Last night I went to a Halloween party for one of my friend's from my language course, who actually is from Seattle too. She came to Finland through AFS and unfortunately is leaving at the end of this year. I dressed up as a cowgirl/reindeergirl (because this is Finland and I was wearing a shirt with reindeer on it). The party was in a rented warehouse and we watched the scary Finnish movie, "The Sauna." Luckily I haven't been scared so much that I will never be able to go into a sauna again. I had a great time and it was really nice to see some familiar faces and meet many new people too.
Today once everyone was up and ready to go, my family drove down south about an hour to the quaint, old, little city of Porvoo.
Porvoo is the second oldest city in Finland. If Lahti hadn't been destroyed during WWII because of the radio towers, it would look very similar to Porvoo.
The old part of the city consists of two main streets of different little handycraft shops, but there are also many other narrow, winding cobbled streets of old buildings that are just residential areas.
Porvoo is the Finnish name for the city, but there is a great majority of Swedish speakers living here and the Swedish name for the city is
Borgå, which means castle by the sea.
I really liked this sign on one of the buildings. It talked about an man who lived in this house well over a hundred years ago, and he "dreamt that Ireland and Finland would take their place amoung the nations of the earth" one day. I really liked how that sounded, so it was actually kind of nice to see that there.
I am discovering that there are many churches in Finland that date back to the middle ages. The Porvoo Cathedral was believed to have been build during the13th century.
Over the years, with the changing of hands there has been a bell tower added, most likely from Russian rule, resembling that from the Russian Orthdox religion.
The main church itself is pretty massive in size, with a wooden roof. I find it absolutely amazing how these buildings were constructed almost a thousand years ago and are still standing tall. I think that most modern buildings wouldn't stand a chance at surviving even 200 or 300 years.
The first room you enter is the weapons room, where back in the middle ages everyone would leave their weapons before entering. Upon coming into the main church, you are greeted by much grandear. In the back of the church there is an organ on the second floor, which is very common for a Lutheran church.
There were a lot of nice paintings on the walls, including some origionally done in the middle ages which have endured all of this time. There were also a lot of different symbols and figurines. I found it interesting that there was some different writing which I had also seen in many other churches, but I had no idea what it was. As it turns out, it is an acient religious script, which resembles today's arabic.
There were many sailors who came to church here, and probably many who also lost their lives out at sea, which is why there is a suspended model of a ship. There were many different paintings of saints, a statue of one of the Russian tsars, and interestingly enough, a painting of a unicorn. I was really surprised that a mythical creature was depicted on one of the pilars, especially since you can tell it was painted in the middle ages. In general there was just a lot of different, priceless pieces of religious memorabilia.
There were two floors that you could go up off the main one. And even more middle age paintings were on the celing up above.
In one area in the very front of the church, you could see where the celing had turned slightly black. Before there was electricity, fires and stoves were used to heat the massive space. Smoke must go up, and so the ceiling has therefore blackened in some areas from the smoke.
There were also some different large, wooden crests lining the walls above. I think the Porvoo Cathedral has turned out to be one of the most beautiful churches I have seen since coming here. I do enjoy seeing all of the different styles and seeing how things have endured so long, and changed over time as well.
After visiting the church, we walked through the main streets a bit, going into the different handycraft shops. The symbol on the sign above is what you will find on any product "made in Finland." This is how everything here is easily identifyed as having been crafted here Suomessa.
Since it was a Saturday, most places were only open a few hours today, and everything will probably be closed tomorrow. That has been one of the hardest things for me to get used too. Coming from America, most things are open 24/7, but here most everything is closed Sunday and the hours aren't very long. Just something you have to think about if you do come to visit. Even in Helsinki, things close early. We planned it perfectly so that things were open and we weren't squeezed for time to see things.
The streets of old town were actually bustling with people, but they look pretty desserted in this picture. When I am older, I would love to own my own little shop in a street like this.
For lunch I ate meatballs (lihapullia), salad (salaatti), carrots (porkkanaa), garlic potatoes (valkosipuliperunat), and a piece of bread (leipa), with milk (maito) to drink. The food was very good. Meatballs are actually a pretty common food here in Finland, and one of my favorite dishes too.
While here in Porvoo, we had to stop at the Brumberg Suklaa (chocolate) shop. They had all sorts of different Brumberg treats, and they were much cheaper than at the grocery store. There is also the Brumberg Suklaa factory, so sometime I have to come back and go on a tour of that.
Porvoo is a very nice town in Southern Finland. It's old town boasts good food and nice little shops, but there is also now a bigger more modern side too, just a bit further on through the streets. I had such a great time there.
After that, we drove down to Vantaa, a suburb of Helsinki to visit my host grandparents. Yesterday they came over and had coffee with us on their way from Lapland. They will be staying at their apartment in Vantaa for a little while before returning back up to Utsjoki in Lapland (where I will spend my Christmas). Tomorrow is father's day, so we had some cake and kahvi and chatted for a few hours, before returning home to Lahti.
It has been a really good day! Have a good weekend!
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