Jyväskylä

 Jyväskylä 

Amy was invited to work with scholars outside of Tampere, at another Finnish university as well.  So as we entered our last days in Finland we hopped on the train, and for the first time on our trip our destination was neither Tampere nor Helsinki, but rather nearby Jyväskylä.

Jyväskylä is an ancient city, with archeological finds dating from the stone age.  It has the nickname “the Athens of Finland” owing to its age, and its history as an educational center.  It has its own University.  It is the northernmost University in Finland, and as such is the landing spot for many of the students from northern Finland and the Lapland.  Today Jyväskylä is the headquarters for the Finnish Air Force, and is an important paper manufacturing center.  It’s also the capitol of central Finland and the primary city in the Finnish Lakeland, which is absolutely breathtaking.

The train ride was pleasant.  Another play car.  More coffee and snacks.  More gorgeous Finnish countryside with rivers and lakes and forest.  We went through several tunnels, and each time we went through we felt a rush of air pressure and our ears all popped.  I’m not exactly sure why.  Maybe it was the speed of the train.  Or maybe something about the tunnel – they felt a lot lower and closer to the top of the train.  And they were longer.  I dunno. 

 We checked into our hotel, which was another Scandic, so we knew that we had breakfast to look forward to the next morning.  Then Amy had a busy morning of meetings.  So it was just the kids and I for a while.  We explored what was a very charming city.  It is substantially smaller than Tampere, but has a cuter city center that is closed to cars, and feels very safe to walk.  

We also recognized the relatively limited vocabulary in the Finnish language.  Pretty much every town that we explored uses the same words to describe the town, but in different combination.  For example in Tampere the central city square is called Keskustori (Central Square).  In Jyvaskala – Torikeskus.  It’s a lot of stuff like that. 

The boys and I were on a bit of a mission.  Milo had seen a sticker book that he wanted in the Helsinki airport, but we hadn’t had time to grab it.  We checked in the Tampere book store (called the Sumolainen Kirjokauppa) but they didn’t have it.  They could order it, but they weren’t 100% confident it would arrive before we were leaving.  So we figured worst case scenario, we would just buy it in the airport on our way out.  But we checked at the kirjokauppa in Jyväskylä and they had it there.  

So we grabbed it.  And good thing that we did!  When we checked at the airport on our last day it wasn’t there anymore.

We mostly just wandered, stopping for korvapuusti and coffee and juice.  We walked up a beautiful set of stairs called the Nero stairs.  

We stopped midway to celebrate the Finns' hard work with an impromptu dance party.

Apparently it was a public work during a time of economic depression.  Funny how government is able to take care of people when times get hard – and produce stunning works of art to boot.  At the top of the stairs was a natural history museum, which Oscar loved!  

It had more of the little diorama vignettes, and at the top of the tower had a gorgeous view of the town. 

It also had an anti-aircraft gun parked outside, a sobering reminder of Finland’s most recent war with Russia.  I am sure that concerns are renewed now with Putin on the loose in Europe and the Kremlin now having an ally in the White House.

Amy was able to join us at the museum, and we enjoyed the last few hours of sunlight.  By this point in our trip it was getting quite cold in Finland, and we were all in hats and gloves.  

We walked by the University (which is a place that would be lovely to teach at) and found a magnificent park with a zip line that the kids played on for literally hours.  

And I tried a viral Tik Tok trend that ended about as well as you would expect.

For dinner we went to a pirate themed place called Hook.  

For whatever reason hot wings are super popular in Central Finland.  Like, kind of their most famous regional food.  It started in Tampere in the 1990s.  There are a couple of famous chains, Hook being one of them.  The wings were good.  They had a Buffalo sauce that was pretty close to what you get in the States, but a little different.

My biggest gripe is that the most common order of wings is nine.  Which is stupid on so many levels.  It makes it impossible to split an order.  It is too many for one of us to eat, but too few to share.  But the biggest problem for me is that Finland (like most of the world) uses the metric system.  Which is base ten.  So I could understand a standard order of five.  Or ten.  Or a pay by wing structure.  But nine breaks my brain.  What is the point of using the metric system if your baseline order is going to be nine?  It would be like designing a language and deciding not to use the letter “k” but then having that sound appear everywhere in your language and needing to use multiple letters to represent the sound.  (And yeah, I’m looking at you Italian).  After I’d gotten over my existential rage, the hot wings were really good.  All nine of them.

We had a peaceful twilight walk back to our hotel and swam in the pool.  

In the morning we chowed down on another famous Scandic breakfast, 

and then went back to our favorite park to spend another couple of hours.  

Then it was back to the train, through the torture tunnels, and back to Tampere, where the weather was getting colder, and our time was growing short.

Should you go to Jyväskylä?  It depends.  Are you a moron?  No?  Then of course you should go to Jyväskylä.

Hei Hei