Travelogue, Day 8: Naantali (mostly) and Turku (not-so-much)

Oh Lord… Long, thick ropes of water, pulled from the sky, first a few at a time, and then so many so hard I can barely believe we’ve just had a week of endless sunshine (except between the hours of about 10 and 4, and then not even that convincingly gone except at midnight).

We’ve waited a week for this – we live in Denver, where there are generally more than 300 days of sunshine a year, and we miss the rain. We’ve been so stoked for “crappy” northern European rainy weather that Finland had been something of a disappointment so far – the newspaper we read on the plane was complaining about Helsinki’s lousy cool and rainy weather this year, and coming from our brick oven of a house in a dry climate during a basically rainless summer, it sounded heavenly.

But nooooo… none of that for us. We got sun, sun, and more sun. The first full day we were here, I got a worse sunburn than I’ve ever gotten in Denver, and there’s a mile more atmosphere here to protect me. I was totally cherry red. I had to go buy some serious sunscreen for freakin’ Finland.

And now… on our last day in Finland… there’s this delicious full-throttle downpour. I can see it from my window. I can smell it through the screen. It is calling my name, taunting me.

And why am I watching from my window, you might ask? Why am I not outside, revelling in the glory of this mini-storm?

I’ll give you a hint: it has two syllables, starts with a T, is napping, just got back from a long day at Moominworld, and rhymes with Roarsten. (RARRRR)

Little guy is napping. And neither rain nor hail nor sleet nor snow will interrupt a Torsten nap.

I’ll bet my husband is outside right now dancing in it, if his conference is over. And preparing to gloat.

I should probably be napping myself. Today, I packed Mr. T and I up and headed out to Moominworld in Naantali for a fun-filled adventure in a foreign theme park for little kids involving characters I’d never heard of before. It looked interesting, it was only 16km away, and it had good reviews, so I figured… eh, what the Hell.

We caught the city bus out there instead of the special “Moominbus” which stops at all the local hotels – the Moomins are a huge deal to the Finns, so I can only guess that the hotels are packed with Finnish (or Swedish – more on that later) kids from other places dying to see their favorite cartoon world brought to reality. We could have taken a boat as well, but that was two hours and required reservations, so seriously, a 16km ride?

City. Bus. Thank you very much.

Now, first of all, we get on this bus at the baby carriage door, and the driver (who sort of looked like an evil thug) keeps staring at me. I think… hrm, maybe I’m supposed to pay since this goes to another town. So I wait and wait and wait to pay, and then something happens with some Japanese tourists and he starts driving, and I figure eh… whatever, and take Torsten back to sit down. I figured he’d yell at me if I were supposed to pay.

Well, about halfway through the trip, the other baby carriage that was on the bus gets off, and he starts babbling at what might have been me, but I couldn’t understand him and my back was to him getting Torsten resettled, so I didn’t know. Bad American tourist, I know, and I would have worried much more about it pre-baby, but seriously, I can only worry so much. He hadn’t as much as gestured to me yet.

So finally we get off in Naantali, and it’s then that he starts babbling at either me or the Japanese tourists, I have no idea which (and neither do they, none of us speaking Finnish), so I think, ok, if he’s trying to get me to pay, that’s fine, I’ll let him know I can’t understand and we can try to sort things out. I have absolutely no problem with paying if it’s required, I just didn’t know if this bus was different from other local buses in Turku, since it seems to run just like every other Turku bus. N.B. I had tried to sort this out earlier in the day, but couldn’t for the life of me find the bus office – it’s well-hidden – and so I figured T and I would sort it out on the bus. Bah.

So I tell him I can’t understand, and rather than have to try to explain to the tourist – gestures would have been easy enough – he just waved me away.

I felt bad, but… he wasn’t willing to try. I don’t in any sense ever expect that people in a foreign country speak my language or any other language I speak – that’s an arrogance I don’t buy into at all. But normally, one can get by with gestures, pictures, a few “international” words, and a cheesy grin. I feel bad when I don’t speak the local language, but I didn’t even have time to learn a few phrases in Finnish before we left, and there’s no chance of me understanding it, for the most part, with no longer exposure.

When I came back, of course, I caught the driver (a different one – friendly and not thug-like) on his lunch break and asked him how much for me and the baby – he clearly understood the question, but couldn’t answer, and so through some gestures, we confirmed that it was €4,80, I paid, and we were on our way. No Finnish, no English, no Swedish, no problem.

Anyway. Back to Moominworld (Muuminmaailma, which on my first day here I thought had something to do with a mailman (which seemed very, very strange to me, given that English and Finnish have absolutely nothing in common) until I realized what Muumi referred to). Moominworld is to Finns what I imagine a Smurf theme park, complete with Smurf theater productions, a forest filled with Gargamel and Azrael and the Smurf Village and Smurfs wandering around, Smurf stories etc., would be to the Belgians (As an aside, Peyo was Belgian, and my first overseas flight with the now bankrupt Sabena – the former Belgian national airline – was on a plane with a Smurf on it, as I recall). The thing is, though, if I’d gone to a Smurf theme park, I’d totally be into it, because Americans my age (and people from lots of other countries) totally know their Smurfs.

(Though, as an aside, I was puzzled to discover while au pairing in Holland that there’s an episode where Smurfs – if I remember this correctly – bite each other on the ass and pass on this disease that makes them turn purple and make some funny noise. I somehow don’t think that one was shown in Victorian America, presuming what I just said is not entirely apocryphal…)

Anyway, so this was not a Smurf theme park. Because I totally know that the Smurfs were created by Gargamel for some nefarious purpose – making gold or something, I think – and that they are led by Papa Smurf on adventures and that Smurfette is a dumb blonde. (No offense to blondes – I know a lot of smart blondes, and some idiotic brunettes and redheads, so it’s nothing personal. Smurfette is a dumb blonde.) I know they live in little mushroom huts, and that there’s a particular piano piece that they play every time there’s a danger scene/chase by a composer I never remember.

I do not, however, know where the Hell Moomins came from. Well, ok, there was this person named Tove Jannsen or something, who created these allegedly much-beloved guys, but I don’t know their background story. They sort of look like snow-white hippos bred with horses, and there is a Moominpappa, a Moominmamma, and Moomintroll, and some other assorted characters (Joxter or something is one of them, a whimsical guy in a hat who appears to live in a tent in the forest). Someday I will find out what the deal is – someday when I have internet access – but that day is not today.

So imagine, if you will, that you’d never heard of the Smurfs, and you were dropped in Smurf World (which probably does exist, and if it does, tell me, because I’ll swing by while I’m in Belgium, maybe, if I get sick of Belgian beer). You don’t know the story, and none of the plays are in your language (though there is some stuff in English to be read), and your child is really too small to enjoy the general storybook quality of the place, so it’s like… huh. I’ll bet this is really cool if you’re Belgian or have a three-year-old, but I am not and I don’t, so, eh, huh. Or, in the case of the Moomins, Finnish or Swedish. Or a Finn who speaks Swedish. You get my drift.

It could have been a letdown, and it sort of was, but… actually, it was a worthwhile trip. Naantali is on the sea, and Moominworld is on an island that you walk across a bridge to which is covered in forest. Torsten really enjoyed seeing the sea and boats, and Little Guy loves trees. He really liked the music and plays, even though they were in Finnish (and the one I intended to see in Swedish was not, I realized, when the guy used the word “Vesi” for water instead of “Vatten”, which scares the crap out of me, because I don’t speak Swedish either), and he loved seeing the little kids, and for some reason, he really really liked the Moomins. He giggled and squealed at them, and he kissed and bit and tugged on his new plush Moomin (it’s a theme park – you know what its purpose is before you go there) all the way home on the bus. He is sleeping with it now.

He loves his Moomin.

His Moomin is better than Mama.

He wakes up, I hand him the Moomin, and he goes back to sleep.

It’s cute, but frightening. The Finns have apparently invented a cross-linguistic baby-control device that looks like an albino hippo horse. (Btw, I have no idea which Moomin it is – I got one with no distinguishing accessories that he could eat/choke on.) I’m pretty sure there’s some nefarious purpose involved, like keeping the Swedes and the Russians from ever dreaming about trying to invade again, or possibly stopping Monty Python from singing about them, but in any event, Torsten likes `em.

Anyway, what’s neat is that the woods on the island are exactly the sort of woods you imagine Hansel and Gretel being lost in, or the Smurfs living in, or whatever, and they aren’t planned like most scenery at U.S. theme parks. It’s the woods that were on the island to begin with, I’m sure, and they’re full of moss-covered rocks and the usual stuff. Great fairy tale setting, and you can totally see where trolls and other fairy tale characters came from. They seem to fit. In the park, there are two story trails (and some other stuff for bigger kids that I didn’t bother with because I had a baby in a stroller who could not be put in the Björn for obvious reasons) which have witches in huts and mazes and waterfalls and lighthouses over the actual sea and all sorts of things which are part of a story, and all of it is done along a wooden-planked walkway through the woods which is also fit for strollers if you’re fit enough to push up and down hills.

For Torsten and I, for the most part, it was a really nice nature walk with occasional views of the sea and a few things to look at that he could appreciate. There was even a swimming beach, though I didn’t take T into the water because I think Christian and I want to take Torsten into the sea together, and I didn’t want to do it alone today (Torsten was a bit cranky, so it could have been tough with all our crap, etc.). We did sit and watch the sea, though, and he was totally into it – no surprise there – and we got a nice walk through the woods out of it.

But really, for Torsten, it was about seeing the Moomins walking around and most especially the shows. He thought the shows were great. Apparently he understood something I didn’t, because I was like uh? Oh, something about a water mill, and a weird grey character who was more than vaguely phallic-looking who had a name similar to a professor I once had, which kept throwing me off. Well, ok, I learned that Moominpappa came from an orphanage and went off on adventures and apparently made the lady who ran the orphanage mad, but I didn’t get the rest, or what it had to do with a water mill. Sorry, Finns. Torsten gets it, and that’s what counts, no?

Moominworld, if you’re in Turku, would be awesome if you had a three or four year old, and there’s apparently an adventure island for older kids, so I’m totally not knocking the Moomins, though that Mayor McPhallus character still creeps me out – but if you have a pre-verbal baby and you’re alone, unless the nature is worth it for you and your kid likes watching shows (the only TV our kid ever sees is Olbermann – well, that and Bernd das Brot sketches on YouTube – and the occasional Doctor Who episode when being fed to sleep – so dancing and singing characters are totally new to him), I’d skip it, really.

We enjoyed it, and given that we spent so many days in Turku, it was a good thing to do, but I still wish I’d seen the cathedral and the archeological museum. But it felt good to do something that was specifically for Torsten to enjoy, even if it’s bloody expensive if you don’t earn your money in euros…

So anyway, that was our last day in Turku, and in Finland as a whole. Sorry, Karen, but I find I take far fewer pictures of sights when I’m toting the little guy around, so when I finally get them posted, you may be disappointed. But Torsten and I have definitely enjoyed, as Rick Steves always recommends, living as temporary locals (to some extent), and I find I quite like Finland in general.

Tomorrow we board the all-day ferry from Turku to Stockholm, where we’ll stay with Christian’s cousins for a few days. I’ve never met them, but I hear they’re excited to meet Torsten, and I’m always happy when there’s more family for him to meet. He’s such a loveable baby

And now there’s nothing left of my storm but the drip drip drip of the trees in the forest outside the window. Moomintorsten is still asleep, and it will be time for his Papa to return soon, so I think that’s it for today. Tomorrow, we leave at something like 5:30 am to get on a series of buses down to the harbor, so it’s gonna be a looooong day…