Today's family adventure was a little bit different, but is hopefully going to be far more commonplace in our collective futures. The three of us did a trip to a local museum, which has a several exhibitions and is constantly changing. However, we "didn't pay" to enter, but instead, my wife and I are now the proud owners of a museokortti (museum card), that gives us free entry into 350+ Finnish museums, of varying sizes, qualities and many, many topics.
The cards cost us 86€ each, but because many museums either don't charge for children or are at a reduced price, we didn't get one for our daughter. And today at the Vapriikki Museum, the tickets would have been 15 per adult and 7 for a child, yet we ended up paying nothing for our daughter. I tried to pay, but I think that because of our daughter's diminutive size, they thought she was 7 or under, so let her in for free, even though I asked three time, "are you sure?". It was either her size, or the cashier thought I was a single dad and was going to give me her number, until my wife finally finished rummaging through her phone behind us looking for her code, and came to the counter to block my chances.
This particular museum is quite a large place, but has several exhibitions ongoing all of the time. Generally, there is an international one of some type, and then a small Finnish natural history museum, The Finnish Museum of Games, a chess exhibition, 50 years of Dungeons and Dragons, and a couple others. The international flavour came from Australia and was called Songlines: Tracking the seven sisters.
The entry picture is a tiny slice of a huge painting.
What I like a bout this museum, is that there are generally lots of things to interact with and it is far more relaxed than many. The games museum is pretty cool too, as there are heaps of old school games to play, from arcade types, to pong, and on C64s, Amigas, pads, and board games.
Our daughter hasn't a lot of experience playing computer games of any sort, and it was pretty cool to see her have some fun on "old-school" arcade driving and joystick games. She was really good at the driving ones, which surprised me a lot - though she was also frustrated that she couldn't catch me, complaining,
BUT YOU CAN DRIVE A REAL CAR!
The natural history section is pretty small and catered to 95% Finnish animals, and it is not badly put together. It is there all year round I believe, so they have put more work into upgrading the exhibits and making them neat and ordered. In fact, the whole museum is kind of cool, because it is in an old fabric factory area, built in 1844. It was cold, dark and snowy outside, so I didn't take any pictures externally, but it is a nice area in the summer.
While the Australian exhibition was initially relatively boring for our daughter, we did spend some time in there and I talked her through some of the stories and bits and pieces that I knew from my own knowledge bank too.
Though, I don't know much about this particular story, I think it helped her to have more connection with what she was seeing. It was also good for me I think, as there is so little "from home" here. However, I was disappointed at the café, because apparently they have "authentic" Australian meat pies, but were sold out.
Just yesterday I was wondering if I could make proper meat pies at home myself.
Roll the dice.
While we only walked past it, seeing the sign for the 50 years of Dungeons and Dragons made my think to myself;
Fifty years ago, did anyone think that these nerds would run the world?
I guess they would have played chess too.
The museum is located in the city centre, which speaks to how old the factory building is, because once upon a time, it was an industrial area, but now is surrounded by apartments. However, it is easily accessible and one of the side tasks of the trip was that we took the tram in, which has in the last week opened up its new line that is close to our area. There are no longer any direct buses to the city, it is a short bus ride to the tram stop, and then a tram journey to the centre. But, it was still faster than the old bus line.
And while our daughter says she had a great day at the museum, this was her face as we were waiting for the tram home in the city. She wasn't sad though, nor was she crying, it was just cold and surprisingly windy, so her eyes were watering. I told her to look sad for a photo, and she didn't know why.
Don't cry sweetie, there are more museum trips to come!
We will likely do more of these trips to the smaller, more random museums and see what there is available to see, because I reckon it they are nice days out, even if we aren't that interested in the topic on show. There are art museums, car museums, factory museums, worker museums, and glass museums to check out, plus more. And that is just in this area. In the summer, we will travel further afield and likely visit Helsinki where there are many more.
Healthy family fun ahead.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
That is cool that they have a reciprocity agreement with the other museums. You should get a lot of use out of that membership! We have a small museum in the town where I grew up, but it is a very hands on science style museum. I used to have my grandma take me there all the time. It was one of my favorite places as a kid. They do rotating displays on the upper level too. About a decade ago or so they had a couple of the terra cotta soldiers there.
That is cool! This one actually had them about a decade ago or so also - but I never got to see them.
There is a great science one in Helsinki I took Smallsteps too about three years ago and then again a couple years ago with my wife as well, but we will definitely go back this summer for sure. Fun for adults too - can make racing cars! :D
That does sound like a good time! Our local one does a lot of art displays along with the science stuff. I know one year they had a precious gem display and I was trying to get to that one.
Good for the family, they had a wonderful time. I fully understand the effect of the cold, it hit me hard in the first few winters in Canada. I wouldn't close by saying that they might come back, more positive, these are family moments that need to be repeated, to get out of the monotony... I love Smallsteps smile when they are leaving, as well as the projection of the kaleidoscope mosaic of colours on them.
The cold doesn't bother too much now. I am guessing they have a similar saying in Canada - there is no bad weather, just bad clothing.
This was really weird to stand in - I felt like I was falling over as they moved. Made me feel sick!
The most common cause of feeling a kind of vertigo, dizziness..., kaleidoscopic vision is a visual migraine. It is also known as ocular or ophthalmic migraine. The technical term is scintillating scotoma and occurs most often in both eyes.
About 25 percent to 30 percent of migraine sufferers have visual symptoms.
A visual migraine occurs when nerve endings in a portion of the back of the brain called the visual cortex are activated. The reason for this is unknown. On an MRI scan, it is possible to see that the activation spreads through the visual cortex as the migraine episode progresses.
Symptoms usually last no more than 30 minutes. You do not necessarily experience headache pain at the same time. A visual migraine without a headache is called an acetalgic migraine. Many years ago I suffered from that, specifically from stress.
A Dungeons and Dragons exhibit, that is neat. Was or is Dungeons and Dragons popular in Finland?
The Commodore 64 exhibit would have been powerfully nostalgic - when I was a kid I would spend hours typing in games from a magazine - it was heartbreaking if the power flickered. My first storage device for it was a cassette player, and then I saved up and purchased a disk drive. Formatting a disk for storage sounded like a power tool going off!
It sounds likes your family is going to get a lot of use out of the museum cards.
It is pretty popular here still, and similar roleplaying games. There are a lot of nerds :) Some of my friends have been playing since the 80s.
The 64 was the first "computer" I ever used, but it was on friend's machines, not my own - but I do know the sound you are talking about! My first was a second-hand Amiga 500 in the early 90s.
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It looked very nice.
This is a good approach. I spent a nice day with my nephews (they are 9 and 3) and I bought a little book about all the birds in UK, so we were out despite the cold, trying to spot birds from the book. I try to get them into birdwatching. Ha ha! (they spend too much inside the house). If you need a different idea!
Museum visits were a part of my kids' childhood/homeschooling, we love them XD
Unfortunately for the bigs unless we had gone in a group with multiple adults who could supervise individual subgroups, our visits tended to be dictated by youngest's attention span as while the big two could concentrate for lengths especially once they learned how to read and wanted to read at least some of the signs, youngest's adhd meant he wanted to see everything all at once right this second and all he wanted to do was rush to the next exhibit after seeing the first one. When they were younger we could cover the whole museum (or zoo when we went to the zoo) in the one trip, but as they got older and youngest got a longer attention span or at least the patience to wait til his siblings were done, we ended up spending a lot/all the time in sections of interests and less time/none in sections that weren't interesting at the time.
Those membership cards were so worth it purely for that and not feeling like you had to drag out the trip "to get your money's worth".
It is useful to visit museums, especially historical museums, to better understand the past. It might be a good idea for you to go to the museum that houses the Finnish-Soviet war.
Nice museum. I would love to play old computer games and show them to my children.
Second photo is really cool. Which is strange considering that it reminds me of the only time I went to a night club and I did not like that experience.
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Oh, I agree, especially since they are normally funded by taxpayers anyway. They should be free for locals at least. I haven't been in too many museums abroad, but I enjoyed the Hermitage in St Petersburg, and visited a couple in London with a friend.
What are they like in Turkey?