Carl Nilsson-Polias

In this email: Buskers. Drunk men playing cards in childrens’ playground in the middle of the afternoon. The best toilet in Helsinki. And so much more.

Buskers in Helsinki rock my sweet little world. I never thought putting a banjo player together with a trumpet playing and getting them to play Lullaby in Birdland could actually get me singing along but it did. Try a frustrated opera singer going for the high C with a minidisc accompaniment. Try a really ugly guy with some kind of epidermal disorder playing electric guitar solos to a minidisc accompaniment. Try three young guys with whited faces juggling and playing simon and garfunkel’s greatest hits. Try a Finnish polka band playing famous pop, rock and jazz tunes (all with a polka beat … ring any bells Matthew?). Try DJs laying down some lo-phat beats for a ‘youth against drugs’ awareness event (which had an attendance of ten very sincere looking young people … nice to see the Finns aren’t going soft on us … more cocaine for the kids!).

Drunk men playing cards in childrens’ playground in the middle of the afternoon. Nuff said, really. But, yeah, it happens in Helsinki, what doesn’t this town have to offer?

The best toilet in Helsinki award (as judged by a panel of moi) is this week awarded to the Amos Anderson Museum. I tested many facilities, including those of various major shopping centres into which i wandered for the sole purpose of surveying their porcelain appointments, but the Amos was the clear winner. The one’s in question are on the basement level (for those of you playing at home) and the main door is a New-York-garage-loft-style metal affair. Within, one is met by moody recessed lighting and floor-to-ceiling vanity mirrors that surround the chrome basins, hovering weightlessly on their glass stands. Are you excited yet? The cubicles are armed with metal doors that operate on a pneumatic system that ensures a lack of slamming-toilet-door sounds. The toilet itself is stainless steel and topped with a mock-wood plastic seat. Fine, it doesn’t match the Peninsula Hotel in HK (that’s the one isn’t it John?) where the men’s urinal is a glass wall facing the other buildings, but, hey, it made my day.

Saw an exhibition of French and Finnish art at the National Gallery. Why i’m seeing French art in Helsinki when i’ll be in Paris by the end of the month is a good question. Actually, it’s a very good question, what the fuck was i thinking?! Anyway, there were some stunning pieces from both nationalities. Keep your eyes out for Magnus Enckell and Akseli Gallen-Kallela from Finland. They’re both dead, but keep your eyes out for them nevertheless. After this high culture, i went back to my hostel, did some laundry and watched Baseketball (again) so Trey Parker and Matt Stone kind of evened out the masters of impressionism.

Crossing the border into Russia was as uneventful as one might expect, thought the silky smooth tracks of Finland soon gave way to old-fashioned clickety-clack and gentle rocking. The passport officers made their sullen and sombre slavic way through the train, though any sense of gravitas was undermined by the junior officer’s Leningrad Cowboys inspired hair (think Travis Bickle meets Flacco).

One’s first impression of St Petersburg comes in the form of the Soviet-era tenament buildings moving past the train like waves of concrete and rust. Adjacent to the tracks are the garages and sheds that correspond to the apartments, though cynics will be disappointed by the lack of tractors being built or repaired. Indeed, i haven’t seen a tractor yet, or for that matter a worker standing, looking into the middle distance, wiping his brow and professing his on-going loyalty to the people’s revolution. Ah well.

Having finished ”Darkness at Noon”, i’ve moved on to the equally light-hearted romp, ”One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Basically, i’ve moved from one Soviet prison for political divergents to a another Soviet labour camp for political divergents on the steppes of Kazakhstan. I’ll be reading some Wodehouse next methinks.

I’ve been in St Petersburg for one and a half days now and have much to say, but that will have to wait till next time, which should be very soon.