Summer Laughter in the Courtyards

The city is melting in this unbearable heat wave. Brains closing down due to overexposure to plus thirty degrees. There are two boys about the same age as mine outside my window playing in two buckets of water. The buckets are so small they can barely fit their skinny behinds in them. Most of the time they run around naked in the garden throwing water at each other. Yesterday I witnessed a toddler bathing in one of the fountains in Valdštejnská zahrada, and a herd of dogs fetching sticks in the Devil’s Stream. Seeking refuge in the cool parks seems now the only way to survive.

In my walks in Prague I find myself wondering about rules and freedom. No toddlers are allowed to bathe in fountains in Finland. Neither are dogs allowed to run unleashed outside dog parks. In my travels I’ve grown to realize that our small nordic nation has quite a few rules, both written as well as unwritten ones. However, when I tried to enter a university building today I was asked to leave with the unfriendly ‘Ne turisti!’ Maybe I have just been lucky to find my way into campus areas around the world thus far, or maybe there is a growing problem of people with cameras entering the university buildings of Prague, in any case I was disappointed.

Last night when I was sitting in a café, listening to music joyously floating down from the open windows of the music academy, and enjoying the cool breeze coming up Nerudóva, I felt like I was taken back in time. It must have been the blue moment and the sound of the footsteps on the cobblestones that played a trick on me. There were two kids running past me back and forth, up the hill and down the hill, playing catch. And then gas lamps crackling at a precise moment. Bats circling around the towers. Summer laughter in the courtyards.

Found in Translation

I got pleasantly lost today in the snaking streets of Prague. I didn’t mind it though, I just picked up my Kundera and went along with the pull of the Czech mindset with another chapter of Laughter and Forgetting. I arrived in Prague yesterday, and so far I’ve learned that the familiar “dobry den” (good day) will get friendly service here. I suppose the phrase has its origins in Russian but it seems to work in many other Slavic countries as well.

During our trip to Malta my kids tried to compile a list of funny geographical names. Well, those that are funny to us Finns. Naturally the idea for that came from the word Malta, which in Finnish means ‘hold your horses’ and Valletta, which is pronounced in the same way as ‘it’s a lie’ in Finnish. It didn’t take them long to find Lima on the world map, which in Finnish means ‘mucus’. I will not go into detail of what they managed to put together with all this material (and the rest of it, which I have mercifully managed to forget by now), but obviously the realization of how differently languages work was a fun one for the unexperienced traveler.

I, on the other hand, am mesmerized by the fact that the first thing I stumbled upon in Prague was the Maltese Square. I suppose I need an update on my history knowledge. Here, by the flooding river Vltava I remember that Finns call Czech the language without vowels. And I know foreigners struggle with too many vowels in the Finnish language. Otherwise I find the sound of Czech very familiar to the Finnish ear. By the way, ‘valtava’ means ‘huge’ in Finnish and ‘kampa’ – a park by Vltava river – is ‘a comb’ in Finnish. I was looking forward to spending some time in the Kampa Museum which is a modern art gallery showing local work by the river Vltava, but it is closed due to damages caused by the floods. I have been admiring the beautiful building from the numerous bridges crossing the river and hoping they will get enough funds to restore the museum.

It is easy to get exhausted in Prague. There is an endless stream of people crossing the river first this way and then that way. TripAdvisor has 1,753 restaurants listed for Prague. Approximately 1.7 million tourists visit Bohemia every year. Amazingly though you cannot get by with English in the local food stores, even though that is the most often heard language on the Charles Bridge. A friend told me just to leave out all the vowels of the Finnish words and it will pass as Czech. He was joking of course, but it is true that sometimes language barriers exist in our minds only. I’m convinced we all could manage just like my globetrotter grandmother who doesn’t speak any foreign languages. What she lacks in vocabulary, she fills in with smiles.

Yellow Island

I asked my son to describe the island when we were in Malta and he said “it’s so yellow”. First I thought it was yellow because of the sunlight, but then I realized it was because of the limestone, and I had to concur. Malta is yellow. You know, the same way as pyramids and the desert. And there are in fact some of the world’s oldest buildings in Malta, built out of limestone, like pyramids are as well.

I became fascinated by limestone. It might have been partly because I got some of it in my elbow when I slipped on a wet cliff while taking photos of the moonlit bay. But probably also because it is so different from the rocks we have at home. Or maybe it just reminded me of my stay in Egypt when my son was just a baby. However, in one magical night watching the sun set and collecting sea shells by the sea we heard how ancient sea life turns into limestone bedrock which the locals have used for thousands of years to build their homes.

Malta doesn’t have many trees. I talked to a local man who said draught was one of the biggest problems for Maltese people. Whenever it rains in Malta, the water just disappears through the limestone bedrock and they have to make drinking water out of the salty sea water. Standing in the highest point of the island, watching the gorgeous blue sea with dozens of hues of blue on both sides and thinking that there is a severe scarcity of water on the island might well seem absurd to some, at least to my small boys.

Learning a few words in the local language is always a dear hobby of ours when we travel. It is just pure joy to see how it melts everyone’s hearts when you show that you have taken an interest in their language and culture. We found a fantastic restaurant by that little eastern bay where we stayed and it turned out that it was a family owned business, with cousins and sisters and sons and daughters pitching in. Since it wasn’t the tourist season yet, there were in fact no other proper restaurants open at all so we ended up dining there on several occasions. In addition to the absolutely delicious meal that we had there every time we visited, our sons soon got used to their favorite dessert which was a new phrase in Malti every evening. Grazzi hafna, beautiful yellow island.

Looking Elsewhere

It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to write. I’m grateful for the readers who keep coming back despite my long absences. I can’t remember when I last had such a busy time. Now that I’ve rested for a week I feel that things are gradually getting back to normal. Just a week ago I felt like I hadn’t got a good night’s sleep in four months, and I probably hadn’t. I’m one of those people who need a lot of sleep, and most of the time that is just impossible to get.

In a way I do enjoy being busy, especially when I feel that it is for something important and something that I’m good at. This spring all my students graduated, and I couldn’t imagine a better reason to stay busy as to ensure that they all had a chance to get the best diploma they deserve. Also since I have been so active in using social media in teaching, I have been asked to give courses to other teachers and that takes up a lot of my time, although again it is something that I really enjoy doing. For me, that is just a great opportunity to show people all the great projects that my students do online. That is, after all, the point of doing them online – being able to show the world what we do, and students get motivated in doing them when there are more people than just me who see their work.

I was also contacted about taking part in a photo exhibition. A gallery owner had found my photos in Flickr and asked me to join the group show. The opening was a couple of weeks ago in an old mill by the river Mustijoki. It was a beautiful occasion and a fantastic opportunity for me. I hope to show you photos of the mill one day, the opening night I wanted to concentrate on enjoying the atmosphere, talking to some good friends and getting to know new people. I am most grateful for Lee Tracy whose World Rivers Project initially inspired me to photograph Mustijoki. There will most probably be a book about the exhibition photos, I will let you know if it happens.

During the last six months I have traveled to four different countries, three of which had new cultures for me. You can find photos from my trips in Flickr. For me, traveling at best means getting into the culture of the target country as much as I possibly can and I have in fact been able to do that in all my travels this spring. I will always remain grateful for the wonderful people who have let me into their homes and their lives wherever I have traveled. I will be gone again next week but I hope to keep writing throughout the summer and catching up with others’ work.

I see that the previous post I wrote was in March and about the last days of winter. It was a cold spring, -30 celsius during nights and lots of snow. Now three months later we have +30 degrees and brand new curtains of green everywhere you turn to look. Due to the busy spring, it almost feels like the change took place over night. But of course it didn’t. I have just been looking elsewhere.

Last Days of Winter

It was close to -30 degrees Celsius last night. All nights have been extremely cold recently. When the sun comes up, it warms the air so much that the temperature rises almost to zero. It is such a pleasure to enjoy the cold sparkling nights as well as the warm and sunny days.

It’s been such a long winter. Everything has been hidden under the snow since November. Twigs, cones, rocks and grass. Beetles, spiders, ants and maggots. It is easy to forget what it is like to see them go about their business in between the fallen leaves and pine needles on the pathway. It is easy to forget what the warm summer forest smells like in the dry period, and what it smells like after the rain. Looking at the bare tree branches it is amazing to think that they are still alive, and will very soon be making brand new leaves that will weave green curtains all around, providing shelter and privacy. It is easy to forget what is sounds like when there’s wind in the aspen leaves.

The light in March makes a promise of the approaching spring. It is such a powerful promise that waiting isn’t easy. Every new snowfall feels like a betrayal, falling temperatures like torment. And it’s just about the expectations, the promises, the inevitable change. Winter, when it arrives again next November, will be a long missed friend.

Spring Blanket

Southern Finland has about 50-75 cm of snow now. There is a crust half way down, from the warmer period this week, and then some fresh feather-like fluff on top. Quite nice for snow shoeing. It is amazing how bright it is now all of a sudden. Taking  photos on spring snow is a challenge. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if the photo is a color photo or a monochrome one, there is so little color out there during the day. Just white and black. And a dash of blue where there is a shadow on the snow. Even the sky is white most days.

There was a blizzard last night and there were absolutely no tracks or prints anywhere in the forest today. Untouched snow is almost like the sea. Glimmering in the sun. Carrying shadows on its surf.

This is the time that most Finns love. Time to enjoy both sun and the snow. The time that comes after the long darkness. The reward for waiting so patiently.

Those Delicious Words

“Never say more than is necessary” is a good advice in most situations. With the students at school or my kids at home, especially when giving instructions, this certainly is the truth. However, it does not necessarily apply to blogging or storytelling. Sometimes it is fun just to enjoy words and phrases without the need to accomplish or finish something.

There is one novel that I started almost ten years ago called Höfundur Íslands (The Author of Iceland, 2001) by the Icelandic writer Hallgrímur Helgason that I like to nibble on every now and then, a sentence here and another one there. For me it does not mean that the book is so bad that I can’t finish it, quite the contrary. I enjoy it so much that I don’t want to finish it. And maybe Hallgrímur Helgason did not write that book for binge reading, maybe it was meant to be nibbled on.

I must admit that I do binge reading as well. There are books that need to be finished off quickly, to the extent that sometimes I feel guilty afterwards for skipping sentences in order to race to the end as quickly as possible. That happened to me with a young Finnish author called Riikka Pulkkinen. She is one of the most distinguished contemporary writers in Finland. If you haven’t read any of her novels yet, I think you should. With Riikka’s Book of Strangers, however, I didn’t race to the end in order to find out what happened. Instead I gobbled up her words and phrases because they were so delicious that I couldn’t stop.

When looking for scarce expression, it is most often present in poetry. My favorite book of poems is Edith Södergran‘s Samlade dikter (Collected Poems). When a writer wisely and delicately picks his or her words, there is room left for imagination and interpretation. It is a common advice for writers to condense, wrap up, say it shorter. Just as you need to be a very good writer to be able to pull off scarcity in expression, the same is true about diverging. And for a reader like me, maybe there is a time and place for enjoying both. Maybe you nibble when you are not that hungry and devour when you’re starving.

(Quote in the beginning by Richard Brinsley Sheridan)