Travel is full of surprises. The trip I recently took with Overseas Adventure Travel called Baltic Capitals, didn’t just include the three capital cities of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. It ended with three days in the Nordic capital of Helsinki, Finland, a substitute city for the Russian city of St. Petersburg. Obviously, the world political situation created this itinerary change, but I was happy to return to Finland. And what surprises were in store for this art lover, right outside of Helsinki, which harkens to me the Parisian-like beauty of that region.
We drove from the main part of Helsinki to a lovely town called Porvoo. It’s Finland’s second oldest town, and known for its brown wood buildings set off a river, as well as all the cobblestone streets and local shops which sell artisan ware. We ate some of the sweets they are famous for, and saw all the Christmas ornaments one could ever hope to see.
The Old Town where we spent our time wandering and window shopping, grew in the 17th and 18th century, with a Medieval style cathedral as a major point of tourism today. But the city dates back to the 1400s, and in the early 1800s Provoo played a pivotal role in helping Finland gain independence from Sweden.
But highlights continued after we left this charming town about an hour outside of Helsinki and visited Malmgard Manor and met with one of the family members who gave us a tour, Count Henrik Creutz. The mansion dates to the 17th century and is really of Swedish nobility heritage. We ran into a lot of Swedish heritage during this part of the trip, and the manor itself was like a work of art, with fine art and beautiful furniture everywhere., and family crests in distinct parts of the manor. It has been owned by the family for 13 generations, for over 400 years, and some family members still live there.
I had been to Vienna Independently before joining the OAT trip. The art and furniture in the Malmgard Manor was superior in beauty to what I saw in the Schoenbrun Palace of the Hapsburgs in Vienna. But aside from the spectacular art and meeting the Count and his family, we got to experience their farm to table cooking at lunch, complete with beer and wine tastings. The dark beer was everyone’s favorite.
A spectacular work of art came at the conclusion of our entire adventure, when we got to see the sculpture of the Jean Sibelius monument, Finland’s fanned classical composer, and we heard his masterpiece “Finlandia” on the way. It is an abstract sculpture with over 600 steel pipes welded together to represent a huge organ. A bust of the musician is close by. It was created in 1967 and is in Sibelius Park. There was some controversy surrounding the monument since Sibelius was not known for organ or pipe music. But it was intoxicatingly surreal to stand next to all the pipes and try to hear the wind blowing through them.
Sibelius himself said he could never leave Finland because it would be ” the death of my art.” But poet Alisa Martikainen wrote ,“The reason I love this country is that its surface is like its people – frozen on the surface but when the ice melts, no one has seen a more beautiful glow.”
And for this part of Europe, sandwiched between the Baltic Capitals and Scandinavia, I heartily agree.
All photos and original content by Jann Segal
Travel the World with Passion 