Helsinki, Finland

This is one of the two non-holiday cards for today. Although... it's from a meet-up that Addis from Puerto Rico attended when she was on holiday in Finland, so technically this could be a holiday card as well...?! :D I received this from Sini, though, she keeps spoiling me with wonderful postcards, often from her travels.

I remember seeing a picture of this postcard on Instagram and thinking how awesome it is, wishing I would receive one as well but very much doubting the possibility. I was so pleased to be wrong! :) I just really, really like the picture. It reminds me of my childhood - I used to go to places like this wih my mum to wash carpets. I can't remember if they were run by the local council, they very well could have been and I think they still exist. I'm not sure how environmentally friendly they are, though, when all the washing liquids etc end up in the lake/sea. The picture used on this card was taken in the 1950's.

Helsinki, Finland

A lovely snowy view from Finland I received last year. I love the atmosphere here, it seems magical somehow.. and cozy at the same time.

The picture is from the Kruununhaka neighbourhood in southern Helsinki. It's one of the more affluent, fancy areas of Helsinki. According to Wikipedia, the area is known for its vintage shops??!

I LOVE the stamp! It was kind of why this swap got arranged in the first place... :D

Hakaniementori, Helsinki, Finland

Ahhhh, Helsinki! I was there last month and walked past this place as well as my sister lives only a short walk away. It's such a nice area and I love the marketplace and the market hall. I was there in November last year as well and had yummy lentil soup in the soup kitchen in the market hall. :) I highly recommend 'Soppakeittiö'. :)

Hakaniemi is an unofficial district of Helsinki, the Finnish capital. It covers most of the neighbourhood of Siltasaari. It is considered a part of the Helsinki city center. Historically, it was often associated with the working class and worker's associations. However, the cost of living has risen considerably in recent years and is now on par with the rest of the downtown area of Helsinki. The best-known features of Hakaniemi include a large and lively marketplace, Oriental food stores with a good variety of Asian imported products the headquarters of several trade unions, the headquarters of the Social Democratic Party of Finland and the Left Alliance Party and the Helsinki Hilton hotel. Famous buildings include the Ympyrätalo building (architects Heikki and Kaija Sirén, 1968) and the Hakaniemi Market Hall (architect Karl Hård af Segerstad, 1914).

Hakaniemi square has been built on reclaimed land. It has been site of farmers' market since 1897.

Helsinki, Finland

I'm trying to go through the pile of postcards I'm hoping to post in this blog and my plan is going pretty well - the pile has gone down quite considerably. I should really take a photo... A lot of the cards are now ones I've received this year, such as this one from last month that mum and dad sent me from their holiday.

I have a bit of a soft spot for these trams in Helsinki. I think they are lovely and I vastly prefer them to buses, they are so much nicer. I have no idea yet whether I'll be going to Finland at some point this year. I hope I'll get to go, fingers crossed! My sister has just moved in Helsinki and I'd love to see her new flat as well.

This picture is from 1974 and well, the adverts on the trams do look a bit old. ;)

Helsinki Cathedral, Helsinki, Finland

This is a slightly older card, received about four years ago from dear Marja in Finland. I really like all the postcards I've seen from this particular series, and I just love the design of this card for some reason. Haha, and I wanted to post something Finland-related as I'll be going there in a month. I'll be staying for a week there, visiting family. I'm really looking forward to it, seeing my family again and all the familiar places as well. Hopefully it'll still be nice and warm as well, it seems like this summer has been pretty good over there so far. ...better than here in England at least, although the past few days have been really hot here and I'm boiling at the moment. Still, I much prefer this to the usual cold, miserable weather. :P

Helsinki Cathedral (Finnish: Helsingin tuomiokirkko, Suurkirkko) is the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran cathedral of the Diocese of Helsinki, located in the neighbourhood of Kruununhaka in the centre of Helsinki, Finland. The church was originally built from 1830-1852 as a tribute to the Grand Duke of Finland, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. It was also known as St Nicholas' Church until the independence of Finland in 1917.

 A distinctive landmark in the Helsinki cityscape, with its tall, green dome surrounded by four smaller domes, the building is in the neoclassical style. It was designed by Carl Ludvig Engel as the climax of his Senate Square layout: it is surrounded by other, smaller buildings designed by him. The church's plan is a Greek cross (a square centre and four equilateral arms), symmetrical in each of the four cardinal directions, with each arm's façade featuring a colonnade and pediment. Engel originally intended to place a further row of columns on the western end to mark the main entrance opposite the eastern altar, but this was never built.

Today, the cathedral is one of Helsinki's most popular tourist attractions. More than 350,000 people visit the church each year, some to attend religious events, but mostly as tourists. The church is in regular use for services of worship and special events such as weddings.

Helsinki, Finland

I've only just realised that I've already had this blog for over a year! I'm quite impressed as when I started this blog I wasn't sure whether I'd manage to keep up with this or whether this would be interesting enough to keep updating. Turns out it has been well worth it. :)

I'm a little nervous at the moment because of the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano. I'm supposed to fly to Finland for a week with Matt next Sunday, I really hope the ash cloud will have settled by then. I don't want to miss this opportunity, I'm really looking forward to seeing my family again. Hopefully everything will be fine. *fingers crossed* Anyway, in anticipation of this little trip I thought I'd post a Finnish card here. I received this from one of my favourite postcrossers, Essi, not long ago and *really* like it. I find this to be a very typical image of Helsinki.



Hopefully I'll get to ride these lovely green trams again in Helsinki. :) I much prefer them to buses, they have so much more character and the atmosphere is great. My sister doesn't live right in the centre of Helsinki anymore, but these trams go near to where she lives now so I should get to ride these. Yay! Trams were first introduced in Helsinki in 1891 and were initially horse-drawn.



The awesome mailbox stamp is from a set of 5 stamps issued earlier this year, showing - obviously - mailboxes. The smaller stamp showing a birch leaf is a definitive, also issued earlier this year.

Baltic Sea

A slightly different map card I received in a swap from Finland...



The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and the Little Belt. The Kattegat continues through Skagerrak into the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The Baltic Sea is connected by man-made waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea Canal, and to the North Sea via the Kiel Canal. The Baltic Sea might be considered to be bordered on its northern edge by the Gulf of Bothnia, on its northeastern edge by the Gulf of Finland, and on its eastern edge by the Gulf of Riga. However, these various gulfs can be considered to be simply offshoots of the Baltic Sea, and therefore parts of it.



The small stamps are from a set of 6 definitives issued in 2008, with the theme 'water & landscape views'. The bigger stamp is from 2008 as well and shows a snowflake. The stamp is actually transparent, although you can't really see that here.

Back home!

I've been back home for a few days now. I had a fantastic holiday (apart from falling ill near to the end, and I still have an annoying cough :() and wouldn't have minded staying a bit longer. It was so good to see family and friends again, see familiar places, eat good food and just relax. I took tons of photos, too, have yet to upload a selection to my flickr.

I bought lots of postcards, too. The selection in Finland is AMAZING, no wonder postcrossing is so popular over there when it's so easy to get hold of nice postcards. The downside is, postcards are really expensive over there! One euro was a standard price, and apart from some discount buys at Kirjatori shops, the cheapest viewcards were around 50 cents. *shakes head*



I totally fell in love with this one postcard series I found in Helsinki. The cards are all panoramic I think, and show nice little details of Helsinki. They're a bit different from the usual touristic cards, which is probably why I like them so much.

The card above is from this series. On the left it shows the Helsinki market square (Kauppatori) at the end of Esplanadi, and on the right you can see a courtyard in Vallila (a suburb near the centre of Helsinki). I didn't go to Kauppatori this time, I much prefer the Hakaniemi market place. It feels more down to earth somehow and there are less tourists there. That, and the Hakaniemi Market Hall is amazing. Lots of cute little shops selling all kinds of goodies, including yummy foods and postcards. I even found a shop selling Nouvelles Images postcards there! The day before I left back to England I went to eat lunch there with mum and dad in this lovely little place called Soppakeittiö ('Soup Kitchen'). They only sell different soups, but it's all SO good, and the portions are very generous. I had a bowl of jerusalem artichoke and goats cheese soup, which was heavenly.

Hopefully next time I'll go back a bit sooner than in a year and a half... Me and Matt have been talking of going some time early next year/spring. We'll see...

The National Library of Finland

Moving on... No more beaches for today. :P I love spending time in libraries and I have to say that generally speaking, Finnish libraries seem a lot better than English ones. They tend to be bigger and maintained better, and most of the services are free. Borrowing books is still free in England (or at least in Wolverhampton and Dudley it is) but you have to pay if you want to borrow cds, dvds or other things like that, which tends to be free in Finland. Well, at least the selection of books in English is better here. ;)



I received this gorgeous postcard from the Finnish Summer RR on the postcrossing forum. It's been such a fun RR so far and I've received a lot of great cards.

The National Library of Finland (Finnish: Kansalliskirjasto, Swedish: Nationalbibliotek) is the foremost research library in Finland. Organizatorily, the library is part of the University of Helsinki. Until 1 August 2006, it was known as the Library of the University of Helsinki.

In addition to being the most important of the libraries of the University of Helsinki, the National Library is responsible for storing the Finnish cultural heritage. By Finnish law, the National Library is entitled to receive five copies of all matter printed in Finland. These copies are then distributed by the Library to its own national collection and to reserve collections of four other university libraries. In addition, the National Library has the right to store in to its collection any material published on the Internet.

Any person domiciled in Finland may register as a user of the National Library, and after this, borrow library material for home use. The publications in the national collection, however, are not loaned outside the library. The library contains one of the most comprehensive collections of books published in the Russian Empire of any library in the world.

The National Library is located in a library complex in the heart of Helsinki, right by Senaatintori square. The oldest part of the complex, designed by Carl Ludvig Engel, dates back to 1844. The newer extension Rotunda dates to 1903. The bulk of the collection is, nonetheless, stored in Kirjaluola (Finnish for Bookcave), a 57,600-cubic-metre underground bunker drilled into solid rock, 18 metres below the library.