Day 3: Tampere - in the garden of Death

Today’s word of the day… death! We visited a mass grave and places of execution as well as stared at the painting The Garden of Death by Hugo Simberg in Tampere Cathedral.

To top it off, we even got a brush with death while travelling from Helsinki to Tampere by bus. What we imagine was a stressed businessman talking on his phone tried to change to the bus lane in order to cut off the dense Helsinki region morning traffic, forcing our alert driver to swerve off the road in order to avoid a collision. At this point most of us were taking the opportunity to make up for any possible lack of sleep but got a very rude awakening. Luckily, this was the only consequence of the incident.

A bus tour was next on the agenda upon our arrival, followed by lunch at the Vapriikki premises, where we also attended the exhibition Tampere 1918. The following sign greeted visitors:

While the sign was appropriate to warn younger visitors of the harsh reality of the gruesome war and the way it was depicted in the exhibition, the tone of the voiceover for the English audio guide suggested that it was nothing short of family-friendly. Listen to the mismatch between the narrator and the subject matter for yourselves here: http://zones.zonear.com/tampere1918

Be that as it may, let’s give our brave Eustorians a say on what they thought of our day trip – coming right up!