I’m back home in Finland! I quite surprised myself by realising I feel this way about Jyväskylä. So I guess PB is right, home is where my wireless is. 😀
But before I got to be here, I went away some more. First, I spent a week with almost my whole family (mum, brother and girlfriend, sister and even my 89 year old granddad!) in a mökki close to here.
Our Super Luxurious Summer Cottage
Even though a finnish friend said it wasn’t really a real mökki on account of there being too much comfort. (Seriously, there even was a massage chair!). Here’s what we did that week (besides taking turns in the massage chair):
Hanging Out Talking
Swimming – After sauna and also just like that
Böötle – (Swiss German for boating)
But what we mostly did was this:
Nothing! – (and a little reading)
It was also the first time I experienced white nights, which is strangely surreal and eerily beautiful:
Midnight at a Finnish Lake
The occasion was my mum’s round birthday. She had invited us to the mökki, so we wanted to give her a very special birthday present. Which was a short trip to St. Petersburg! What a beautiful city! Even PB, who grew up in Rome and is not usually impressed by cities (“they don’t even have a colosseum!”), was astonished. If you ever have the chance, go visit, it’s so worth it! I mean, look:
Beautiful Church – I don’t even know if it’s a famous one
It gets better, look:
Church of the Savior on Blood – Probably the most Famous church in St. Petersburg
But it’s not only the churches that are impressive, there is of course:
The Hermitage – View from the Neva
This city just feels huge. Besides the generous and lavish buildings the broad rivers give it an openness that is lacking in most big cities I’ve visited so far (N.Y. I’m looking at you…). I’m a bit of an architecture fan (hereditary: my mum’s an architect, my dad’s an engineer), so I felt like a kid in a candy store. Especially since the city center seems to consist mostly of buildings from my favourite epochs: baroque, classicism and art nouveau.
Smolny Cathedral – Baroque (only the outsides, inside it’s classisistic)
Kazan Cathedral – Classisism (or Empire Style)
Inside a Candy Store on Nevsky Prospekt – Art Nouveau
However, these are all places and buildings you would expect to be grand (religion and commerce tend to be). What kind of suprised me (not really, I got tipped off by a friend beforehand), was this:
The Metro – The red line, specifically
While comunist architecture is usually too massive for my taste, I was nontheless impressed by this. Compare this to the Roman, Parisian or New Yorkean(?) subway (dirty holes, all of them). The only one that comes slightly close is the one in Stockholm. We spent almost an entire afternoon hopping from station to station, which cost us the whopping amount of 0.60 €.
Here’s us at Pushkinskaya Station – me, “little” sister and mum
We saw much more, and didn’t nearly see all! I will definitely go back (especially since it’s so close and cheap(ish) to go from Helsinki). And I can only repeat: It’s definitely worth a visit, so go! You can visit visum free for 72 hours, if going by ferry (we took St. Peterline, can recommend), so it’s easy as well as close and cheap(ish).
To end this post, a silly picture:
Forever Alone…
lazylinchen 