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 ]