Hyde held an international trip to the Finnish Nature Centre Haltia in
Espoo. It was a pleasure to see so many new faces interested in the
Finnish nature! Overall there were about 40 participants from all over
the world.
At Haltia we got an introduction to the Centre, it's goals and history
and other interesting aspects of it. The whole building is made of
beautiful wood and has received many prizes for its architecture and
eco-frendliness. After this we got to explore the two exhibitions of the
Centre.
The first exhibition was about the Finnish nature in general. The
entrance was very impressive: a passageway with a scenery of a Finnish
forest in the winter with artificial snow and lots of well-stuffed
animals. We even got to peek under the snow to see what kinds of
creatures spend their winter there. The rest of the exhibition was
rather informative about the Finnish nature, but also very beautiful.
There was also an interesting dark room where we could listen to the
different sounds of the Finnish summer night in the nature.
The other exhibition explored the carreer of the first Finnish nature
photographer Hannu Hautala. He has done most of his work in Kuusamo,
located in Northern Finland. This was evident in the amount of wintery
sceneries and pictures of the beautiful Siberian Jay, a curious bird
that can be found in the Northern parts of Finland. Most of the pictures
were of birds but there were also some mammals. It was quite impressive
that Hautala has taken all of his photographs with a traditional camera!
After the exhibitions we did a little orienteering to find the camp fire
to grill sausages. Despite the rather wet weather, we were able to set
the fire and eat some nicely roasted sausage. After eating, some of us
went for a little walk before heading back to Helsinki.
Thanks for all the attendees for such a nice day!
