The Moomins, mushrooms and a very good doughnut: a birthday weekend in Tampere

For years, I had imagined the Moomin Museum as a little Moomin house hidden somewhere in the middle of a magical Finnish forest. I don’t know why I had never questioned this particular image in my head, but apparently that was where the museum lived in my imagination.

I’ve loved the Moomins since I was a child. There was something about their world that filled me with wonder — the forests, the strange little creatures, the feeling that there was always something slightly mysterious happening just beyond what you could see. So visiting the Moomin Museum had been sitting on my dream list for a very long time.

When I finally started looking into actually going to Finland, I discovered that the museum was in Tampere. Not in a little Moomin house in the middle of an enchanted forest, but in an art museum in an industrial city.

I was slightly disappointed, I have to admit. But by then I was emotionally invested. It had been on my dream list for far too long. I couldn’t exactly decide not to go simply because I’d got the architecture of the museum wrong. So Tampere it was, and I decided to take Heida with me too.

Discovering Tampere

The more I learned about Tampere, the more interested I became. It turned out that it wasn’t simply the city that happened to have the Moomin Museum. Tampere has a long industrial history, including a strong connection to textiles, and that immediately appealed to me. I have always loved industrial aesthetics — old factories, red brick, huge windows, chimneys and buildings that still carry the traces of what they were once used for.

Even our choice of hotel seemed to fit. We stayed at UNITY Tampere, which has been created inside a former textile factory. I loved that before we’d even properly explored the city, we were already sleeping inside part of its industrial history. It was also a very practical choice for us because we had a studio rather than a standard hotel room, giving us enough space to separate sleeping from lounging. With children, that little bit of extra space makes a surprising difference.

I had also expected Finland to give us plenty of nature, and Tampere didn’t disappoint there either.

September turned out to be a lovely time to visit. We’d seen the rain in the forecast and expected a rather damp weekend, but most of the time we actually had sunshine and surprisingly warm weather. The trees were only just beginning to change, so everything was still predominantly green, with little touches of orange, red and yellow appearing here and there.

We walked through pine forest where the air had that unmistakable smell of trees. There were mossy paths, alpine strawberry leaves, mushrooms everywhere and, rather unexpectedly, blueberries still growing in September. The lake edges were made up of great slabs of slate-grey rock, forming natural little landings into the water.

And then there was that strange mixture of nature and industry. Every now and then, a red-brick factory chimney would appear through the trees, reminding you that this was an industrial city even when you felt as though you were deep in a forest.

I think that combination was one of the things I liked most about Tampere. It wasn’t trying to separate nature from the city. They seemed to exist alongside each other quite naturally.

But where were all the tourists?

Another thing that surprised me was how quiet Tampere felt.

The airport was really quiet when we arrived. Even the Moomin Museum was full of Finnish families and children rather than international tourists. There were a few other visitors, of course, but at times it genuinely felt as though we were the only tourists there.

On the way home, our flight was actually the only flight departing from the airport. Our taxi driver told us that the airport had never really recovered after Covid, which was rather sad because the airport itself was incredibly modern and exceptionally clean.

I ended up having quite a lovely little conversation with the taxi driver. We’d been telling her about finding blueberries and mushrooms in the forest, and she explained that Finns are mostly berry pickers. By this point I was beginning to suspect that mushroom picking might be equally serious business, although I didn’t get official confirmation of that.

The famous munkki.

One of the things I had heard about before going was the famous munkki at Pyynikki. I knew they were supposed to be very good, and I’d even been warned that there could be a queue, but I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

In my head, I’d somehow turned the idea of a famous Finnish doughnut into a sickly, sugary doughnut covered in pink icing.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The munkit were were simple ring doughnuts, freshly made and still warm, rolled in ordinary granulated sugar. They didn’t look particularly remarkable. I ordered five straight away anyway, because obviously.

It wasn’t until I bit into one that I understood why they were famous. They were fresh, warm and soft, without being overly sweet, and they had this wonderful scent and flavour of cardamom. There was something incredibly satisfying about how simple they were.

The café itself made the whole experience even better. It had high ceilings, beautiful paintings, Art Deco details and curved windows looking out towards the forest. Sitting there with a coffee and a warm cardamom doughnut, looking through the windows at the trees, felt like one of those very ordinary moments that somehow becomes one of the memories you take home with you.

More than the Moomins.

Of course, the Moomin Museum was the reason I had finally made it to Tampere. And I was very glad I went. It was lovely to finally see all those familiar characters and drawings that had been part of my imagination since childhood.

But the funny thing is that the museum ended up being only one part of what made the trip special.

I had gone to Tampere because of the Moomins, but I left thinking about old textile factories, red-brick buildings, forests, lakes, mushrooms, blueberries and cardamom doughnuts. I loved the fact that the city felt industrial without losing its connection to nature, and that we could spend one part of the day looking at old factory buildings and the next walking through pine forest beside a lake.

I think I had spent so long imagining what Finland would be like that I had built my own slightly unrealistic version of it in my head. A magical forest, a Moomin house, perhaps some sort of woodland creature waiting around the corner.

What I actually found was much more interesting.

It was a real city, with its own history and its own slightly strange combination of industry and wilderness. It was quiet and a little unexpected, and it didn’t feel as though it was constantly trying to show you that you were a tourist.

And perhaps that is why I’m so glad I went to Tampere rather than waiting for the more obvious Finnish trip.

I finally got my Moomins.

I just had to find them in a former industrial city rather than a magical forest.

Rasa