Goth tourist in Dublin

As I mentioned in a previous post, I spent the first weekend of September in Dublin.

Things I saw

I went to two art museums, the National Gallery of Ireland and The Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery. Both were exquisite and had free entry. Nothing extremely goth art was on display, so I am not going to write about them much. All I'll say is that if you are in Dublin, they are extremely nice places to spend a couple of hours.

Another not particularly goth or gloomy place to visit but in which I had a great time was Teeling Whiskey Distillery. They arrange tours and it is the only working whiskey distillery in Dublin.

In these huge tanks water leaves alcohol. They all had names and the liquid goes through from the biggest to the smallest. There are three copper ladies in a row.

Rebecca on the right can hold 9 000 liters. She is the smallest one. If I remember correctly the biggest of the sisters has the capacity of 15 000 liters or more.

A tad more goth-y or at least more geeky place to visit would be the old library of The Trinity College. The quality of photos is awful due to lighting conditions (to preserve old books). One could photograph only in The Long Room. If you think there is something familiar in this place, it might be because you have seen its doppelganger in the movie Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones.

They have around 200 000 books in this library and many of them are extremely valuable first editions. The most priced book of this library is the Book of Kells, It was written and drawn around year 800 and it contains the four Gospels. The most intriguing thing about it are the marvelous drawn decorations. Underneath this Long Room in the photos is a huge exhibition area dedicated solely to the Book of Kells. 

The most goth tourist attraction I found on a 48 hour trip was Marsh's Library. They have many ghost stories and other peculiar and sometimes morbid things on display. Among them a copy of Jonathan Swift's dear friend's skull. No photos are allowed to take in the library, so alas, I have nothing to show. They do have great photos and information on their website, though.

The Marsh's Library has stayed pretty much the same for 300 years and is an almost pristine example of 18th century library. James Joyce, Jonathan Swift and Bram Stoker have all visited it and used its services. The library still has the chair Mr. Stoker rested his bum on while he read about witchcraft!

One thing particular makes this place the gothiest place I visited and it is because their history and that they made a small comic book about the weirdest tales. It was created by John Rooney, the illustrator, and Julie Burke, who is the Education and Outreach Officer of the Marsh's Library.

I bought a copy and I must say it is great! I adore the style of the illustrator. All incidents or stories consist of a one picture and a text box but they are really amusing and sometimes a bit gross. My favorite story is about a 3500 years old mummy that was found in a cupboard at the library in 1888. Nobody knows how it ended up there!

You can read this small treasure online, if you want to, though I must say that buying it for mere 2 euros for a physical copy is a very good deal. They also have beautiful photos of details of their collection on Pinterest.

Prospects on shopping

In the post before the trip I wrote that I would like to go to goth clothing shops, if possible. There were a couple of alternative fashion stores in the Temple Bar area. They were nice but they mostly sold rock, psycho-billy etc. styles so I end up leaving without any purchases.

Obviously for those interested in Celtic myths, jewelry, and things related the Green Island is a heaven. Celtic necklaces are beautiful but not my style anymore, so no products came to my possession. What I really wanted to have was a selection of animal themed sticky notes. The bat and the dodo are my favorites.

 The sticky notes were sold in the shop of the National Gallery of Ireland. It contains 8 different animals in 8 different sticky note piles and it costed about 12 euro.

From an Irish gift shop called Old World New I found this beautiful thing. "Wolf's Bane. Potion No. 5. Slightly bitter potion to take the edge off your Lycanthropy. Drink at your own risk."

I am not sure if one can actually use it and store some liquid in it. The bottleneck is really small and it would be a pain in the ass to try to clean it after usage. No matter, it looks gorgeous by my window, next to a candelabra I found at a flea market last summer.

Next up: Creepy Reads Review after a long pause!

Road trip: Eastern Finland, pretty cafes and natural beauty

This post is about the first half of the road trip I was on last week. As shown on a previous post, me and my other road tripper (who wishes to stay more or less anonymous and I am going to respect that) drove to the municipality of Mänttä-Vilppula. After the Gösta art museum and its amazing content, we headed towards Kuopio.

Kuopio is the capital of the province called Northern Savonia (Pohjois-Savo). It is a large area of the Eastern Finland. We do not really talk about "Middle Finland", it is always either west or east. :D Especially the Eastern Finland has a disturbing amount of lakes. Of Nortern Savonia's area 17,7% is inland water, in Southern Savonia 26,6%.

It is fair to say that the scenery was beautiful. These photos are not modified in any way. They are from a small pond and a lake on our route. We needed a break from driving so we stopped at the first "break place" we saw. there are many places to take a break beside the roads of Finland.

 The first two photos are from the small pond. It was so still the pond acted as a perfect mirror.

This third photo from the bigger lake makes me understand, why some painters from 18th and 19th century wanted to paint solely clouds.

To balance this overexposure of natural beauty, here is me causing havoc in a lake. Notice how a city person can not let go of her phone even when in water.

When we reached Kuopio, we stayed at friends' place. These two too are not so interested of featuring themselves in my blog, so no much other material about them. You may wonder, are Finnish people reluctant to appear in public, or am I actually just a weirdo without friends. Well, at least you can see that the photos taken from a moving vehicle are taken from the passenger seat, not behind the wheel. ;)

Even though Finland has a small population, there are distinguishable differences between eastern and western areas. East being next to Russia, has more Russian influenced cuisine. More cream, more stews etc. We did not go and eat anything really traditional, but we did go to the Moomin Pancake House in Kuopio. They had a huge selection of sweet and salty pancakes and the decoration was themed with the Moomins.

Moomins are fairy tale characters created by Swedish-speaking Finn Tove Jansson and they are known in many countries. They are super popular in Japan, for example.

I had a salty pancake with reindeer meat and my rather anonymous companion had cold smoked salmon pancake. Delicious!

In the photos are also shown a glimpse of the menu, and decor. the right upper corner is of a lamp they had. All lamps had Moomin decorations and yes, those are sold to ordinary folk too. In the lamp one of the main characters called Moomintroll is painting. Underneath him is Little My a really tiny yet feisty girl. Notice she is only just bigger than an ant next to her.

Finland got its independence 1917 and if I exaggerate a bit, before that it was a vast land area between Sweden and Russia. Both Russian and Swedish throne were interested to claim that area and during the Middle Ages the most common way was to ride to the borderlands and convert the humans who might be inhabiting the areas. That is why the Eastern Finland has a longer history with Eastern Orthodox Church. Lutheran church arrived from the west.

In Kuopio you can visit the Orthodox Church Museum of Finland - RIISA. As they sum up on their webpage: they continue the purpose of the Museum of Antiquities founded in the Valamo Monastery in 1911 by preserving, studying, and displaying the cultural heritage of the Orthodox church.

The photos show the bell tower outside the museum and church, the entrance to the museum and church, a detail of a red carpet-like religious equipment, and some holy texts and other equipment needed in a sermon.

It was very interesting to visit this museum, since it is an awful long time since I was in secondary school and was educated on religions. Plus, most of Finns have been christened to Lutheran church so they only teach cultural basics about the other church in school, unless you are orthodox yourself.

Kuopio is a good city for tourists, the centre is compact, it is an old city so the architecture is pretty, and there are several museums (12 to be precise!) and other ways to pass one's time. I am a museum person myself, so on my list were Kuopio Art Museum and Kuopio Natural History Museum.

If you check the webpages of the museums you will notice that the language options are Finnish, English and Russian. Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish but in Eastern Finland the amount of Swedish-speaking Finns is much smaller (compared to coastline area) and the amount of tourists and immigrants from Russia is more significant. More fun facts about Finland's languages in the next post! Whether you like it or not.

In this photo collage frim the museum of natural history you can see one of the exhibition areas. It is a winter scenery with birches. On the walls are boxes where are animals. The boxes depict the natural environment and behavior of the animals during winter. That means there are scenes with taxidermy animals and information boards next to them. Other two are of two bears arguing over honey, and a Saimaa ringed seal with its offspring. They only live in a small area of Saimaa in Finland.

I mentioned in the previous post that despite not reaching Lapland, we did drive trough an area where reindeer are herded. Those areas are marked and on roads you will see signs warning about reindeer. They are half tamed animals so they might not necessarily be aware of cars and a collision with one will be ugly. More fun facts about the dangers of wildlife in Finland in the next post!

To conclude this post, some tourist photos of the center of Kuopio, featuring art, little design shops and a really nice cafe we went to. Their decor was mostly from small local designers and even though it is not straight up goth, there are elements you could easily incorporate to romantic goth style, or the modern witch style. The name of this cafe was Kahvila Kaneli, which means Cafe Cinnamon. It is situated close to the market square, on a nearby street.

In the photos you can see the outside of the cafe. They have a lot of green plants and it really made the place extra nice and homey. That whole day had short but violent rain showers interrupting our trotting around the city of Kuopio. I do not know if you notice straight away, but in the outside pic the ground is completely wet and so are the tables and stools. We actually ended up going to Cafe Cinnamon by accident, because we had no umbrellas with us and we were in front of this cafe when it started raining.

I have to say I was super pleased we went there, because the place was awesome! The cafe had two floors, here is a view from the upper level. As you can see the decor is lovely romantic with a dash of rustic touch.

Last but not least, me ready to attack my hot chocolate. They had a gorgeous selection of salty and sweet pastry products but unfortunately we had just eaten our breakfast so there was no room for food.

2014 Kuopio ordered seven sculptures by artist Pekka Kauhanen. The statues are positioned in the centre area. In the photos you can see Oksapoika, which means a "branch boy" or a "twig boy".

Kauhanen is from the Savonia area and his works are described as humorous and that they express especially Savonian humor. It is hard to describe, but Savonian humor, compared to the humor Finns in west areas have, is a touch more twisted. It has a dash of horseplay in it but that it is not maleficent, a Savonian bloke has a good heart.

The yellow building is the old market hall of Kuopio. It is filled with little shops of delicacies. Meat, bread candy, etc and also local design and crafts.

Next up: the world's oldest (and possibly creepiest) diving suit and other wonders of Finland!

A Goth Tourist in Budapest: where to shop and what to buy

The next episode of a not-so-fictional goth tourist's (also known as me) escapades in Budapest is about what funny or weird things I bought there.

As I mentioned in a previous post, a little white rabbit led my travel group of two into a big flea market on Saturday. The flea market is held every weekend (at least during warmer months) in the city's park Városliget. According to all tourist guides one is sure to make great finds in that flea market but I was rather disappointed. There were some sellers with nice old things but nothing really weird or creepy that would fit a goth's taste. There was also many people selling their clothes and unopened everyday products like toothpaste in big bulks.

I still managed to find something to buy. Two dead old watches and some small metallic plate. I intend to do some DIY and make a steampunk inspired brooch or a hair accessory or something.

Me and my companion also wondered around a regular shopping center and I found some casual and smart shoes for this fall. Though they are fake suede, so they are not good if there is any rain. From another shoe shop I found these gorgeous green legwarmers and stockings. The stockings were on sale and 990 FT is about 3 euro.

A shop I really adored in Budapest was Szputnyik Shop on Dohány utca 20, in the centrum area. They had interesting second hand clothes, accessorizes, hats and other stuff and a huge amount of clothes, jewelry and what not by local designers.

I had my eye on several really cool print tops but alas I am not the right shape for them! They look good on more flat people and with my curves there was no chance. My companion bought one I wanted to buy too. It did not look half as good on me as in this pic.

If you are interested of design and local artists, I must recommend Magma, a Hungarian design and contemporary art gallery in the centrum, pretty close to the river, on the side of Pest. I bought this cute little fox from there!

Unfortunately this print is on a slightly shimmering paper so trying to take a good photo of it was quite frustrating. Here is a link to the artists webpage. I cant remember how much I payed for my little fox but it was not too expensive. I also bought three postcards from the museum shop of Ludwig Museum, of which I am going to write the next post, since it was a great art museum. Here are the three works of art on postcards:

I shall tell more about them in the next post, why ruin the content of it now! Finally the last three things I bought from another design shop. These are more goth-y too.

A skull of coarse. This is the perfect size and if I am any judge, it probably belonged to an European roe deer. It was the first thing I saw in the design shop. The place is Szimpla Design Shop, their webpage is under construct but here is their facebook page. 

When I saw the second object that interested me the conversation between me and the salesperson was this:

me: That's pretty. What is it and how much is it?
salesperson: To be honest, I do not know what it is but it costs 10 euros.

A short silence. 

me: I'll take it.

So, if any of you know what that thing is on the right, please tell me! I do know that the thing on the left is a ballpoint pen, I put it there to show you how big that other thing is. Me and my entourage of one soul pondered this for a while. We wondered if it might be a part of a door handle. But where could one grab it? We saw those metallic middle parts by themselves of the flea market I mentioned earlier.

 The last thing I bought and am going to show you is this.

This too costed only ten euros. It is made of porcelain and it is exactly the size you might think it is. 

It is a vase for flowers, though I am not going to put real live flowers in it. The shape might be cool but it is inconvenient if one tries to actually clean it well from inside. I predict it would soon start to smell, if there was water and organic things like parts of plants in it. I shall buy a black fake flower to make this perfect.

This porcelain gun has so far been the most fun thing I bought. Since it is of such delicate material, of coarse I had to take it back to Finland in my hand luggage! I must say it was rather fun at the security check before we could go to the gate area. No surprise, my bag was taken for a more thorough inspection than mere translumination. The inspecting person asked me to open the bag and started to go through it. To make things speedier I said something like "What you are probably looking for is in that small pocket on the lid part of the luggage. I mean, if you are looking for a gun shaped object, there is a designer vase that fits that description". I was as nice as it was possible and explained how I really could not have put a delicate object like that in to the cargo bin. In the end the inspector said it was actually rather cool a gun and let me proceed to the gates.

I hope these recommendations of shops have been helpful if somebody is planning to visit Budapest and that this post has been at least entertaining! Next time, some culture tips, an art museum and some museums of specific parts of history.