I managed to luck out and get a few conferences in Europe
this month. As usual, I posted in TP and
on Facebook asking for puzzle shops and setting up meetings with like minded
people. I thought as long as I was going
I may as well add a side trip to Finland so I can go visit with my
professor. So begins my adventure of the
early summer…
The first person to contact me was Tomas Linden. He told me they were having an FPP around the
same time and if the dates coincided I was welcome to come. I booked my flights hoping the dates would
work for me. As luck would have it, I
got a message from Tomas telling me they had shifted the FPP to the weekend I
was to arrive. I made a quick change of
plans and decided NOT to head up to my
university right away. After all, I had
a boys and toys to go to and we all know that is more important!
Now all I had to do was wait.
On the 18
th of May, I left Hong
Kong headed for Berlin.
A bit of work, a
bit of play, and it was time to head over to Helsinki!
My flight of course was delayed but it didn’t
matter.
I was smart enough to take a
hotel at the airport.
At 9 the next
morning Tomas called and picked me up.
His children were participating in an annual running event
so we took a quick detour to go watch them.
I’ve never felt so short in my life!
It was fun watching the kids run, but from there it was onto the boys
and toys!
When we arrived, I recognized, Vesa, Timo, Matti, and
Surprise! Franz! I wasn’t the only “foreigner” in the
room! No wonder the dates got changed! There was not one, but two visitors from
overseas.
There were around 18 of us there I think. We started off being given a wooden burr type
puzzle by Matti and set about solving it.
The gentleman next to me asked me to see a completed version, and when I
passed it over, I suddenly had that Eureka moment! I knew how to solve the puzzle! My first of the day!
Around 15 minutes in, Vesa came over and gave me a
ring!
This girl loves her jewelry.
And when it’s a puzzle combined!
Heaven!
He also gave one to Franz and explained that he only made three of
these.
They are the prototypes and the
nylon version can be found on
Shapeways.
What a kind gift!
After a while, Matti spoke of his early days collecting and
passed around some booklets he’d made.
He then began to pass a number of paper puzzles. Again, I managed to solve one!
Next up was some math puzzles on the white board, and a
gentleman speaking of I know not what because I don’t speak Finnish. I did get the gist of it though as he handed
out another puzzle. An optical
illusion. The next talk was about
encryption and bless him, the lad wrote the slides in Finnish but spoke in
English. I came next and showed a few of
my recent purchases and spoke a bit about the boys and toys we have in HK. Franz was the last speaker and it was about a
building he designed in Rotterdam, and then made a puzzle of!
LUNCH BREAK.
Timo decided to show us the robots his company makes, and
all were eager to go see it.
It recycles
building waste.
Very cool!
But first!
40 minutes stuck in an elevator with 13 men!
Now if I were a really sick person, I would
say this was the highlight of the trip thus far.
I found it very entertaining.
I also enjoyed the fact that none of the
smart phones worked, but the old dumb ones did!
A call for help was placed and we knew all would eventually be
well.
Did I forget to mention we were
about 6 stories underground?
We had some lively entertainment though. After a while someone played some music,
there was a bit of dancing, Vesa did some magic tricks. I pulled out David who was in pieces in my
pocket and we reassembled him. Before we
knew it, we were rescued and that was that.
We then got to watch the robot sorter for a few minutes and
headed back upstairs for the main event!
Puzzling and shopping!
I played
with a few JC puzzles and liked two of them so much I had to buy them.
I passed around David and Many More Horses
and those were well enjoyed.
Matti
showed me the pieces for a coffin burr and I attempted to put them
together.
No such luck.
I’m not that clever.
Lovely man that he is though, he handed the pieces
over and told me to try at home.
I ended up buying 2 puzzles from Matti and 5 from
Tomas. Adding the gift from Vesa and I’d
say it was a good puzzle party.
We all broke up around 6:30-7:00 and went our separate
ways.
Tomo very nicely agreed to let
Tomas and I spend the night so we headed to his flat.
A quick (2 hour) break for some puzzling and a
few drinks.
I was in heaven yet
again!
I got to play with some of the
Prague puzzles that I had not seen before.
I handed out some puzzle locks for my hosts and a couple of NP360 metal
jigsaws that my husbands company had made.
The locks were a hoot.
It took
them a while to work out how to open them, but in the end it was done.
We decided it was time for a beer and off we went.
When we got to the bar, we bought 3 different
Finnish beers and played round robin with them.
None of us were clever enough to bring along a puzzle so we chatted and
laughed for a few more hours.
When
heading back to Tomo’s flat, we
I don’t know the names
of what we had, but I enjoyed 3 of the 4 dishes.
The hamburger was "interesting"
More
for them.
Around 3:30 or so we decided
it was time to sleep and off we went.
Only problem: it
didn’t get dark. I couldn’t sleep
because of the light coming in around the curtain. In the end I covered my head with a blanket
and passed out till morning. Breakfast,
a shower, and off we headed for Vaasa.
Tomorrow look for my post on the adventure I had with Tomas
and the small bit of shopping I did…..
Photos can be seen
here.
First stop Helsinki for a night and of course I had to visit a puzzle shop! Nothing for me though. Can you tell how cold it was there? Next stop Jyväskylä and a bit of intensive study before I headed off to the puzzles.
We first went to a mathematical exhibition at what I think was an art center. We had a bit of a guided tour, and while most of the items on exhibition I had seen before, we did get into a good discussion about why balls travel faster down different planes, and there was a really cool dice counting thing that I had never seen before. You dump around 40 dice on the table, roll them then line them up randomly. Start with the first di and count that number. As you go through the dice, you should end up with a few remainders, discard those, roll the rest again and restart the count. You will then end up with no remainders. I don't know what this is called, or why it happens, but it is sooo cool! I was fascinated by it. It was also great fun to watch the boys playing with bubbles!
From there we headed off to a school to do a bit of talking and playing with puzzles. Of course Tomas was selling and I managed to get a few toys myself. Once again it was a good haul!
I listened to a talk on different shapes and tiles that forgive me, went over my head, but was very interesting. A icosahedron turned inside out makes 2 cubes. Is that right? Gave a short talk on where to buy Berrocals and then went on to puzzle play. All in all we spent about 4 hours chatting and playing. I brought along the astronaut and sort of forced Vesa to reassemble it. (I took it apart to show him how easy and different it was from the others I've brought in the past and made him fix it). Sorry Vesa, but I really take great pleasure from watching people play with them. (and thank you for the disk!) I brought along my copy of the 69 puzzle an if you count the shoes, you can see how many people it took to solve and reassemble the puzzle. Good fun!
After we went to a man's house...Sorry, can't remember the name. We puzzled for another 4 or 5 hours, had a late bite to eat and headed home. While there, I managed to find an original price list for the Berrocal's I love so much. How I wish I had discovered them 20 years ago!
