Finland Happenings -- May 2009

05-29-2009

The live Bear Cam, , New High-Speed Helsinki-St. Petersburg Train, Alvar Aalto House Anniversary and Fishing Tours!

 

World premiere: BearCam featuring the brown bear, streams live video from 6pm-6am from the taiga forests in Eastern Finland

 

Finnish online service BearCam allows you to admire Europe’s greatest carnivores, the brown bears, as they awaken from winter hibernation. Starting May 1^st, live videos have been streamed of the wild bears from the taiga forest in Eastern Finland, near the Russian border.

 

The BearCam is installed in the animal observation site of the Wild Brown Bear Company which arranges animal watching tours. In tests last summer, the webcam system which films live feeds showed a 95 percent probability of capturing the bears on film.  Although brown bears are classified as near threatened in many European countries, the taiga forests in Eastern Finland are home to a large number of them.

 

BearCam feeds live videos between 6 pm and 6 am daily. Daytime visitors of the website can browse the video archive. The evergreen taiga forest provides possibilities for guided trips during which one can admire rare wildlife, in particular bears and wolverines.

 

For more information

Wild Brown Bear website www.wbb.fi

Wild Taiga - Operators offering wildlife observation tours can be found at website www.wildtaiga.fi

 

 

High-speed “Allegro” rail connection between Helsinki and St. Petersburg to open in 2010

 

The high-speed rail link between Helsinki and St. Petersburg is due to open in the summer of 2010. The new rail link will shorten the journey time at first to three and a half hours, and later to three hours, from the current five and a half hours. The train has been named Allegro, which means “fast” in Italian.

 

In the initial phase three scheduled trains will operate in each direction daily, with the number later increasing to four per day. Each train will have seven carriages and a total of 350 seats. There will be a restaurant, a business class area, facilities for disabled passengers, and designated seats for passengers travelling with pets.

 

Passenger numbers on the Helsinki–St. Petersburg line are expected to triple within five years of the introduction of the high-speed service. The trains are operated by Oy Karelian Trains Ltd, a company jointly owned by the Finnish national rail company VR Ltd and the Russian rail company OAO RZD.

 

For more information

Antti Jaatinen, Director, Passenger Services, VR Ltd

tel. +358 307 20 700

 

 

Alvar Aalto’s rare architectural attraction Villa Kokkonen turns 40 

 

Villa Kokkonen, a rare private house designed by world-renowned architect Alvar Aalto, turns 40. Built by the so-called “father of modernism” for his friend, composer Joonas Kokkonen, it is an architectural-cultural attraction of note located in the city of Jarvenpaa, about 35 minutes by car or train from Helsinki.

                                                                                                                                                                   

The jubilee year of Villa Kokkonen is celebrated with musical performances that bring together the music of Jean Sibelius with the architecture of Alvar Aalto and the home of Kokkonen.

 

Villa Kokkonen represents Aalto’s objectives in architecture: "build naturally, don’t do it”. The house is hidden in the natural surroundings almost without a facade, but its interior is like a beautiful wooden music box. The wooden house is linked to a log sauna and a swimming pool by a pergola along the slope.

 

[Back to Press Releases Main]