Espoon Keskus, first impression

2 days of excursions through the Espoon Keskus gave us, the group of students, attending the course “Media Intervention in the City” the opportunity to catch a glimpse of this part of the city. During these days our group visited several interesting places situated in this area.

For me the most interesting were several of them:

The kirkko/kyrkan/church situated in picturesque area near the lake with ducks, surrounded by old trees in a quiet and relaxing place. Near the church there is an old churchyard with different gravestones, they form an even more peaceful impression of this place. If we look at the church, we will see, that it is an old building. If we go inside the church, we will strengthen this thought – the wall made of stone, brick columns, beautiful chandeliers and frescos made on the walls and the ceiling, decorations on the chancel, stained-glass window – this place made me think and calmed me. This place might be a meeting point during religious events or while celebrating events that are typical only of this place – like a place, where the old traditions are kept and respected.

The second place that inspired me was the youth centre “Sentteri”. This place reminds me on kindergartens that are typical of Russia. I liked that there are a lot of such centres in Espoo, and that children of different age can go there and spend there some free time. In Russia only young children can go to kindergartens, though there is a possibility to spend spare time at school after classes for elder children. I liked the atmosphere of this place – children are not made to do smth special – they can choose by themselves what to do. There are a lot of activities for children – they can cook, play different games, or go to the gym, where they can play. An interesting thing – when we came to the centre in the afternoon, no one was watching TV, only some of them were playing PC games, and that’s really good. The interior is also very nice – I liked the girls’ room – there are a lot of things made by the children – paintings, craftworks. This place might be useful for making different events for children – celebrations, competitions or events connected with education.

The third place I would like to tell you about is the centre called “Trapesa”. This place with such a russian name – meaning meeting and eating together – fulfils a noble purpose – helps and supports people in need. To Trapesa can come migrants, people who don’t know the Finnish language, there are groups for women, for children, so that they can do different activities in there – study Finnish, do their hobbies and just find there asylum and help. There is a chapel, where you can pray, there are collected different cultures “under one roof”.

There are also some shopping centres which can help to attract tourists here or be meeting places for local residents. In one of them there is a library – also an interesting place to spare time there – you can find there books written in different languages – I found several shelves written in Russian, there are several cozy sofas, some installations, paintings – this place can attract youth and can be used for different events both for young people and grown-ups.

There are a lot of places here where people didn’t change the original landscape. There are interesting special things that we can only here – like a metal statue of a headless girl on a lantern and nobody knows what this means. This is a first impression of Espoon Keskus, there are several interesting places to visit and they can help people living here to communicate with each other or to attract people from neighbour areas here.