The Museums:
Next up Steffi and I didn´t want to miss going to a museum… so we went to Forum Marinum and went to the Exhibition and the Museums ships there. It was really interesting and we learned a lot about the history of finish marines and voyage. I especially enjoyed the Suomen Joutsen, directly translated the Finnish swan, an old training ship. It was built 1902 in Saint-Nazaire and ran under the name Laënnec. It carried shipments between Europe, North and South America and Australia. Then it was sold to the Germans and finally it was used by the Finnish government as school ship. The Suomen Joutsen was also used during the war as mothership for diving and motor torpedo and after as a base for mine clearance. Then it was again used as a training ship for shorter trips, a mothership for naval drills, a houseboat and as a storage ship. Since the 1960s it is stationed in the Aurajoki and was used as a seaman´s vocational school. It belongs to the city of Turku since 1991 and the Forum Marinum Foundation is responsible for its maintenance and museum activities. I really enjoyed my time there and think it´s fascinating how much this ship went through and how beautiful it still is after 117 years.
The firework:
After a long day at the museum we were exhausted, but we didn´t want to miss the fireworks to celebrate the city. We went around half past eight to meet our friend Lukas at the Aurasilta bridge and went down to the Aurajoki shore and waited for the fire works to start. It was nice sitting there, because a ship nearby was playing life music which we heard and we had a really nice view with the restaurant ship Svarte Rudolf on the other side of the shore. Before the fireworks started all the Finns around us started counting down from ten and then it started. It was really beautiful and it was a really good finish to our own Turku day!
