Turku experience 1

I got back from Turku, Finland on Sunday evening. I notice that travelling long distances seems easier in Europe. Of course a direct flight to Vancouver would be easier, but to go between countries and switch planes was pretty seamless here. There wasn't the same hassle at airport security. Or maybe it was just that the airports were smaller. I dunno.

In any case, Turku was neat. As soon as I got there I felt like I was in a small Canadian city on the edge of the boreal forest. Think Sudbury or Quebec City: big enough for a theatre and concert hall, but only a few kilometers from endless pine trees. On arrival and departure, our turboprop was the only plane on the tarmac. This makes it easier to find your luggage (there's only one baggage carousell!).

Turku airport

The emptiest airport.

Turku's cathedral is the oldest in Finland. Aura river in foreground.

Some unusual facts about Finland:

• Many (most?) Finns are lactose-intolerant, and all the coffee-creamers are lactose-free. 
• Much of what is now Finland was controlled (or was technically part of) Sweden. So Swedish is a sort of second language. The university in Turku is a Swedish-language institution.
• Although a free and democratic country for most of the 20th century, Finland was careful to be friendly with the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. 
• The Finnish language is unlike any other, and bears only structural similarities with Korean and Hungarian. So all Finns under retirement age also speak English (perfectly). 
• In Finnish, there are 15 different ways of saying "the". That is really silly because "the" is not an interesting word. I can understand that the Inuit have 15 words for "snow". Or the Australians have 15 words for "vomit". But what's with all the "the"s?
• Vladimir Lenin lived in Turku for a while, while plotting the overthrow of the Tsars. 

Comrades

Also, Turku is the "European Capital of Culture" for 2011. I am pretty sure that this is just a marketing ploy that Brussels cooked up to help down-and-out cities make a few bucks off of tourism. What is central government (supposed to be) for anyways except to spread the largesse? There were many public sculptures around, including a series of seals.

Seal eating fish

Turku, Finland

I am off to Turku, Finland on Wednesday. I am presenting a paper there on Friday at the "Information Science and Social Media" (ISSOME 2011) conference. I will be staying at the Holiday Inn until Sunday the 28th, then it's back to Germany.

The presentation is entitled "Author Disambiguation for enhanced science 2.0 services" and describes how I have implemented a simple algorithm at iFQ to split publications written by identically-named individuals into distinct groups. It's not very cutting-edge, but it has the advantage of requiring no human guidance and works with very meagre data. Hopefully that makes it of interest to the conference attendees, as the metadata associated with the community-generated content on science 2.0 websites is also pretty sparse. Such websites would be more useful if they could automatically generate new structures based upon their data.

My colleague Kalle is half-Finnish and he told me bluntly that Turku is not very pretty. I think its main purpose is to serve as a place where Swedes can get off the ferry and purchase lots of lightly-taxed vodka. Nonetheless, the city is the 2011 European Capital of Culture. There are lots of public art installations that I hope to check out (including a see-through sauna). I will look into taking a boat tour and may go for a run on the island of Ruissalo.

Toy Town Berlin

There is a website for the expat community in Germany called "ToyTown". I don't know what that name is supposed to refer to, but I guess some towns are so cute that one could imagine that this country was designed as one big LEGO theme park.

Sometimes I can imagine the trains I see rolling along between rolling hills are just a grown-up version of those miniature train sets. So which is a charicature of the other? I never understood the appeal of that hobby until I came here.

Anyways, Christine is off to Berlin this weekend to check out an apartment. Here is a smurf-sized view of Berlin:


Tiny Town - Berlin from Sam on Vimeo.

Noord Holland

Here are some more photos from our little vacation last week. It was a big week for my daughter, as she got to crawl around on grass for the first time, swing in the hammock, etc. In addition, Arianne got to interact with a whole range of new animals that she had previously only seen in cartoon form. The family that runs the B&B has a young cat called "Pip", and Arianne was fascinated with this small furry thing. Later that week at another B&B near Utrecht she got right up to the snout of cows, large pigs, sheep, and a horse.

Here she is all decked out in adventure gear: Army green cargo pants, black tactical jacket and helmet. Ready for anything! Except sand - she was not keen on sand at all. Very strange stuff the first time one sees it.

We rode along the bike paths between the huge sand dunes (really hills) and eventually found a beach. The Atlantic at this time of year is damn cold (and that is as warm as it gets). But there were a few hardy souls splashing around out there.

View from back yard of "Pears and Apples" B&B

Vacation time

Here's Arianne and me by a canal in Amsterdam:

From Monday August 1st to Friday, August 5 we stayed at a great B&B near the Wadden Sea. The "Apples and Pears" B&B was surrounded by (very) flat fields, many full of flowers.

I spent some time in the hammock watching the giant windmills on the horizon spin around. Arianne learned about grass and was soon crawling all over the place.

The cute part of HamsterDam

After about 10 minutes of jostling with tourists and freaks, we went a few blocks Westward into a more sedate area. For four blocks there is another canal at every intersection (that is to say, the blocks are defined by canals). We stopped at this pub to rest our feet and feed Arianne. Just watching the people go by on their bikes and scooters is endlessly entertaining. A cyclist passes by every second or two.

Note how the windows are a bit crooked? That is normal.

The pub we stopped at is the third-oldest in Amsterdam. It dates from the mid-1600's and is known as a "brown café" because the wood interior was turned brown from all the patrons smoking that new-fangled thing called "tobacco" that had been imported from the New World.

 

Scooting by (no helmets, naturally). One of hundreds of two-wheeled passerby we saw. A few minutes later some guy drove by in at 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle, all rumbling V8 and shiny chrome. Who cares about some old muscle car, you say? But take it in situ, and it becomes special. First of all, cars are pretty rare. You can't park anywhere. Gasoline is more than $2 a liter. And the streets on either side of the canals are wide enough for only one vehicle. If you saw a muscle car from the 70's at the Drive-Thru back in Generica, you wouldn't look twice. But given the context, cruising around medieval cobblestone streets in a candy-ass purple hot rod with racing stripes borders on performance art.

The intersection of canals right next to where we were sitting. Note the folks in the foreground lounging in the boat, perhaps enjoying a glass of wine, while putting along the canals.

North Holland

For the past few days we have been exploring Amsterdam and the region north of Amsterdam called "North Holland". Because Holland is a real society that exists in the modern world, it isn't all just a fairytale of legalized drugs and prostitution. That's fun to see, but there are other aspects of the country too. From modern art to 500-year old pubs, there is such a juxtaposition of sights in this city that it is hard to convey it all. I'll cover a few different aspects in the next couple of posts.

So over the weekend we stayed in a super-hip hotel in the southern outskirts of Amsterdam. Here is a view of the (entire) room. The green-lit cylinder is the shower. All trendy and post-modern, this is Monocle magazine turned into a hotel. Very nice, although the kids at the "front desk" (there is no front desk) could never figure out if we had paid for breakfast or not.

This area (Amsterdam-Zuid) is very different than the touristy areas at the centre of the city. It's mostly residential and the apartment buildings date from the mid-twentieth century. Right around the corner from the hotel is the World Trade Centre business park, where tens of thousands of sleek, well dressed 20/30-somethings work in finance and shiny insurance offices. It's actually reminiscent of the "La Défense" area of Paris, with its gleaming office towers and futuristic open spaces. Of course, this being Holland there has to be a quirky twist to things. Note the architecture of this office block:

This sort of playful take on things permeates Dutch society. Look very closely at this sculpture: this piece of industrial equipment is made up of a filigree pattern of coats-of-arms and fleur-de-lys:

 

 

Then it was off to the core of Amsterdam. Within only five minutes of stepping off the tram, Christine had already remarked on the smell of pot, we had seen a rastifarian dog (all covered in dreadlocks), and a posse of Hell's Angels rode by. It was very crowded and filthy. 

House rules at McDonalds in Amsterdam

The main (Dom) square was full of guys posing for photos in wierd costumes.

This is not the Amsterdam that you were expecting to see, is it? Where are all the cute canals and bicycles? That will be the next post....