Before playing Jesus and actually walking over (ok, frozen) water, we first did some proper tourist impersonation and visited Sibelius monument.
I have to admit that I had to ask Wikipedia about Sibelius but now know the following:
The Sibelius Monument (Finnish: Sibelius-monumentti) is dedicated to the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). The monument is located at the Sibelius Park (Finnish: Sibeliuspuisto) in the district of Töölö in Helsinki, the capital city of Finland.
The monument was designed by Eila Hiltunen and unveiled on September 7, 1967. Originally it sparked a lively debate about the merits and flaws of abstract art, for which reason an effigy of Sibelius was included in the work. It consists of series of more than 600 hollow steel pipes welded together in a wave-like pattern. The purpose of the artist was to capture the essence of the music of Sibelius. The monument weighs 24 tonnes (24 LT; 26 ST) and measures 8.5 × 10.5 × 6.5 metres.
A smaller version of the monument is located at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. A work with a similar concept, also designed by Hiltunen, is located at the grounds of the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
Afterwards we just followed lots of other Finns and took a shortcut over the ice to Seurasaari, past the house of the primeminister & the president. I’ve already been to Seurasaari before xmas, but this time – with some blue skies & sunshine – it was even nicer.
But unfortunately no squirrels this time, and also no open coffee places, so it was back to the mainland after an hour. And after warming up at Cafe Regatta (Merikannontie 10, 00250 Helsinki) with Korvapusti and some hot chocolate (with cream!) we were ready to tackle the rest of the day.
And that consisted of a visit to the German Bakery Crustum (Pursimiehenkatu 7, 00150 Helsinki, www.crustum.fi). I’ve always wanted to do that but Punavuori is unfortunately not really round the corner. And I was positively surprised! First of all the bakery actually includes also a small cafe and offers brunch on the weekend (which is on the to do list for the future), then it is actually open on weekends until 18:00 – and the food has been really nice. I bought some pumpkin-seed-bread and can definitely recommend it!
A German in Finland - 