Sitting in an old leather armchair in the cool basement of the Arkadia International Bookshop, I read in a poem (Memoriam, by Anne Michaels) “The dead leave us starving with our mouths full of love”, and I hear Ian tell another Ian (the bookshop owner) a poignant tale from his orphaned childhood. The book he’s chosen is the story of a London street in the 1930s – the time his mother died. In memoriam! There are some lovely paintings (by Ian, the owner) in one of the basement rooms, and a mandala made with LED lights, hypodermic syringes and the plastic waste that comes with them. The artist was sitting nearby with his lap-top. He’s a diabetic and the work was about plastic waste. I’ll have something to say about that in China!
After the bookshop we went into the National Museum, looked at a photographic exhibition of rural life but decided we didn’t want to pay a hefty admission to go into the main part of the museum where the current exhibition seemed to be about Barbie dolls!
In a children’s playground beside the botanical gardens, two young Chinese women were both busy with their phones while their children a boy and a girl aged around 3-5, charged around with delightful exuberance – up and down the slide, leaping on and off the see-saw, bouncing on spring-mounted animals. When one of the women eventually looked up from her phone, I managed to ask her if she was Chinese and tell her a bit about our travel plans, but we soon lapsed into English. She and her friend are on a whistle-stop tour of “the North Countries” (Scandinavia), and are in Helsinki for just one night. She’d taken a photo on her phone of a statue – some guy on a horse – and seemed surprised that we couldn’t tell her who he was. It was only after we moved on that I realised they’d assumed we were Finnish, since English is the common language among travellers from everywhere.
After the bookshop we went into the National Museum, looked at a photographic exhibition of rural life but decided we didn’t want to pay a hefty admission to go into the main part of the museum where the current exhibition seemed to be about Barbie dolls!
In a children’s playground beside the botanical gardens, two young Chinese women were both busy with their phones while their children a boy and a girl aged around 3-5, charged around with delightful exuberance – up and down the slide, leaping on and off the see-saw, bouncing on spring-mounted animals. When one of the women eventually looked up from her phone, I managed to ask her if she was Chinese and tell her a bit about our travel plans, but we soon lapsed into English. She and her friend are on a whistle-stop tour of “the North Countries” (Scandinavia), and are in Helsinki for just one night. She’d taken a photo on her phone of a statue – some guy on a horse – and seemed surprised that we couldn’t tell her who he was. It was only after we moved on that I realised they’d assumed we were Finnish, since English is the common language among travellers from everywhere.
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