8 Tuntia. 12 Kuvia. Monta hahaha.

« A magician giving sidewalk performances on Helsinki's Night of the Arts before it started to rain. He roped me into helping with a few tricks and I was reasonably impressed. It was the first time in 16[?] years that it rained on the festival. I took a few photos, including this one, with the Leica before the pissing heavens drove most of the entertainment and people somewhere indoors and most others just stayed home. »

For some inexplicable reason, the evening before Taiteidenyö [Night of the Arts], I noticed in the Finnish programme something that looked like a photo scavenger hunt so I looked for it in the English translation just to make sure I wasn't misreading it. There was a Fotomaraton that was open to mobile, digital and film photographers with the objective of taking 12 photos in 8 hours directed by clues dispensed every 2 hours over the course of the evening from 4pm - midnight. I'm a glutton for self-punishment and rejection so naturally I thought this was quite possibly the most fabulous idea ever and took me and my Lomo on down to Vanha at the designated hour to get my film and my first set of clues. I figured the Lomo was the ultimate in art student camera since you can't always predict how the camera will behave or where it will decide to focus thus creating Art. :) I should have listened to the words of Henri Cartier-Bresson:

A photograph is neither taken nor seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.

The clues were hard, especially since they were in Finnish and the cultural in-jokes were lost on me. I had to call Jarkko a few times, especially for "Vain mäkikotka tietää" [Only the skijumper knows] since, aside from a suicidal tendency and knowing where to get good ski wax, I had no idea what skijumpers know. :) The weather and lack of car didn't help either since we had only 2 hours to take precisely 3 photos in the order of the clue's appearance on the list and so we couldn't really stray too horribly far from Vanha on foot. Jarkko valiantly came along for the evening portion of the madness and held the umbrella against the rain while I took a few shots. It was a lot of fun but if they have it next year and it doesn't rain, I'll have a few ideas on how to make my entry suck less.

The show of the winners photos opens tonight at 7pm on the 2nd floor of Lasipalatsi and I'm really interested in seeing what other people took photos of for all those crazy clues. You can enjoy my non-award-winning Fotomaraton entry in the comfort of your office or bedroom where you can laugh with me in private. The bold text is the clue in Finnish and English and they are in the same order as the clues were given. :)

permalink Ω 28 September 2004, Helsinki

Hvitträsk

A few photos from Hvitträsk, the former home of Eliel Saarinen. The description of Hvitträsk from the brochure: Hvitträsk was built between 1901 and 1903 by three architects; Herman Gesellius, Armas Lindgren and Eliel Saarinen. The main building, designed in the National Romantic style, built of logs and natural stone, was both a common studio and a home for Eliel Saarinen and Armas Lindgren.....

Jarkko and I took a bus ride out into the boonies of Kirkkonummi, just west of Espoo, to visit the museum since my hometown is St. Louis where the Gateway Arch is about the only thing people remember about the city and it was likely the only Finnish thing I had encountered, aside from a Nokia mobile, before meeting Jarkko. Eero Saarinen, the son of Eliel, designed the Arch to represent and pay tribute to the role St. Louis played in the settling of lands west of the Mississippi River. As a kid, I rode up to the top of the Arch in the freaky pod elevator cars and promptly got sick from the rocking to and fro. I was content, after that, to play glow-in-the-dark frisbee in the park with some beers instead of making the trip to the top. We have an annual 4th of July VP Fair on the grounds which draws several million people for the impressive fireworks and we often refer to the Arch as a giant croquet wicket with affection. It is a beautiful and sublimely elegant monument that everyone in St. Louis truly admires. A recent issue of Suomen Kuvalehti featured an article about the Arch and the fight to get minority workers on the building crew which was no small task since St. Louis was then, and still remains, one of the most racist cities in the US.

I don't remember if we were ever taught in school that Eero Saarinen was Finnish since, in the US, you don't really think of people with unusual names as being anything other than American when they're living in US, especially when they're famous for designing other buildings like Dulles International Airport and part of JFK Airport. I hadn't ever read that he was born in Finland and lived at Hvitträsk until he was 12, when the family moved to Michigan in 1922. The house at Hvitträsk, his father and the group of talented architects there certainly influenced his architectural style which had a more modern flair while still retaining some of the softness and organic forms. It is interesting to see the house and the contents not only because it is a stunning work of art, but also as a monument to some of the greatest architecture that was ever built and those who designed and built it. Why can't or why don't we have buildings like these anymore?

permalink Ω 23 April 2004, Helsinki

Beer is good food

An evening of beer, more beer, talking with friends and pictures at the Helsinki Beer Festival.

We went to the Helsinki Beer Festival and it seemed a lot more subdued this year as compared to last year. There didn't seem to be a band and you could actually move around the hall without feeling squished. The selection of beer was also much smaller this year and all of the good Belgian beers had run out by Saturday evening, too. I suppose the trick of getting the good beers is to go on the first evening. The beer expert Michael Jackson was reportedly at the festival this year as well, but noone seems to have seen him or known his whereabouts. It's a big hall, but not quite so big as to not bump into someone like that all evening.

The Russian beer Baltika was something new and was reasonably tasty. Sahti was a nice treat as well. The Estonian beers from last year weren't there this time around much to my dismay as they were memorably good. I managed to avoid the Lapin Kulta and Koff booths on the principle that had I wanted either of them, I could have saved myself 7 euro for the cover charge and bought a 6-pack of them for less money at the corner grocery. A group of us expats congregated, drank and talked for much of the evening and, when we had exhausted all the good beer choices, headed into the center for drunken disco to entertain the more sober people at Baarikärpänen. The highlight of the evening was getting to see Arabella's tattoo of the international power switch icon which caused an instantaneous "more geekier than thou" reverence from us all. She could go to any of the programmer cons and be enshrined. It would be even more amazing if tattoo inks were luminescent. :)

permalink Ω 15 April 2004, Helsinki

I, I Aku Ankka

"I, Donald Duck - 70 years in the life of a duck" is an exhibit at the Päivälehti Museum between now and 31 December 2004. Jarkko and I visited it last week and I took a few pictures. Donald Duck, a.k.a. Aku Ankka, is incredibly popular in Finland and it's charming when I see an older man sitting on a plane caressing the pages of the latest Aku Ankka magazine. I had never heard of this national addiction until Jarkko took me aside one afternoon to break the news to me that he had 30 years of Aku Ankka comic book serials in storage at his parent's house and that they would really like their garage space back. It took a moment for it to sink in that I had married a grown man who reads Disney comic books. I could understand a porn collection or a few boat anchors masquerading as old computers, but a fetish for a duck who doesn't wear pants? Donald Duck was quite possibly the last secret vice I would have imagined. :)

The exhibit had a brochure with a brief description of the history of Aku Ankka in Finland, the items on display and why Finns have a special fondness for the half-naked quacker. It doesn't mention, however, that Aku Ankka has been given awards for its outstanding use of the Finnish language. Jarkko has often pointed out some clever passages or regional dialects and encouraged me to start reading the comics to help my Finnish language lessons along. I'm going to have to give it a try and buy some of my own since I suspect Jarkko wouldn't like me mussing his copies.

The Disney character Donald Duck - Aku Ankka in Finnish - made his debut in the movie "A Wise Little Hen" on June 9, 1934. Subsequent research puts the official date of his birth at March 13, when his egg was laid. Donald Duck first appeared in cartoon strips on September 16, 1934.

It is no surprise that Donald Duck should be the Finnish favourite among the various Disney characters as he somewhat resembles the soldier Sven Dufva and the farmer Paavo, two epic characters of Finnish national poet J.L. Runeberg. Life is tough but one gets by. At work, for instance, Donald often finds himself in a desperate situation but he is always ready to meet any new challenge.

The Donald Duck 70th Anniversary Exhibition at the Päivälehti Museum introduces the house where Donald lives with his three nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie. The exhibition assembles the furniture usually found in Donald's home: the armchair, round rug, book case, TV set and the nephews' three-layer bed. Over the years Donald Duck has introduced the Finns to several interesting details in the American way of life and American culture. [from the brochure in Finnish these 'interesting details' are: Santa Claus, apple pie, round metal garbage cans, round door handles and Television.]

Aku Ankka, the Finnish Donald Duck cartoon strip, first appeared in the daily Helsingin Sanomat in May 1936 and in the tabloid Ilta-Sanomat in February 1941. The definitive breakthrough came in 1951 when the publisher, the Sanoma Corporation, began to issue the comic book Aku Ankka. It so happened that the first issue appeared on Walt Disney's birthday, December 5th. The first edition printed 34,017 copies. In 1951-1952 it was printed at the press on Ludviginkatu Street - the building that now houses the Päivälehti Museum. In 2003, Aku Ankka was Finland's largest magazine, with a circulation of 294,500.

Films occupy a leading role in the world of Donald Duck and so he has a movie theatre of his own in the exhibition. Donald has appeared as the principal character in a total of 128 Disney movies of which eight have been nominated for Oscars. He got an Oscar for the propaganda film "Der Führer's Face" in 1943.

The birthday celebrations at the Päivälehti Museum continue through the year. The exhibition provides a substantial program with a variety of themes and events. Welcome to the World of Donald Duck!

permalink Ω 13 April 2004, Helsinki

Tropical Gardenia

A visit to Gardenia Tropical Garden and back.

I happened to notice a brochure for the Gardenia Tropical Garden by accident and was curious about it since I hadn't ever seen or heard anything mentioning it before. The garden opened in April 2001 and is situated in Viikki next to the Viikki-Vanhankaupunki bay nature reserve.

The garden is small, as the map will show, but it has a lot of lovely specimens packed into it. As soon as you enter the house you know you are in the tropics with mist raining down from above. It's warm, moist and green which is a welcome change of scenery after a long grey winter. It's quiet except for the hiss of misting systems overhead. Just beyond the courtyard of potted mimosa trees, there's an even more humid enclosed section housing a koi pond, bananas, some exotic ferns, vanilla and other tropicals. They also host classes in gardening and other horticultural topics for hobbyists and children. It's a lovely little garden, but having worked in research at the Missouri Botanical Garden with the Climatron, it loses some of the grandeur. It's funny how the US makes everything so big, so large and so grand most of the time that it tends to spoil anything less elsewhere. The Climatron is a truly amazing building that I used to walk through fairly often at lunchtime. It always looked like a spaceship nestled in a grove of trees and, in winter, it would be glowing late into the night making it look even more out of this world. I'd guess that Gardenia has the same look to it in the depths of the November darkness.

permalink Ω 4 April 2004, Helsinki

Last Hope

I've always thought the name of this bar is perfect for a refuge of last resort. The plywood and the dumpster, which is conveniently located in front for easy disposal of those whose last hope expires, lend it a certain something extra and I hope they keep them there even after the construction on the building is completed. :)

Over the past week I started noticing that there were an awful lot of idiots linking back to images in my archives. One guy was using a photo of mine for the background for his webpage. I mean, sure, it's nice to know someone likes my photos, but should I have to become a content provider for random bizarre web pages and blogs to know that? In fact, 2 blogs liked the same photo, a Christmas star, and both of them were in Arabic which I thought was a little curious and idly wondered if they were related somehow and if they had both inherited the same stupid gene. Fark users like my political anti-bush pics and some churchy types on a jesus bulletin board liked a cross from Effingham for their avatars [Hey! Jesus doesn't approve of bandwidth theft in his flock you morons! There is evil in my domain name, too. Maybe the bible needs to be updated for the digital age.].

I first tried the subtle approach by replacing the images with an image of a hot tub full of naked, fat white guys brandishing a shotgun bearing the message, 'image linking verboten'. It would seem that the churchy folk unlinked rather quickly and are probably already leeching their new avatar from some other unsuspecting victim. The picture of the Effingham [F-ingham to the locals. Oh, the irony!] cross was so popular that I think the christians might be either stupid or terribly cheap [or both] when it comes to buying space on the web for their homepages since it seems that so few of them are willing to host a tiny 25kb image on their own site. Instead they prefer to let someone else pay for hosting their content. I wonder if I should write to the Pope and see if I can get in the queue for some kind of divine blessing for hosting this stuff for those whom Jesus hasn't given either clue or cash enough to provide for themselves. Maybe the new mission of the 21st Century is to go online without having to pay for anything!

The most galling offender was a cheeky asshole who liked one of my bitter candy valentine hearts and who, after I moved/replaced it, came looking for it and linked to the moved file instead. So, as a last resort, I've just gone ahead and used mod_rewrite to punt everyone, including google's image search, who try and link to images. I'll make exceptions, but the idiots who inline the background for their homepage from another host that isn't theirs just need a boot to the head and possibly something more gratifyingly visceral. I'm sure that this is very common around the net, but why do people do it so shamelessly and why are there so few sites who seem to know how to punt them and who indulge them? It ranks right up there with spam in terms of stealing bandwidth, rudeness and outright stupidity.

permalink Ω 22 March 2004, Helsinki

The things you notice when you look up

Helsinki has some very appealing architecture and I've always been rather fond of this particular building. While it lacks the ornate detail of the Jugend houses, the reserved pattern adorning the side complement the overall design of spare lines and angles. As I was admiring the building one afternoon, I noticed a mistake in the pattern which may have been accidental or possibly even intentional as an Escheresque illusion. I prefer to think it's the latter since I think it lends a bit of cachet to the building. :)

permalink Ω 21 March 2004, Helsinki

The comfy chair

Spring is in the air and comfy chairs are out on the ice.

permalink Ω 18 March 2004, Helsinki

Driven to drink

A popular job with expats seems to be child care since, just like in the US where Mexicans fill the cheap domestic labour market, not knowing the native language puts you at a disadvantage in the market unless you are in IT or another profession that doesn't require it. Such a job was suggested to me but I figure if I don't have one of my own then having 30 of someone else's kids probably wouldn't appeal to me very much. I'm not really sure why child care in particular doesn't seem to demand Finnish fluency from its employees.

This is a table of such child care expats whom we met at a pub one night when we were out with some other expats. The guy with the smile on his face was a New Zealander who borrowed my lighter and was trying to impress the girl across the table by telling her that Bic lighters and pens were invented in his country. I didn't have the heart to tell him that Bic is actually a French invention and that a better pick-up line would be something like, "I come from where the Hobbits live!". The guy on the end was a dead ringer for Mick Jagger and we giggled more than a few times over the likeness. These are the people who watch your kids and who, after a long week of patiently enduring your spawn, have been driven to drink. :)

permalink Ω 12 March 2004, Helsinki

Lomo Anniversary

Leningradskoye Optiko Mechanichesckoye Obyedinenie, a.k.a. LOMO PLC, will be celebrating its 90th anniversary this year in St. Petersburg, Russia. I've been really wanting to visit St. Petersburg since moving to Finland so this is as good an excuse as any to fill out the daunting visa application and go. The Lomography Society is supposed to be arraging some festivities and tour packages so try to keep your last week in July open if you're interested in going.

permalink Ω 7 March 2004, Helsinki

Hakaniemi Market Square

Hakaniemi Market square and the tram station next to it. I love the old markets and really hope they resist being replaced with some concrete and glass modern atrocity.

permalink Ω 4 March 2004, Helsinki

The Labyrinth

Helsinki has a labyrinth of underground tunnels and shops that I have never been able to reliably tell where I am or predict where I will emerge when I take a flight of stairs. This is the entrance to the subway with a tile compass that isn't really much help in navigating the maze. :)

permalink Ω 29 February 2004, Helsinki

Grey sky

The Sokos Torni Hotel has a lovely view of the city from the cafe on the top of the tower, but in winter the balcony is often closed due to winds, ice or both. So, I had to settle for a picture taken from the inside. You can see plague park and a few of the church steeples before it drops off into the vast white expanse of the Gulf of Finland. Snow on the rooftops and a low, flat and grey sky that looks close enough to touch.

permalink Ω 25 February 2004, Helsinki

A Walk in Winter

A few photos from a walk on a winter day.

Alan Burlison always has such nice pictures and stories from his own walks around the Peak District that I thought I'd have a go with my urban landscape. No fields of heather or peat bogs here, but it's home. :)

We took a nice walk around the southern edge of Helsinki and I needed to finish off a roll of film. We wound up walking out on the ice which made me nervous even though it appeared to be a very popular Sunday pastime for quite a few people. Where I come from, only stupid people who want to die walk out on the invariably thin ice, but Finland's ice is much thicker so that only a few people manage to fall through each year. :) It's strange to walk on the ice where in summertime there are only boats. The abandoned fuel station looked out of place and abandoned in spite of the people with strollers, with pets, with friends all wandering on the ice around it. It may be winter here, but we don't let the cold keep us inside all the time.

permalink Ω 21 February 2004, Helsinki

Fashion that deserved to die

It's a cold, dark night when you're walking home and you hear some music that sounds vaguely familiar. You walk towards it. You realise that it's Madonna's "Like a Virgin" coming from the speakers in front of a store window that has mannequins dressed up in clothing that you burned in a ritual to cleanse your soul and your wardrobe of the 1980s a decade ago. You realise that two-tone jeans, big hair and ripped sweatshirts are coming back. You have fear.

permalink Ω 18 February 2004, Helsinki

Kiasma

It seems common practise that people don't go see the sights and attractions in the city they live in either because they think that they should go elsewhere to see the sights or that they might look like a tourist in their own city. This is why I enjoy having visitors from elsewhere to give me an excuse to visit places I've not been to before, even though they're right down the street. Last week we went to Kiasma, Helsinki's contemporary art museum, with a friend visiting from the US. The exhibits are a bit of a mixed bag, but it is a fine collection overall. I especially liked the "Faster than History" exhibit, a collection of artwork from Baltic countries which included a series of photographs of 3 shivering men clad only in underwear standing in front of churches and a number of film shorts, a few of which had me laughing out loud. The artwork in the picture is "Gun. So What?" if I remember it correctly. There was a gun on a tripod and several bottles suspended on a plate of glass with a light lending a dramatic effect. The way it came out in the photograph, taken with a Lomo, is pretty cool as it looks like a bullseye drawn with light.

permalink Ω 14 February 2004, Helsinki

A Gaudí City

Pictures from an impromptu trip to Barcelona; part 1 and part 2. The vast majority of photos were taken with the Lomo LC-A since it isn't an expensive looking camera and I didn't really want to get mugged like a friend of mine had only a week earlier in Madrid. I was aiming for fun and random holiday snapshots that would be a bit more unusual than the average. Hopefully they'll also be a pleasant memento for Jessica in the years to come. :)

It all started so innocently as a Sunday outing to see Return of the King for the umpteenth time which led to a few drinks afterwards to ponder the dreamy Aragorn and Legolas. Jessica talked about going back home and lamenting she didn't travel more while she was here. In particular, she had wanted to see the Temple de la Sagrada Família before heading home. After a couple of beers my guard was down and somehow between then and the next afternoon, we had cheap tickets to Barcelona departing the following Monday. It seemed like a crazy thing to do, but without a compelling reason not to go the 'why not?' directive was applied.

As a seasoned traveller, I tend to judge cities/places by two things; food and restrooms. Barcelona wasn't exceptional in either food or restrooms but were mostly agreeable. I had been to Madeira only a few weeks earlier which was exceptionally good on both counts and may have coloured my judgement. We spent the week wandering around La Rambla, going to architectural gems designed by Antoni Gaudí and eating. At some point we went shopping for a few things in a local grocery and I had to stare at the selection of wines which ranged from 1.50 euro to 6 euro. I bought a bottle of the 1.50 wine just to determine if it was drinkable and it was quite pleasant. I don't know what would happen in Finland if there were shelves full of 1.50 euro bottles of wine in the grocery stores. We went out to find the nightlife one evening and discovered the one bar in the entire city of Barcelona that had Helsinki drink prices just because I think we were missing home so much. :)

La Rambla is the center of town where there are purveyors of magazines, newspapers, porn, flowers for any occasion including for the departed, chickens, roosters, bunny rabbits, fish, lizards, roosters, pigeons, and parakeets, along with buskers, street artists and touristy crap to suit any taste or fetish. La Rambla was named after a seasonal stream [from the Arabic 'raml'] that used to flow there which seems appropriate with the seasonal ebb and flow of tourists. I took a number of photos on La Rambla and in the Mercat de la Boqueria since they were vibrant places of people and activity. Markets fascinate me since you can learn a lot about a culture from looking at the kinds of food they have available since food is at the center of daily life and culture.

Barcelona is the nucleus for the architectural movement called 'Modernisme' and those who practised it were the 'Modernistas'. It was a form of Art Nouveau and it is quite amazing. We spent most of the week visiting the works of Antoni Gaudí. The most impressive of his works is not yet finished, The Temple de la Sagrada Família. It is projected that it will be finished by 2048 and, by the looks of the construction, it will be worth the wait. Gaudí clearly loved trees and the pillars inside form a canopy which will be tiled and gilded to complement all the other organic forms all around the temple. We went up into the tower and my vertigo provided some entertainment for Jessica. Park Güell was designed to be a modern utopia, but it was never finished. What does exist is intriguing in it's planning and implementation of public space and walkways. Casa Battló, La Predrera and Palau Güell were all amazingly different and inviting. The apartment in La Predrera was nice enough that I'd move in tomorrow. In particular, Gaudí's innovation in introducing natural light into all parts of a living space and organic forms was outstanding. His work makes me wish that such care and consideration of the natural forms were more common in modern buildings.

The tourist bus was amusing as, when we got on the bus after a few dull and desolate hours at Poble Espanyol, there was an American couple reading out of a guide book about how the place wasn't really worth going to, which we were able to confirm. :) As the neverending bus tour continued, the woman was clearly not very entertained. At the Palau Güell, there was a perky American college girl [with the accent and the attitude I will guess Vassar] leading her parents around the tour to show off her edumacation [sic]. It was bad enough to hear her loudly say "y'all", but when she and her parents exclaimed, "Your English is so good!", in a tone of amazement to the tour guide, Jessica had an epiphany as to why I never travel as, nor admit to being, an American anymore except to those who need to see my passport.

In late January, the number of tourists was at a low point and many of the attractions were being repaired for the high season, but we still had a good time visiting a city with so much history. I could have been entertained by sitting in the market or hanging out on La Rambla for a week as well.

permalink Ω 11 February 2004, Helsinki

Dracula's supermarket

Every place has some variety of local weird food in the grocery and in St. Louis you could get a whole dressed raccoon in the right part of town. Only recently did I notice these jars of frozen blood sitting next to slices of frozen rudolph in the local market. I eat black bread and love blood pudding but for some reason that I can't explain, seeing blood in the grocery was a bit disturbing.

permalink Ω 20 January 2004, Helsinki

Pictures from Madeira

Two photo albums from a week in Madeira: Part 1 and Part 2. Pictures with "madle-" in the name were taken with the Leica, "madlo-" were taken with the Lomo and anything else was taken with the Elph. Since the Leica was new and I hadn't had any pictures developed with it before heading for Madeira, I am impressed with just how good the photos are as it has been a while since I've used a fully manual camera. The Lomo pictures are a bit freaky as expected. A tip for photographers travelling to Madeira is to take plenty of film with you as all they appear to sell on the island is Fuji consumer grade film which made a difference in my pictures when compared to the Kodak and better Fuji colour film I had brought with me. A polarizing filter is essential for the landscapes during the daytime, too. I didn't have one for the Leica so there aren't many pictures of scenery.

Madeira is an island which lies approximately 660km west of Morocco in the Atlantic and is part of Portugal. The word Madeira itself means wooded since it was full of trees when it was discovered. Nowadays, however, it is covered with hotels and tourists. It also has the most moderate climate in the world with very little difference in temperature all year. The airport has one of the shortest runways used by commercial jets which was recently doubled in length by extending it on stilts to 2,781 metres. Jarkko wisely informed me of this fun factoid only after we landed.

Funchal is the main city on Madeira. I was disappointed that no tourist brochures proclaimed, "We put the FUN in FUNCHAL!", but I suppose that's too corny even for the usually silly tourist slogans that abound everywhere. We stayed in a hotel very near downtown which had a casino next to it that looked like the headquarters for Spectre. I suppose we should have gone inside the casino and had a look around but casinos usually only manage to fill me with the urge to run to the nearest exit with all the flashing lights and noise. This may be the result of all those years of late nights spent in dance clubs. It was a lovely hotel with a fine pool in the 1970s concrete school of architecture. Madeira would be absolutely nowhere without concrete since the local volcanic basalt is too hard and difficult to quarry for building stones. The sidewalks are beautiful mosaics with white limestone and black basalt chips arranged in geometric patterns. These do tend to get a bit slippery in the rain though.

The first thing I noticed after we settled into the hotel was the sound of the birds; big, squawking tropical birds filling the air along with little birds singing before sunset. Stray dogs are everywhere as well, but they are obviously fed by the locals as they appear to be well fed and healthy doggies living the good life. Surprisingly, I saw very few stray cats. Exotic flowers such as the bird of paradise grow like weeds all around the city and plants that would normally be tiny, wan, and pitiful things on your windowsill are gargantuan in this sub-tropical paradise. Christmas lights were everywhere and on everything that could be made to hold lights. I don't know if Funchal has the most Christmas lights of any city in the world, but it certainly looked as though it did. It takes Madeirans several months to hang all the lights around the city in trees, on bridges, on light posts, on statues and everywhere else. Funchal is also one of the cleanest cities I've ever been in which may be due to litter bins placed along the streets every 20 metres or an army of people sweeping the streets late into the night. I didn't see so much as a cigarette butt on the streets of Funchal. The streets are filled with lots of older tourists from the UK and the Nordic countries which made us feel too young for Madeira but too old for Ibiza.

Madeira is a very hilly island which the travel books and brochures really don't emphasize enough. If you walk anywhere it is likely that you'll be walking uphill or downhill with some degree of difficulty. Funchal is mostly flat unless you want to walk north of the city to one of the botanical gardens which is a bit of a challenge. We walked to the Botanical Garden which took about an hour and was, in some places, about a 45% grade. The weather is cool enough to make this a pleasant ascent in spite of the exertion. The Botanical Garden suffers from not being terribly well maintained so the reward at the top of the hill isn't equal to the walk but it still had lovely views of the city below. The cable car trip to the Monte Palace Tropical Garden is far easier than walking up the mountain and the garden itself is spectacularly odd and beautiful. I would have spent another day there given the chance. Jarkko somehow convinced me that taking a toboggan ride down the hill was a good idea and it was strangely thrilling in spite of my terror of careening down a mountain on a contraption with no brakes and whizzing around cars. It's a fun thing to do...once. :)

Unless you are a UK tourist looking for excellent curry or chips and egg while on holiday, the food on Madeira is sublime. The grilled swordfish I ordered one evening was nothing short of the best I've ever had. The local limpets fried and coated in garlic butter were fabulous as well. We were told to try the scabbard fish, Espada, with bananas as Madeira is the only place other than Thailand where you can taste this dish. The fish is delicious but it is best tried before you see the very ugly raw, whole fish in the market. It is caught at a surprisingly deep 800m and dies and turns black from decompression on its way to the surface. Giant round gelatinous eyes and vicious teeth also don't do much for the appearance of the scabbard fish. I don't like bananas very much but the local variety is smaller, sweeter and fresher than the ones in the supermarket and I loved a desert of bananas and creme caramel a waiter surprised me with one evening. One restaurant we took a special liking to was Arsénios in the Zona Velha which featured Fado singers, a stray named Bimbo and a chef with flair who knew his way around the grill. Portuguese wines were a special feature. We tried a green wine that is made from green [ not ripe ] grapes which makes the wine a bit tart and it has a lower alcohol content. There were carts all along the seaside that sold local foods like churros and chestnuts at all hours of the day and night. The chestnut cart generated quite a bit of smoke at times but it didn't appear to deter people from wading through the smoke for a bag. The chestnuts are soft, meaty and slightly sweet but should be enjoyed with a beverage close at hand since they will make you thirsty. Surprisingly, the local Madeira wine isn't pushed as much as I had expected. Madeira is a very sweet wine that is best suited to drinking after a meal with dessert. We tried all the varieties from dry to full sweet and I found the full sweet to be much more flavourful than the dry in spite of my dislike of sweet wines. The sunshine was nice in Madeira but the food was nothing short of fabulous.

The geography of the island is beautiful and varied. The mountains rise dramatically into a treeless plateau which is a striking contrast to the eucalyptus forest and agricultural terraces you pass on the way up. The roads are narrow and winding with steep vertical drops. It isn't a paradise for those afraid of heights. :) One of the more popular attractions for tourists are the levada walks; a levada is one of the many channels built to collect and carry the water from the top of the island to lower parts of the island where it is used for agriculture. There are also a number of tours around the island that are safer than hiring a car yourself and driving around the crazy roads. I glimpsed death more than a few times on the 2 tours we took around the island. A snag with the tours is that all of the tour offices are fronts for time share scams and they seem to prey on people from the UK and the Nordic region in particular. If you get caught by one of these grifters just say that you're German since they don't appear to be recruited for these 'opportunities'. Book your tours ahead of time or find a reputable tour operator before you leave. Also, avoid the bridge from the hotel zone into Funchal as I dubbed it 'grifters bridge' where they assail you on every pass. If you want to spend your holiday in the same place for the next 29 years, just buy a house there as it's cheaper and it builds equity.

Overall, Madeira is a lovely place to visit for a relaxing and sunny holiday with plenty of good food and drink to enjoy. We had a good time but if we go back sometime, I think I'd like to stay in a small hotel outside of Funchal and try more of the levada hikes and other trips around the island.

permalink Ω 19 January 2004, Helsinki

Fun with Lomo

A gallery of my first Lomo pictures

I bought a Lomo LC-A camera in the beginning of December and got the prints from my first two rolls I shot with it today. What a fun little camera that makes such groovy pictures! Sadly, due to the cold weather or my fumbling, half of the 2nd roll didn't get printed since the film got a wee bit mangled when I was rewinding it. I had to go huddle in the dark of the loo, open the camera up and rewind it carefully with the backdoor hanging open which left a few bits of film confetti on the floor. There were some good shots in the chewed up film from what I can tell from the negatives. The luddite joys of a film camera. :)

The pictures were scanned and sized for the web, nothing more. The colours are crazy without any help from photoshop. The sushi picture is my favourite as we were just having dinner at the yo-sushi-esque place in town on a rather slow Sunday night and I thought I'd take a few pictures just for grins. There's a retro hyperrealism/surrealism that I really find attractive. The neon and the Christmas lights are amazing considering that the film was 100ISO and I didn't use a tripod. Still, these photos taken with a cheapo Russian camera are in some ways far better than the ones I took with the 10D at 1/15th the price. I hope it isn't just beginners luck with the Lomo and that I get even better at taking freaky fun photos.

permalink Ω 3 January 2004, Helsinki