This week I had the pleasure of travelling three hours south to the capital of Finland: Helsinki. Fulbright Finland welcomed us to town for a two day orientation filled with new and old friends, a lot of information and an amazing school tour. Adam and the girls stayed back in Jyvaskyla since they are in a great routine now and didn't want to miss ice skating at school on Friday, dance lessons at school on Thursday and their other regular activities.
I was able to travel by train with my Fulbright friends Erin and Annie, and Annie's adorable seven month old daughter and husband. We took the very comfortable train, where coat hooks are easily accessible, wi-fi is free and electric outlets are at each seat. Upon arrival in Helsinki we dragged our luggage through the very slippery ice and mucky slush and found our hotel. Erin and I decided we wanted to walk around the city a bit before our evening dinner engagement so we set out to see what we could find. It was foggy and sometimes raining, but it was nice to get out and see the city. The weather means my pictures don't do the city justice, but here's a flavor of what we saw.
First, Helsinki was not always the capital of Finland. Turku to the west was the capital when Finland was under Swedish rule, but when Russia took over they moved the capital further to the east and away from Sweden. The Russian influence is very obvious in much of the architecture as the city was built up under Russian rule.
As expected (since we are in Europe) we found churches. Two of them. Really big ones.
This is the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran cathedral. It was built as a tribute to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia when Finland was under Russian rule. At the time it was also called St. Nicholas Church, but after gaining independence from Russia in 1917 the name was changed to the Great Cathedral and now the Helsinki Cathedral. In front stands a large statue of Alexander II.
It is a little surprising to find a statue of this Russian right in the middle of Helsinki, but Alexander II was liked by many Finns as he passed several reforms that increased Finland's autonomy from Russia. He is most famous for freeing the serfs in Russia, but his stance towards Finland was what is most important to most Finns. Some have argued that the statue should be removed but others feel it should remain as a reminder of the close ties between Imperial Russia and Finland.
Above is the Uspenski Cathedral, the largest Orthodox Church in Western Europe. It was beautiful from the outside and set up on a hill near the harbor. We didn't go inside either church but the exteriors of both buildings were beautiful and very different.
We sat for a while and had a kahvi for Erin and a Coca-Cola for me before we joined up with all the Fulbrighters for our first official event of orientation: dinner at Restaurant Linnankellari. This restaurant and attached hotel is the site of a former prison. In fact, the prison was in operation until 2002 when the last prisoners were moved further out of the city. This particular prison was not used for permanent residents; it was mostly for men and women who were serving very short sentences or who were awaiting trials and sentencing. The prison was designed using the Philadelphia model, very familiar to me as we used to live only blocks from the Eastern State Penitentiary, the original Philadelphia model prison. By standing in the center of the prison a warden can look down many halls by simply turning and that made serveillance much easier and prisoners never knew when they were actually being watched. Today the cells have been combined to create some fantastic hotel rooms. The hotel opened in 2007 after some major renovations. Multiple cells were combined to create rooms with plenty of space and bathrooms and saunas were added. In fact, there was no running water or plumbing on the second or third floor of the builing until the hotel was renovated and plumbing was only added to the first floor in the 1970's. Prisoners until 2002 were given one bucket for the room! The cells were originally made to hold one prisoner, then bunk beds were added so that it could hold two, then two sets of beds were put in each room to hold four prisoners. The reality was that many times cells held between five and seven people. Since it is Finland, of course the prison held a sauna for prisoner use! Downstairs several isolation cells were built for prisoners that chose isolation as a matter of safety or that were assigned it by a warden. Below is a picture of the isolation cell. I am fascinated by the prison system and loved touring Eastern State and Alcatraz and this Finnish prison was no less fascinating.
We had a great dinner at the restaurant where we were able to meet other current Fulbrighters in Finland and some local alumni. My mentor, a former Fulbrighter, along with Taru, my Finnish friend who just finished her program at Indiana University, joined us and great conversation was had by all. My table stayed the latest and we then took a meandering walk through Helsinki with fellow teacher grantee David as our tour guide.
It was a slick walk home, as you can see the ground is an absolute sheet of ice, but we all made it safely back to the hotel to rest up for two days full of Fulbright Finland information.
Orientation was great. We got a lot of information about administrative stuff but also learned even more about the Finnish school system, got a crash course in Finnish history (10,000 years of history in 25 minutes) and had a Finnish 101 session. On Thursday night we were hosted by Jeff Reneau, a member of the Fulbright Center Board of Directors and the Counselor for Press and Cultural Affairs of the US Embassy. This was a fun night at his beautiful home where we felt right at home with pizza, beer, soda and wine. Jeff had some amazing and entertaining stories about his stints in other countries and will be leaving Finland in a few months to go to Tblisi, Georgia. It was such a pleasure to meet him and all of us Fulbrighters are thankful to have such a great gentleman on our side. It is clear that Fulbright Finland is a top-notch outfit that holds a lot of clout in this country. Most people know the Fulbright program name and it holds a lot of respect. It's such an honor to be a part of this program in this country in particular.
Our last stop of our orientation was Sibelius High School. This visit left most of us speechless and I will write more about Finnish education in another post, but I'll give a few tidbits for now. Sibelius is a lukio, one of the university track high schools in the city. This particular school has a focus on music and dance arts. Other lukios in the city focus on other types of art (like theater and fine art). Students have to audition to get in and are part of many of the different performing groups. We happen to arrive on perhaps one of the best days of the year. The seniors were having their final day of school! In Finland, seniors at all lukios finish up their final term of classes at the end of January or beginning of February and then are given several weeks to study for their matriculation exams, the national exams students must pass in order to get their high school diplomas (more on this later, too). To celebrate this last day of school all of the seniors were running around wearing togas. When we first walked into the building we could hear a rock band playing a few floors above us. As we started our tour we ran right into a hundred screaming seniors doing a Finnish version of the hokey pokey in the hallway. As I don't have permission to post a photograph of these students just imagine a bunch of 18 and 19 year olds clad in togas, jumping around and screaming. Kind of like a frat party...in a high school hallway...with no alcohol. We were able to watch the choas for a few minutes and not one teacher was there to make sure it didn't get out of control. As crazy as the kids were acting nothing was damaged and no one got hurt. Just a few minutes later we walked through the same hallway and everyone had proceeded back to class or lunch, the band was gone and one lone young man was wrapping up the last of the amplifier cords. The rest of our tour included a performance by a violin/cello duet that was astounding, a mixed a cappella group performance of three songs and two beautiful student choreographed dance numbers. The talent in that one building was incredible and the whole atmosphere was a ton of fun, especially on this last day for seniors. I am so looking forward to getting into more high schools over the next few weeks. While some of my colleagues could never imagine their students doing the hokey pokey or acting so silly and crazy at school, it made me miss Marvelwood! I could absolutely see some of my students rocking out to a kids song at school meeting, wearing togas as a big group for some silly event and just enjoying themselves.
Here you can see the a capella group (that does have permission to be photographed) and their conductor. Obviously the girls and boys in togas are seniors! I am headed back to Helsinki tomorrow for a Fulbright Finland event and then will be visiting at least one school this week. Stay tuned!
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