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Article: I've started, so I'll Finnish
- Article from:
- The Irish Times
- Article date:
- October 31, 2009
CopyrightCopyright 2009 The Irish Times. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Up at Europe's northeast frontier, where Scandinavia meets
Russia's wild west, Tampere shrugged off the often violent advances
of its covetous neighbours to become a city with its own unique
identity, writes LORRAINE COURTNEY
LENIN AND Moominpappa are unlikely bedfellows. It's hard to
imagine them inhabiting the same sentence, never mind rubbing
shoulders. But, in true idiosyncratic Finnish style, there they sit,
a stone's throw apart, in Tampere.
The city was the cradle of Finland's industrial revolution. These
days large-scale industry is mostly a memory, although red-brick
mill chimneys still throng the Tammerkoski rapids that cut through
the grid-like city centre of wide streets and ...