This time we decided to meet in the Vapriikki museum centre, which is located in an old factory area and gives home to many different exhibitions. There are eight permanent ones: the Natural History Museum, the Tammerkoski Rapids and the Story of Tampere, the Media Museum Rupriikki, the Mineral Museum, the New Hockey Hall of Fame Finland, the Doll Museum, Postal Museum and The Finnish Museum of Games.
Unfortunately we got there just one hour before closing, so we didn’t have time to see all the exhibitions. We choose to visit the Natural History Museum in order to learn something about the wildlife of the region.
We have seen different kinds of stuffed animals, such as a moose (‘hirvi’ in Finnish), which can weigh up to 700 kg, a brown bear, a wolf, foxes and birds.
The most interesting creature for me was the ‘hirvikärpänen’, which is a small insect that flies to mooses and once it is attached to their skin, it looses its wings, stays there like a parasite and is feeding on their blood. There can be thousands of these creatures in one moose.
We’ve also seen an ‘ilves’, which is called lynx in English and one of the hockey teams of Tampere got its name after this animal.
I think this exhibition was really interesting and I’m sure that I’ll go back and visit all the others as well, so that I can learn more about Tampere and Finland.
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