EUROPE TRAVELING GUIDE: April 2007

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

By the Aura river in Turku

Listen to little birdie's station

Escaping from the beginning of World War III, I went over to Turku, Finland for a short boat trip with my husband, his father and a few people of his family & friends.

The night on the boat was very short (had to get up at 6, it arrived so early, and it was difficult to sleep because of all the noise and the light in the cabin), but in the hotel, after breakfast we continued sleeping...

Then we went for a walk in the city. Although it's the oldest city of Finland, to be honest, Turku didn't impress me too much - maybe I simply couldn't enjoy it, because of the goddamn cold in April, just above zero!

And I had the feeling that we were 30 years back in time, from the design of the streets, squares and shops, signs, etc. Really, like in the 70's in Hungary, despite of a few hypermodern fancy buildings.

As for the architecture, there are a couple of individually beautiful buildings of modern and older styles as well, but putting them beside each other gave an untidy, unplanned, somewhat chaotic impression. And sorry to say, but I saw many extremely ugly buildings. Not dirty or worn down - simply aweful design.

Yeah, and on Friday - Good Friday - almost everything was shot, the city was dead. Except some brave tourists strolling up and down. To jump over there from here, Sweden, might be understandable, but from the warm, nice spring, from far away Italy, to spend the Easter holidays with freezing???

Anyway, let's see the nice parts of Turku!

The river Aura is definitely worth to mention. There you can walk for hours, watching people, dogs and birds, pretty buildings, boats, trees.