Tampere – Manchester of Finland
The next destination after Turku in Finland was the industrial city of Tampere. Tampere, Turku and Helsinki are almost equidistant from each other and are well connected by train network (with trains running every hour during the day). After I arrived in Tampere, I met my couchsurfing host MM at the train station who was hosting another guy who was hitchhiking around Europe. I was not carrying any guidebook for Scandinavia so we went to the tourist information center to pick up brochures and maps. Much of my stay in Tampere was unplanned and it turned out to be a good thing. MM gave me a tour of the city. The city centre is compact and can be traversed on foot.
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| The Old Tourist office | Tammerkoski Pedestrian Bridge |
Tampere is the most populous inland city amongst the Nordic countries. It is located between two lakes, Näsijärvi and Pyhäjärvi. Once you look at the location it is easy to understand why. There is a difference in the water levels of the lakes (18 metres). The lakes are connected by the Tammerkoski rapids. For several hundred years, the rapids have powered the industries of Tampere and made it the “Manchester of the North”. Tampere is a city in transition now. Lot of the old industries such as Finlayson are been converted into malls, shopping centers, theaters and living quarters. It is strange to live in one of these living quarters as wall ceilings are fairly high as these housed heavy machinery earlier.
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Another thing that Tampere is known for are the cartoon characters known as Mommins. The Moomins are the central characters in a series of books and a comic strip by Finnish illustrator and writer Tove Jansson. They are a family of trolls who are white and roundish and resemble hippopotamuses. The carefree and adventurous family live in their house in Moominvalley, in the forests of Finland. Other than the Nordic countries, they are extremely popular in Japan. In fact, several couples travel all the way fro Japan to Tampere to get married in the Moominvalley museum. Unfortunately due to lack of time, I could not go to the Moominvalley museum.
Something characteristic about Tampere is the Finnish dialect. There is a emphasis on the ‘L’, ‘M’, ‘N’ and ‘P’. To add to the fun there is the trilling ‘R’. It is fun just to try to talk in Finnish and try to pronounce the names. It is almost musical. What most people are unaware of is that Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family and is not related to Swedish, Norwegian or Danish – the language spoken in other Nordic Countries. It is related to Estonian which belongs to the same family of languages.
An post about Tampere would be incomplete without the mention of (in)famous Black Sausage (Mustamakkara). It is made by mixing pork, pig blood, crushed rye and flour, after which it is stuffed into the intestines of an animal like most sausages. There are several shops near the Tammerkoski that sell it. But I did not have have the courage to try it out. You can see how it looks like here.