Getting fortified in Finland

Helsinki waterfront

It wasn't the most auspicious of starts to a vacation. We were getting ready to board our airBaltic flight from Vilnius to Riga, where we were to connect to another airBaltic plane going to Helsinki, when the announcement was made that the flight was canceled due to the closure of the airport in Latvia for unknown reasons. The good news was that we were rerouted onto a direct Finnair flight to Helsinki Airport for later that same day; the bad news was that we had to wait more than four hours in a small airport without much in the way of facilities. At least there was beer:

The plane to Helsinki turned out to be only 2/3 full and in a further positive development we actually arrived in Finland forty minutes ahead of schedule. It was a thirty-minute train ride from the airport into the center of Helsinki, and another fifteen minutes on foot from the train station to our accommodations, the Hellsten Helsinki Parliament. As we would do in Rovaniemi and Tallinn, we stayed in a furnished apartment with a kitchenette. The building in Finland's capital dates from 1912, but the apartment itself had been modernized. The neighborhood where it's located felt more like New York than Helsinki:

We set out on our first morning in Helsinki by heading toward the waterfront on a chilly but sunny day, passing by a statue of Finnish military leader, statesman and national hero Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim:

My daughter in Esplanadin Puisto (Esplanade Park):

We first visited Vanha Kauppahalli, Helsinki's most famous market hall, dating from 1889 and home to a traditional Finnish market. If you're running low on reindeer meat, this is the place to go to replenish your supplies:

Adjacent to the covered market is an open-air one in the kauppatori (market square), where a few sellers and shoppers were braving the sub-zero temperature:

From the kauppatori, it's a fifteen-minute ferry ride to Suomenlinna, the "fortress of Finland", a UNESCO World Heritage Sight and the one must-see sightseeing attraction in Helsinki. The ice clogging the surface of the water proved no obstacle for the ferry:

One of the massive ferries plying Finland's waterways, this one probably on its way to either Stockholm or Tallinn:

Suomenlinna was originally built by the Swedes as Sveaborg in the mid-18th century, before surrendering to Russian forces in 1808, and then becoming part of independent Finland in 1917, following the Russian Revolution. Visitors like us begin our explorations by passing through the pink Rantakasarmi (Jetty Barracks) building from the main quay:

The fortress is spread out on a tight cluster of islands. The distinctive church also serves as a lighthouse:

The Suomenlinna-museo provides a good overview of the history of the fortress:

On the bridge connecting Ito Mustasaari (where the church and museum are located) with the main island, Susisaari-Kustaanmiekka. The girls were fascinated by the sight of all that ice in the water:

Winter being the off-season, some of the attractions, such as the Ehrensvärd-museo (pictured below) and the World War II-era Finnish submarine Vesikko weren't open:

Still, there was plenty to explore among the old bunkers, cannons and fortress walls:

The grave of Augustin Ehrensvärd, designer of the Suomenlinna fortress:

The King's Gate (1753-4) at the end of Kustaanmiekka, one of the six islands making up the fortress:

Enjoying a house brew and some smoked reindeer calf roast at the Suomenlinna Brewery:

After our late lunch, it was time to return to the city:

The ferry breaks through the ice as we return to Helsinki:

Approaching the waterfront. Visible are the Uspenskin Katedraali church and the Finnair Sky Wheel:

Naturally, Amber wanted to go on the ferris wheel (Shu-E stayed at ground-level, relaxing with a cup of coffee). We passed on the €195 VIP gondola (the one with the glass floor, leather seats and bottle of champagne), and went economy class:

Taking in the views through the blue-tinted glass of Tuomiokirko (top) and Uspenskin Katedraali (bottom), both of which we would visit the next day:

We ended our first full day in Helsinki with dinner at an Indian restaurant, located inside the Forum shopping center on Mannerheimintie. This would be turn out to be the only consistently sunny day of our eight-day visit to Finland and Estonia (and one of only two days without snow), but that was fine with us. This was my daughter's "ski break" from school, after all, and the main reason for coming to Finland in the first place was to see the northern lights, a mission which would be accomplished. Stay tuned...

In case there was any doubt as to where we were...

The Sky is Falling!: The Day of Restoration of the State of Lithuania

Flags, flags everywhere

Vladimir Putin was once quoted as saying that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. But it's actually the opposite of that observation that's true - the establishment of the USSR in 1917 (formally in 1922) ushered in seven decades of misery that resulted in the deaths of millions of people, from the Red Terror and the Holodomor to the Great Purge and the Gulag Archipelago. Lithuania's experience as an unwilling constituent republic from 1940 to 1990 saw the deaths of thousands from executions, deportations and armed resistance to the Red Army. So it comes as no surprise that Lithuanians treasure their independence and sovereignty. Today is a public holiday, the Day of Restoration of the State of Lithuania (Lietuvos valstybės atkūrimo diena), which, along with March 11 (the Day of Restoration of Independence of Lithuania), serve as important markers in establishing a sense of national self-identity. February 16 was the day in 1918 when the Act of Independence of Lithuania was signed in Vilnius, proclaiming the country as a sovereign state independent of the collapsed Russian Empire. At the time the country was under German occupation, but aspiration became reality later that year with Germany's defeat in the First World War. The 16th of February became an official holiday with the restoration of Lithuanian independence and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1990-1991, and is celebrated with various ceremonies held throughout the country. I wanted to participate in some of these events, but She Who Must be Obeyed had decreed this Thursday to be the day when new light bulbs must be purchased to replace several that had recently burned out in our kitchen and in one of the bedrooms. Still, I found time in the late morning to take a walk into Old Town and see what was going on.

As with most things in Vilnius, I began at Cathedral Square:

Inside Vilnius Cathedral, preparations were under way for a special commemoration mass:

Outside in the square preparations were under way for the Celebrate Freedom Concert, to be held from 7-9 p.m.:

The House of Signatories (Signatarų Namai) museum on Pilies gatvė. It was here that Lithuania's Declaration of Independence was signed on February 16, 1918. A flower laying ceremony was scheduled to be held there in the middle of the afternoon today:

A group with a guide gathers in front of the Town Hall:

Having a little fun with filters and flags:

With my usual impeccable timing I showed up at the Presidential Palace soon after President Dalia Grybauskaitė had given her speech and the flag raising ceremony had been completed:

Displays of patriotism in the middle of the afternoon as we walked to the lighting fixtures store for the aforementioned light bulbs. The shop turned out to be closed for the holiday, of course:

The Boy with a Big Shoe in His Hands, a statue of 9 year-old boy holding a shoe (a depiction of French novelist Romain Gary, who was born and raised in Vilnius), was also showing some pride this afternoon:

After the sun had set, my daughter and I left the apartment again and walked over to Gediminas Prospektas, to check out a series of sixteen bonfires lining the street from Vincas Kurdika Square to Vilnius Cathedral, enjoying both the atmosphere and the warmth in the -1°C (30°F) evening air:

This group was singing a Lithuanian song:

At one point Amber pointed out a drone flying overhead. A few moments later I heard a loud buzzing noise. I looked up at the drone, and suddenly it dropped out of the sky and crashed onto the road about a meter from where I was standing. In the 21st century you need to be aware of not only what's around you, but what's above you as well:

In Cathedral Square, where preparations were underway for the evening's concert:

The Three Crosses lit up in the national colors (yellow, green and red):

The statue of Gediminas in front of the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania:

Lithuanians are justifiably proud of the hard-fought restoration of their independence, first in 1918 and again in 1990. Uglier expressions of nationalism, like those often seen in places such as China, Russia and, sadly, at times in the United States are largely absent here. If we're in town next year at this same time (we're leaving tomorrow on a weeklong trip to Finland and Estonia), I hope to convince Shu-E to join my daughter and me in going out and taking part in the celebration of Lithuanian statehood.

I don't usually post work-related matters on this blog, but I thought I'd share this image, from the website of the Lithuanian document processing center. We were given a tour of the center last week, and it was fascinating to see the machines in operation producing passports and identity cards.

In the center of the Lantern Festival

The girls admire a frozen lake

Saturday was the fifteenth day of the first month of the Lunar New Year, meaning it was time for the Lantern Festival 元宵節. You wouldn't have known it in Lithuania, of course, but that's perfectly understandable. What's harder to comprehend is why you wouldn't have known it in our household. True, there isn't much that can be done to observe the occasion here in the Baltics, and even in Taiwan few children these days will carry paper lanterns with riddles written on them to local temples. In this day and age of tourism promotion, many Taiwanese will attend official activities in public parks and plazas; this year's Taiwan Lantern Festival 臺灣燈會 is being held in my wife's home region of Yúnlín County 雲林縣.

If you haven't figured it out already, Shu-E is originally from Taiwan. You would therefore think that she would try and instill in our daughter (who was born in Fēngyuán 豐原 and carries a Republic of China 中華民國 passport) a sense of Taiwanese identity while we're living overseas (or even in the U.S.), but then you would be mistaken. When we were residing in Taiwan, I made sure that we celebrated the main American holidays so Amber could stay in touch with that half of her bi-cultural identity, but my wife doesn't share the same sense of urgency when it comes to other half (the Chinese/Taiwanese one). If it wasn't for me, cultural occasions such as the Lunar New Year would get overlooked. There's an odd sense of irony at play here when the hopeless Japanophile American is the one trying to get his bi-cultural offspring interested in Taiwanese culture, to learn to read and write traditional characters and to be proud of both of her heritages. I should be thankful Shu-E uses Mandarin when conversing with Amber; I'm still trying to have her speak to our daughter in the Taiwanese dialect 臺灣話 as well, but to no avail so far (she won't teach me the language, either).

So how did we observe the Lantern Festival in Vilnius, you might be asking yourself (or not)? First, by visiting the Humanitas bookstore on Dominikonų gatvė, where my daughter used some of her Christmas/birthday cash to purchase a book on how to draw cats (later that afternoon she would buy the next two entries in the Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children series from Akademinė Knyga). Humanitas is a great place to browse books on art, design and travel, and there were a couple of titles on Soviet and Taiwanese architecture that may convince me to let the moths out and use my holiday spending money as well:

Next, we had lunch at Kitchen, a stylish international restaurant off of Didžioji gatvė that didn't feature any Chinese dishes on its menu of contemporary cuisine. I tucked into the homemade sausages with tomatoes and mushrooms, and washed them down with a Raudonų Plytų Bėganti Kopa wheat beer:

Afterward, we strolled through Old Town before heading home. It hasn't snowed in Vilnius in a while, but the temperature has consistently remained below freezing, so there's still a lot of ice and snow around. Amber took some time out to slide down one such mound in the plaza across from the French embassy:

The days are getting noticeably longer, though the weather's still chilly (-4°C/25°F the high on Saturday) and the sun prefers to remain hidden most of the time. Passing through Cathedral Square on Saturday afternoon:

For dinner, as we've been doing on all the major Chinese/Taiwanese cultural occasions, we went to one of Vilnius' mediocre Chinese restaurants, this one a Cantonese place a short walk from our residence. At least the food here is better than at the establishment where we had our Lunar New Year's Eve meal. My daughter brought along a book on Chinese festivals to try and make sense of Yuánxiāojié - three guesses as to who bought it for her:

As they are for many Taiwanese, issues of cultural identity are not easily defined for my spouse, especially as she grew up in a household with a wàishěngrén 外省人 father (who spoke only Mandarin) and a běnshěngrén 本省人 mother (who only can converse in Taiwanese). So it's best if I don't push her too much when it comes to Amber, whom I'm confident will start feeling the need to fully embrace her Taiwanese side around the time she starts her sophomore year at college.

The sixteenth day of the Lunar New Year (aka Sunday) was even colder than the day before, with the temperature never climbing above -7°C (19°F), but by this point in our Vilnius-based life, it doesn't feel that chilly anymore. Which is in stark contrast to the present situation in Taiwan, where a cold snap has resulted in the deaths of over 80 people as temperatures plunged to 4°C (39°F). 4°! It's tempting to be snarky, but Lithuanians are much better prepared (with their central heating) for the cold than Taiwanese (who typically live in apartments consisting of uninsulated concrete walls, bare tiled floors and no heat); no doubt a typically hot and humid East Asian-style summer would take its toll on people in this part of the world.

On this day after the Lantern Festival the three of us drove into the countryside just outside of Vilnius, to a geographical position marked as latitude 54° 54', longitude 25° 19'. What's so special about this bearing? According to the French National Geographical Institute, it's the geographical center of Europe (Geografinis Europos Centras)! The actual midpoint of the continent is debatable, of course, and the French came to this conclusion by stretching Europe's boundaries into the Atlantic Ocean to include the Portuguese-administered Azores to the west and the Spanish-controlled Canary Islands to the south. Still, the Lithuanians were more than happy to erect a white granite obelisk with a crown of gold stars to mark the spot:

There are also 29 different flags, one for each member of the European Union, plus that of the EU itself:

The center of Europe is located about a half-hour drive north from where we live. There was a lot more snow on the ground compared to the streets of the capital. Had we known, we could've brought along Amber's disk sled to take advantage of the hilly terrain. Wait till next year:

On the large frozen lake next to the geographic midpoint a couple of people were enjoying an afternoon of ice fishing:

We returned to Vilnius for a late leisurely lunch at one of Shu-E's favorite restaurants, FORTAS. It's a chain specializing in international cuisine, with special menus devoted to particular countries. By fortuitous chance, the current featured cuisine is that of Belgium. Mussels, frietjes and Leffe beer may not be your typical Lantern Festival fare, but it was a nice way to round off the weekend:

Next up on the cultural calendar is Tomb Sweeping Day. I'm not sure how we're going to observe this one, especially as we never bothered much with it in Taiwan (something to do with my wife marrying out of her family, and therefore not responsible for maintaining their graves). As for the Lantern Festival, here's a link to a short NHK news story on the spectacular but environmentally-unfriendly practice of sending sky lanterns soaring into the atmosphere. I would occasionally see these fly over our building while we were living in Shéngāng 神岡.

Considering my age, job and marital status, a place best avoided