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Can someone explain what's special about the (actual) Helsinki bus station? Genuinely curious. I googled it, and all I see is a very ordinary, modern, un-beaut

Can someone explain what's special about the (actual) Helsinki bus station? Genuinely curious. I googled it, and all I see is a very ordinary, modern, un-beautiful bus station, like the ones you find all over Europe, so I'm having trouble understanding why it's a "cool backdrop" or "famous" (other than the author using it as a convenient metaphor).

jarpineh 9y ago
Well, going through or near said station almost every day I'd wager these points: To me the article said the bus station is famous first for his students because he talks about it in his lessons. Here in Helsinki we like to think that the railway station has some merit on international scale, bus station by itself doesn't rate that much (and those are disappearing underground anyway). From artistic point of view (I only shoot with phone camera)... It's a bus station servicing east and north eastern lines. It gets travelers from airport train in addition of near and far going trains. Also, underneath is metro station, other side of the railway station is another bus station for north to westward lines (additional western lines are close by though that one is underground). So, lot's of different people going through which affords various views against backdrops of various (to me spectacular) specimens of Jugend architecture through (particularly nasty example of) concrete brutalism (which writer neglects to mention for some reason..).
theoh 9y ago
From the article: "The buses that move out of Helsinki stay on the same line but only for a while, maybe a kilometer or two. Then they begin to separate, each number heading off to its own unique destination." So Helsinki is an example, maybe not unique, of a bus station where it takes some time for (at least some of) the different numbered buses to diverge from a single route ("career trajectory").
- atombender 9y ago
  But he's describing it in visual terms: "the Helsinki bus station makes a cool backdrop for Magnum wannabes". Here, "cool backdrop" implies that a lot of photographers shoot it because it looks cool. But I get the sense from the article overall that he's thinking of the bus stop in purely metaphorical terms, so the language is confusing.
  - blahedo 9y ago
    That's just an artful aside; he then brings us back to the real reason he's bringing it up, which is the transit system pattern rather than the station itself. (And, the transit system pattern is not uncommon but also not quite universal either, so he went with the specific example he knew of from where he was from, I'm guessing.)
deleted 9y ago
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jarpineh 9y ago

Well, going through or near said station almost every day I'd wager these points: To me the article said the bus station is famous first for his students because he talks about it in his lessons. Here in Helsinki we like to think that the railway station has some merit on international scale, bus station by itself doesn't rate that much (and those are disappearing underground anyway). From artistic point of view (I only shoot with phone camera)... It's a bus station servicing east and north eastern lines. It gets travelers from airport train in addition of near and far going trains. Also, underneath is metro station, other side of the railway station is another bus station for north to westward lines (additional western lines are close by though that one is underground). So, lot's of different people going through which affords various views against backdrops of various (to me spectacular) specimens of Jugend architecture through (particularly nasty example of) concrete brutalism (which writer neglects to mention for some reason..).

theoh 9y ago

From the article: "The buses that move out of Helsinki stay on the same line but only for a while, maybe a kilometer or two. Then they begin to separate, each number heading off to its own unique destination." So Helsinki is an example, maybe not unique, of a bus station where it takes some time for (at least some of) the different numbered buses to diverge from a single route ("career trajectory").

atombender 9y ago
But he's describing it in visual terms: "the Helsinki bus station makes a cool backdrop for Magnum wannabes". Here, "cool backdrop" implies that a lot of photographers shoot it because it looks cool. But I get the sense from the article overall that he's thinking of the bus stop in purely metaphorical terms, so the language is confusing.
- blahedo 9y ago
  That's just an artful aside; he then brings us back to the real reason he's bringing it up, which is the transit system pattern rather than the station itself. (And, the transit system pattern is not uncommon but also not quite universal either, so he went with the specific example he knew of from where he was from, I'm guessing.)

deleted 9y ago

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