happy steps

I now know the story behind the colorful bear statue we saw in one of the sidewalks of Berlin which I just fondly named as the Berlin Bear. Well, that’s what you get with surfing in the net; you end up with some interesting information. The bear statue we saw is actually one of the United Buddy Bears.

A buddy bear (or friendship bear) is a painted sculpture made of fiberglass about two meters in height.

The buddy bears were displayed in previous art exhibitions in Berlin (2003 and 2006) and Warsaw (2008) with the motto: “We have to get to know each other better; it makes us understand one another better, trust each other more, and live together more peacefully.” The exhibition also went on global tour and was hosted in Hong Kong, Sydney, Tokyo, Warsaw and other cities.

The United Buddy Bears exhibition at Bebelplatz, Berlin-Mitte (Photo credits: Wikipedia)

The United Buddy Bears’ message is about the art of tolerance, to promote international understanding among different nations.

Wanna shop for paintings, décors, jewelry, t-shirts, lanterns, bags, buttons and all sorts of art, handicrafts and books in Berlin? Check out the Art market (Kunstmarkt) at the Museum Island (Museumsinsel) beside the bridge every Saturday (11:00 AM - 3:00 PM) and Sunday (10:00 AM - 2:00 PM) where you can find some Berlin souvenirs to take home with you.

Here are some photos of what’s on sale at the street market where busy tourists crowd around the many items displayed.

One way for travel bugs to get a taste of a place’s art and culture is to watch the local concerts and musical events in town. I was not able to do so during my Prague vacation, but at least we were treated to a beautiful concert by the choir at the Strahovsky Monastery when we attended their 10am Sunday Mass. Well I still have some brochures here about upcoming concerts and shows in Prague, they’re just my souvenirs for now…maybe next time I’ll treat myself to a real Prague show.
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Our family had a nice day tour at the Royal Flora Festival in Chiang Mai, Thailand two years ago where we saw lots of great flower arrangement ideas for our home. Colorful plants and flowers were stacked on different levels of iron bars making a nice ‘flower column’ which is great for gardens with little space. Flowers were not planted directly on soil but on thin black plastic pots and grouped together to complement the other varieties. This makes it easier to replace with a new variety and planting these flowers on the pots gives more flexibility and creativity in your garden arrangement. The trip to the flower festival inspired us to spruce up our garden with the ideas we got from their presentation.
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Continued from Helsinki City Museum: Old Helsinki days

At the second floor is the Russian era where more interesting artifacts are displayed. We took longer time at another section in the ground floor which highlights the era of Finnish independence from Russian rule, the consequent changes in Finnish lifestyle and the city’s progress that followed.

Museum caption in English: “Ration cards with cases and paper fabric purse from the 1940s. Food was rationed between 1939 and 1954.”

Museum caption in English: “Name tag and identity disc of child evacuee. 1939-45 more than 70,000 children evacuated from Finland to Sweden, Denmark and Norway.”

This is the top view of a miniature model of a clothing factory which I find so charming. The tiny dolls are busy seaming and working on equally tiny pieces of textile and sewing machines.

A huge poster of “I live in Helsinki” in many languages. Can you spot your own language here?

The multicultural environment in Helsinki is well summed up by these paragraphs posted in a nearby wall:

Who are we?

Helsinki is once again a multicultural city. In ten years refugees and immigrants have moved to Helsinki from all corners of the world. Today, there are 200 different mother tongues spoken in Helsinki. However, foreigners make up around just five per cent of the Helsinki population.

Finland joined the European Union in 1995. Despite geographical distance, Finland is closer to mainstream Europe. People and goods can move freely within EU Member States. The introduction of a common European currency brings us even closer to Europe.

Population growth in Helsinki has accelerated since the 1990s. The IT breakthrough has added to the attraction of the Helsinki region. In the midst of rapid change, people want to cling to something familiar and permanent. For example, there is a growing interest in Helsink slang. The Helsinki spirit of tomorrow is a blend of old and new.

The few hours spent going through the history of Helsinki as a city (and of Finland as a whole) left an impression of admiration, knowing that it went through hard and difficult times such as fire devastation, children being evacuated to nearby countries, food being rationed, and other turbulent events such as wars and diseases. It thrived through those trying times and developed to be one of Europe’s modern cities.

While in Finland, my big sis took us on a day tour of Helsinki though our time was very much limited but nevertheless we squeezed in about an hour of visit at the Helsinki City Museum. We chose it from among the many museums listed on our guide since it was just within the city and dropping by is another way of learning more about the Helsinki’s history. I wanted so much to drop by the contemporary art museum but we really lack the time. Anyway, it was such an enjoyable one for us, we stayed longer than expected.

The museum has an ongoing exhibition titled “Helsinki Horizons” which features the history of the Finnish capital in pictures, paintings, artifacts and stories over the past 450 years. A lot of interesting items with explanations for each exhibit are printed in Finnish, Swedish and English. There were also cardboards with a list identifying each item, also in the three mentioned languages.

The museum entrance where behind the front doors, the visitors are greeted by a big screen with a film showing about the ongoing exhibition titled “Helsinki Horizons”.

At the ground floor were shown the Old Helsinki days during the Swedish era, with the scale models of ships and ancient tools used for fishing and livelihood, then the founding of Helsinki by King Gustav Vasa of Sweden, and the gradual progress of civilization.

Quick information about the Helsinki City Museum:

Location: Sofiankatu 4, Helsinki
Tel. +358 (0)9 310 36630
Cameras are allowed
Entrance is FREE
Exhibit captions in Finnish, Swedish and English
Opening hours: 9am - 5pm Monday to Friday
11am - 5pm Saturday & Sunday

Museum Shop (ground floor at the right side before the museum entrance)
Opening hours: 9am - 5pm Monday to Friday
11am - 5pm Saturday & Sunday

Picture Archives:
Customer service 10am - 3pm Mondays & Thursdays

To be continued

Would you paint a war tank pink? Maybe not, but controversial Czech artist and sculptor David Cerny did it to a Soviet tank when he was still an art student in 1991. While that tank is now kept in Lešany Military museum, a pink torso of a tank by Cerny was just recently planted on the grounds beside the Justicní Palác in Prague. The white stripe at the center is reminiscent of the invasion of the Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Call him weird, creative or what, incidentally he’s also the sculptor of the Viselec or the ‘Hanging Man’ at Jilska Street which I featured in my previous Wordless Wednesday post. The ‘Hanging Man’ is a life-size statue of famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud who was born in Moravia, Czech Republic. In 2007, the sculpture was part of art exhibitions held at the Open Concept Gallery in Grand Rapids, Michigan and the Columbia College in Chicago where it was installed high on top and caused alarm among the motorists who thought it was a real man about to take his own life. It has also made its appearance in other art exhibitions in Europe such as Berlin and Stockholm. Now that it’s back home, nobody seems to mind this hanging artwork when we were at the Old Town in Prague.

Another interesting work of Cerny is the crawling babies at the Prague Television Tower.

Photo credits: Prague TV Tower by rainydazeee.com

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