Helsinki; Thursday, 27 July, 2006

A relatively early start to the day so that I could get to the station in time to catch the mid-morning train to Turku. Turku was the capital of Finland up until 1812 when it was moved to Helsinki, as Turku was considered to close to Sweden for the new Russian rulers of Finland, having captured the country from the Swedes three years earlier. It still has many of the markings of the capital with a mighty fortress and the nations main Cathedral.

After an event free if slow (2 hours to go a little over 160Km) journey I arrived in Turku and headed to the tourist information centre to buy a Turku card, having already worked out from the guidebook that the attractions I wanted to visit would cost more combined before I even added on travel costs. I caught the bus out of the centre of town, down river to the port to visit the maritime museum.

The museum is based in two buildings and three ships on the riverside. It contains all the usual models and exhibits on maritime life, most in Finnish and Swedish only. After looking around the museum and ships, and a quick lunch in the café, I walked the short distance down the road to the castle.

Originally built on a small island less than 800 years ago the land has risen so much that it's now several hundred meters inland and surrounded by grass rather than water (Southern Finland is rising by about 3mm a year or 3 meters a millennium, and with the entrance to the Baltic down to a narrow channel between Denmark and Sweden it is highly likely that in the future it will be possible to walk from Tallinn to Helsinki - though as it will take a few thousand years the ferry companies don't need to worry about their profits yet!)

The castle is a massive structure, that I was surprised to find in such good repair, until I found out on one of the exhibits that it was gutted by fire in the 18th Century, left to crumble from then on, then flattened during W.W.II before being completely rebuilt post war! There is masses to see with lots of random exhibitions dotted around the site, like a massive treasury stretching the whole of one side of the main building, the royal apartments, the archaeology of the town and, bizarrely, a museum on vandalism, modern culture and, squeezed into pride of place, Lordi the 2006 Finnish Eurovision winners (Hard Rock, Halleluiah?)

After looking around the castle I caught the bus back into town and wandered up to the Handicrafts museum. The museum is a folk park of traditional houses showing what life was like in the past. Unlike other parks (Riga, Skansen in Stockholm, Bygdøy in Oslo or Seurasaari in Helsinki) this isn't a collection of buildings brought together from around the nation. These buildings are in the same locations they were built on at the end of the 18th early 19th centuries. It was the only area to survive a massive fire that destroyed the rest of Turku in 1827 and after the city was rebuilt was scheduled for demolition. By the middle of the twentieth century nothing had happened so in 1940 the nation decided to preserve the area as a historical time capsule.

After looking around the museum I walked through (or more importantly up and over) the neighbouring park to the Cathedral. The Cathedral is an imposing building that is visible from most of the city (except those hidden by the massive hill in the middle of the park!) and is the key Cathedral in the country.

Having looked round the cathedral I wandered along the river back into the centre of town in time to catch the bus back to the station, grab a bite to eat in the café and make the mid-evening train back to Helsinki (another 2 hours!)