Alexey Smirnov's blog

This Sunday I went to a car show that was taking place in the ice hall near Olympic stadium. I was at a car show in NYC a few years ago. The purpose of that show was to demonstrate that year’s models and attract the customers. The purpose of this show was quite different. People were demonstrating their skills in tuning the cars. Many people have decorated the interior and exterior of the cars, for example with nice pictures.

Also, classic sports cars were present, for example Porshe 911. There were a few very old cars made in 1920s. There was even one dragster. Overall, there were over a 100 of cars, I was really impressed. Most of the cars were from Helsinki area including Vanta and Espoo, but there were a few from Tampere as well.

This Saturday I saw camels in the center of Helsinki. They were being fed near a store that sold carpets. I wonder if it was possible to order a carpet made of this particular animal.

Click on an image to see a larger version.

Together with my German friends Thomas and Judith, I have attended an ice-hockey game between Blues and HPK. The score was like that in soccer, Blues lost 1-2. But overall the game was quite fun to watch because of sincere attempts of both teams to score more.

HPK, a team from Hameenlinna, a town with old castle were playing quite aggressively. At one point 3 players out of 5 got penalties. This happens very rarely in ice-hockey. The rules are such that the referees only deleted 2 players and the 3rd penalty was delayed. As the result, Blues were playing 5 players against 3 during lots of time. But they did not manage to score. Their inability encouraged HPK for even more aggressive play. During the game, lots of penalties have been assigned. Taking advantage of this is what Blues need to take a look at.

HPK was not much better in scoring. Quite often they got puck to the goalkeeper but the final shot was missing. Overall, however the defenders were good as well as goalkeepers. Often, they played the role of a 6th field player because they went quite far out of the goal.

In fact, Blues scored in the end of the 3rd period but the referees discarded that goal.

I have attended an amazing concert in the Stone Church – Temppeliaukion kirkko. Later on I found out that it is considered one of the main tourist attractions in Helsinki. It is quite close to the railway station. However, I have never heard it earlier.

The orchestra was that of YLE Radio. The conductor was Russian-born Dmitri Slobodeniouk. There were three parts in the concert. In the first part the music of Finnish composers was performed. Jean Sibelius the Oceanides and Lotta Wennäkoski Soie.

After the break a Russian part has started. Autumnal Sketch and Symphony #1 of Prokofiev were performed.

After the second break the music of Tchaikovsky was performed. Piano Trio “In memory of a great artist” for the piano, a violin, and cello. The duration of the concert was amazing as usual – almost 3 hours. I enjoyed it so much!

I have participated in a half-marathon in Espoo. It is one of the largest running events in Finland, probably next only to the Helsinki City Run.

The course goes through the forest as well as partly through asphalt. This is why it is called a Rantamaraton, or a beach marathon in English. The course is quite tough, it goes uphill quite often. Compared to a course in Hameenlinna which also goes through forests this Espoo run is a lot more difficult because of this.

Before the race I got new shoes with a big discount. I decided to try them out immediately. Initially they felt very light and comfortable but after half of the distance I found out that the feet were badly damaged because of friction. Then I started feeling the muscle jams. I even thought of retiring from the race but I managed to get to the finish line after walking the last few kms. But my time was still fair – 2 hours and 3 minutes, the same as it was the first time I ran in Seinajoki a couple of years ago.

What I really liked was the atmosphere of the city. It looked as if every resident of Espoo went out to streets to cheer the runners. This gives additional strength to the runners.

Another difference was the number of people. In the forests the paths are quite narrow, two people are barely able to share it. When several thousand people are trying to get through a narrow path the intense competition is inevitable. This is why a marathon and half-marathon are started off at different times and partly go through different routes. However, in the end the routes merge and then the number of people increases even more. On that day a lot of people ran faster than I because I had to walk a lot, but I have overtaken a few tired marathoners as well. This constant competitiveness did not allow me to maintain a normal pace. I was confused as of whether I was going too slowly when I was overtaken or that I was going too fast when I was overtaking. Knowing your pace is very important.

Overall, tough course and nice people but I did not have too much luck this time. And I guess this is the last race this season. This year I have done quite of few of those including a marathon and I am very happy. I did not experience any major leg injury this year. Looking forward to having more successful attempts next year!

Thanks to my colleague Thomas Moenike I have got this bike from Green Bike, a company that rents bikes during the summer and then sells them in the fall.

It has 3 speeds and a lock for the rear wheel. On the front wheel there is a light that I am turning on when I bike in the darkness. So far, I have enjoyed using this bike because of its large wheels and speed selection.

As I am getting used to living in Helsinki there are a few things that I enjoy almost every weekend. After the summer break the swimming pools are opening now. I found out that there is a swimming hall that resembles Roman bath right in the center of the city, a 10-minute walk from home.

When I was a student I once went to a conference in Italy. I visited Rome and visited Baths of Caracalla. But the construction in Helsinki is also quite impressive. On the first floor there is a swimming pool and two electric saunas. On the second floor there are cabins as well as additional bigger saunas. When I went to the swimming hall on Saturday morning only the first floor was open. Still, I enjoyed swimming in such warm water. I guess they make it warmer because otherwise people will freeze as soon as they get out of sauna.

After swimming for an hour or so, I am proceeding to the market square. In Helsinki lots of markets take place during the weekends. Various things are sold there including mushrooms, pancakes, fish, tourist souvenirs, etc. I eat a couple of pancakes or lettu in Finnish. With tasty gem and tea it is a perfect refreshment after Roman bath.

Then I read books for a couple of hours. These days I am reading novels of Anton Chehov and Clay Shirky’s Here comes everybody which I am actually done with and going to write a review.

Then in the afternoon I am taking a ride to Suomenlinna, a stronghold located on four island not far from Helsinki. The reason I am going there is because it includes a boat cruise and costs so little, less than 4 Euros. Suomenlinna was built in 1700s. The amount of work that people did without any automation is amazing. They used huge stones to build 10-meter walls at the perimeter of the islands. I guess the total length of their constructions is nearly 1km.

On Sundays I am exploring other museums. During the summer I went to organ concerts. But now the concerts are over. I have accumulated a big collection of organ music. Nowdays I am converting it to MP3. The bigger idea is to build a library using the Simile Exhibit widget. But anyway, last Sunday I went to Seurasaari open-air museum. In fact, I visited a similar museum in Suzdal when I was on vacation in Russia. But here they have more houses. I found out that one building was originally in Russian Karelia.

I have rented a furnished apartment in Eira, in the center of Helsinki. It is only a 10-minute walk from the Market Square where most of the ferries are located. It is possible to go to Tallin and Stockholm from there. Many local cruises are available as well. Then there is the main cathedral of Helsinki located at Senate Square with a monument dedicated to Alexander II. Lots of fun going on in this area 24 hours a day.

I had to deal with the problem of moving stuff from Tampere. It always seems that you have only personal belongings but when you start moving the stuff it turns out that you have got a lot. I decided to rent a car. On Friday I went to Helsinki with trunk full of stuff. After arriving to Helsinki and getting the key from the apartment rain began. It lasted for over an hour and was very strong. I used a navigator to get to the city but when I was approaching the apartment the battery ran out of power. I had no map with me, I only knew the approximate location of the apartment. In addition, finding a parking place in the center of the city is always a challenge. Because of the rain I had to sit in the car for an hour and a half. But then I got to the apartment and unloaded the stuff.

On the next day I had to do the same and that was pretty much it with the personal belongings including sports equipment and some furniture. However, as the new apartment is furnished I had to drop the furniture I bought in Tampere in my old apartment. Here are the pictures of the apartment in Helsinki. It is half the size of the apartment in Tampere but I am quite happy. As I have noticed, I have never used one of the rooms in that 1-bedroom apartment.

After that rain the weather became very nice. It is very warm and humid. I remember that last year when my parents visited me we were in Helsinki at the same time of year but I was wearing a jacket. Because of such nice weather I went on several boat cruises. Here are the maps.

This cruise goes to the western part of the archipelago. It goes past the ship building factory where the giant cruise ferries are built. Also there is Finnish high-tech area Espoo, an equivalent of Silicon Valley.

The following is Starline cruise which says that it is the best cruise in Helsinki. It goes past the islands that vikings lived in almost a 1000 years ago. There is also an island that was once a property of a Russian businessman. There is yet another island where stones were created for the Helsinki fortress. There are residential areas on this route as well as a zoo on one of the islands.

One thing that I immediately noticed after arriving to Helsinki is the greater variety of food here. All kinds of restaurants. In the city center, they are almost on every house. For example, in the building next to my apartment there is KotiPizza.

I have attended several organ concerts here. They happen almost every day in different churches. I was surprised to find out that there is an organ in almost every church here, or even two organs. I have recorded quite a lot of organ music, thus I am thinking of building a library searchable online.

Before attending Jean Michel Jarre’s concert I have visited several museums in Helsinki.

I have been to Helsinki a few times previously. The main square on which Alexander’s Cathedral is situated is really impressive. There is a museum of history on the same square but it is not very big. Exploring Senate Square did not generate any other interesting results. Thus, I was surprised that Helsinki does not have any big museums at the central square. Where should a tourist go? Of course, there are interesting places in Helsinki I only needed to find those.

I needed a travel guide which would provide popular tourist routes as well as location of tourist attractions such as museums. Schmap is a web site that offers tourist guides as standalone applications as well as online web pages. The maps are integrated to the web site. It offers various kinds of information such as history of a city, tourist routes, lists of museums. Thus, it combines Wikipedia and Wikitravel. Also, the latter cannot show a map which I always found a limitation of wiki approach. Many popular Internet technologies are controversial in the sense that there are more powerful technologies but those are less popular. The extremely popular Wikipedia cannot combine media content. Despite being very useful anyway there is lots of room for improvement.

Here is Schmap’s guide of Helsinki. As I arrived in the afternoon, I only had three hours to attend the museums before the concert. I chose Sinebrychoff museum of foreign art and National Museum of Finland. These are must-visit places and I only wonder why I have not discovered them earlier after spending one year in Finland.

Sinebrychoff was a Russian-born beer maker. He had a gorgeous house. Once you enter it two things surprise you immediately. First, the furniture, the paintings, etc are accessible to the visitor. It is not like a museum, it is like a home as if Sinebryuhoff left 10 minutes ago. Another surprise is the candle smell. It was so common in older times but nowdays you will not find it anywhere. This creates the true atmosphere of the old times and you forget that you are in the 21st century for the duration of your visit. There is not much information on Sinebrychoff on the Internet except this web site. The art collection is absolutely fantastic. It features Italian paintings dated as long as 15th century, the pre-Leonardo times.

The other museum that I visited the National Museum of Finland is located closely to the train station. The building looks fancy like a Catholic church with a tall bell tower. The museum explains the history of Finland in very great detail. It starts with pre-historic times. It turns out that people were living here for very long time. It continues with the history of Catholic Church and how it influenced Finland through the middle ages. A special hall is dedicated to Russian Tzars, from Alexander I to Nicholas II. There is a portrait of each Tzar and a chair on which they sit during their visits to Finland. Of course, the museum describes Swedish kings as well. There are lots of paintings in this historical museum. Thus, it combines art and history or illustrates the latter with the former. This is an interesting approach to making history more engaging.

During my next trip to Helsinki I will attend other museums. So far, attending museums in Finland was a lot of fun in part because most of them deal with Russian history.

I have attended a concert of Jean Michel Jarre in Helsinki, in Hartwall Arena. I arrived to Helsinki in the afternoon and had fun attending several museums. I will describe that other part in the next post.

Hartwall Arena is a medium-sized stadium with a roof. Therefore, this concert was indeed private as typically Jarre performs in front of multi-million audiences using city landscape as the background image of his laser shows. I guess the music that he played was specially designed to match with such in-doors environment. To start with, I was impressed that the sound was of very good quality in every part of the stadium. That’s because of the backstage sound system that he uses. In classical music, lots of effort is spent on designing the shape of concert hall ceiling to improve sound quality.

The music itself revealed the great talent of Jarre the composer. To me it sounded a bit like Shostakovich. Jarre uses lots of traditional folk tunes and reinforces them with electrical instruments. A few of his instruments sound like church bells, others like French accordeon played in Paris. Obviously, Jarre has processed lots of music in his head and compiled it to present to the general public.

The audience in Helsinki was more ordinary than I expected. We have to admit that the concert hall was half-empty, especially the upper rows. I guess the classic music audience decided not to attend this pop music show. They were wrong. Jean Michel only tries to promote the music as art no matter which genre it is. His performances are above such division. Thus, the people who attended the concert looked like office workers, or even factory people. But during the concert they were raving. They loved the music that Jarre played. Thus, the goal of unification people with music was achieved. Chances are that these people will decide to play music or even become composers themselves.

The instruments used in the concert were fantastic.

The laser harp is a powerful instrument which is intuitive to play. In computer science, everybody is trying to simplify the computers and operating systems. For example touch screen cellphones do not require any learning before becoming an essential tool. And so is the laser harp. Reinforced with artificial intelligence it starts shining when the musician approaches it. When it is being touched, a background music is played to match the tune that the musician improvised. I read on Wikipedia that this is not a new instrument but I saw it the first time. I think that such instruments can start a new phase of composers. Everybody is listening to the music of Mozart and Bach for several centuries. But new classical composers do not appear. This is because the environment for which the classical instruments were designed has changed. New environment demands new instruments and laser harp is a perfect example of such instrument.

Another important component of the show were the lasers. I also liked the huge backstage screen that changed its color arbitrarily. The trick of combining images with music is used nowdays even in classic music concerts, for example in Carnegie Hall a portrait of the composer is displayed when his music is played.

With lasers and lights, Jean Michel was able to display complex images resembling Egyptian pyramids or extraterrestial landscape. In addition to processing lots of existing music he made a huge step forward because it looked like his music came from space.

There is only one drawback of attending a live performance. Its quality is so good that you cannot listen to any home sound system afterward. After I arrived to home I turned on the radio. It was playing a song. To me it sounded as if it needed energy badly, as if its batteries were running out of power. But it was connected to electrical grid. Nothing can match the power of sound and beauty of lasers that Jean Michel Jarre was able to achieve.