Turku – 2/13/2020
Feb 13th, 2020 by rallyadmin
It rained on and off all night and we’re still recovering from travel fatigue. Travel fatigue is different from jet lag. Travel fatigue comes from just plain old over exertion while jet lag is caused by screwing up your circadian rhythm where your body thinks it’s night but your eyes are insisting that it is not sleepy time.
We’ve only been gone for 3 days but we haven’t had a chance to slow down yet. Last night our bodies took control and decided that we were going to sleep. We didn’t wake up until 8:30 which we haven’t done in years. I guess we needed the sleep.
A quick breakfast and out of the hotel. It’s a beautiful morning with clear blue skies and temperature hovering around 30°F. A beautiful day.
We’re headed for Torku Castle which is about a 40 minute walk along the river side to the mouth of the Aura River. The riversides are a park like walkway designed for pedestrians of which there are only a few and those are mostly older. The only issue is that last night’s rain has frozen in some places making the walkway a bit slippy in places.
There are occasional ships tied up to the walkway. They are all floating restaurants or bars that are mostly closed for the season. This probably quite the place during the summer high season.
Along the street that runs parallel to the walkway are lowish apartment buildings that have that very expensive, urban apartment look. They all have a balcony that faces the river, another selling point for an expensive urban apartment,
The only odd thing we see are the floating restaurants. They are all trapped by bridges across the river and none of the bridges are drawbridge or opening type bridges. I’m curious how the boats even got to where they are moored and they are certainly not going anywhere.
About halfway to the castle, there is a ferry that crosses the river. This area of the river is the start of the working port and there no bridges here. A bit farther down is the ferry port for ferries that go to different local islands and to Stockholm in Sweden.
Along the walk down the river, there are occasional art installations: a bust of Jarno Tullini, a local motorcycle wunderkind who was killed in a motorcycle championship race in Italy just as his career was taking off. A bit farther along there’s a huge sculpture of what appear to be mine. Still farther down the river there’s a huge daisy lying in the grass.
In the water, a couple of tall ships, a small passenger liner turned into a hotel/conference center, some charter yachts and a Finnish Navy frigate. It’s an odd mix of civilian and military, private and commercial. Finally, at the ferry terminal we leave the river, cross the road and head on to the castle grounds.
The castle was destroyed for the last time in the 1941 during World War II. During the war, the Finns were allied with the Nazis against their traditional enemy, the Stalin’s Soviet Union. They had previously fought a short war in 1939 and sued for peace that required Finland to cede an area to Stalin the was rich in minerals that Stalin coveted for the Russian war effort.
The alliance with the Nazis was an alliance of convenience, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The Finnish history with Russia went back generations and things didn’t get much better when Finland got it’s independence when czarist Russia collapsed in 1917. The few years before the Russian Soviets started looking at Finland again, the country was involved in a civil war. These guys just couldn’t catch a break.
At any rate, the castle. In the late ‘90s the castle was reconstructed and opened to the public. For most of the life of the castle (it was first built in the late 14th century), it was the seat of the government occupied by assorted kings and governors. It was upgraded and/or rebuilt every time the occupiers changed. The reconstruction brought the castle back to the condition of the last occupiers who left in the 1800’s when the castle was turned into a prison.
We but our tickets and start the tour of the castle. It’s a huge place and at critical points there are docents or guides dressed in period garb who offer information and answer questions. We wander through the rooms reading posted info and taking pictures.
The reconstruction of the castle is wonderful but the most amazing part of the visit is how much information they have of the history of the castle all the way back to its very first construction. We’ve seen a lot of castles and usually there gaps in the recorded history of the castle, usually filled in by educated guesses and speculation.
The entire tour takes about three hours and we finally leave. The weather is still beautiful and still chilly. We start the walk back and stop for lunch at a nice restaurant near the ferry port. On the way out of the restaurant notices a meringue dessert on a display case near the cashier. We get one of the meringues and start the walk back.
We have one more stop, a funicular the goes up a small hill to the Kakola Prison which, coincidentally was built by the prisoners confined in the Turku Castle who were transferred to the prison when they completed building it. It’s a short ride (I have no idea why they even bothered to build it on this little hill) and we walk back down to the riverside walk.
While we’re walking back I think about whit a nice small city this is. Once this capital of Finland before the capital was re-located to Helsinki during the period of Czarist annexation, Turku has the vibe of a university town. It’s got a population of just under 200,000 that appears to be mostly white. Not a lot of diversity here that we can see.
But there’s no hustle or bustle. Everyone is friendly and polite. The cars wait patiently at intersections. Pedestrians have right of way at street crosssings and the cars seem to stop gladly when a pedestrian enters a crosswalk. Quiet, peaceful, orderly, clean, almost boring.
We walk along the river until we get to a street that we think our hotel is. We’re wrong but as we walk up the street we see groups of you people gathered around the doorways of bars. They are all wearing brightly colored pants with patches sewn all over them. Different groups of 3 or 4 or 5 have pants of the same color, maybe banana yellow, next to another group that have pants colored forest green, next to another group with hot pink or florescent blue or bright red pants, all with patches sewn on.
I can’t stand it any longer and I stop a couple of young men who have dark blue pants outside a bar. I ask them what is going on. They are engineering students and this is a student party day. These groups are all small affiliations and they are here for a one day party, kind of 1 day spring break.
The city may be quiet and reserved but the groups of students aren’t and from the looks of the drinking that’s doing on at 3:30 in the afternoon, it’s going to be a long night. They may be noisy but they certainly having a good time and, other than being noisy, they aren’t causing any trouble.
We finally get to the hotel and back to the room. We’re pretty well worn out by the day’s walking. We take a break for a couple of hours, check email and then head down for dinner in the hotel restaurant.
We’ve had a great day but we have a long drive tomorrow with an early wake up. Got to call it a night.
Obi-wan