The Sound of Convenience

The Sound at 11:50 ~ Buying a Ticket ~ Why Is the Plane Awake? ~ 

The Sound Ledger ~ It’s the Freight, Stupid ~ What Does Convenience Cost?

An apologetic flight taking off
overBergamo at night

The Sound at 11:50

Bergamo, 11:50 pm, a low roaring rumble. Then silence. Another one follows. Eventually things quiet down. At 5:30 am, it starts again.

What we first thought was an aberration of a late or early flight here and there, has become something we recognize as part of the acoustic day in Bergamo. We live near Milan Bergamo Airport, the third busiest airport in Italy. As the crow flies, we are about 3.5 kilometers from the runway. Most of the time we hardly think about it. At other times, especially late at night or early in the morning, it sounds like the airport is next door.

The sound isn't necessarily enormous. During the day it would probably disappear into everything else: cars, motorcycles, construction, voices from the street, bells. But at 11:50 at night the city has mostly gone quiet, and the sound of an airplane climbing out of Bergamo has the sky largely to itself. The same is true around 5:30 in the morning, when the first departures begin before much of the city has properly started its day.

After a while, we began to notice the pattern. Why so many planes at precisely these edges of the day? Who wants to leave Bergamo at six in the morning? Who wants to arrive somewhere close to midnight?

At first these were idle questions prompted by lying in bed listening to airplanes. Then we started looking for flights ourselves.

Buying a Ticket

One evening recently, we were looking at tickets on Ryanair. Let’s leave aside for the moment the dashed hope of truly low-cost flying unless you travel with a backpack and are prepared to wear five layers of clothes onto the plane.

I was looking at tickets to Pescara. Departure: 05:50. Helsinki: 06:30. Slide forward or back a day or two, and the choices often seemed to stay at the edges of the day: very early in the morning or very late at night. Sometimes after 11:00 pm.

These are just two examples. We’ve seen the same pattern with other destinations from Bergamo: departures and arrivals clustered around hours when most reasonable people are either still asleep or thinking about going to sleep.


There was probably a time when we would have shrugged and booked the flight anyway. A cheap ticket was a cheap ticket. Get up at 3:30 am, stumble into a taxi, arrive at the airport before sunrise, and recover later. These days, we are much less willing to organize an entire trip around an unpleasant flight time. We have changed days, changed destinations, chosen another airline, or simply abandoned an idea because the available flights were too early or too late.

And then came a realization.

The airplanes disturbing our sleep and the flights we routinely refuse to book might be part of the same phenomenon, viewed from opposite sides of the booking window.

At home, we hear the 11:50 departure climbing into the night and think, ah noisy. On the Ryanair website, we see the 05:50 departure and think, ah absolutely not.

The question became: why are flights scheduled at the edges of the day?

Why Is the Plane Awake?

Once we started noticing these flight times, we began wondering what was behind them.

Our first theory was obvious enough: perhaps the early-morning and late-night slots were cheaper. Ryanair is famously focused on keeping costs down, and its own annual reports say that it favors airports with competitive charges and negotiates aggressively over airport and handling costs. Secondary and regional airports can also offer fewer slot restrictions than larger primary airports.

So maybe 05:50 was simply the bargain hour.

Except, at least at Bergamo, we couldn't find evidence for that. The airport published charges and fee schedules don’t indicate any special discount for taking off at 5:50 in the morning or 23:50 at night. Ryanair certainly cares about airport costs, but "cheap airport" and "cheap time of day" are not the same thing.

Slot availability is another possible factor. A flight leaving Bergamo early may need to arrive at another airport at a particular time, and the same aircraft has to fit into a whole day's sequence of flights. There are crews, airport restrictions, passenger demand, and the schedule at the other end to consider. It isn't as simple as Ryanair sitting in Bergamo and deciding that 05:50 is a particularly amusing time to send us to Pescara.

But the explanation that we kept coming back to was aircraft utilization.

An airplane is an expensive piece of machinery, and it only earns money when it is being used. In its 2025 fiscal year, Ryanair reported an average of 9.57 flight hours per aircraft per day (see Ryanair Holdings plc, Annual Report FY2025, Key Performance Indicators section, available at https://investor.ryanair.com). The figure isn't uniquely high. Some airlines, including other low-cost carriers, report even greater utilization. But Ryanair reports it as a key operating statistic, which tells you something about how important it is to the business.

A long working day for an airplane has consequences. If you want to squeeze several flights out of the same aircraft, somebody has to be on the first flight of the day and somebody has to be on the last.

The 05:50 departure begins to make more sense when you stop thinking of it as our flight to Pescara and start thinking of it as the first movement in an aircraft's entire working day. That plane may return to Bergamo and head somewhere else, return and leave again. The unattractive hour for us may be what makes another flight possible later in the day.

In other words, the plane is awake because it has work to do. And suddenly the roar at 11:50 pm starts to make a little more sense.

The Sound Ledger

It turns out that in the bureaucracy of Italian aviation, our annoyance at the 11:50 pm flight has already been anticipated, has a formula, and is extensively measured.

Italy measures airport noise using an indicator called LVA (Livello di Valutazione del rumore Aeroportuale) (see SACBO / Milan Bergamo Airport environmental noise page), roughly the Airport Noise Assessment Level. LVA isn't the decibel reading of one airplane flying overhead. It is an overall measure designed specifically for airport noise. The annual LVA is calculated from 21 observation days: three weeks selected during different parts of the year, with the highest-traffic week used in each period. During those weeks, noise is measured continuously. See following Italy’s DM 31.10.1997 (article 1) for methodology for measuring airport noise.

From the May 2026 data (from the linked noise page above), Bagnatica and Seriate show some of the highest noise levels (mid-to-high 60s dB(A)). Bagnatica and Seriate are noisier because they sit directly under the runway 28 (heading toward 280 degrees) arrival path, and arrivals consistently come from the east. Given Bagnatica's position beneath the Runway 28 approach, much of that exposure comes from low-altitude arrivals from the east. Arrivals can come from the west (Runway 10, landing toward 100°) and land eastward at Bergamo, but it is rare.

 

Monitoring stations around the Bergamo airport

Bagnatica’s numbers tell a very human story about what it feels like to live under the runway 28 arrival path. In May, the station recorded a minimum LVAj of 58.3 dB(A) and a maximum of 70.1 dB(A)—an 11.8 dB spread that is not just a technical fluctuation but a substantial difference. Sound is logarithmic, and a 10 dB increase is often perceived, for comparable sounds, as roughly twice as loud. But LVAj is not a continuous background-noise reading: it summarizes the accumulated effect of aircraft events during the day. In other words, Bagnatica is not sitting under a steady 70 dB roar. What changes is the frequency, intensity, and cumulative impact of aircraft passing overhead.

I’m glad I'm not in bed in Bagnatica. But someone is.

And the LVA formula makes an important distinction between day and night.

For LVA calculations, daytime runs from 06:00 to 23:00 and nighttime from 23:00 to 06:00. Noise events occurring at night receive an additional penalty, meaning that—within the LVA index—a single nighttime aircraft event can influence the result roughly as much as ten comparable daytime events. Note: the Bagnatica number cited above are daily averages. The day/night numbers are not published. A nighttime LVAn could theoretically exceed 70 dB(A) at Bagnatica, but the bulletin’s published numbers would not show it — they only show the combined daily LVAj.

The airplane at 11:50 pm isn't literally ten times louder than the airplane at 11:50 am. The multiplier is there because context matters. At noon, an aircraft competes with traffic, voices, construction, motorcycles and the general noise of a city going about its business. Near midnight, the same aircraft has the stage largely to itself. More importantly, people are trying to sleep.

Bergamo has quite an elaborate system for keeping track of all this. SACBO, the company that operates Milan Bergamo Airport, runs eight permanent noise-monitoring stations, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, supplemented by two mobile stations. The system combines microphone readings with radar tracks, weather information, and flight logs so that individual noise events can be associated with aircraft movements. The results are analyzed monthly, published publicly, and periodically checked by ARPA Lombardia.

Three of the fixed stations are actually within the Comune di Bergamo: Via Linneo, Via Quasimodo and Via Colognola ai Colli. The other five are in surrounding communities: Orio al Serio, Bagnatica, Seriate, Grassobbio and Azzano San Paolo.

In other words, it’s not just me hearing the noise, there are microphones scattered around listening to it too.

Bergamo also has Noise Abatement Procedures intended to reduce the impact of aircraft on surrounding communities. Of particular importance for the city are restrictions on nighttime departures using Runway 28, the westward departure direction, during the 23:00 to 06:00 period. Exceptions can be made for weather, unusual traffic conditions or operational safety, and ENAC can sanction airlines for violations of the procedures.

So, it would be unfair to say that Bergamo does nothing about aircraft noise. In fact, when it comes to monitoring and mitigation, the airport appears to take the issue quite seriously.

But monitoring noise and preventing noise are two different things. This is where a few comparisons with other European airports heavily associated with low-cost flying make that distinction clearer.

• At Brussels South Charleroi Airport (curfew info: https://www.brussels-charleroi-airport.com/en/bscas-environmental-policy), there is a curfew between 23:00 and 06:30, together with a quota system for late operations, restrictions on the noisiest aircraft, noise thresholds and fines when airlines exceed them. The surrounding region has also carried out a large soundproofing program for affected buildings.
• At Eindhoven Airport, scheduled flights have not been allowed after 23:00 since October 2020, apart from limited provisions for delayed arrivals. The airport also caps the total number of flights and charges lower airport fees for quieter aircraft.
• London Stansted, one of Ryanair's largest bases, takes yet another approach. It continues to allow nighttime flying, but the British government imposes both a limit on the number of aircraft movements and a separate noise quota during the core nighttime period. The current regime, running from October 2025 through October 2028, retains those controls. In other words, even if quieter aircraft make more flights possible, there is still a ledger keeping track of both the number of flights and the amount of noise they collectively produce.

Bergamo has chosen a somewhat different balance. It measures extensively, publishes the measurements, uses special flight procedures and restricts certain nighttime runway operations. But it does not have the broad nighttime curfew found at Charleroi or the prohibition on scheduled flights after 23:00 used at Eindhoven. Compared with those airports, Bergamo seems stronger on mitigation than on prevention.

And that seems important. The 05:50 departure isn't simply an unavoidable fact of low-cost aviation. Similar airports have drawn the line in different places.

How much of the airline's long working day a community is willing to hear is, at least partly, a choice.

It’s the Freight, Stupid

At this point, we thought we had the story more or less figured out. We live near a major low-cost airline hub. For example, Ryanair sells tickets at 05:50 in the morning and close to midnight. Its airplanes work long days. We hear airplanes at 05:50 in the morning and close to midnight.

Case closed.

Except it wasn't.

While looking through SACBO's noise information, we came across reports of nighttime departures from Runway 28. Runway 28 sends aircraft westward (280 degrees), in the general direction of Bergamo, and its use for departures between 23:00 and 06:00 is restricted. SACBO publishes lists of the flights authorized to use this runway during those hours because of weather, air-traffic conditions, safety or other permitted circumstances.

We opened one of the reports, from 2020, expecting to see Ryanair flight numbers everywhere. Instead, a surprising number of flights were cargo and courier operations.

That required a small recalibration of our theory.

The report doesn't tell us that all, or even most, nighttime flights at Bergamo are cargo flights. It covers a specific subset of nighttime departures from a specific runway, and 2020 was hardly a normal year for aviation. But it was enough to remind us that the roar we hear in bed cannot automatically be blamed on the person flying to Pescara for €29.99.

There is another wrinkle in using 2020 as our window into freight traffic. DHL, once a major courier presence at Bergamo, was in the process of moving its air hub operations to Malpensa, where its new international hub began operating in 2020 and was formally inaugurated the following year. Cargo traffic at Bergamo subsequently fell substantially. Today, UPS is the airport's principal established courier operator, flying from Bergamo to its European hub in Cologne and other destinations. There are also smaller logistics operators handling, among other things, e-commerce traffic between China and Italy.

For reasons we haven't figured out, 2020 also appears to be the last year for which SACBO published these Runway 28 nighttime lists. Another small mystery for a lay person to wonder about.

SACBO has stated that Bergamo’s future in cargo lies in becoming a specialized e‑commerce logistics hub — focusing on fast, efficient courier operations rather than competing with Malpensa’s large‑scale freight volumes. (L’Eco di Bergamo, Bergamo News)

Freight has its own reasons for liking the night because express cargo works particularly well while the rest of us are sleeping. Packages collected during the day can be flown to sorting hubs overnight, moved again, and arrive somewhere else in time for another day's deliveries. For passenger airlines, the edges of the day help extend the productive life of an aircraft. For express freight, the night itself is part of the product. Yesterday's package is supposed to become today's delivery.

Cargo operations can also have different acoustic characteristics. Freighter fleets tend to include older aircraft than passenger fleets, in part because passenger aircraft often spend a second career carrying freight. Older generations of aircraft generally have larger noise footprints than their newer counterparts. At Bergamo, meanwhile, a growing share of passenger traffic is flown by newer aircraft such as Ryanair's Boeing 737 MAX, which SACBO's own measurements show to be several decibels quieter than the older 737-800.

It would be tempting to turn this into another simple explanation: cargo airplanes are old, heavy and loud; passenger airplanes are new, light and quiet. A cargo aircraft isn't necessarily heavier than a passenger aircraft, and carrying freight doesn't inherently require more thrust or make an airplane noisier. Aircraft type, age, engine technology, actual takeoff weight, weather and operating procedure all matter.

What is different is the timing. Cargo and express-delivery networks have a strong economic reason to use hours that passenger airlines and passengers might prefer to avoid.

And so, our neat story about the sound of low-cost flying became messier.

Some of the early-morning sound really may be the Ryanair flight we saw on the booking screen. Some of the nighttime roar may be freight moving through the European logistics system. Both use Bergamo Airport. Both have reasons to stretch activity toward hours when much of the surrounding community is asleep.

The common denominator isn't Ryanair and other low-cost passenger airlines after all. It's an airport working around the clock.

What Does Convenience Cost?

By now, our original theory had become considerably less tidy. Maybe what we are hearing isn't simply the sound of low-cost flying. Maybe it is the sound of convenience.

We want inexpensive flights to Helsinki. We also want the thing we ordered online to appear at our door tomorrow. Neither expectation seems particularly remarkable anymore. Behind both, however, are complicated systems trying to squeeze time out of the day.

Online shopping in Italy has changed enormously. The Osservatorio eCommerce B2C at Politecnico di Milano/Netcomm report that Italian online purchases were €16.6 billion in 2015. In 2016, product purchases alone were €9 billion. For 2025, the same research group put total e-commerce above €62.3 billion, with products above €40 billion.

Not all those packages fly, of course. Most don't. And we can't draw a straight line from Italian e-commerce growth to freight traffic at Bergamo. In fact, cargo flights at the airport are much less numerous today than they were before DHL moved its courier operation away from Bergamo in 2020. But overnight freight remains part of the airport's activity, and the larger logistics system exists because we use it.

It's easy to complain about a Ryanair departure at 05:50 when we don't want to take it. It's also easy to complain about an airplane passing overhead at midnight. It's harder when we recognize ourselves somewhere in the demand that keeps the entire system running.

Bergamo Airport works hard. In 2025, SACBO handled nearly 17 million passengers, more than 104,000 aircraft movements, and about 24,500 tonnes of freight. The airport operates officially on a 24‑hour basis, and its development planning — as reflected in ENAC’s approved masterplan — is built around distributing annual traffic across the full H24 operating day. (See SACBO).

But there is another piece of infrastructure immediately beside it: Bergamo, where people live.

That brings us back to the question we stumbled into while listening to airplanes in bed: where should the productive day of an airport end and the sleeping day of a city begin?

One obvious answer would be a curfew. But Bergamo doesn't have one.

We wondered whether that was simply because Bergamo has only one runway and needs to squeeze as much traffic as possible through it. A single runway certainly creates pressure to use the available hours efficiently. Yet it doesn't make nighttime operations inevitable.

Eindhoven has one runway and closes to scheduled flights at night. Charleroi also operates a single runway and normally closes between 23:00 and 06:30. Stansted, another huge Ryanair base with one runway, remains open through the night but operates under government limits on both the number and cumulative noise of nighttime flights.

So, Bergamo's 24-hour operation isn't simply an engineering necessity imposed by having one strip of asphalt. It is also a choice about how that infrastructure is used.

We couldn't find an official SACBO or ENAC statement saying, in so many words, Bergamo has no curfew because... And perhaps there isn't one simple answer. A curfew would reduce operating flexibility. It would constrain passenger schedules and overnight freight. It could push flights into already busy periods immediately before and after the closure, move some activity to other airports, and ultimately make some services more expensive or less attractive.

Those are real costs.

But allowing flights through the nighttime has costs too. They simply appear somewhere else on the ledger.

There are ways of drawing the line short of closing the airport. Night flights can be capped, as at Stansted. Airlines can pay more to operate at noise-sensitive hours or with noisier aircraft. Airports can give preference to newer, quieter planes. Certain runway directions can be restricted, as Bergamo already does. Homes can be insulated and noise continuously monitored, also things Bergamo already does.

In other words, there isn't a choice between having an airport and not having an airport. There are many choices in between. And that's perhaps where this investigation finally landed.

Low-cost airlines aren't the villain. Freight isn't the villain. Nor are those of us who like inexpensive flights and packages arriving at the door. The interesting question is how we divide the benefits and costs of all that convenience.

Commerce would happily use all 24 hours of the day. Human beings tend to reserve a few of them for sleeping.

At 11:50 pm in Bergamo, we can sometimes hear where that line has been drawn.

Following the Cool: Observations from Helsinki in the Summer of 2026

The Real Reason We Chose Helsinki ~ Are We Part of a New Wave? ~ 

Speaking of Tourists ~ The North Knows ~ Public Space as a Measure of a Society ~

A City That Doesn't Need to Perform ~What Helsinki Taught Us About Travel ~

Photos

  

   

Top: Left and center Suomenlinna. Right: Temppeliaukio Church (Temppeliaukion kirkko), Helsinki.

Bottom: Left: Helsingin päärautatieasema - Lyhdynkantajat - the Lantern Bearers at the main train station. Center left: View of Helsinki Cathedral. Center right and right: Facades in Helsinki.

While we were walking Helsinki's waterfronts in light jackets, much of southern Europe was enduring another summer of extreme heat. June 2026 was the hottest June ever recorded in Western Europe, and the heat continued into July, driving wildfires in France and the Iberian Peninsula. 

We hadn't come to Finland as climate refugees, at least not consciously. We came because Helsinki had also attracted our intention as interesting, yes cooler, but also because we like museums, coffee, public spaces, and cities near water. Yet by the end of the trip, a question kept resurfacing: Were we simply tourists in Helsinki, or were we following a larger movement north?

 
In this travel post, we won’t tell you where to get salmon soup or list museums you must see. We’d like to take this opportunity to use Helsinki as a lens for thinking about how climate may already be reshaping where people choose to spend their summers. And to talk about things that we noticed in Helsinki.

The Real Reason We Chose Helsinki

We admit it, the original attraction was practical as much as cultural. Helsinki was appealing because it offered something increasingly rare in late July: moderate temperatures. In our planning notes from months before the trip, Helsinki was explicitly chosen as a cooler weather target as compared to Italy.

We arrived in Helsinki on a Saturday in July. For us arriving in a city with gray skies and cool weather felt like a feature rather than a disappointment. At the Sibelius Monument north of downtown Helsinki, in our travel notes, we wrote: "Gray and cool, and we love it."

Besides the weather, we would come to love our 5 days in Helsinki for more than cool weather. The city has a lot to recommend, like walkability, great transit, nice people, great museums, and tons of food options.

Are We Part of a New Wave?

So is our trip an escape north, looking for cooler temperatures? Is this the wave of the future? Answer: likely yes.

For years, Mediterranean Europe was the obvious summer destination and still very much is (c.f. the post Escape to Isolatos: Notes on Curated Remoteness)

Increasingly, northern cities may be becoming summer destinations not despite their climate but because of it. Helsinki felt full of a different type of traveler, perhaps skewing older, more families, and people moving at a slower pace. You specifically noticed a different tourist profile than what you often encounter farther south. This wasn’t the average tourist we encountered in Porto Venere in 2021 or Elba in 2019. No one was furiously protecting a rented deck chair and dutifully rotating every 20 minutes to even out a tan.

No, these tourists were dressed smartly in light jackets and scarves.

Speaking of Tourists

We stayed at the Lapland Hotel - a Finnish hotel chain with 20 hotels. Of these, 14 are located in the region of Lapland, five city hotels further south like the one in Helsinki. The hotel is all reindeer antlers, Sámi music (pleasing, slightly droning and rhythmic), carefully placed lighting, and natural color palettes, curated signifiers — a kind of thematic shorthand meant to evoke Lapland quickly and comfortably for visitors who may never go there. Or maybe we will? 

The hotel experience was pleasing and relaxing. There was the subtle context of the unknown north as a horizon for travelers. Lapland as a global brand: aurora borealis, reindeer, Sámi culture, wilderness minimalism. Was our Helsinki hotel a gateway product — a sampler?

The staff at the Lapland were super nice, and the breakfast buffet was the best we've had. Smoked salmon with pickled spruce tips in the morning? Hell, yes. A special oat porridge produced daily by the hotel, Finnish squeaky cheese, and spruce yogurt with lingonberry. 

On a gray Sunday (love it!), we walked from the Kiasma Museum to the Old Market Hall (Vanha kauppahalli). As we approached the hall, we couldn't help noticing a few large cruise ships anchored in the harbor. Argh! Even here? Yes.

Two days later, on a trip to Suomenlinna on a ferry, we would pass by these behemoths, strangely silent as all the tourists were injected into the city. Near the Helsinki Cathedral (Helsingin tuomiokirkko) and the Sibelius Monument, we would see some of these tourists hustled on and off buses with earbuds tuned into someone explaining a quick history of this or that.

The North Knows

The north knows what winter is, but now it may need to prepare for summer and tourists in the coming years.

Until then, some north-related things we noticed in Helsinki:

• Buildings are engineered around snow and ice. Just look at those metal, steep roof pitches, and snow guards.
• Downspouts with ice-management systems. What are those curious electrical wire loops doing in drainpipes?
• Public infrastructure that adapted to climate reality. Extensive underground passageways and facilities...some are designed to double as bunkers.

What caught our attention as almost futuristic at first glance really isn’t. Helsinki is a city visibly shaped by environmental conditions. Climate is not an abstraction there; it is built into everyday life.

Also, an interesting fact in our what-we learned on our Helsinki vacation is this: the water surrounding Helsinki, though being seawater,  is less salty than ordinary ocean water.  We noticed this walking around Lapinlahti, a shallow enclosed inner bay not far from the city center, where the common reed, Phragmites australis, grew in the water. Odd we thought. Isn't there too much salt in the water for this grass? 

The Baltic Sea is a brackish sea, meaning a mixture of salt water and fresh water. It receives enormous amounts of freshwater from rivers, rainfall and runoff, while relatively little salty Atlantic water enters through the narrow Danish straits. Around Helsinki, coastal salinity is typically only about 4.8–5.5 parts per thousand, compared with roughly 35 parts per thousand in the open ocean. The Baltic Sea is a brackish arm of the Atlantic Ocean. And in fact, the common reed can grow well in brackish and moderately salty water, but not so well in ocean water.

Public Space as a Measure of a Society

A second major theme of our trip was public space and what that says about a city/place/culture. We approached Helsinki with hungry eyes. We are on vacation after all and are much more attuned to differences. And the Nordic countries (more correct than using Scandinavian for referring to Finland) don’t disappoint in terms of ingenuity and efficiency in doing things that is obvious after arriving from Italy. No shade on Italy.

Some observations:

• Integrated walking paths and green spaces thought out with pedestrians and bikers in mind. 
• The seamless movement between city, shoreline, and nature.
• A clean city.
• Efficient transit that requires little thought on how to purchase a ticket and use.
• Family-friendly and one might argue people-friendly details everywhere: benches, bathrooms, and space to maneuver.

The argument is less that Helsinki is perfect. It's that many of its public spaces seemed designed around people, trust and inclusion, not defensiveness, hostility, or exclusion.

A case in point is Helsinki’s Central Library called Oodi, the Finnish word for 'ode'. It opened in December 2018 on Kansalaistori—Citizens’ Square—directly opposite Finland’s Parliament. That position is intentional: Oodi presents access to information, culture, technology and public space as part of democratic life, not simply as a municipal book-lending service. Almost all of the building is devoted to public use.

The library has three levels.

• The glass-walled ground floor functions almost like a continuation of the square outside. It is open, busy and easy to walk through, with several entrances and relatively few psychological barriers. Architecturally, the building seems to lift itself up and invite people underneath it.
• The middle floor is the enclosed, darker, and more intimate part of the building. It contains meeting rooms, workspaces, gaming rooms, music and recording studios, photography and video facilities, a communal kitchen and an extensive urban workshop. Equipment includes sewing machines, 3D printers, a laser cutter, electronics workstations, large-format printing and other creative tools. This floor expresses one of Oodi’s central ideas: knowledge is not only something you read—it is something you produce, practice and share. A person can record music, edit a video, sew something, hold a meeting, play a game or learn a technical skill without needing to own the equipment privately. We were blown away when we saw this floor!
• The top floor returns to the recognizable idea of a library, but in an unusually open form. Known as Book Heaven, it is a bright, gently undulating landscape of bookshelves, reading areas, children’s spaces, trees and informal seating. Its glass perimeter offers broad views across Töölönlahti and toward Parliament, while the Citizens’ Balcony extends the reading room outdoors during the warmer months.

When we pulled open the doors of the library, we felt a positive vibration: happy people, moving and meeting with each other. Oodi feels democratic because it treats knowledge, technology, comfort, and creative space as public goods rather than privileges. People can read, work, meet, make things, or simply spend time there without being expected to buy anything. Its openness suggests that every citizen has an equal claim to the building. It feels less like an institution serving the public and more like a place the public collectively owns.

A City That Doesn't Need to Perform

One thing that emerges from your notes is how often the city surprised us by not trying too hard.

Examples:

• Oodi as we mentioned above. We mistook it for a second (and only a second) as yet another shopping mall from the outside but how wrong we were.
• Kiasma, a contemporary art museum located on Mannerheimintie in Helsinki, Finland. Its name kiasma, Finnish for chiasma, alludes to the basic conceptual idea of its architect, Steven Holl. The collection and curation were top notch.
• A long meandering walk (like many you could take) to Temppeliaukio Church (sunk in the ground), to the curious Sibelius monument, a coffee stop at Cafetoria Café & Shop, and back to city center, hugging the Seurasaarenselkä open sea inlet and Lapinlahti bay. Along the walk back, we passed Hietaranta Beach, a proper beach, just minutes from the city center.
• Great coffee experiences at Cafetoria, Rams Roasters (visited twice), Andante, and begrudingly Kaffa Roastery (if indifferent baristas don’t bother you).
• Helsinki's architecture moving between neoclassical grandeur, National Romantic stonework, Nordic modernism, and bold contemporary design. What unites it is a distinctly Finnish restraint: buildings tend to value light, natural materials, human scale, and usefulness over spectacle.
• A visit to Suomenlinna, windswept views of the Baltic and a chance to tour the Sukellusvene Vesikko (submarine).
• EMMA – a hidden gem of a museum just a short metro ride away from downtown. The Futuro house, Collection Kakkonen, and the extensive Bryk & Wirkkala Visible Storage.

Let’s take our EMMA visit as an example. EMMA impressed us partly because it did not seem to be performing for visitors or trying too hard to announce its importance. It was simply there: confident, spacious, and deeply integrated into the cultural life around it (the Espoo area). That restraint felt Finnish to us, especially compared with museums that rely on spectacle, branding, or architectural drama to attract attention. Yet EMMA has plenty of drama once you enter, beginning with the vast former printing house and the visible logic of its industrial past. The building gives the art room to breathe, while its history adds another layer to the experience rather than competing with it. The collection itself felt thoughtful and wide-ranging, with enough surprise to keep the museum from seeming overly curated or self-conscious. What stayed with us was the combination of modesty and substance: an extraordinary museum that never seemed to insist that we find it extraordinary.

What Helsinki Taught Us About Travel

We left Helsinki wondering whether we would return in the future, perhaps in autumn or spring. We also left wondering whether our travel habits are quietly changing. For years we chased a tolerable amount of warmth with access to azure-colored water and swimming possibilities.

Now we seem to be chasing something different, perhaps moderation. Helsinki may not have provided an answer, but it sharpened the question. If summers in southern Europe continue to become hotter and more fire-prone, perhaps the future summer itinerary for many travelers will not point toward the Mediterranean. Perhaps it will point toward the Baltic, the Nordics, and places that once seemed too cool to consider.

And if that shift happens, what does it mean for the people who already live there? This question was raised partially in a beautiful exhibit at Kiasma We Who Remain - Sámi Art in Focus.

Exhibition description: The Sápmi region, which today spans four countries, existed long before the emergence of Nordic nation-states or national ideologies. The exhibition invites viewers to explore Sámi identity as expressed by the Sámi themselves. The exhibition highlights the complexities of Sámi experience, showing how Sámi identity endures and remains vibrant despite externally imposed pressures.

The Sámi exhibit highlights the pressures that a more northerly world could place on northern communities that already have struggled through past exploitation.

The exhibit’s broader question is what does a changing climate, changing habits, and ever more tourists worldwide mean for places like Helsinki? Is it a future where tourists arrive in Helsinki not for snow, but for shade?

Photos

  

Coffee experiences in Helsinki at Ram Roasters, Cafetoria (try the Brookies), Andante.

  

Left: Collection  Kakkonen at EMMA- Annikki Hovisaari (1918 - 2004) - five vases. Futuro house at EMMA. A barnacle goose.

  

EMMA - Antti Laitinen Chiming Forest, EMMA - Bryk & Wirkkala Visible Storage, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art EMMA - Espoon modernin taiteen museo.
 

  
Helsinki facades and roofs.

  

Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (Nykytaiteen museo Kiasma), Osmo Valtonen (1929  - 2002, Finland) - Circulograph (1983), Siri Baggerman (1978 The Netherlands - Sápmi) - The Drone (2021).

  

Temppeliaukio Church (Temppeliaukion kirkko), Amos Rex, Sibelius Monument - Helsinki.

  

Left and center: Helsinki Central Library Oodi (Helsingin keskustakirjasto Oodi). Right: Marina Abramović (b. 1946) - Counting the Rice - Räkna ris (2005) at EMMA.

A Short Post About a Long Hike - Vò Valley to Rifugio Tagliaferri

Overview ~ The Route ~ Photos ~ Flora

  

Left: Malga Venano di sopra (1870 m). Center: Baita Malga Venano di sopra. Right: A mossy beginning to trail 413.

Sometimes you have to wait to get or do something, and it’s worth it and you are probably better for it. Case in point: a hike to Rifugio Tagliaferri via the Valley Vò. We were supposed to go on Saturday with friends and for various reasons it didn’t happen and we were bummed. Then, a few days later on Wednesday, we decided to give it a go, just the two of us, and it was magical and worth the wait (and less crowded).

Overview

Length: 22.6 km
Elevation Gain: 1270 m
Duration: 8.25 hours (about 6 hours moving)
Highest Point: 2331 m
Starting Point: 1067 m
Destination: Rifugio Tagliaferri

The Route

The CAI Sentiero 413: Schilpario - Rifugio Tagliaferri is what we followed except for a small deviation on the last part going, which was more a “direct” route and not really worth the hassle and the sweat. Our advice, follow Sentiero 413 up and back. Easy-peasy.

The first 30 minutes of the hike are in a forest of spruce, mountain pine, alder, and hazelnut trees. The Vò torrente is always nearby and visible at times through the trees. Then the forest opens up to pastures. As you climb the mule track you come across: the Baita del Venano di sotto (1542 m), the Baita del Venano di mezzo (1679 m) and the Baita di Venano di sopra (1859 m). At the uppermost baita we saw a herd of about 1000 Pecora Gigante Bergamasca (Bergamasque Giant sheep), a massive Italian breed native to the mountainous valleys of Bergamo. The shepherd said he had been doing his job for 50 years and was ready for retirement. What does retirement look like for a shepherd?

We visited Rifugio Nani Tagliaferri back in 2019 approaching the rifugio from the adjacent valley with the Gleno Dam. See the post A Hike to Rifugio Tagliaferri via Val di Gleno. It was fun to come back and visit. This rifugio is the highest in the Bergamasque Alps at 2328 m. It’s also interesting for the story of why it was built.

The namesake of the rifugio, Nani Tagliaferri, was a mountaineer from Bergamo whose life and spirit embodied the rugged devotion to the Orobie Alps. His untimely death in in 1981 in the Peruvian Andes inspired his brother Francesco and a group of close friends resolved to honor his memory in a way that reflected his spirit—by building a refuge at altitude, where others could experience the same communion with the landscape that had shaped him.

The rifugio’s construction in the 1980s followed the logic of the military mule tracks of the surrounding valleys—meticulously graded, drained, and reinforced—linking the alpine valleys of Scalve and Valtellina. Set amid the Orobie Alps, the refuge overlooks a panorama that sweeps from the Bernina and Disgrazia groups to the peaks of Camino, Bagozza, and Concarena.

One botanical note: we saw so many raspberries on this hike. We sampled all along the trail, and they were good.

Photos

  

Left: Heading back down the mountain to to Malga Venano di sopra on trail 413.

Center: Last bit of the direct trail to reach Rifugio Tagliaferri.
Right: Sheep in Malga Venano di sopra.

  
Left: Leaving the rifugio on trail 413.

Center: Looking down on Malga Venano di sopra.

Right: View from the trail looking south toward Pizzo Camino.

  

Left: Trail 413 starts out gentle in the forest.

Center: Trail 413 goes by two small lakes in the upper reaches.

Right: View of Pizzo Tornello (2687 m).

  

Left: Venano di sopra conca.

Center: Trail - View from trail up to rifugio (hidden).

Right: Trail - Malga Venano di sopra – shepherd's hut.

   
Left: Rifugio Tagliaferri - special dish of the rifugio.

Center left: Rifugio Tagliaferri – spezzatino.

Center right: Rifugio Tagliaferri – dishes for a group of hikers

Right: Rifugio Tagliaferri - in the kitchen.


  

Left: Sign about charcoal production.

Center: Trail Sign at Malga Venano di sopra (1870 m).

Right: Just below the rifugio, out of sight.

Flora

[Apiaceae] Bupleurum sp.

[Asteraceae] Leontopodium nivale - edelweiss
 

[Asteraceae] Carlina acaulis

 

[Asteraceae] flower


[Campanulaceae] Campanula sp.

 

[Caryophyllaceae] Lychnis flos-cuculi

[Crassulaceae] Rhodiola rosea
  

[Crassulaceae] Sempervivum montanum
 

[Papaveraceae] Pseudofumaria lutea


[Rosaceae] Potentilla sp.


[Rosaceae] Rubus idaeus


[Saxifragaceae] Saxifraga aizoides