This blog is a classy, adult place. It avoids low humour. It rises high. It would never lower itself to laughing at foreign words. Just because a Finnish word sounds odd or curious to our English ears, that's no reason for us to point and giggle. Are we clear on that? Good. Because my next station was called Niittykumpu.
It makes an impression when you step off the train, Niittykumpu, though not necessarily for a good reason. Mari Rantanen's artwork was intended to evoke "the red of milkweed and the green of grass", to inspire thoughts of the meadows that give the station its name.
To me it looks like a couple of Margo Leadbetter's wilder kaftans have been pinned up above the tracks. It's certainly red and green but it screams lurid 1970s bathroom tiles more than gentle waving wildflowers.
Niittykumpu (nope, still not funny) has its main entrance in a shopping centre above ground, but I was headed for a side exit. The underpass beneath the main road was crowned with a large green snake of a tunnel which rises up out of the ground alongside a stretch of parkland. I thought that was far more interesting to use than a boring old mall so I walked through the underground passages to find it. There was a large central area with dozens of bike racks - an admirable attempt at providing a valuable transport resource, but it looked about as secure as a wooden shed with a wide open door and an arrow over the entrance saying steal me so it was unsurprisingly barely used.
The exit tunnel is very exciting to use, if you ignore the two gentlemen at its foot who gave me a slightly too searching look as I passed before returning to whatever thing they didn't want me to see in their hands. At the top of the ramp I looked around for the station sign... and discovered there wasn't one. It seemed I'd wandered so far away from the footprint of the Metro this was no longer signposted as an official entrance.
Muttering obscenities to myself, I walked back over the top of the busy road - I wasn't keen to return to the underpass, for obvious reasons - and crossed the street so I could pause outside the station/mall for the sign pic and proof that I definitely visited here.
Absolutely nothing funny about Niittykumpu. Don't know why you'd even suggest it.
My plan had been to walk through the residential area north of the Havsindsvägen to my next station, but having crossed the road twice already, I didn't feel like doing it a third time. Instead I walked alongside it, a busy main road lined with new buildings on either side. They very much came under the category of 21st Century Standard: a block of white or yellow or cream with one (1) interesting feature to placate the planners. This could be, for example, the top two floors housed in a box overhanging the edge, or a sudden swoop of random metal cladding, or a jagged roof line. Something to stop them from becoming repetitive. I'm all for it, personally, but it did look a little token when you saw it repeated over and over.
It was a little further on, in the car park of a Lidl, that I encountered something that convinced me I should move to Finland immediately. They're living in the future and us Brits are stuck in mud. It was - and I need to take a deep breath before I say this - a pizza vending machine.
A little box, a bit like a cash machine booth, sat in the corner of the car park, and offering hot pizza in three minutes, twenty four hours a day. No need to go to a restaurant. No need to speak to a human and have them become aware of the shameful quantities of pizza you eat. Turn up, pick a flavour, and after three minutes it pops out of a slot all hot and ready to be consumed. Imagine how great that would be after you came out of the pub.
Now you may be sitting there saying "yeah but what sort of quality are you getting from a robot pizza chef?" To which I counter: there is no such thing as a bad pizza. Bread? Great. Cheese? Brilliant. Vegetables and meat to go on top? What's not to like? I need someone to buy the technology and install one of these on every corner in the UK, and possibly also in my house.
I didn't partake, by the way. I considered it, what with this being a blog famous for its indepth research and commitment to trying new experiences, but it was eleven o'clock in the morning and even I would consider eating pizza at that time gauche. I waved it sadly farewell, and sitting here in England two weeks later, I still slightly regret it.
The road continued on for a while, then I took a side turn to approach Urheilupuisto station. Urheilupuisto translates as "sports park" and it was certainly clear that was the focus from the locals. There were dozens of excitable teenagers in football gear being corralled by harassed men who looked like they were wondering what they'd signed up for. Tapiolan urheilupuisto has pitches for football, an arena for tennis, badminton, gymnastics and squash, a climbing park and an ice hockey stadium. In short it sounds like somewhere I would never visit in a million years if there wasn't an underground station here.
It's a really good station though. The outside building looks like a cube that has somehow been dropped into the plaza and got stuck at an odd angle; it draws your attention but doesn't dominate the area. It's quirky and fun.
Inside the angle of the cube's walls follows the angle of the escalators, pushing you down underground. I love the information screens on that wildly overhanging strip by the glass wall too.
Below ground is another station I added to my favourites. I'm not sure how long that list is now.
The broken tile pieces meshing together up and over the walls and onto the ceiling. (Is it just me or do they look like bits of the London 2012 logo?) The huge pillars. The halo lights. Everything about it feels epic and exciting and alive.
Considering it's almost all white, you'd think it'd be bland, but those flashes of black liven it up and make the arrival of the red Metro trains even more notable. They zoom in and grab your attention.
I jumped aboard a train and headed off to my next stop. Hopefully this one, unlike Niittykumpu, wouldn't have a name like an overly twee term for a filthy sex act. Dammit.
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