Perhaps you didn’t know it, but Helsinki is probably the first city in the world to have talking trashbins. Watch the video to see what I mean.

In short, the trash bin thanks you and says something humorous (examples here) when you throw something in it, in different voices provided by various Finnish celebrities. There are only four of these novelties in Helsinki downtown, and their location changes weekly.

This made the news in Italy, and the way I found out is that I, together with two other Italian residents of Helsinki, was called by the Italian radio program “Caterpillar” to actually interview one of these trash bins - well, more like give a live demonstration of its operation. The idea was to stop a passerby and make him or her translate the speech and comment on it.

I managed to find out the location of one of the bins by calling a representative of the City of Helsinki (who was very helpful, thanks!). We went to the place (in Esplanadi) some 20 minutes before the time of the interview and tested it a few times - it worked beautifully, although the speech was a bit hard to hear. But the pouring rain should have given us a hint that things wouldn’t be as easy as it seemed.

When the radio finally called for the interview, the bin went completely mute! We only managed to make it say a few “kiitos”, too short to be heard on the radio, but apart from that our subject refused to say a word. And I can only imagine what we looked like, three people around a trash bin sticking their arms into it. Downright embarrassing and definitely an end to my radio career if I ever had one.

Anyway, many thanks to Juho and Marjut, the two youngsters kind enough to stop under the rain for an interview. Who would have thought trashbins can have stage fright?

[Update: you can download the mp3 of the radio show here. The interview starts at 23:45]