Vinayak Hegde

The next day at Tampere, I decided to take a tour and visit the different sights of the Tampere. In the morning I visited the distinctive Kaleva Church and the Tampere Cathedral. In the evening, I went to a traditional Finnish Sauna followed by a visit to the Viikinsaari island.

The Kaleva Church and Tampere Cathedral

The Kaleva church has several distinctive features. It is built in the shape of a fish and is extremely minimalistic as it does not have any ornamentation inside (even compared to the typical minimalistic Lutheran churches prevalent in Finland). It can be mistaken for a huge classroom or a concert hall if it were not for the large Organ that is present there. The church is huge and has a volume of about 36,000 cubic metres. Incidentally the guide who was conducting the tour was the daughter-in-law of the architect and she gave an insider’s view of the church. Another unusual feature of the church is the altar and the tall wooden sculpture behind it in the shape of a reed. The interior is mostly exposed concrete while the exterior is white tiled (like scales on fish’s body).

The Tampere cathedral was built in 1907 and is famous for it’s frescoes. The frescoes were painted by renowned symbolist Hugo Simberg. “The Garden of Death” and “The Wounded Angel” are two of the famous frescoes in the Tampere Cathedral. Hugo Simberg’s works depict dark and gloomy worlds. “The Wounded Angel” was voted as the most famous and recognizable painting in the whole of Finland recently. The most controversial of the frescoes is a red-winged serpent on the ceiling of the cathedral which symbolizes corruption and sin. The windows of the cathedral are adorned with beautiful and intricate stained glass paintings. All along the mezzanine floor of the church, you can find the paintings of the 12 apostles of Jesus.

The Wounded Angel	Garden of Death

Viikinsaari island

In the evening, Marek and I went to the Sauna and met some other CSers. We had a CS meeting in the sauna ! After the Sauna and a dip in the Näsijärvi Lake, I left for a trip to the Viikinsaari island on Pyhäjärvi lake. The island is popular with Tampere residents for picnics and weekend getaways. The forest on the island has several art installation in the form of theater props, photos and other artifacts. Angling, barbeque parties, kayaking and horseriding (on Icelandic horses) are popular activities on the island.There are several nature trails including around the island and the western part of the island is a nature reserve.

I did not have many plans in Tampere and had left it open-ended. When I was choosing hosts on CS I was looking for people who were interested in photography. Marek was a good photographer and offered to host me. I was lucky as Marek has two very talented friends – Alexsi and Tuomo who were good photographers too. In the evening, Marek and I went to TUT (Tampere University of Technology) campus where Alexsi was developing photos of their recent trip to Bulgaria and Slovenia. Alexsi was a film photographer and was manually developing the film himself . The film developing process itself is very laborious as you have to soak the film in water and then developer. Then made wet in fixer to fix the image. Finally the film is left to dry. After drying the developed film can be scanned into the computer. Quite a big difference from the digital photography that I am used to.

While Alexsi was developing the film, Marek called another friend, Tuomo who had just bought a couple of flashes and a reflector/diffuser combo (the round diffuser is seen in one of the images below). We moved to the TUT Campus to take some photos. First we shot some photos near a cliff nearby. As the natural light faded, we moved into the campus nearby which had bare concrete walls. Since I had never worked with external flashes, I was initially volunteered as the model. Some of the photos came out faurly stunning. Then we took turns being the cameraman, model and spotboys .The results were fantastic.

Me	Alexsi

The setup for the photo session is shown below with one flash getting triggered from above and one from the side onto the diffuser to cast soft light on the subject. We kept adjusting the intensity and the distance until we could perfect the light setup. The inspiration for this was the strobist blog. Do read it if you are interested in flash photography.

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.

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.

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.