Luleå to Gävle

Getting from Luleå to Gävle was a little bumpy. The train only goes at night and was over two hours late leaving Luleå. By the time it finally pulled into the station most of us had been waiting outside in the cold for well over an hour. But the Swedes are patient people and everyone was bundled up and seemed to take the wait in stride. Sleeping on a train is only slightly less miserable than sleeping on an airplane, but the seat next to me was empty so I really couldn't complain. The delay ended up being a good thing as I still arrived in Gävle two hours ahead of the hostel’s reception opening hours. After a short wander through town trying to elude an excessively vocal and pungent man I went back to the station to get coffee and wait. Gävle is a beautiful little town of parks and squares modeled after Paris. A wide river runs through the city from a vast park designed after the Bois du Bologne. Little bridges link several islands running up the center so you can jog right in the middle of the river. Gävle is the home of Gevalia Coffee and Läkerol, makers of those tiny colorful boxes of pastilles that line the shelves of Scandinavian candy stores. Irresistible. Every winter they make an enormous goat (13 meters tall) out of straw and place it in the center of town. In the 40 year history of the giant yule goat it has been set on fire over 20 times, vandalized and even hit by a car. Apparently undeterred, the people of Gävle continue to build it each year. I've put links to this year's webcam as well as the tragic history of the goat on this page.

The hostel was in the oldest part of town in a tiny patch of colorful wooden cottages that had survived a fire that took everything else. They had no record of my reservation (starting to notice a pattern here) but they had room for me if I was willing to move around a bit. After a shower and an assessment of what I wanted to see and how much time I had to see it all I gathered my cameras and sketch books and headed back to the train station. Turns out I had made a very good decision, but I’ll get to that. After booking travel to Ensköping and Borlänge I went to wait for the bus that would take me to Forsbacka.

less than 48 hours

Ok, so lesson No. 1: When you’re a negligible distance from the Arctic Circle it can be VERY cold. Anticipate the worst and plan accordingly.

Lesson No. 2: When you’re a negligible distance from the Arctic Circle and a local tells you a BIG storm is coming, you can take their word for it. If you’re smart, you’ll sit somewhere warm with a nice drink while you reflect on how lucky you are not to be out in the cold.

Both luck and common sense must have taken leave of me somewhere in Finland. I’ve been in Luleå less than two days and every time I step onto a bus it’s a new adventure. I set out yesterday in a snowstorm to see Gammelstad. It was cold and very windy and snowing horizontally. I climbed onto a crowded bus (Saab, of course) and watched attentively as each stop came up. I didn’t want to miss mine. Everyone was animated by the storm; talking while they took off or put on hats and gloves. There was a girl with a cat and three of her friends, a very large deaf woman who kept making phone calls while trying to hang on to a rather cumbersome wall shelf, two women with large strollers and man in his early twenties sitting in front of me who couldn’t manage to get his fingers far enough into his ears to block them all out. I got off at Gammelstad’s something or other and followed this agitated young man across the snowy road. To my right was a huge roundabout and to my left a petrol station. I went left to get directions. The woman at the counter pointed me toward a young man stocking the shelves. He spoke English and was very kind and told me that Gammelstad proper was three more stops down the road. He gave me a map and said it was only a kilometer but cautioned “It is not such nice weather.” I told him I didn’t mind walking and thanked him as I went back out into the storm.

There were lots of cars and no sidewalks on the road I was to follow. The snow was ankle deep and I walked into a very strong wind. It was snowing so hard (follow the link to video) that I almost walked right by Gammelstad! It appeared out of nowhere and I turned onto a narrow lane and walked up a hill packed with little red cottages. It seemed as if most of the wooden buildings had all huddled together behind the more orderly ones fronting the street. They all had white trim and shutters and lace curtains were hung in the windows. Most had large stones for front steps. A huge old stone church and a big white belltower sat on top of the hill. Except for an occasional passing car, there wasn’t a soul in sight. The church was locked up and the tourist office was closed along with all of the shops and cafés. Further evidence of my singular brilliance. I took pictures, mostly of the blowing snow, until the next bus came.

As the day progressed the storm just seemed to grow and my attempts to wander Luleå were severely hampered. I gave in and returned to my room, where the snow was now a quarter of the way up the window. The storm blew all night but the sky was clear when I woke up this morning and so I decided to go back to take some more pictures and sketch before leaving town. A bus bound for the hospital, via Gammelstad came ten minutes before the N^o 9 that I had taken yesterday. The driver didn’t speak English but nodded when I said Gammelstad so I paid her and sat down. This time I wouldn’t get off until I saw those little red cottages. The bus wound through neighborhoods where all the houses were either yellow or red, past two lakes and finally stopped in front of an enormous building covered by a glass roof. Everyone got off and the driver turned and just looked at me. We were at the end of the line and apparently I had missed my stop. Could getting to Gammelstad really be this much of a challenge? I gathered my things and stood up and she tried to explain to me that another bus would come in three minutes and to get off at ‘Centrum’. I told her I understood and turned to get off the bus but she told me to sit down. In three minutes we were back on the road.

‘Centrum’ came, and I got off the bus. I knew where I was from the day before and I walked toward the church on the hill. I passed a man with two children on delicate foot sleds and they smiled at me as I took their picture. The town was quiet and nestled in yesterday’s snow and I wandered up and down the tiny streets and photographed the winding passageways between the buildings. The church, even in a city would have been massive and imposing but at the top of the hill in this Lilliputian village its presence was exaggerated. A family was gathering there for what looked like a christening and so I was able to get a glimpse inside. A single bay of white plastered walls terminated in a beautifully painted apse. It was a very reduced gothic of ribbed vaults and pointed arches and uncharacteristically thick walls. It would have been the perfect place to wait out yesterday's storm. I circled the entire village and then stopped next to Margarta’s Wardshus to sketch the buildings that followed the main road as it wound its way out of town. Getting there had taken a great deal of doing and as long as the weather held I was in no hurry to get back on the bus.

Välkomnande till Sverige!

27 October, 2006 ~ Luleå, Sweden






















I've come to Sweden to look at and document the work of Sigurd Lewerentz. Yesterday I traveled from Helsinki to Kemi by train. I left early in the morning and chatted with a friendly woman until Tampere where I changed trains and continued on to Oulu. Frost quickly turned to snow as I watched forests and trains full of logs go by. At almose every station there was a beautiful brick semi-circular roundhouse. Each with a wooden platform in front to rotate the trains and send them from the tracks into the sheds. I sat next to a boy of about 10 who was traveling with his younger twin brothers. From time to time he would ask me something and I would have to remind him that I didn’t speak Finnish. He asked if I was Swedish because I was reading Lonely Planet’s Sweden. I told him I was “amerikkalainen” which he promptly reported to his two brothers. With what little Finnish I know and the "american" he knew we managed to have a staccato conversation punctuated my repeated admission “Mina en ymmärtää.” and his giggles. When he saw me reading Moominsummer Madness ‘in american’ he told me they had that book in Finland too. He was delightful company. Any hesitation or fear to speak another language completely disappears with children and I was reminded of a wonderful conversation I had with some Belgian children last spring in Normandy. They were curious about what I was sketching and told me about the cours de dessiner they had taken in school.



I reached Kemi at three and walked a block from the train station to the bus station. The big clock on the wall had no hands and made me feel like I was very far away. I wrote a postcard while I waited for the bus that would take me to the border. I walked ½ kilometer right into Sweden and onto another bus bound for Umeå. It was 14:00 local time and the sun was already giving up the day. Three more hours and I was finally in Luleå. I collected some Swedish kronor and some dinner and went to find the bus to the hostel. Vandrarhem Kronan, the hostel, was the last stop and I got off and walked into the woods. It was at the end of a lane and lights were lit in several of the windows. I rang at the door...I rang again....and again. Nothing. There were two phone numbers on the door and after some fumbling through my guide book for country and city codes I called various combinations of both but to no avail. My Finnish phone does not work here in Sweden. Eventually my disbelief turned to acceptance and I walked back to the bus stop. The bus had just gone and the next one wasn’t for an hour. Taxis didn’t seem to make it out this far and I debated walking back to town but decided it would be worse to be lost than to wait it out. I bundled up and paced up and down the snowcovered sidewalk to keep my feet warm. I passed the time talking to myself, half laughing and half scared by how vulnerable I suddenly felt. Waiting in subfreezing temperatures for over an hour feels like a real accomplishment. The bus finally came and I climbed on to warm up. Back in town, I walked to a hotel recommended by the guide book and rang the bell. When a girl finally answered she told me that reception was closed for the evening and so they wouldn’t take any more guests. It was just a little after 21:00. So off I went to find another hotel and I took the first room I could find. It is expensive and tiny but looks out over snowy rooftops and has the most wonderful bed. I had a glass of wine and checked e-mail before going to sleep. A message was waiting for me from the hostel. It said “Welcome!”

The train to Gävle is booked until tomorrow, except for the sleeping cars which cost more than this little room, so I’ll stay on another day and go see Gammelstad. It’s a 16th Century church town, built where Luleå used to be when the sea was 10 meters higher. Uplift from the receding glacier meant that the town had to move to stay next to the sea. Gammelstad is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with over 400 little cottages. At the train station I was warned that a big storm was coming. It’s already snowing and the wind has kicked up but I’m assured that I can seek shelter at Margaretas Wärdshus, a cozy 200 year old café next to the church. It sounds perfect. Wish me luck.

Purjelaivat

In search of cloudberries, I stopped at kauppatori on my way home this afternoon. Just as I arrived, an exquisite parade of sailing ships passed through Eteläsatama. They came and went in just a few minutes without making the slightest sound.

Lupaava Esittely

A rather auspicious introduction to a young American man this morning led to the surprise opportunity to hear Peter Zumthor give a lecture this afternoon. The Finnish timber industry had chosen him for their annual ‘Spirit of Nature’ prize and he had come to Helsinki to accept it and to speak about his work. A tall and august man, dressed tip to tail in black so as not to stand out from the other identically clad recipients, he and his cap of white hair made a seemingly spotlighted appearance in one of the shadowy rooms of Kaapelitehdas, the old Nokia Cable Factory. His entrance was preceded by musikki that had been composed using mathematical proportions parallel to one of his projects. He never took the stage, preferring to stand on the floor among his listeners so that he could turn to see the images he was narrating. Outfitted with laser pointer and headset he began to tell us what he’d done this summer.

A book written in the 18^th century had captured his attention, not for its plot but precisely because it lacked one. It simply described the landscape. Eighteen pages before the first person appeared and even then only to pass by. It went on for thirty pages until time had simply stopped. "Then time begins to grow", he said "and one finally becomes aware of place." After this he introduced us to his new studio which is also where he lives. It’s a house, he told us, that says “I like to be in this place. I like the houses around me.” rather than saying “I’m better.” “It is important to define the atmosphere.” which he said was best done in wintertime when nobody was there. And when what you see amazes you, as an architect you do nothing—“Four walls, a roof and that’s it!”

This is a man fully possessed of Bachelard’s material imagination. He described a chapel built of concrete placed fifty centimeters at a time—“a day’s work”—around a form of hand-picked and felled trees. The tapered top was left open; a smoke escape for burning out the trees and a chance to let the rain fall all twelve meters to the floor of molten lead. He spoke proudly of finding the man who could make the floor and of the oven he will build at the site to melt the lead. He described his own floor of massive sandstone slabs, from Italy and again of the men who placed them, four at a time before going off to cut the next ones. Then he showed images of perforated bricks, laid two courses wide, that made walls into translucent screens for shadow play. And he spoke proudly of the Polish men who worked two full years to develop them. Always a tender courtship of the landscape followed by marrying material to craft. He’s an alchemist of sorts; somehow making mountains or fields and forests and history and faith and food and reverence and gratitude into architecture.

Helsingin Porttiaukot

Helsingin Ovet

Muminat

Thursday September 28, 2006
The sun has grown heavy with age and prefers most days now to travel across the sky instead of rising into it. More frequent are its failures to burn through the haze, which it has turned a melancholy shade of violet. In skies swollen with resignation it has become a daytime moon. The ghosts of sailboats hover in thick mists that linger on the sea. And once expectant gazes have hushed to sleepy reveries.

Monday September 25, 2006
What is the horizon? The furthest point visible at which the sky meets the earth or the sea. What is the furthest point when one is inside? What are the limits of the apprehendable from within a room, a house or a city?

That most fragmented space, in flight when one loses sight of the earth and the horizon consists of the sky upon itself, the nowhereness matched by the jerking of time moving forward and backward simultaneously. Yet somehow from this ambiguity one emerges somewhere that is fixed to the earth and to a constant clock. It’s like the non-space of the cinema where one goes to leave their bodies and its horizons behind for a few moments—so completely apart form this world for the sake of another.

I’ve always found the moments just after a film has ended to be some of the most excruciating. The transition is a shock and one is thrust out and back without the chance for a proper good-bye. And then left with the task of reconciling this reality to that one with out the least understanding of how to begin.

Monday September 18, 2006
In America we are collectively so self-conscious that the only acceptable attitude is apathy. Enthusiasm is too risky. It’s like being the only one dressed up on Halloween.

Saturday September 16, 2006
One can photograph Paris in black and white without sacrificing any of its substance and perhaps make an even truer representation of the city. Not so Helsinki. This city of pastel houses under crystal blue skies in the shimmering water begs to be captured in color. She wears grey with the steely solemnity of a diplomat; brooding and serious but always with a luminous horizon. Her sparkling blues and sunny yellows are always crisp and fresh. Her greens are of neither sea nor earth, but of legends read from painted books in wooden rooms by northern light. From the forests come her reds, where sanguine berries grow in brambles under huge and rusty trees. Her white is almost silver descending from the leaves and bark of birches that dance over fecund bogs of earthen black that seem to swallow up the light.

Ensimmäiset Painaumat

Saturday, September 9. 2006

Lämmin Sade

Saturday, September 9. 2006

I met Juhani Pallasmaa yesterday.

I was late—and wet, having gone the wrong direction on Tehtaankatu towards the sea in search of a small triangular park opposite which I was to find his office. As luck would have it there are three triangular parks on this street and the sea wraps from the west to the south. The rain had let up and the skies held until abut two minutes to five, the hour of our appointment, and in the ten minutes I required to reorient myself and walk back enough rain fell to render my umbrella superfluous as my coat sent sheets of water to my thirsty wool trousers. Marita, his office manager, met me at the door, welcomed me warmly and took my dripping coat. She led me to a long room made of books excepting the deep window at the furthest end. Several low lamps hung over a glass table set for two with wine, coffee and biscuits. She invited me to sit but before I could assess which chair I should take Juhani had made an enthusiastic entrance and was shaking my hand. Still damp and apologetic I tried feebly to tell him how pleased I was to meet him.

We talked for well over two hours, interrupted only once—his wife calling to say he should come home and make some food with her. Talking for ¾ of an hour beyond her request, the conversation punctuated by his sudden and frequent exits to fetch another book we’d been discussing from his office library of over seven thousand volumes. Of which one really only needs very few, he said, telling me he could survive with about six. He gave me the names of four. The pearls rolled off his tongue in rapid succession with an understated ease. We shared the same list of names, mine of admired authors, his of brothers and friends. He told me of the dinner shared by Groucho Marx and T. S. Eliot and their mutual respect. Brodsky, Pound, Borges, Pessoa, Husserl, Sartre, Perez-Gomez, Wilson, Tintoretto, Michelangelo, Lewerentz, Libeskind and Barragan and apes. Faithfully and without exception he reads what his friends recommend. He said one only learns from failures, success teaches nothing. And he told me that he was not a believer in theoretical starting points, that architecture requires a certain attitude and a sharpness of perception. He told me there was no meaning without touching some existential core, but that once you’d done that… He said “Architectural meaning comes before language, language is not the primary condition.” leading us into a discussion of Levi-Strauss, Chomsky, Husserl, Wittgenstein and pre-reflective meaning.

He sent me away with two books, one mine to keep and another to borrow. He offered his library and space to work and told me my time in Finland would be very important for me. I wished him bon voyage for his trip to the south of France, an escape with his family from the 70th birthday next week brings and he kissed me once on each cheek and walked me into the hallway, now chatting again telling me of the two flats he’s designing in the extra office space he no longer requires.

The rain had stopped. Early Friday evening in Helsinki is quiet.
And so very beautiful.