Nottingham hosts its annual Light Night this Friday.
It’s a nigh of public art and illuminations to bring the city to life in midwinter.
I recently had a preview of plans for the night and, over a weekend, discovered why Nottingham should be on your bucket list this year.
Read my article for Rough Guides, Why now is the time to visit Nottingham.
I was back West Sweden last week.
It was a summer-themed trip to Gothenburg and the archipelago to fulfil a raft of commissions for print and online.
This time, I spent more time in Gothenburg and a morning talking herring with Nils-Gunnar Johansson [pictured above], Curator of the Herring Museum in Kladesholmen. No, really.
The stories are coming soon but, last time, I was there to write a piece for the Weekend FT.
Here’s an extract:
Swedes take midsummer very seriously — think New Year’s Eve and a public-holiday weekend all rolled into one.
They down tools and head for their summer houses on the coast for a family gathering lubricated by beer, herring and shots of the local firewater.
Whether you’re a builder or a banker, it’s the one day of the year that everyone casts aside their daily routine and goes back to the land.
You can read more at West Sweden: Folklore traditions of Midsummer.
Or, watch a short Vimeo from a boat tour of Gothenburg harbour from my recent trip.
Check back for links to the published articles.
* I’m really delving back in the archives this week. I read a story on the BBC News Magazine this week about sauna culture in Finland. It reminded me of this, one of my very first freelance stories as a cub freelance writer. I’m reproducing it here in full – and, yes, the intro does now make me cringe.
Follow me on Twitter or subscribe to the RSS for more stories from the archive.
Geri Halliwell recently revealed her new beauty regime involves taking a hot shower followed by plunging into an ice-cold bath.
This may sound like another new age fad for the erstwhile Spice Girl turned yoga guru. For your average Fin, however, the custom of taking a sauna then rolling naked in the snow has a 2000-year heritage as a means to promote physical and mental well being.
Indeed, for sauna mad Fins – a country of 5m inhabitants and 2m saunas – sauna is a whole way of life deeply entrenched in the national psyche.
Historically, babies have been born and dead bodies laid out for last rites in the sauna.
Even today, most families have a private sauna at home regardless of the size of their flat (over 100,000 private saunas in Helsinki alone) and the first thing the Finnish UN troops do when posted overseas is to build a sauna. Even if they’re in the middle of the desert.
However, tourists, who are used to electric saunas at UK gyms, fail to appreciate that there is a whole world of sauna reserved for the connoisseur – much like fine wine or art.
Indeed, the world of sauna is run according to a strict hierarchy with the communal-garden electric sauna relegated to lowly amateur status and the aspen wood-fired sauna, whereby the pile of sauna stones is heated slowly and thoroughly by burning logs, considered the Holy Grail amongst the sauna cognoscenti.
After the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, when Finland’s success was attributed to the sauna they imported from home, the word about sauna spread. It’s now popular across the globe but the Fins still know how to enjoy it best.
There’s an old Finnish saying:
“A woman looks at her best one hour after the sauna.”
So, if sauna really is the best natural cosmetic to keep the body and mind healthy, throw away the products, potions and herbal remedies and check out these sauna hotspots around Helsinki.
Sauna Seura
Based just outside of Helsinki in the suburb of Espoo, Sauna Seura is run by the Finnish Sauna Society, which campaigns fervently to preserve what they describe as the ‘pure values of sauna’.
As such, their members and guests only three smoke saunas and two wood-burning saunas are the king and queen of the local sauna scene. Most Fins dream of bathing in an authentic steam (loyly in Finnish) sauna at a rural summer cottage, then swim naked in an adjoining lake.
Sauna Seura recreates that romantic idyll in the capital, even down to building a plunge ice-hole and providing sauna whisks of leafy birch twigs (vasta). When used to vigorously thrash oneself, these cleanse, disinfect and smooth the skin.
There are separate days for men and women and a masseur on stand-by and. Beware: given its pure sauna ethos, swimming costumes are strictly forbidden.
Take bus number 20 from Erottaja (from Helsinki’s central Esplanade Park) – the journey takes approximately 15 minutes. Pre-booking is required on 00 358 9 6860 5622.
Kotiharjun public sauna
Family run and shamelessly traditional, the wood-fired Kotiharjun sauna (one of very few left in central Helsinki) regularly wins sauna of the month awards and was recently named Helsinki’s best public sauna.
Although India is regarded as the original home of the steam bath, the Fins made it their own establishing the optimum temperature of 85-90°C and countering the dry heat by throwing water on heated stones to push humidity towards 100%.
Kotiharjun upholds this tradition vehemently making its twin saunas (one for ladies, one for men) half furnace, half sauna.
Apart from its traditional rustic charm, it is also legendary for Pirkko, the resident never-blushing washer woman who spends her working day scrubbing burly naked men with an industrial-sized loofa after they have savoured the connoisseur sauna experience.
Harjutorinkatu 1, 00 358 9 753 1535.
www.helsinki-hotels.net/saunas.htm
Yrjönkadun uimahalli swimming hall
This labyrinthine Art Deco building, dating from 1928, looks like something out of a bacchanalian Roman orgy. Split across three floors are three wood-burning saunas and two steam saunas as well as 25-metre and 12-metre swimming pools.
Yrjönkadun was recently renovated to include high-tech gym equipment while retaining the original mosaic-dappled features. The ornate nature of the surroundings inspires a silent reverence and visitors are expected to adhere to strict sauna rules.
Noise in the sauna, it is believed, will drive away the sauna spirit hence, even for the 6.30am intake of young executives heading for a pre-work swim, sauna peace forbids them to use their Nokia mobiles in the building.
They can, however, pop into a cabin for a quick snooze after their sauna alarm call.
Yrjonkatu 21b, 00 358 9 3108 7401.
www.hel.fi/liv/lajit/uhallit.html
Café Tin Tin Tango
Taking a sauna has traditionally been something to make an evening of. Hence, the owners of this cosy café bar and bakery hit upon the idea of combining a night out with a night in the sauna.
Customers book the sauna out back by the hour and gather groups of friends together to drink beer and sweat it out. It’s the ultimate Finnish boys’ night out.
There are even washing machines if you fancy doing your laundry at the same time and regular local art exhibitions.
Töölöntorinkatu 7, 00 358 9 2709 0972.
www.aktivist.fi/tintintango
Saunabar
Sauna is all about warming-up and then cooling down.
The funky underground Saunabar expands on this maxim, encouraging revellers to warm-up in the saunas then chill out in the alcoves to tunes by top local DJs and live bands.
After work, it fills with young Fins playing pool and sinking designer beers before stripping off and basting like Christmas turkeys in the two saunas for hire.
However, despite their contemporary spin on sauna culture, Saunabar is strictly traditional in its segregation of sauna seekers – two the saunas are not mixed.
Eerikinkatu 27, 00 358 9 586 5550.
www.saunabar.net
* This story first appeared in The Guardian in 2002. Liked this? Try also Last Tango in Finland [pictured above].
And post your comments below.
* Another story from the back catalogue, this week with a Flanders theme. I’ll be back in Belgium this autumn for the opening of the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp’s Little Island district but, for now, a foodie tale from Ghent. Follow me on Twitter or subscribe to the RSS for more story updates.
Belgian food gets a bad rap.
But the Flemish city of Ghent, a short hop by train from Brussels Midi, is kicking back against the stereotype of chips and waffles.
Not only is the Belgium’s fourth city home to traditional local stalwarts such as mustard purveyors Tierenteyn-Verlent and sweet shop Temmerman, but also a groundswell of small-scale food champions is adding a modern, new twist to favourite local flavours.
Many of these will be showcasing their wares during the city’s annual Patershol Festivities staged August 12 to 15, a long-weekend jamboree of music, performances and tastings around the labyrinthine, medieval streets reborn as the city’s restaurant district.
We profile the some of the faces behind Ghent’s burgeoning food scene.
Roomer
Brothers Maarten and Jeroen Michels started distilling elderflower wine during childhood visit to their grandmother’s house, using the fragrant flower that grows abundantly around East Flanders. Now in their mid thirties, they left steady jobs to turn Roomer [pictured above], a 14.9% alcoholic beverage based on elderflower, into a home-grown drinks business.
“It’s not a wine and not a liquor,” says the hirsute Maarten, surrounded by toys and Lego on the terrace of his office-home in Ghent’s residential southeastern suburbs. Roomer is based on all-natural ingredients and distilled with 21 varieties of herbs.
“Secret herbs,” adds Maarten from behind dark glasses. “They give it a dry, easy-drinking taste.”
The brothers have grown the business organically, producing 70,000 bottles of Roomer last year.
“We started as anti-professional with buckets in the kitchen. We’re now semi-professional,” smiles Maarten, who still rolls up his sleeves each June to collect some 1,200kg of flowers from sites around Ghent. Indeed, the whole production remains a hands-on, family affair with mother Marie Louise daintily placing flowers into open bottles with a pair of teasers.
“Exactly 50 flowers each time,” says Maarten. “She has a feel for it.
Roomer may now sit next to Martini and Pastis on aperitif lists at 500 restaurants across Flanders, but the brothers retain their non-corporate approach to business.
“We are entrepreneurs but philosophically we just wanted to have fun.”
Maartan raises an ice-clinking glass in cheers. “Op eu muile,” he smiles. “On your face.”
De Blauwe Zalm
Ghent’s Patershol district is a fashionable restaurant quarter
But when chef Danny De Cleyn and front-of-house Christine Beernaert first opened De Blauwe Zalm (The Blue Salmon) in 1984, the area was still a down-at-heel backwater and their idea to prepare only fish, organic and seasonal food a curiosity.
“We started with 15 covers and the pans from our kitchen,” says Chris. “When I put Jerusalem artichokes on the menu, people laughed at me.”
The couple moved to bigger premises in 1993 and became a stalwart of the Patershol scene, championing a low-food-miles approach without being prescriptive.
They still grow much of their own produce on an allotment near Ghent and source their fish sustainably from the North Sea, although the average dinner would have little clue about their green credentials of their meal – from the recycled tables to the freshly picked flowers on the tables.
“We haven’t sold tuna or swordfish in four years because of overproduction. But we’re not severe,” says Chris. “I’m not selling a religion.”
As I tuck into the light, seasonal flavours – basil, aubergine, muscles, brill and sea bass amongst them – a large blue-salmon-shaped light fitting swims along the ceiling above me.
“The salmon always swims against the tide.”
Chris smiles. “But always gets there in the end.”
Yuzu
Yuzu, the domain of chocolatier Nicholas Vanaise on the fringe of Ghent’s student quarter, offers a non-Belgian take on Belgian chocolates.
One-man-band Nicholas gave up Indiana Jones-style archaeological adventures around the Middle East to return to Ghent, but he continues to dig out new, contemporary flavours. Today Yuzu, named after a Japanese citrus flavour, comprises 150 chocolate varieties with a core range of 25 flavours.
“There’s a story behind every chocolate. Each praline is a memory board,” says Nicholas. “For example, the Havana, a best-seller flavoured with malt whisky and tobacco leaf, tastes of an English gentleman’s club.”
The selection box of Ghent flavours, by contrast, features chocolates laced with blue cheese, cured ham and beer.
The capsule-hotel-sized shop in Ghent is a shrine to Japanese taste with bottles of sake, sachets of green tea and porcelain cups lining the shelves. Nicholas goes flavour hunting to Japan each year and already sells his creations through the Matsuya department store in Tokyo.
Outside of running the shop, Nicholas spends up to eight labour-intensive hours per day making chocolates at his home-based laboratory, preparing up to eight varieties per day in batches of 100 pieces.
“At the end of a day of chocolate making, I’m desperate for something to take away the sweetness,” laughs Nicholas.
“I can murder a curry.”
Gruut
Gruut is not only Ghent’s only city brewery but it’s also an all-female affair with brewer Annick De Splenter opening the canal-side microbrewery restaurant in 2009.
Annick wanted to reinvent the mage and taste of beer and spent months researching the brew process before hitting on a formula.
She took an old recipe from the Middle Ages and replaced the hops with herbs, some sourced from her own garden.
“I wanted to get away from the dusty old image of brewers,” says elfin-blond Annick, surrounded by dark wood tables and shiny steel brewing vats.
“Brewing was traditionally a very physical job but technology helps us now.”
The Gruut range, named after the coin used in the Middle Ages, now extends to five beers, including a Trappist-style dark beer and a grand-cru ale, the Inferno.
Annick brews twice a week, producing some 1,000l of beer overall, which sells at 150 bars and restaurants around Ghent.
Annick has already launched some spin-off products, working with local companies to make Gruut-based pâté and cheese; she recycles malt from the brewing process to make bread for the restaurant.
But the real secret of Grout’s success is simple. “It’s a proper beer but with more softness than a typical brew. Best of all,” she grins.
“The herbs have aphrodisiac properties.”
Gazetteer
* This story first appeared in Metropolitan magazine in 2011. Liked this? Try also Shine a Light on Flanders.