Libraries

Seriuosly, if you know me, you may also know how obsessed I am with books. When I left Perth after 3 years, my books weighed more than all the rest of my belongings combined. My favourite destination in Perth is also the State library (a.k.a. Alexander library), which I call my “soul asylum”, where I encountered several unforgettable (in all kinds of ways) people during my first year. I even loved it so much that I noticed when they changed the toilet paper from one-ply to two-ply, or when they dismissed the weird blue light in the ground-floor toilets which were said to be to inhibit people injecting drugs (in library toilets?) since they couldn’t see their veins. Anyway, that’s another story 😀

So before even going to Finland I already told myself that I had to try out the library in Turku. And today I did. It’s smaller than Alexander library, but in some parts more exciting, like cool chilling out areas. Also, you don’t have to put your bag in a locker in order to enter the library (although the new electronic lockers in Alexander are cool), but on the other hand, you need a LIBRARY CARD to use the restrooms in Turku library. I mean, how weird is that, although the cards are free to obtain, but library should be a public place, what’s the point of limiting the use of restrooms? When I was in Perth, I used to just go to State library to use the restrooms, because it’s much nicer and cleaner there than other public toilets around. I don’t know about other people but I feel like when you judge a place, its toilet is quite of a valuable measure, whether it’s dirty or clean, simple or fancy, under good maintenance or run down, free or charged, says a lot about the place.

But other than that, Turku library is cool in many ways. It pays attention to the details and has cool designs which is typical Finnish. The first floor is actually a lot larger than one expects when she first enters the building, because keep going through the newspaper area there will be a connection to another room so much bigger and with lots and lots of different kinds of fiction and non-fiction books. Then on the second floor, this little stairway leads to another small section of the library:



From there you can see the whole second floor:


But what I loveabout Turku library the most is its area on the first floor for children and young adults, that is where the coolness of the library shows.

I have both of these. Yay!

Awww my childhood Pippy

Little Japanese toys and models. Soooo cute!

Detective Conan anyone?

Here comes the coooool area:


What can be more fulfilling than sitting there reading a good book for the whole day?


A little fairytale-like corner where girls can dress up like those princesses in the books

And they have these glass boxes under the floor displaying cool toys and all the weird stuff

Nice study desks