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July 24: Swimming and cinema

Spent some time browsing at the famous Hiehtasaari flea market⁴⁶ and investigating the current state of Finnish music in a record shop. Then we went to the rollerblade stall in Kaivopuisto park to try a pair of Kangoo Jumps. These are a pair of sturdy boots with big plastic springy things on the bottom, enabling the wearer to take huge strides. I quickly found that the only comfortable way to move in them is in a kind of great loping run, which becomes tiring after about ten minutes and painful after fifteen, but is exhileratingly fast and draws bemused glances from onlookers. We spent the afternoon sunbathing and swimming on Hietaniemi beach, went home for dinner, and sampled some contemporary Finnish cinema in the evening. The film, Return to Plainlands, was about a businessman returning from America to his home town in Finland, having run out on his family and business fifteen years earlier to avoid prosecution for tax fraud. It was slighly strange, slightly funny, and slightly uplifting, but a bit too flat to be involving.

Footnotes

... market⁴⁶

On the way there, we saw a plaque on a house declaring that Bertolt Brecht had lived there during his time in Helsinki. Brecht's play Mr Puntila and his Man Matti is inspired and informed by his time in Finland, and is very funny.