2018 Sep Finland: hike up Oejberget, old Vaasa, finishing up

2018 Sep 05 Hike around Öjberget 

Getting to Öjberget required a car and then a little walk, which made it clear this was one of the few hill-like areas in the region. The third/rightmost picture is some kind of ski mascot (found at the base of the skiing hill, around which the nature trail wanders.


View up the hill:


The hiking scenery was entirely different from Svedjehamn. Included wild blueberries and lingonberries (left picture).




The whole place was pure granite, mostly one giant boulder-seeming formation. Regular signage mentioned how inhospitable the granite is, and it becoming forest started with lichen, then moss, and these two built up some dirt-like substance that eventually brush and trees could take root in. Note: fuzzy looking stuff (left picture) was not fuzzy.


Interesting rock formations included the "Giant's Cauldron", formed as ice receded but was still moving stones around inside other stones, forming a hollow.



The signage by the following boulder explained that during the stone age,  this part of the hill was at water level, so it was an island with a boulder outcropping. Seal-hunting was clearly what people were up to there in the area, with stone-age tools found under the rock where people must have sheltered from the weather/storm/angry seals?.


This next thing, a field of stones, was also created by retreating ice effects/formerly being under the ocean. Called a/the devil's garden, I enjoy the supposition that the Devil would gather up rocks to make more rocks, and that was what he was interested in harvesting.

View from the top of the ski hill, down to the start of the hike. This from atop a tower like thing that seemed to be somehow used in winter as well, maybe as the start of some kind of ski-jumping part of the hill.


In the tower was a map explaining how the area looked over time. You can notice the meteorite crater, and how Öjberget started as a neighboring island and became a nearby hill as time and land uplift went on.


View of the crater from the tower:

Bike rides: old Vaasa and some of the open air museum

During the next few days, we took some bike rides, including swinging by "old Vaasa" on the way home. The prior port/harbor is now solidly on land, which is part of why Vaasa moved. The rest being that Vaasa had burnt down a few times, and after 1852 they gave up and tried to build in a way to minimize future fire danger, with very broad streets and alleyways forcing spaced between the (even now) largely wooden buildings. As a result, old Vaasa ruins is mainly the mostly-stone church:


The signage on the church is pretty funny.  It talks about the various expansions, including one where they made something larger, and the local peasants demanded they remove the support pillars to "make it more airy", and it promptly collapsed. They tried to fight having to pay for the repairs, to no avail.

The area around the Open Air Museum (aka a small swedish settlement that didn't want their old farmhouse buildings anymore, so they moved them and made them a museum) was very pretty, along the shore.



Given it was post-tourist-season for the open air museum, one could walk around it but not actually get inside of any of the buildings, which seemed to be the most interesting part. Enjoy an odd windmill:



Also saw on our bike ride a very very green house, next to a totally standard red house.

Parting thoughts on Finland

I think Finnish is a language where one would have to live there to learn it, and it would always be quite a challenge. It is nice that this region has Swedish as a very common language. 

Temperatures were, as highs, between 17 and 20C. Definitely a great range for outdoor activity, and when on/by the water, it felt quite toasty.  It was supposed to rain one day, but didn't (still spent the day checking out outlets and sports stores to see if any brand there fit well/better than what I could get in Germany for a softshell or allweather shoes).  

Sauna every day, especially with the option for somewhat brisk ocean water to cool off, was really lovely and relaxing. I may join a gym here just for sauna access. Well, and, you know, to exercise a little.

Side-note: public and private toilets alike seemed generally stocked with what I would call a "Finnish bidet". Which clearly also doubles as a tool to wash your hair in the sink or maybe even hose off your feet if you need (all bathrooms and rooms with water-using appliances have drains in the floor and tile or linoleum floors).

Fly home: 

If you zoom in, to the right of the airplane tail, is a totally normal house, just looking out onto the runway.


Last views of Vaasa from the air:


Til next trip (or, you know, I write some of the backlog of travel blogs I keep intending to write ;) ).

pre flight "chilling" in rocking chairs at airport

2017 Nov 25-26: A weekend in Stuttgart, Auto Museum and Staatsgallerie

Stuttgart is about an hour away from Mannheim by train and up until this trip, I had only been once, in the main train station, having grabbed the wrong train and that was the first stop after Mannheim.

Its population is twice that of Mannheim, which is 100k less than Frankfurt. Home to Daimler-Benz and Porsche, it is still known mostly as a city of car manufacturing. Other large manufacturing companies have their headquarters there, like Bosch.

According to some travel blog I read, Stuttgart has the second greatest number of thermal baths in Europe after Budapest, which is kind of surprising given Baden-Baden's reputation. Ended up booking a hotel with a bookable (for guests) private sauna, which was pretty cool.

Saturday: Auto museum
Sunday: Tower and Staatsgalerie (museum)

On Saturday, which was grey and bleak, went to the Daimler-Benz Automuseum. 

Very interesting. Two very different mindsets about engines. Daimler was all about PUT AN ENGINE ON EVERYTHING, and Benz was very much about building the two together into a car-like object.  This thing with Daimler is where the three pointed star comes from: engines on land, sea, air.

Your visit starts with a ride in a retro futuristic elevator to the 8th floor, then you wind your way down.

The following exhibiion opens with a stuffed horse. The base of this taxidermy is a quote from the Kaiser at the time, stating he believed in the horse, and that the automobile was transitory.

stuffed horse; I enjoy that someone bothered to put this on wheels

As part of the leading-up-to cars history, I learned that the Neckar river used to handle upstream barge traffic with help of chains that the boats could sort of pull themselves along, as illustrated in this cute model.

diorama of Heidelberg

We then had a hall of all the things with motors in them, including some early tram type things.

motorize all the things!

The early auto transitioned from a motorized carriage to something that gentlemen drove themselves -- and would race. One early gentleman racer was driving Benzes and as part of his deal, he got some cars named after his daughter, Mercedes.

swarovski crystal decorations hanging above. I found this display really swank

This was an example of one of the sweet early racecars/roadsters:

I'd drive that

German trivia: fenders were developed to keep all the horse crap off of people that got churned up by the wheels. Thus, the german name for fender is "Kotflügel",  Kot (said like "coat") is animal excrement (dogs, horses, whatever) and Flügel is wing.

Another shiny car I would toally drive

vrooom

A nice graph of work hours due to bombing and air raid alarms. The orange shows clearly hours lost.

Daimler and Benz were competitors (various engine patents were filed in Mannheim, and they still have a presence there), forced to merge at some point due to the market. I think this was actually post-WWII.

Eventually, we went from casual racing to more practical things, like every kind of truck. I love this bus from Argentina. 

In the same hall was an early tourist bus thing from the UK

I will close with some fancy modern cars: 

I rushed through the museums last 4 floors in hopes of making it outside to catch some of the sun that had appeared. It was of course mostly obscured once outside, and there was a long wait on the next S Bahn back to town.

Sunday got up to more flurries and ok weather (for winter), so tried out Killesberg Turm while the weather held, then a museum.

Killesberg tower is in a park, near some (pretty boring from the outside) cubist houses, and a museum to Le Corbusier (father of high rises and apartments that are poorly planned in terms of living -- you are expected to bring your groceries there and sleep there, but not really have parks or other useful things nearby).

Most of the later criticism of Le Corbusier was directed at his ideas of urban planning. In (...)The public housing projects influenced by his ideas have also been criticized for isolating poor communities in monolithic high-rises and breaking the social ties integral to a community's development. (...)

For some critics, the urbanism of Le Corbusier's was the model for a fascist state.These critics cited Le Corbusier himself when he wrote that "not all citizens could become leaders. The technocratic elite, the industrialists, financiers, engineers, and artists would be located in the city centre, while the workers would be removed to the fringes of the city".(found on Wikipedia)

The view was nice. Stuttgart clearly has a lot of wine produced still in the area, I bet it is great to hike in the vineyards in the summer.

Me, making one of many faces (the album contains the dozen or so other related pics)

my coworker makes this face often. It reminds me of that surprised...prairie dog?...meme

Returning to the city, ended up having lunch at a nice indian place, getting the Thali, and checking out the Staatsgalerie, which won over the choice of museums because of the pop unlimited exhibition. 

The Staatsgalerie is on a little strip of several museums, near the center of town which had a pre-Advent "Winter market" open by a very tiny ice rink. 

This is some ah indecent neon art of naked dudes shaking hands.  
It is a video. 

I will link it rather than display it, in case you might offend anyone by some dude-bits hanging out on your screen while reading this. 

This piece reminds me of the plush toys people make out of kids scribbles:

There was a mix of modernism and post modernism (and other stuff, but that is what I took pictures of). I liked this poster story of a guy who was like hey this thing i found is art. 

dude declares a wine rack a piece of art, starts a movement

In the hallway between wings was this (technically grammatically incorrect):

one potato, two potato, three potato

I loved this. Kadinsky. He is hard to understand? I would put this on my wall. Or on a paravent.

I like this next thing because of how bizarre it is.

Imagine you got to visit Picasso in his studio.
You knock, you are called to let yourself in, and you are greeted by this.

never intended to be displayed in a gallery, just picasso fucking around 

In a completely different part of the gallery was another arrangement echoing this one in a sort of almost creepy circus figure way

After the gallery, it was time to hop a train and head home, chill out a little, do things one puts off for Sunday evenings, and rest.