Welcome to Europe Samuel

I got asked for directions today. The (obviously) American lady stopped me on the street in Helsinki and asked if I spoke English. I thought of answering, ‘No, only Australian,’ but then thought better of it. I was quite taken by the fact that I knew the directions to where she wanted to go. The humorous side of it all is, of course, that I needed to ask for directions from someone only yesterday.

I’ve only lived in the city of my birth for a short while at the very beginning of my life, but somehow Helsinki has had a deep impact on me. It’s one of the great cities of Europe, steeped in a history that at many times has been dark and difficult. Every building has a story and the old narrow alleyways in the centre of the city point to a time before cars and public transport.

Our Samuel was quite taken aback yesterday when on the way to the sauna in the basement of our hotel, we passed a large red iron door. ‘That’s the bomb shelter,’ I casually commented to Samuel. ‘The bomb shelter!’ came Samuel’s stunned reply. ‘Yes, the bomb shelter. Welcome to Europe,’ I replied. That’s part of the ‘dark and difficult’ past of Helsinki’s history, as it tried to navigate its way through a complicated Cold War world in the shadow of the Iron Curtain.

Many of the buildings in the city still display the scars of shelling from World War II. My mum and dad have at different times told stories of bomb raids on Helsinki during the war and of days spent in bomb shelters not dissimilar to the one Samuel saw yesterday. How fortunate we are that Samuel doesn’t need to tell stories of days spent in bomb shelters to his children and grandchildren. And how incredibly sad that so many children still today, live with the fear that so many European children lived with 70-years-ago. Humanity hasn’t learnt much from its mistakes.

For a relatively small and young city (by European standards anyway), Helsinki displays an amazing array of architecture, from neo-classical to neo-renaissance and Art-Nouveau to Nordic Classicism. There’s also some Neo-Gothic and Russian-Byzantine thrown in for good measure. One of my favourite buildings in the city is the Kallio Church, built in the Art-Nouveau tradition. It’s also our ‘family church’ and the church in which I was christened.

That’s where I was headed this morning when I was asked for directions. It sits proudly on a hill about two kilometres from the central railway station and about 200 metres from my childhood apartment. As I climbed the hill up to the Church, the Church bells tolled and I was transported back to my toddler years as I played in the local park in the snow. The Church bells tolled back then, as they had for a Century before that, calling people to worship.

Good, functional and practical design is a way of life in Finland. Minna and I are big fans of Finnish glassware, especially Iittala. We have tried over the years to buy a few pieces from here and there, so you can imagine how we felt when we stepped into an Iittala store, full of the glassware that is so rarely seen and even more rarely for sale in Australia. The Iittala tradition is to create glassware that is not only beautiful to behold, but functional to use.

It’s the dual emphasis on this understated ‘beautiful functionality’ that permeates through all design in Finland, from its glassware, to linen, to furniture and of course to building architecture. No wonder Helsinki was named the World Design Capital in 2012.

The view from our balcony at our apartment hotel, nestled in nature, yet in the city.

  

QR Codes and Sexy Apples

QR codes are everywhere in Singapore. These two dimensional matrix barcodes are a quick way to get a lot of information about a product. It’s quick and so it should be, ‘QR’ is abbreviated from the words ‘Quick Response’ after all. I came across a QR code today at Changi Airport with the writing ‘Scan QR code to discover some of our best kept secrets’ written underneath it. This QR code promised to tell a story, to reveal a secret.

We’ve met a lot of people over the last few days in Singapore, people we hadn’t met before and probably never will. Like our taxi driver of Indian heritage who drove a taxi because his job allowed him to drive a car. Taxes imposed on private cars prohibited him from owning one, so he drove one for work.

Or the older businessman from Sydney by the hotel pool. He was a quietly spoken gentleman, but one could tell he was also lonely. He simply wanted a yarn and Minna provided a listening ear. You see, we all have a story to tell and perhaps even, like the QR code at Changi Airport, a secret or two to share.

The thing is, of course, that people don’t have QR codes we can scan in order for us to quickly download their stories. Getting to know someone and listening to their story takes a lot of time.

At times I can look at Minna sitting across the room and know exactly what she’s thinking. That’s one of the many joys of being married to her for the last 25-years. At times she still, however, surprises me with insights and experiences that I hadn’t heard before. Our stories are multifaceted and complex and it takes a lot of time to get to know another person.

So, we need to sit and listen to one another. This is another one of the pleasurable experiences of travelling. Often there’s plenty of time, whether at airports, train stations, or by the pool. At such places there are always people with stories to tell and insights to share.

Earlier today I admired massive reproductions of wood block prints by the late Singaporean artist Lim Mu Hue on the wall at Raffles City, depicting various aspects of theatre. Near the artwork there was a plaque with a quote from the artist himself: ‘Human life is a poem, it is an art in its truest form. It needs not any make up, or any acting. Its characters are constantly being renewed and the plots are ever changing and creating themselves.’

That’s what makes life interesting. The people we meet are far more interesting than the most intriguing characters in a play. And we are married to them and we work with them and we spend our Sunday mornings at Church with them. But in order to have Lim Mu Hue’s insight into people, we need to slow down, sit down and listen to someone’s story. It’s well worth it.

We need to do this, because we people are a funny lot. We often present to others a souped up version of ourselves, dressed in our Sunday best and with a smile to die for. It often takes time to get to know the real ‘us.’

We are a bit like the apples I saw for sale today in a Singaporean department store. Two apples, dressed in what could have passed for lace, in a see-through plastic container. Packaging overkill yes and at $8.99 just a tad overpriced. I guess it was an attempt at making apples look sexy. Take away the climate changing packaging and the wallet-breaking price tag, however, and what you are left with are two apples; two fruits that are just perfect as they are, without the lace and the packaging and especially the sky-high price.    

'Majulah Singapura'

Travelling is one of life’s more pleasurable experiences. Since most things are new and unfamiliar, the senses are heightened and one tends to ‘feel’ things that are quite normal in a more intensified way. The usual ‘zoning out’ of the familiar and mundane doesn’t happen and even the small things can create a sense of awe and wonder. And intrigue. I think life was meant to be lived like a traveller, focusing on the present moment with a heightened sense of presence.

Although Singapore is a very western city-state, much like an Asian version of any major Australian city (albeit much cleaner), there is enough difference to keep the traveller intrigued. The Singaporean motto in Malay is Majulah Singapura, 'Onward, Singapore.' And what an apt motto.  

It’s been a while since we’ve made the stopover to this beautiful country of many islands and Singapore has lived up to its motto. Much has changed and progress can be seen everywhere, but I’m not sure if all of it has been for the best. Today Singapore is a truly westernised nation. Even the little stalls that used to adorn the side alleys of Orchard Road are gone, replaced by 7-11 stores and branches of international banks. One doesn’t really travel to Singapore these days to get a taste of the Orient.     

It’s a lovely place to visit nevertheless. And it’s a great city in which to travel. With one of the most efficient and expansive subway systems, just about every part of the city is easily accessible. The trains are incredibly clean, without graffiti and inexpensive to use. The planning for the subway system started already back in the 1960s, when the city-state’s farsighted city planners realised that Singapore would need a rail-based urban transport system by the end of the millennium.

It’s this kind of forethought and long-term planning that is sorely needed today, not only in Singapore, but everywhere. How will we continue to build our cities and countries for a sustainable future? What sort of a society and environment will we leave for our grandchildren? Will life be easier for them, or will the decisions we make today (or don’t make) mean that life will be harder?

We need our politicians to have the type of foresight that the city planners had in Singapore in the 1960s; bipartisan support for long-term infrastructure projects and consensus on the fact that selling state assets is akin to selling the family farm.

As we landed in Singapore yesterday, I heard the news that we have a new Prime Minister. I must say that I didn’t expect this, since most of the speculation over the last couple of weeks seemed to be done by journalists being reported on by other journalists. But there you go! I leave the country for five minutes and they replace the PM. I suspect, however, that this was simply coincidence and not the reason for the change and I also suspect that we may have another PM before I have a chance to return to Australia.

And talking about heads of state; apparently Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean despot, is also visiting Singapore at the moment. I suspect that this is also just a coincidence and he’s not here to see me, as he could have come to Toowoomba anytime for that. I did hear that he was here for some medical treatment for his eyes and I wondered about that, since Singapore is currently experiencing an exceptional amount of smog and haze due to forest fires in Indonesian Sumatra. Not really the first place I would fly to if I had trouble with my eyes and had a private jet and 100 manservants and could fly anywhere. But then again, who am I to question Robert Mugabe’s logic. I’m sure he’s quite capable of looking after his eyes better than he looks after his country.

Which makes me think. If Mugabe was staying here at The Carlton and I ran into him in the lift while returning from my treadmill session at the gym, what would I say to him?

What does one say to someone who has been accused of countless acts of terror? I’d probably try to keep humour out of it, since dictators aren’t known for their sense of humour; revolutions are serious business after all. Come to think of it, I can’t ever recall seeing a dictator crack a smile. Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Fidel or Mugabe – not one smile between them! So I probably wouldn’t crack a joke. Although I would probably look at Mugabe and wonder, what a different country Zimbabwe would have been if he had attended the 1969 Woodstock festival of peace, love and music.

Samuel writing his own blog on the 24th floor of The Carlton with Singapore's hazy cityscape in the background.