Boring

« Siikaranta, Salakoski, Finland. A very, very boring postcard from 1972. »

Jarkko found a collection of mostly Nordic boring postcards this morning that has quite a range of boringness. I really need to scan in my collection of boring Finnish postcards as I noticed that they have a lot in common with the boring Swedish postcards. What is it about the water towers on postcards in the Nordics as they hold a more revered place on postcards than cathedrals or state buildings. :)

permalink Ω 10 July 2005, Helsinki

Going Postal

« A postcard of the Helsinki Kauppatori circa 1940. »

My mother-in-law, Eila, recently found a few more vintage Helsinki postcards at a fleamarket in the series I am particularly interested in. I'm not a professional collector, but I really would like to find out more about Suomen Kuvataide Oy, the company who printed these cards, and more about the cards themselves. I have enough postcards now that I will start putting together a postcard section for the website. There was a postcard show this weekend in the main postoffice, but we were too busy with a sick Otava to go. Part of the show, Easter Greetings, will continue through 3 April and will even be open over the long Easter weekend when everything else is closed and the streets of the city are deserted.

This is our last week in the old office building before we move to the new office building and people are either frantic or waiting around for the gears of progress to catch up. It has all the joys and expected last minute surprises that moving a big datacenter has to offer and, well, maybe a few extra just to keep things 'interesting'. I came in late on this project so my office is packed, the systems won't move for another two or three weeks and I'm just trying to stay out of the way when I can't be helpful.

I found out that I'm getting a corner office with walls of windows which amazed me since everyone else chose their offices long ago and this is one of the best offices on the floor. I looked a bit more closely at the floorplan and realised that everyone passed up the big, sunny office for much smaller and darker offices because, unlike me, they wouldn't have to share the space with anyone else. I'm so used to cubes that having only one other person in an office seems almost managerial. I thought being alone was what telecommuting was for. Solitude and privacy are such a driving force in Finland it's almost a miracle that people manage to meet, copulate and reproduce. ;)

permalink Ω 15 March 2005, Helsinki

Helsinki by Blimp

« Graf Zeppelin flies over Hietalahti in 1931 and, on mouseover, the same building today sans zeppelin. »

Eila, Jarkko's mother, gave me a huge stack of cool old postcards from around Finland [thanks, again, Eila :)] that I've been wading through. Some are hilarious, some are Parr-esque in their boringness and some are really interesting. I particularly liked this one since it features the zeppelin and, in spite of it's lack of any identifying marks, could be dated easily since there have only been three zeppelin visits to Helsinki. I took a photo of the same building today [the Hietalahden kauppahalli is just out of the frame to the right] where you can see some of the scars from the war remain. Postcards are just wonderful and terribly underappreciated time capsules.

I've been reading a lot of the news around the net lately and, well, I think I hit *tilt* when I read that the dark crusader known as Ashcroft has been asked to resign and complied. I'd be really ecstatic about this if I weren't worried about an even more conservative replacement. I just keep trying to think about puppies instead. "Happiness is a warm puppy."

permalink Ω 10 November 2004, Helsinki

Build it and they will come

« The lucky horseshoe and outlet mall of Tuuri. »

I have previously lamented the lack of roadside attractions in Finland before but no longer. I saw an article in FinnAir's magazine about a giant horseshoe on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and knew I had to pay it a visit.

Tuuri is 145 kilometers north of Tampere. I wasn't expecting throngs of buses and old folks swarming around the whole 'outlet mall' sort of attraction. It's the same in the US since noone would bother going to Freeport, Maine, just for a few L.L.Bean shirts, but add a whole array of brand name outlet stores to the same street and people from miles around will come. I wouldn't have expected the Tuuri horseshoe and shopping outlet mall to be the most popular tourist attraction in Finland. I mean, it's not really on the way to or from anywhere except maybe Oulu. Do that many people really go on holiday to shop somewhere?

The shops apparently do enough business to be second only to Stockmann's in sales every year. For a place that's out in the middle of nowhere, that's pretty impressive. Vesa Keskinen, the owner, is planning a 5-star hotel and thinking big for the future. I'm starting to get the idea that Ostrobothnia is the Texas of Finland where everything is bigger. They also host the Miljoona Pilkki which is where 27,000 or so people go out onto the ice to fish and freeze their arse off in early March and is allegedly the world's largest such event.

One thing they need to work on is the postcards as they aren't anywhere near as cheesy as would befit a giant horseshoe out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe one postcard could feature the horseshoe with space aliens landing in the parking lot to fill up on salmiakki and vodka.

permalink Ω 17 October 2004, Helsinki

Greetings from a dynamic shopping mall

I've seen collections of boring postcards but always wondered where people found such random tributes to a humble gas station or burger joint out in the middle of nowhere. A few days ago I found this deliciously boring postcard of the Forum shopping mall in Helsinki which is described as "The dynamic, continental shopping centre in the heart of Helsinki." Wow, what's a dynamic shopping centre?! Who would send this postcard to someone and what would they say?

Darling Veronica,

Salutations from Helsinki! The shopping center is nothing like Palm Beach but they have a food court with two McDonalds! They have this shop, Merimekko, that is just like Lilly only with a bit more of the kitchen curtain appeal! They have electricity, plumbing, and FedEx! Can you believe it? I always thought Russia was filled with a bunch of people living in yurts or something and riding reindeer! What a scream! Those Japanese wireless Nokia phones sure seem popular around here, too, as everyone seems to be talking into them. Can't understand a single word they're saying though. Nothing seems to be open all night, except for the sunshine [no tanning rays :(], so we have to run and go find something to eat before everything closes. The cruise ship heads for Stockholm tomorrow, bork! bork! bork! Love to Mopsie!

XXXOOO Boopsie and Trip

One curious thing about the postcard is, if you look closely, there are only 2 people on the sidewalk standing at the crosswalk waiting for the light. The snow on the rooftops and lack of holiday decorations put the time of year sometime in the Jan/Feb/Mar timeframe, and the direction of the glow in the sky indicates that it's dawn. Since the sun rises very late during those months, the number of people on the sidewalk is still too sparse for a weekday and the photo must have been taken on a cold Sunday morning at dawn. Why go to all that trouble just to make it look like the post-apocalyptic shopping mall?

permalink Ω 29 May 2004, Helsinki