Helsingfors is essentially a modern town with good hotels and restaurants, electric light, good tram and telephone services, and many fine buildings in quite modern style. There are several nice promenades and parks where bands play in the evenings, and the streets are wide, though alas! they are paved generally with round cobbles which tire one’s feet and make the traffic noisy. The market, where one can buy country produce and household utensils, is open every day till noon, but so far as we could find the shops contained little that could not be bought in other towns in Europe, excepting, perhaps, some fine cut glass, said to be made in Finland.
The buildings in which our meetings were held were spacious, and the “akceptejo” (headquarters), where the Congress had Post office, Bank, books for sale, light refreshments and conversation rooms, was a general meeting place for Esperantists of all nations.
Drinks containing more than two-and-a-half per cent. of alcohol are prohibited by law. However, one hears thrilling stories of fishermen turned smuggler-millionaires, and one sometimes meets people who steer an erratic course.
The arrangements for the comfort and entertainment of the members of the Congress were perfect in every detail.
On Wednesday, August 16th, some sixty of us started for a tour through Finland. We had sleeping cars to Viborg, a much older town than Helsingfors, where we spent most of Thursday. The principal sight seems to be the museum, but they kept the finest exhibits on the upper floors, and as many of us had not found it easy to sleep in the train, we preferred an after dinner nap on a low stone wall or on the grass near by. We spent the night at Imatra, where are two fine waterfalls. The river, some fifteen or twenty yards wide, falls over a rocky bed with much noise and foam, and brings down hundreds of logs thrown into it for use in paper mills below. Often these logs stand on end and look like men struggling in the water. We passed Friday night on a steamer to Savonlinna, where is a very fine old ruined castle, now carefully preserved, from the towers of which one gets a splendid view of the lake and surrounding country. The lakes are full of islands of all sizes and covered with pines and a few silver birches intermingled with rocks. We stayed the week-end at Punkaharju—the only place, so far as I could find which did not have two distinct names, according as one heard it in Finnish or Swedish. It is a long narrow peninsular, with lakes on either side, of which one caught glimpses between the closely growing straight pines. An Esperantist doctor at a huge sanatorium for consumptives invited us all to coffee on Sunday afternoon, and showed us the institution, which seemed quite up-to-date. We returned to Helsingfors by train on Monday night, after having had a most delightful trip, the pleasure of which was enormously increased by the presence of several Finnish Esperantists, who came with us as guides and translators.
On Wednesday morning, August 23rd, we left Helsingfors in the “Birger Jarl,” for Stockholm. Several Esperantists came to see us off, and one of our Scottish friends photographed us as we leant over the side of the boat. All day long we passed innumerable islands, much like those we had seen in the lakes. We found some Dutch Esperantists on board and enjoyed a pleasant chat with them.
On landing at Stockholm next morning we were met by an English gentleman who took us in a taxi to the station for Saltsjöbaden, where we stayed for four days with Mr. Thulin, who had very kindly invited us to visit him in his beautiful villa. Mr. Thulin has been blind for many years, and devotes his time and energy to the collection of money for the higher education of the blind in Sweden. The “Bokfond,” which he founded some years ago, provides Braille text books of science and languages, and gives scholarships to promising blind students. Mr. and Mrs. Thulin and her sister, who lives with them and helps in the Braille work, are a charming family, and in their hospitable company we felt we were seeing Swedish life under ideal circumstances. Saltsjöbaden is a beautiful place on the coast of the Baltic, dotted with villas, where the chief inhabitants of Stockholm spend the summer months. On Monday, 28th, Mr. and Mrs. Thulin took us in a motor car to Osmo, which we reached about midday, after a pleasant drive through woods and open country. Mr. and Mrs. Thilander were waiting in their garden with the Swedish flag flying in our honour. Their little country house, like so many in Sweden, is painted red. It stands in a garden with grass and abundant fruit trees, and at the back is a wood, which gives it a picturesque appearance from the road. Osmo is near the port of Nynashamn. It is a large and straggling parish with a fine church dating from the fifteenth century, a railway station, electric light and telephone. The neighbourhood is very pretty; the ground is undulating, with woods, pastures, and a few corn fields.
And now came the most memorable and delightful part of our holiday, of which we had so far enjoyed every moment. I had seen the Thilanders before they were married, in Cambridge, in 1907, and I knew that Mr. Thilander was blind, somewhat of a cripple, and so deaf that no one but his wife could speak to him intelligibly through his speaking tube. Mrs. Thilander, too, is blind. Yet it is a revelation to be with them, for they are the most devoted, the kindliest and the merriest couple I have ever met. Their lives are spent in working for the blind; he editing magazines and stereotyping Braille books, and she proof reading and seeing to household affairs. Their work brings them an enormous amount of correspondence, more than enough of itself to occupy the working hours of an ordinary mortal. He is a perfect mine of information on all matters relating to the blind of all countries, and yet has room in his memory for items of local history and tradition, and can talk interestingly on almost any subject. He speaks Esperanto and English with correct intonation, although he can never have heard their sounds perfectly as he lost his hearing when quite young. They take in and read Braille magazines in various languages. He never seemed to be at a loss for the right English or Esperanto word to help us out when our vocabulary was deficient! Their talk was full of wit, and no little joke escaped their appreciation. He thoroughly understands the mechanism of the machines he uses, and has devised many improvements to Braille stereotyping machines, and one of great importance to the “Picht” typewriter, which is now being adopted by the makers. He has brought his Braille printing to a fine state of perfection. Their gaiety was infectious, and we never had a dull moment during the week we stayed with them. When they were busy with work that had to be done to time, we rambled in the woods, to the little lake or the sea, and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the countryside. One day I noted a musical cattle-call sung by an old man as he led his cows home to be milked. In the evenings I sometimes played chess with Mr. Thilander, while his wife, an excellent musician, played and sang to us. They call their little house, “Solkojan” (Sunny Cottage), but I would translate it “the happiest home in the world.” Living there one soon forgot their disabilities and ceased to wonder at the things they could accomplish. Their welcome was so hearty that it was quite a wrench to leave them; one felt that an important and interesting part of one’s life had passed away. We often spoke to him for a short time, but listening to long conversations evidently tired him greatly.
At Stockholm we spent two busy days. On the Tuesday we visited Skansen in the company of Miss Josefson, an Esperantist friend of the Thilanders. This is the great open-air national museum, where you see old Swedish houses from various districts, set up and furnished in the original manner. There are also some Lap huts inhabited by Laplanders. These are small round chambers made by lodging split pines against a central upright and filling in the crevices with moss. There was, too, an old wooden church, in which, I was told, service is held on Sundays. The old furniture and household implements interested me very much.
The second day we visited Tomteboda, the chief blind school in Sweden, where Director Ostrand gave us a rapid but most interesting sketch of the history of the blind in Sweden. He took us through the institution, and then Mr. Blom, the music teacher, with some of his pupils played and sang to us delightfully and gave us coffee. It is a splendid school with a real wood for a playground and the education is quite up-to-date and practical. The girls learn housewifery, and before they leave go through a course of cookery in a kitchen purposely made quite simple and free from mechanical luxuries, so that the pupils should not miss them when they practise their art in their own homes, or as often happens in Sweden, when they find places as servants. This visit we owed to Mr. and Mrs. Warrilow, who being in Stockholm, very kindly took us.