Hello from my home in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #105, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.
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In the morning today, as I was scrolling past one titled - ‘Spring 2025’, I came across a picture of Prerna at the the Roihuvuori Cherry Park in Finland.
The cherry bloom season was in full swing a couple of weeks back or so. There are many around the many apartments at the beach area, around the bus stop in Kumpula. The main bloom had happened in the weekdays, I think Tuesday. I had told Prerna then, there would be no point in going to the park this year.
The same thing had happened to us in 2024 when we had last gone to the park. The bloom had happened over the weekday, and by the time we got there, the bloom was no more. The colour, was not there anymore.
But trees are trees. So, here, a few pictures of some trees from around Kumpula.
Back to me scrolling past the picture in the morning. I saw that and knew that we will not be going to the park this year. And I was reminded of this piece I had read thanks to Hacker News some five days ago.
And then you have the tourist. Bright-eyed, eager, and fresh off a rewatch of their favorite Rick Steves episodes, the tourist is the most naive person to ever arrive in the city. The tourist has not spent decades fitting themselves into a jaded but comfortable box named Life In The City. The tourist, more than any local, can really do whatever they want.
And I felt like I was the resident who was kind of done with the park. The getting there, the dealing with the many, many people who congregate there around this time.
I felt a little happy about that too. That I do not consider myself a tourist in this place. This is my city. It took all of five years.
Speaking of touristy things. We visited the Fazer Experience Visitor Centre last Sunday. This visit was organised by the HOAS committee of our buildings. We were part of a lucky few, who managed to fill out the form in time.
We drove to the centre and were just before the pre-agreed time of getting there by 13:45. There were a few student looking people there already.
We said our hellos, put our names and signatures on a piece of paper and then waited while our reps got us our tickets.
The tour started then, with our wonderful guide getting us past the stanchion, past the massive bunny statue and into the exhibition hall. This was our first stop in the tour, and the place where the guide told us about Fazer, like the fact that this particular shade of blue, is copyrighted by Fazer. We saw a short video presentation about the company and the founders.
After this we moved to the greenhouse (fondly called a Swedish sauna). This is where we saw a bunch of cocoa trees, some spice trees, banana trees and so on. While the guide talked about where Fazer gets the chocolate from.
Then, we moved to the third stop, where we tasted some wonderful Fazer bread, and then played around with blocks, trying to build a healthy plate. Mine was 5 stars - super healthy.
Then there was the memorabilia section, a wall full of things that mean something - something about their history. I particularly liked the different posters they had.
There were more stops along the way - the place where we talked about how some of the candies came into being - trying to reduce waste as one example. We smelt the different type of candies and tried to guess which was which. We tasted two candies and tried to guess which was fruity and which not.
There was also a toy structure here. I had seen something similar at MoMa. There were also chairs built by a famous Finnish designer. But Savya was getting cranky by this time - he had had enough talk about candies, and wanted to taste some candy now.
Thankfully, the last and final stop on the tour was the candy tasting section. We don’t eat chocolates usually, in this household. But we did not hold back here. We ate a lot of chocolates. Took pictures of ones we liked.
Then we got a goodie back each after we were done. We bought a fridge magnet from the shop. I wanted to grab something at the cafe, but all they had was more cakes and pastries. We had had enough by then. So we did not.
Instead we went to IKEA and had some veggie meatballs there.
Since we’re human, I managed to compare my experience to the one other similar experience we had in Zurich at the Lindt chocolate factory.
That was bigger, the space. We had walked over so many different floors. The green area was bigger. There were so many different educational pieces on how chocolate is made and so on.
Not so much here.
Lindt also had this tasting area where you could basically taste liquid chocolate. That was awesome.
But it was a wonderful experience none the less. On a smaller scale. Sure. But wonderful nonetheless.
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Until next week.
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