The first few days
By Tessa Bunney on 14 March 2010Thursday 11 March
I’m in the flat. There’s no television on. There’s no happy 4 year old child. There’s no internet. I can hear traffic and its raining. I’ve started knitting some socks but I’m thinking about the residency at the same time.
It’s taken us almost two days to get here with an overnight in Helsinki. It’s cold but not as cold as I expected and its started to rain. There are big piles of dirty snow everywhere.
I wanted to get off the train all the time to take pictures.
I’m here with Debby who is also part of the Connections North project but she goes back next week and I’ll be here alone. We both want to get started and it seems its taken an age to get here.
Sunday 14th March
The frozen lakes have not disappointed. I spent yesterday at Jyväsjärvi which is the nearest lake to the printmaking centre, just over the railway line. I suppose you could describe it as an urban park as its surrounded by housing. It has a specially made ice skating track and the rest of the lake is used by ski-ers, dog walkers and as a shortcut from the houses on the otherside into town.
Today, I spent the morning at Tuomiojärvi, a much quieter lake north of the town in a residential area. The main draw was to check out the ice swimming spot, there were a few people braving the water but I couldn’t get close enough to talk to them as it had a private entrance. I then spotted a few ice fishermen on the otherside of the lake, I think its going to take a while to get used to walking across the lakes – there’s probably around 10 inches of snow on top of the ice so every now and then your leg disappears and you think that’s it! Its also proving a bit technically tricky with all that white stuff in the frame.
On Friday, I had visited the ice swimming office in town and they had told me that there was a special sauna and swimming spot open this afternoon at Tikkakosken, about 20 km north of Jyväskylä in a military zone. Debby and I only had one swimming costume between us so I very graciously (!) forwent the experience in favour of taking photos. It was a beautiful spot and the three older women who didn’t speak a word of English were happy to be photographed, thank goodness for the letter Anna-Leena had written for me… It’s got a lot colder and is snowing again today.