Soft Modernism

Even the subway cars in this great city are functionalist. Been living in a borrowed apartment in a traditional working class neighbourhood with a great flea market, cheap beers, sweet trams and lots of drunks. Been commuting to days full of lectures in amazing Aalto buildings and wanting to steal E stools. Been sweating in saunas and jumping in the gulf.

Note: I will be taking a break from blogging for two weeks or so as I work on a case study in suburban Helsinki.

Also, there are 5 rolls of film are burning a hole in my backpack. Can't wait to develop them! (poladroid stand-in).

Caffenation

Hello good coffee! Hello Helsinki! Cappuccino and americano by Tuomas at Kaffeecentralen.

Havre Gryn

It feels like we are always in grocery stores, perpetually roaming a new fluorescent aisle that is totally different yet exactly the same as the last one. I have read (or struggled to read) packaging in Danish, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish.

I have a growing guilty conscience about the inefficiency of buying for single meals and the number of plastic packaging we have inevitebly disposed of (despite considerable conservation efforts). At times, the inability to eat salads and warm meals, the excesses of white starch and müsli. We have become masters of assembling swiss-army sandwiches on trains, buses, park benches and steps.

I dream of pear and gorgonzola pizza, potato wedges, quinoa salads, toronto takeout and my mother's cooking. For now, at a friend's apartment in Helsinki, we have permanence.

I have never been so excited for domesticity in my life.

Anholt

Before Norway, we came back to Denmark for a few sunny summer days. These were our two days at Anholt, where you ride ramshackle bikes all over the island, bake fresh bread, buy fish by the harbour, say hi to your neighbours, lie on the beach under the moon and taste salt on your skin.

There is even a Ricco's to get your vesterbro-espresso fix!

L'Avventurra

Our time in Oslo was a bit of a bust. We found the city uninspiring and unaffordable. But all those taxes do produce a number of wonderful underused cultural institutions around the city which are mostly free. Look at those great programs!

We were lucky enough to catch a screening of Antonioni's L'Avventurra. Previously I had only seen Blow-Up, of which I am not a fan. But by this film I was captivated.
Monica Vitti has a breathtakingly beautiful presence on the island on-screen.She is the perfect balance to the rocky landscape. The entire film had a beautiful quality I can't yet describe - something I could get lost in.

Bergen

This is Bergen! Norway's second biggest city and city of culture. This town may seem small, but I think it has everything you could ever need. We were here for three days and loved every minute.

We discovered that Bergen is filled with awesome functionalist buildings from the 1930s. Like this one, the Sundt department store designed by Per Grieg. Beautiful.

Also home to the greatest telephone boxes I have ever seen.

Bergen is also famous for its well-preserved collection of old buildings by the wharf, or Bryggen. It's like a miniature wooden city filled with bridges and secret passages, where nothing is truly straight.

Lovely cafés spill their antique mismatched chairs onto the sidewalk.

We wandered into a very red brick Church on top of a hill. We could not have anticipated the lovely surprise inside.

Humble but beautiful details are what make this Church one of my favourites.

Like the spectacular wooden ceiling.

From Mount Fløyen you can get a spectacular view of the city (even though it is only 320m above sea level). If you are lazy or "just-have-an-invested-interest-in-alternative-modes-of-transportation" you can take the funnicular up or down.

On this mountain hovering over town, Bergeners can still get lost in the forest or see their reflection in a still lake.

My kind of city.