Jyväskylä - the city of lights

Jyväskylä is a quiet town. On a normal day, even during the weekend and even if you go to the center, you will never cross an astounding amount of people, after all, there are only so many people in Finland as a whole. However, there are a couple of days at the end of September when everything changes and people start emerging out of everywhere, that ́s Valon kaupunki or the City of Lights. Navigating through flooded streets you can go and check how the city that you are used to seeing changes completely thanks to an amazing display of art pieces all centred around light.

Kirkkopuisto

A good place to start the tour was at the church at Kirkkopuisto. There, a space which ( to our most apologetic honesty) barely pays one’s attention to after being around JKL for a while, looked like an explosion of light mandalas forming the most spectacular tree shapes. It was certainly mind blowing and the psychedelic music certainly helped.

From there we went down Kauppakatu (shops street), through a maze of food stands with flavours from all around the world. These stands are there quite often but them combined with the amazing lighting made us feel like this little town was as great as any European capital. 

The big statue at the harbour

And last, but not least, after a short walk we probably saw the best art piece of the night. A statue of a sitting person, 10 meters tall, lit inside with a contrasting white light that could be seen from a kilometer away. That statue, right in the middle of the big square in front of Paviljonki, was hypnotizing. Hundreds of people just stood there contemplating, or walking around or through it (some kids were actually running under the statue’s legs (okay...we might have done that too)).

The happy faces of your Student Ambassadors