Day 14: Visiting the Moomins

Today started the day - no, not with breakfast, but with packing our backpacks. Then we took the bus to the city, where we headed straight to a café and ordered sandwiches with chai latte.

After a cozy breakfast, we walked to Tampere City Hall and took a number (!) to get tickets for the Moomin Museum.

Once our luggage was stored, we entered the newly opened exhibition rooms and immediately found ourselves in a different world. The lights were dim, drawings were hanging everywhere, and various sounds could be heard.

After a brief introduction, we set out to explore the exhibition itself. In addition to many drawings of the cute little troll creatures and their friends, there were also many lovingly designed display cases, often accompanied by excerpts from the books, as well as things to touch and experience, and animations.

Each Moomin book was introduced separately, allowing us to dive into the stories of Moominpappa, Moominmamma, Moomintroll, Sniff, Snufkin, and the Snork Maiden. In addition, there were frequent references to the author and illustrator Tove Jansson, the creator of all these creatures, and her life partner Tuulikki Pietilä. This provided a lot of background information and insight into the origin of the Moomins.

Just before the end of the exhibition, there was a room where you could try out different drawing styles with various brushes, pens, and papers. We tried our hand at it with mediocre success and created a few small artworks that we could hang on the wall of the room - where they looked rather pale next to some really good drawings.

After nearly four hours flying by, we retrieved our backpacks and returned to the train station, where we waited for the train to Lahti. It's hard to believe, but the train was already quite delayed in Tampere, and we were lucky that the connecting train was waiting in Tikkurila (yes, a strange name).

After about two hours on the train and a short walk, we reached our accommodation in Lahti. Here we have a relatively large room in an old, yellow wooden house with a nice family with three children. There is art by Terhi, the mother, hanging and standing everywhere in the house.

Dinner today took place at the nearby McDonald's, but tomorrow morning we will have porridge made by Terhi. 😋

We say goodbye for today, tomorrow we will get up early so that we can see some more of Lahti before continuing our journey.

P.S.: Unfortunately, photography was not allowed in the Moomin Museum, which is why there are so few pictures today.