Yes, Finland is a country that can produce nightmare-inducing rock bands like Eurovision 06 winners Lordi. But they can turn around and be sickeningly polite and friendly, too. The latest ain't-that-nice story out of Finnish capital Helsinki is the installation of talking trash cans.

From today, four very special garbage cans will be placed around the city for the enjoyment of locals and tourists alike. When you place a piece of rubbish in one of them, it will play a recorded "thank you" message from famous locals. For example, the mayor says (in Finnish, of course):

It is great that you care about the city. Cool, isn't it.

Which, if we could just understand Finnish, would certainly entice us to keep feeding it with more rubbish.

Related Stories:
· Helsinki Rubbish Bins to Thank Users for Not Littering [AFP]
· The Nightmares of European Children Have Just Begun [Jaunted]
· Helsinki Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Matti Mattila]
]]> amandak 2008-08-22T09:33:14-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2007/10/24/101847/56

We do our best to appreciate even the weirdest tourist attractions, but we're still not sold on visiting a landfill outside Tel Aviv. Set to be renamed Ariel Sharon Park, the 2,000-acre dump will be converted into a veritable theme park of trash, with exhibits that are all-too-in-your-face.

A visitors' center is already in place, with a reception desk crafted out of recycled bottles and benches fashioned from crushed soda cans. Plans for a pond and landscaping are in the works, and money collected from the dump's recyclables will soon go to keeping it lit at night.

The landfill itself closed down nine years ago, so it's not as trashy as you might imagine. But it's still near a garbage transfer station that provides some stink, and the pile still emits plenty of methane and sulfur. That won't be stopping trash fans, though, says a former Central Park designer who's worked on the project:

It will be a place people visit like Bilbao or Stonehenge, an international destination.

Related Stories:
· Ayalon Park [Official Site]
· Recycling the Whole Dump in Israel [NYT]
· Chinatown Garbage Tour [Jaunted]
· Israel Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times]]]> pbb 2007-10-24T10:30:01-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/