. We had spend a mere a week in central Finland by now but it was a week so full that it felt like a month since we were here before. Our last day was spend around the city doing some “proper” tourist stuff, i.e. walking in the center and taking a boat to the nearby Suomenlinna, the island fortress just off the coast of Helsinki. It was nice to see Helsinki, even in short. Suomenlinna was too touristy for our tastes. On the other hand the intriguing architecture of Helsinki Train Station didn’t go unnoticed and for a good reason.

In the evening we met again  with with J, whom we haven’t seen since Olhava, and his girlfriend A.   We had a nice dinner together. J asked me how I found Helsinki and I told him it was giving me the impression of an uncomplicated place to live. Everything you need seemed to be there but the city was not too big and impersonal to choke you and make you run like mad. J seemed to agree. After the dinner we said our goodbyes and promises for future meetings and went our separate ways.

Next morning we boarded the plane for Greece

Credits: Climbing Photos by Jussi Luukkonen