The key thing to get done today was to get to the railway station and organise
my train bookings and get my Eurorail Pass validated.
There was no trouble find the station as I had spotted it yesterday and knew
which stop to get off at.
It is a large and busy station and I suppose I was a little surprised by this. I
took a quick look at the trains and they were very modern looking and quite
sleek.
I found the ticket counters OK and I knew that I had to look for the
International counters. But first I had to press the right button on the
customer sequence matching to get my number. So I had about a five minute wait
before my turn came up. I got a very friendly and helpful assistant and she
persevered and worked through my train list one by one. The Bodo to Trondheim
train in Norway was one she could not reserve a seat for and also one regional
in my sequence from Oslo to Copenhagen. But for the rest I am now ticketed and
mostly seat reserved as well. I am pleased to have that one gap filled. I think
it will all work out ok.
I left the railway station and took several photos of it. Just across the road
was the Postal Museum. This was one of the few museums open on a Monday. I had
planned to make a visit so this time was as good as any.
I was not sure what to expect, although my memories of a similar museum in
Poland did make expect something more time consuming that very interesting.
Well this one was great. Nice modern displays in big sets with life size models
to create slices of time and important stages in the postal history. The
enterence had life sized high definition screens with live actors in various
postal uniforms over time and one would appear on screen and beckon you to come
in. Lining the passage inside the door were models in key uniforms representing
points in the history.
I sat and watched oan old movie about postal carriages on trains – no, it was
interesting, it really was. Then I moved into a gallery were they had all sorts
of details about the visit of a Zeppelin to Helsinki in 1930. Special stamps
where done and the sheets had several mistakes as it was a rush job. Now there
are lots of forgeries on the open market of these stamps. There were displays
of some of the forgeries along with the real think. One stamp on the 100 stamp
sheets had 1830 instead of 1930 printed on it. This is the big value
collectors' item now. There were examples of the postcards actually carried by
the Zeppelin in its mail service. It was too windy to land at Helsinki, so the
Zeppelin dropped the mail it had by parachute and used a long rope to pull up
the mail it had to take on board. I watched a historic film about this. Around
the display they had 3D viewers handing with 3D photos of the Zeppelin.
All very interesting to me, so I ended up staying there longer than I expected.
I had a cup of coffee at Waynes' Coffee shop n the post office building. There
is also a company called Roberts' Coffee.
I wandered around a few shopping areas but the shops I saw were pretty much the
same as anywhere else. So I headed down to the harbour and walked down the
Esplanade. This street leads down to the ferry landings which is called Market
Place. However the road has a wide park area running down the middle. Here
every seat was taken with people just sitting enjoying the3 warmth of the sun.
Ice cream kiosks were busy as were a few expensive looking tea houses, bars and
coffee shops. In the park a film crew of three was working and a bit further
along a tv reporter was interviewing a man on camera. While I was seeing all of
this a couple middle age women walked along in full national dress with the hem
line right at the ankle.
As it was after 4pm and the market place had rows of food outlet , I decided to
allow myself to be convinced to have reindeer meatballs, potatoes and
vegetables. Quite tasty and it filled the gap as they say.
Then I headed for a stage in the Esplanade park to hear a free concert. The
first hour was three girls playing and singing. They were using traditional
Finnish stringed instruments which looked and sounded a bit like zithers. They
were good – I think. The locals seemed to enjoy it.
Then I filled in a bit of time taking a couple short tram rides before it was
time for the Mill Hill Big Band. They gave an hour of recognizable tunes,
perhaps they could be called 'standards'. Most of the band members were into
their 50's I judged. The man who was the featured singer and not too bad,
especially when he wasn't trying for the high notes, must have been 65 if he
was a day.
I have heard better big bands but this was free, the sun was shining and I was
in a generous mood. It finished just after 7:30pm so I headed off a couple of
blocks to catch a tram back to the hostel.
No comments:
Post a Comment