Architecture and history

Architecture has always fascinated me. I've been travelling around and I've noticed that many countries have their star architects that shape the image and the face of the city. Hundertwasser in Vienna or Gaudi in Barcelona, to mention just 2 of them, have created real tourist attractions in these cities.

Hundertwasserhaus apartment building in Vienna
Photo from www.carlton.at

Gaudi Battló house in Barcelona
Photo from www.tourspain.org

Well, Helsinki has 2 "landmark" architects: brothers Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen (ENG: Finn). The brothers have designed the famous Temppeliaukio kirkko (ENG: Temple Square church) build into a granite bedrock (also known as Church of the Rock). This Lutheran church is famous for its concerts, because it has good acoustics.

Temppleiaukion kirkko, Helsinki

And Ähtäri has its landmark as well designed by brothers Suomalainen: a privately owned Hotel Mesikämmen (ENG: Bear, RUS: Mишка). It's located across the road from Ähtäri Zoo right by the lake and, surprise-surprise, also built into a bedrock like Temppeliaukio church in Helsinki. Looking from the zoo side, the hotel looks pretty small with just one floor, however, when you go inside, you realize the hotel goes 3 floors down into the granite bedrock and you can exit to the lake shore from the ground floor. Amazing! The hotel built into a solid rock has inspired quite a few couples to get married in the hallway on the ground floor seen in the photos :) Hard bedrock = strong marriage? Why not :)

View from 1st floor to ground floor

View from ground floor up

where are all the 3 floors here???

If the inside of the hotel is all rocks and cement, then the outside is all wood, therefore, fits the surrounding nature just perfectly. The hotel from the lake shore looks small as well, so you can't really tell that it has three floors. However, every hotel room has a view over the lake. The hotel is so well hidden into the bedrock that you can basically see only the ground floor from the outside. The big terrace is somewhere up there overlooking the lake Hankavesi :)  If you hear music and singing on the terrace on summer evenings -- that means they have a terrace concert going on there :)

Hotel from the lakeside, no sign of the 3 floors :)

What more, Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen have also designed the former Mini-Suomi wooden building in Ähtäri. The building is currently FamilyGolf club house. The building is about 1200 m2 big. The wooden building fits perfectly in the surroundings as it's build of timber and also local rocks have been used to build natural walls:

local rock wall

The golf club has a terrace, no concerts like at Mesikämmen hotel, but you can enjoy others playing golf while drinking a cup of coffee or juice, having a piece of freshly baked cake or eating soup for lunch.

from the golf course side


golf club courtyard

Talking of entertainment, FamilyGolf will have a zoo organised Kummikonsertti (ENG: Godparents concert) event at FamilyGolf at the end of September where all the animal mascots involved at the music concert will be playing golf. Would you like to see who plays better golf Ähtäri Zoo Santeri-bear or Ranua Zoo Jonne-polarbear? Come and see the match then :)

So Ähtäri can be proud of having brothers Suomalainen designed buildings next to much older historical buildings that can be found scattered in Ähtäri. I have already written about Tuomarniemi area on the other side of the Hankavesi lake from the zoo and the hotel and its old historical buildings dating back to the beginning of the 20th century when a forestry school was founded there. Tuomarniemi forestry school has operated there since 1903, educating forestry professionals of several levels.

school building from 1905 (look at the school bell on top of the roof)

Before the forestry school, there was a judge’s resident located on this small peninsula since 1700’s until 1902. Hence, the area's name Tuomarniemi (ENG literally: Judge's Peninsular). The only building that has survived since then is an old tar barn built in 1890-s. The buildings could have signs saying what the building was used for, though:

barn for storing tar barrels

Ähtärin history is well preserved in the former Vääräkoski cardboard factory founded in 1897 by Gustaf A. Lönnqvist. It was built by the Hyvölän river which produced the necessary power for the factory. The factory was producing cardboard until 1998 when it went bankrupt. Nowadays Vääräkosken Kartonkitehdas is open to the public as a place where various cultural events take place. 

Korjauspaja (repair shop)

Café (formerly factory office)

water kept behind the dam

what were they doing with this machine???

Vääräkosken Kartonkitehdas has a potential to become a cultural hub like Kultuurikatel in Tallinn which is established in the former power plant or Kulttuuritehdas Korjaamo in Helsinki which is established in the former tram depot. I've taken gazillion of photos at Vääräkoski, but here's just a fraction of them. Enjoy :)

this is the lounge where summer evening dances take place

forgotten you hat at home, don't worry, they have plenty to choose from :)

a real person, not a ghost from the past :)

definitely can't make private calls :)

torture instruments?

mirror in the repair shop...khmmm :)

"don't hang out or swim here if you have no business here" good point :)

you have to have class when you come to Vääräkoski :)

café terrace

stylish hand painted wallpaper

hmmm...I'm not sure I know how to use this phone

a secret room, can't tell you where it is there :)

café cash register :)

this is what you do to a kettle when it's too hot to put down on a wooden windowsill :)

baptism dress in a café?

There are more hidden treasures than the ones mentioned in Ähtäri. Say for example a mansion in Inha area called Pytinki. It is located on the grounds of an old metal factory which still is working and making for example aluminium Buster fast boats. The mansion looks magnificent in its new Renaissance style though built as late as 1899. They say it's haunted and many people have seen strange things going on in the mansion. I wouldn't dare to go and check it out myself :) Especially not at night and on a bike, though it's quite close to Tuomarniemi, right by the lake Hankavesi :)

Photo: Museovirasto

Ähtäri Zoo in its 40-ies

Where nature meets you!

I think I'm not mistaken when I say that Ähtäri Zoo (formerly known as Ähtäri Wildlife Park) is the heart of Ähtäri town. The whole town revolves around it, breaths with it and benefits from it. If it hadn't been for Väino Jaakola (a former mayor of Ähtäri) at the beginning of 1970-ies, then the town wouldn't be a tourist attraction today. He had travelled in Scandinavian countries and visited several wildlife parks there and got the idea of creating a similar type of place in Ähtäri: a park for animals with wide open spaces to roam about and less like a typical caged zoo. The first natural wildlife park in Finland Ähtäri Zoo was opened on 17th June 1973 featuring mainly animals found in Finland, but also 3 species not naturally inhabiting Finnish nature:

• European bison -- now roaming in a protected area on the border of Poland and Belarus (Bialowieza Forest which I visited once years ago)
• snow leopard given to the zoo as a gift 30 years ago -- native to the mountain regions of Central Asia
• wild boar -- once common to Finnish forests, now nearly extinct in Finland

Ähtäri Zoo is the second largest zoo in Finland (after Korkeasaari in Helsinki) and among the three largest in Finland (with Ranua Zoo in Lapland), and member of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria. Ähtäri Zoo has about 65 different species and about 350 animals in total on 60 ha on land. The average visitor rate per year is 150 000 persons of whom 85% visit the zoo in summertime. When in low season the zoo employs 15 persons, then in high season the amount of employees triples to 45.

staff at the zoo shop

visitors on a 3 km trail

Animals

The mascot of the zoo is a bear. You can read about him on his blog (ahtarinsanteri.blogspot.fi). Yes, Santeri the bear writes his blog :) There are two adult bears and two bear cubs at the zoo at the moment. They have a huge "castle", two swimming pools and numerous playground attractions mainly for cubs not to get bored. The latter use their "gym" regularly :) The cubs are extremely sociable and they literally run towards the barrier if they see or hear a visitor approaching their "castle" and start showing off. Never thought they could be such friendly fellows!

mother bear is having her beauty nap...

...while cubs are having fun

bear gym

m-o-m!!! wake up!

This fellow here looks like a small bear, but it isn't. It's a wolverine (Latin: gulo gulo), who lives in Lapland and the eastern part of Finland. Finland and Norway are the only countries in Europe where it lives. It is a very ferocious and strong animal and can kill animals many times bigger than itself. Ughhh, wouldn't like to meet it in the forest :)

small but ferocious gulo gulo

gulo gulo fooling around

The zoo is proud to have some endangered species:

• European mink (FIN: vesikko) which has almost extinct in nature due to a natural enemy in the form of a much more aggressive American mink and due to declines in crayfish numbers, but also hunting for fur (the mink itself is quite small in size, therefore, mink fur coats are very expensive), so don't buy mink fur coats because European minks are critically endangered animals!

Photo: Ähtäri Zoo

• Finnish forest reindeer (FIN: metsäpeura) -- almost like a Santa Claus reindeer only bigger and living in wild nature, not bred like domesticated reindeer. The forest reindeer is a rare and threatened subspecies of reindeer native to Finland and northwestern Russia. Hunting and deforestation have cut down their population.

metsäpeura

lunch for four

• Snow leopard (Latin: unica unica) -- the zoo has a male and a female leopard with a couple of adorable cubs. Ähtäri is lucky to have them as the future of the species depends on estimated 2500 snow leopards (those who are able to reproduce) left in the world. Snow leopards are killed for their beautiful fur. Yes, it's us, human beings who have drastically reduced their population.

antlers are growing bigger and heavier :)

One of the biggest animals in Ähtäri Zoo is the moose, the biggest species in the deer family with huge antlers (on males only). Some of them are very friendly and they even allow you to pet them. However, they can be very protective when they have young calves.

The fastest animal at the zoo seems to be a stoat, a small tough little creature who runs around his cage so fast that you can barely follow it with your eyes. Usain Bolt of the weasels family :)

stoat

And one of the funniest animals in early summer are definitely young striped wild boar piglets. A dozen of piglets running around the cage digging for who knows what and enjoying natural mud baths :)

wild boar mom bathing her kids in mud

However, by far the funniest guys at the zoo are the toads (FIN: rupikonna). I couldn't help but film the remarkable characters:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JnEWEYFnKM

On the trail

A zoo guide's legs for the summer :)

The zoo is nothing without guides (FIN: opas) telling visitors stories of the zoo animals :) Storytelling adds tremendous value to the zoo experience. These guides are busy especially in summertime (about 130 000 visitors, after all). So a bike is of great help here :) It's not easy to walk many 3 km trails a day, but easy with a bike. And what more, can you imagine how much they have to  know because visitors can have gazillion number of questions? Tourists, you know :)

faster, daddy!

Toddlers can travel through all the 3 km trail in a pull trolley. The trolleys are also handy when you've taken a picnic basket with you and you don't want to carry it all the way. There is a barbecue place half-way through the trail with a nice view over Mekkolampi lake. There is also a café (Kaakkolampi lake café) on the 2/3 of the trail, so those who didn't think of a picnic basket can rest their tired feet and get refreshments there (who can resist an ice-cream on a hot sunny day, ay?).

grill your own sausages :)