Day 12: Visiting Old Rauma + Watching Maleficent

Hello readers,

I apologize for the late update!

Yesterday, (Sunday June 15th), my host family took me around Vanha Rauma (Old Rauma) and we explored all corners of the city! Despite the small size of Rauma, this city is so multifaceted in its beauty and history; a perfect combination of environment and city-life, it seems as though nature blends in seamlessly with urban space.

A creek amongst a mini-forest.

Old Rauma is a UNESCO World Heritage site, due to the immaculate preservation of the Nordic wood used to build the houses in the 1400s. My host family and I walked down many of these streets, and quaint shops selling hand made lace, porcelain, cooking ware, etccetc line both sides of the street. According to the UNESCO website, Old Rauma is an "architecturally unified entity, and its authenticity is due to the well-preserved historical building stock, the street network that can be traced back to the Middle Ages, and a lively community with various services, residential buildings and shops."

The famous streets in Old Rauma. Look at the pastel-colored shops!

Another creek in Rauma

After traversing through mini-forests and creeks, we arrived at the Church of the Holy Cross, which was built in the 15th century. A former church of a Franciscan Monastery, there are many impressive medieval paintings in the interior. 

Church of the Holy Cross

Inside the church

Me in front of the church

After visiting the church, we walked to the lively Rauma marketplace. All throughout the market place, vendors shouted in Italian and French, advertising their food and offering free samples. The variety of foods was truly eclectic- from olives stuffed with garlic to moldy goat cheese, from cranberry-rasberry jam to chocolate tiramisu cake, there was something to satisfy everyone! Colorful and bustling, this market is the central meeting hub for all Raumalainens (people from Rauma.) 

On the edge of the marketplace.

A cafe situated on the side of the Rauma marketplace. 

Rauma marketplace

Me in the Rauma marketplace

Before walking home, Marja and Kari bought us tickets to see Maleficent in the theater at 6:50 PM. After hearing so many great things about Maleficent, I was excited to finally watch it! By then it was about 3 PM, so we all went home to take a quick nap and eat dinner.

Ann-Christine (the middle child) came home at around 5 PM from Turku, where she lives to study. In the summer of 2012, she partook in the Finnish Young Ambassadors Program (the program in collaboration with FUSYE) and lived with a host family in Colorado! I loved conversing with her about the exchange experience and her thoughts on it.  

Marja drove Camilla, Ann-Christine, Charlotta, and I to the movie theater, which I learned was Rauma's only movie theater and was privately owned. The theater itself was cozy and contained much fewer rows than theaters in the US, but it was a pleasant change. Besides me, my three host sisters, and my host mother, there were very few other movie-goers. 

The movie theater where we saw Maleficent in 3-D! The seats were very plush.

Maleficent was a wonderful movie!! Besides the breathtaking cinematography, I loved the fact that it offered a different perspective on the single story we are all so accustomed to: the "evil" Maleficent places a curse on an innocent young girl, who is awoken from her death-like sleep from a "true love's kiss." I won't spoil the movie for anyone who hasn't watched it yet, but at the end, I deeply felt empathy for Maleficent's plight. Watching it in 3-D also made the experience more magical, as there were fairies seemingly flying all around me, fire-breathing dragons spitting fire at the audience, and men in armor thrusting swords right in front of me. 

It was also different watching the movie with both Finnish and Swedish subtitles below it. In America, we take movie-watching for granted; we're lucky that most movies are made with actors who speak English. Even in countries such as Spain, Germany, or France, English movies are dubbed with the official language of that country, such as Spanish, German, or French. But because Finnish and Swedish are rarely spoken languages internationally, English movies are not dubbed into Finnish. Therefore, when Finns go to watch an American movie, they watch it with Finnish and Swedish subtitles! It didn't distract too much from the cinematography.