Helsinki centre on Design Week 2018

Keskuskatu, Helsinki, streetview

Helsinki center has cheered up and become more lively after the recent opening of Amos Rex Art Museum there. This inspired me to take a walk in the center, especially since the weather was warm and sunny and Helsinki Design Week 2018 had started.

Helsinki Design Week 2018 in Keskuskatu
Helsinki Design Week 2018 in Keskuskatu
Keskuskatu, Helsinki, streetview
Keskuskatu, Helsinki, streetview

Keskuskatu, one of the streets in the very center of Helsinki has become a pleasant and stylish pedestrian street over the years. For the time being it also features a Helsinki Design Week 2018 -booth, from which event information is shared both for tourists and local passers-by.

A short walk in the center of Helsinki also stimulated the need for traveling abroad:

Keskuskatu with its tourists reminded me of any European metropolis, and even the helmet wearing passengers with the scooter, queuing in the traffic lights, resembled the streets of Rome.

HelsinkicentreonDesignWeek2018_IndivueCom_7060

But when I went to Baana for the first time, the pedestrian/cycling street in the Helsinki center, I was truly fascinated after seeing them benches meant for only one person to sit.

I had admired that kind of benches earlier in Stockholm and wondered why we don’t have them in Helsinki. And now found out that all this time they might have existed by this pedestrian street, which has been easing the life of the cyclists as well in the Helsinki center since 2012.

Benches for one person by the Baana
Benches for one person by the Baana

Yes, I really walked through the promenade for the first time in 2018. And I must admit – it was a refreshing experience.

I liked it even more than the lovely bike / pedestrian streets in Copenhagen, as “hygge” as they might be, since in Helsinki the road was much more spacious and safer for its passengers.

Afternoon car jams were only humming somewhere far off in the upper air when I walked from Kamppi to Kiasma, the museum of contemporary art, towards Oodi, the new and magnificent library being built in Helsinki.

Baana in Helsinki centre
Baana, the road for bicycles and pedestrians in Helsinki centre

The capital of Finland is really changing for the better. It’s really worth for tourists to come and bloggers to blog.

Helsinki Design Week is a 13 year old annual event presenting Finnish design in Helsinki, and this year’s novelty is the Children’s Design Week. You can find the entire Helsinki Design Week 2018 -program at https://www.helsinkidesignweek.com.

Kiasma, museum of contemporary art, in Helsinki, Finland
Kiasma, museum of contemporary art, in Helsinki, Finland

Find more blogging related to Helsinki here

and read about Helsinki also in Finnish .

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