Report of Pushkin Institute gathering: Helsinki, Finland, May 2010
Dates: Thursday, May 20 – Sunday, May 23, 2010
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Thursday, May 20, 2010:
Mervi’s house: Please forgive me for skipping chronology and taking you straight to Mervi’s house on Thursday evening where Birgitte, Antonio, Esa and myself have arrived. Click on the title of this para (Mervi’s house) and you can see her proudly displaying the fantastic dishes that she has so painstakingly prepared.
Her living room has small statues of Lenin, Pushkin, Sergei Esenin and a couple of other Russians. Lenin’s head is broken and keeps falling. She has an astounding library with equal weight to Finnish and Russian books. The library includes a black hardcover thesis with Mervi’s name printed in golden letters. She aims to finish her PhD, and given her determination, I am sure in a couple of years we will address her as Dr Mustonen.
She takes out an old record (the big black round thing) with a soviet wrapper. We then hear the Soviet anthem, followed by the International, in three different versions. When I lived with Armen in Vienna, he used to listen to the Soviet anthem every morning. Mervi is another soviet anthem enthusiast. The solonni ogurtsi in the mouth, the Lenin bust, and the Soviet anthem truly take us back to the Pushkin days. On one hand, I’m happy there is no country any more to go with the anthem – but selfishly, for our sake, I wish the Soviet Union had remained so that we could get a 150 rouble stipend every month, drink mannaya kasha in the stolovaya, travel around on a three rouble a month ediniy, and emit a victory scream every time we can dostavat’ something after queuing for hours.
We go for a long walk in the park next to Mervi’s house. This is what Finland is about – its nature. The fresh air and the surrounding greenery, with hardly anybody in view, convince me this is the place where I can come to write my next book. (I now conduct initial negotiations with Mervi while walking).
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Friday, May 21, 2010:
Suomenlinna: After resting well and recovering from our respective jet lags, we all meet at the market square and take a short boat ride to the island of Suomenlinna, one of the world’s largest maritime fortresses; surrounded by sea, cliffs and sandbanks.
This "Gibraltar of the North" was built by the Swedish in the mid-1700s at great expense to protect their eastern flank. But when the Russians invaded in February 1808, the bulk of the unprepared and bankrupt Swedish army hastily withdrew, allowing the Russians to conquer Helsinki without a fight and capture the fortress. During the Crimean war, 110 years later, a large fleet of English and French ships bombarded the fortress for two days and nights, causing considerable damage. In 1918, it became free and got its Finnish name which means ‘the fortress of Finland.’
Weather is great, sunshine and no rains, and the fairest maidens of Finland have arrived here for suntanning. Even in metros, I notice that the Finnish girls wear the shortest shorts I have ever seen. It’s just a thin thread of blue jeans below the shirt that displays the long white legs. Complete nudity would not attract more attention. Who says there is nothing to see in Finland?
Anyway, coming back to the islands, Antonio and Birgitte advance to the water to dip their feet. Seagulls roam above our heads, and multi-coloured ducks are shyly lingering near us in the hope that they can grab the bread crumbs left by us. We pose ourselves near the cannons, enter the caves and try to imagine how the cannons were used from the caves. From time to time, Antonio takes out tomatoes from his bag and we happily put our teeth into them. Tomatoes are a great diet.
The long pink jetty barracks and the wooden houses along the road strongly remind me of Russia. Our day is made by the beauty of the islands and the special weather organized by Esa and Mervi. (You can experience the islands in a short video clip here: http://www.suomenlinna.fi/en/
When I go to London or Paris or Moscow, I feel there can’t be anything more expensive. But come to Finland, and you will feel London is a cheap place. An unemployed Finn gets 90 Euros a day as social security benefit! (An employed Indian gets less in a month. My latest aspiration is to become an unemployed Finn). Special thanks to Mervi for organizing dinners every evening at her house. We could eat plenty, drink plenty, and chat and laugh for hours without taking our hands to the wallet.
In the night, we walk in the center to see the night life of Helsinki. To be honest, I had thought of Finnish people to be as cold as their country. The buildings were as I had imagined – white, bright and clean. The people, I was told, don’t talk much. They use their greatest invention, the Nokia, to send messages to each other. The phones are on voice mail. … I was wrong about the people. Except the fact that their language is perfected gibberish (for me), they talk in it quite loudly, are on the phone all the time, and are capable of screaming and losing themselves on a Friday night.
We see this at a sing and dance event at a courtyard where everyone looks more than forty years old. Not surprisingly, Esa knows each song by-heart without the caraoke, and is moving his hips widely. Imagine Esa dancing with abandon. After all, people everywhere are the same. Reluctantly, we take the night bus to reach Esa’s house.
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Saturday, May 22, 2010:
Churches: Helsinki has three main churches. We visit, or try to visit, all of them in the morning; not as a matter of any planning but just while browsing around the city.
Lutheran Cathedral (Tuomiokirkko) Aleksanterinkatu, is also known as Helsinki cathedral but previously carrying the name of St Nicholas’ church. Birgitte poses in front of the cathedral. Standing here, I feel I am in St Petersburg. Naturally, because Tsar Nicholas the first paid money for most of its construction. The cathedral looked too new, freshly painted, and with a strange combination of plainness everywhere in contrast to Romanic colourful paintings on one side.
The Uspenski cathedral (sobor) is more familiar. The largest Orthodox Church in Western Europe, it is rented for a wedding when we are here. We stand in the corner, and watch the beautifully dressed Finnish guests and the young bridal couple. (This time the skirts are longer). Neither the wedding nor the wedded have anything to do with the Russian religion, but the interior of the church is certainly more pleasant for tying the knot.
The third church does not allow us to go inside because of the visit of the Bolivian president, but about this later.
Meanwhile Simonetta has arrived from Moscow and joined us.
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Simonetta shared her room with Annalucia, and both of them can be seen in the group photo taken in Erevan in 1986.
Originally from Rome, she was sent on a “temporary” assignment to Moscow in 1999. For the past eleven years, she is based in Moscow, living at Oktyabrskaya and working at Park Kulturi. She works for an Italian company that imports gas from Russia, so her job is secure and stable. Simonetta has a fourteen year old son. She still believes she is in Moscow on a temporary assignment, but I am sure for a long time to come she will be stationed there. (Russia has gas left for 76 years). Simonetta promises to play the organizer and host in Moscow, when we meet there for our Pushkin 25 jubilee celebrations in June 2011.
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We go today for another walk in the nature. Without Mervi and Esa we wouldn’t have known these places on our own. We pass Finns playing Frisbees on the beaches (long legs and trim white tummies on display once again), and reach another unpronounceable place called Tarvaspää. (You can experience the museum by taking a virtual tour here: http://www.gallen-kallela.fi/
We sit and eat in the café across the house.
Mervi, Birgitte and I have a long walk back and the others take a taxi. We decide to take a sitghtseeing cruise in the evening. It’s an interesting concept. You travel for two hours across the different islands around Helsinki, see the central parts of Helsinki from the comforts of your boat cabin, and they serve a buffet dinner for you – all for 41 euros only. The cruise is at 19.00 and we are drinking a cup of coffee at a café ten minutes walk from the port. It suddenly starts raining, and we have no idea how we are going to make it to the trip. Yesterday, I carried an umbrella and it was a sunny day. Today, of course, I am not carrying any umbrella. The expense of 41 euros per person keeps us focused. Fortunately, rain subsides for five minutes, allowing us to run to the boat. Antonio Romeo, sorry Antonio Marino, meanwhile is with another of his global friends and both of them are getting completely soaked in the middle of nowhere.
The boat moves at 19.00 as planned. The salad bar is great and we make enough trips to it to make sure we get our worth of what we have paid. The cruise takes us through Klippan island, a jetty where carpets are washed, kalvopuisto seaside, once again the Suomenlinna fortress, the island of Vasikkasaari, Kruununhaka and the old district of katajanokka. Inside the boat is a wedding party. The normally blond groom is wearing a long black wig which acts as a sex-change gadget. They raise toasts in Finnish, the groom sings something that would be intolerable in normal circumstances, but we all clap and join in the laughter. More than what we see outside the boat, the feeling of the moment… the experience of being here… is what makes the ride great.
After the ride, we find the wet Antonio and the party moves once again to Mervi’s house. Birgitte will leave tomorrow and this is probably our last chance to talk with her this year. (Unless you visit her in Luxembourg where she translates from English to Danish everything that the European Union needs.) We chat so late that we miss the last bus, the last metro and are too tired to keep hopping the night buses.
Esa calls a taxi, and Antonio and I return home with him.
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Sunday, May 23, 2010:
Birgitte leaves for the airport, and the sun disappears as well. Esa takes us first to the design shop and then to the design museum. It’s interesting to see the different models of Nokia across the years, and the Finnish chairs from the beginning of the 19th century.
Sunday is a quite day. We go to the market square and I eat an apple pie. The seller is a Russian woman from St Petersburg who has been living here for the past sixteen years, but says she will not take the citizenship of Finland- ever.
To avoid rains, we take tram no. 3T which goes around the city in the shape of 8. We get down at the Temple, the Church in the Rock (Temppeliaukion kirkko, literally ‘Temple Square Church’). This is where we were denied entry yesterday because of the Bolivian president.
We are extraordinarily lucky. There is a concert in the evening, and they are rehearsing now. (Hence, the Soprano singer in Jeans). We sit there, amazed, at the ambiance and the acoustics. The temple is dug out of one solid rock. The roof is made of 22 kms of copper wires. We listen, mesmerized, until we are driven away. (The tickets later would have cost 15 Euros).
We move towards the station to drop Simonetta. She managed to take the train after working on Friday, and she will now travel back in the train so as to be in her office on Monday morning. On platform no. 8, we hear everyone talk in Russian, and watch the Russian dezhurnaya wearing a short skirt (effect of the Helsinki air).
Mervi is already exhausted and excuses herself. Esa, Antonio and I take a tram to a seafood restaurants “Salve” which I without hesitation would recommend to anyone visiting Helsinki. We eat more than we can, and though we would like to walk a mile to feel lighter, the rains take our feet to the trains. The official Helsinki meet is over. Many thanks to Esa and Mervi for hosting us.
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Moscow: June 2011: Pushkin 25: We plan to meet next year in Moscow to celebrate 25 years since the golden period in our life. Ideally, we will get rooms in the Pushkin institute for a week. They may not be as cheap as 10 roubles a month any more, but hopefully reasonably priced. So, do vstrechi v Moskve.
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Ravi
Helsinki, 24 May 2010
