The Mighty Finn

When Julian told me to pack my bags and accompany Louise to the international librarians’ conference 2012, I nearly skipped around the field!  All those dozens of Aber librarians from all around the world gathered in one place – how could I resist?  I’m sure you already know that Aber librarians are to be found in most of the world’s greatest libraries, so you can understand that I was keen to meet them.
Travelling with Louise is a different experience to my usual squash into Julian’s luggage – this time I had the luxury of a spacious handbag, although I didn’t look too closely at some of the other stuff in there.   Helsinki is a beautiful city combining historic traditional quayside buildings with a modern city centre, a tram system and wide open streets, which I was told was so that the snow could be ploughed to the sides in winter.  However, there was unlimited sunshine for our Aber librarians in August, unlike at home where Wales had unlimited rain. 

Locals were very friendly and helpful to Louise (poor thing can only speak English, no Welsh or Finnish at all) and managed not to laugh too obviously when she could find the hotel but not the entrance to it and had to ask a barman for directions.  I was slightly disappointed that she didn’t manage to find a nice little meadow for me, but there were some tasty little parks and hidden gardens between the buildings for quiet snacking.

During the conference I held a bit of a party for our alumni and was delighted to find not only librarians but also a couple of international politics alumni had come along.  Rebecca Davies, Pro Vice-Chancellor and a librarian too, gave an update on Aber and we had some amazing Finnish nibbles.  My favourite were green, sugar coated apple flavoured jellies.  I was hoping for grass flavour when I saw them, but apple’s nearly as good.

It was only a couple of days, but I was exhausted with chatting to all those bookish types (and not a dusty tome in sight; they’re well ahead of the game with digital archives and all sorts of electronic data-keeping) so I slept all the way back in the handbag ready for the next stop on the list. 

Look out Dublin, here I come!