Monthly Archives: May 2023

Finland: May 31st

I’m at the airport. I’m at my gate. It’s 2:31 and the flight is at 4 so I’m pretty comfortable that I’ve made it in time and I’ve had lunch on the other side of passport control and bought korvpuustia.

I got up, did my packing, returned my bottles to K-Market and used the euro I got for them to buy some more cheese for today’s lunch. It’s not as good as the cheese I had last time.Then I took my luggage to the lockers under the station and went out in Helsinki. I wanted to go down to the harbour, walk around the island and see the icebreakers. They’re very impressive. Finland claims to have built 60% of all the icebreakers in the world and to have designed 80% of them. It was breezy but there was a little bit of park opposite the big ships which was fairly shaded and that was nice for a while. Then I sat outside Allas again. Bit more souvenir shopping, found the big food hall, sat on the sculptural thing and looked at the harbour from that side and then decided it was breezy and chilly and time to find something else to do. I’d considered Seurasaari but Google Maps said it would take about 45 minutes to get there and with only three hours, it didn’t feel worth it. I took the tram back to Lasipalatsi and went in the Forum centre to look at – and not buy – anything Moomin-related, then I went downstairs to McDonalds and had a small chips partly because I fancied some and partly as a reason to drink the entire bottle of Fanta I kind of wished I hadn’t bought last night. Then I reclaimed my luggage, found the I train and came to the airport. I’ve done the rest – security, lunch, korvapuustia, gate.

I’ve made two studies while I’ve been here. The first is of Marimekko. I conclude that the clothes aren’t worn that much, not by people who are out and about in the city centre anyway, but lots and lots of people have the bags. Lots of them are plain black bags with the name all over the strap. Lots of them are more tote bag-shaped, with the name written all over them. I’ve seen a few in the colourful patterns but they’re definintely in the minority.

The second, obviously, is of the language. I’ve not done a lot of speaking Finnish – I’m still not big on speaking at all – and I tend to panic when faced with Finnish, even though I’m quite capable of asking “Anteeksi, puhutteko te englantia?”. But I can pick out words I recognise and occasionally that’s enough to figure out roughly what’s being said. At least, I caught enough words when the plane landed to realise that they were talking about the local time and temperature. I can read a little bit as well. Not books or magazines but signs and the sides of buses and so on. If I was going to say it out loud, I can put together little sentences about what I’m doing. That’s all I really wanted from Finnish, to get to the point where I can see something other than vowels, double letters and umlauts. The Swedish still makes more sense than the Finnish but I’ve been trying to make an effort to ignore the Swedish and pay attention to the Finnish.

Moi moi. Se on ohi. Tee se uudelleen!

Finland: 30th May

I started today with a tiny revelation: the easiest way to get to Lidl for my fresh breakfast bread is to walk down the road and along instead of up the road and along as the bottom end of the road is flat. Then I wanted to cross some more things off my to-do list.

First, Uspensi Cathedral. The 7 tram takes me directly from just up the road to Senate Square and then it’s a short walk across to the cathedral. This one was more what I expected. It’s small, both cathedrals are very small, but it was decorated more or less how I’d expected. Lots of saints, lots of lettering, lots of patterns and colour. Then I walked back up to the nearest tram stop and took the 4 north to the Church in the Rock. I knew it was out of the city centre but I hadn’t realised it’s only three or four stops from the central station. It’s not exactly in a cave, as some places would have you believe. There’s a big dome of rock in the middle of a square with Art Deco apartment blocks on each side and the church has been dug out of that, with a big copper dome over the top held up by concrete supports. Yes, it’s in the rock but effectively – at least as far as the rock is concerned – it’s entirely open at the top.

I took the tram back to town for a little souvenir shopping, mostly for postcards and stickers for my scrapbook although I also invested in a sauna cover of my very own. Then I walked down Esplanade and stopped in the park for an ice cream. When I’d eaten that, I continued down towards the harbour where there were boats doing sightseeing tours. Well, that was on my list so I got on the first one, a city tour leaving at 1.30. The inside was pretty much full but there were only two or three people sitting outside on the top deck and the ladies who were selling tickets assured us that the clouds were disappearing and they had blankets. I claimed a blanket before I’d even picked a seat and was glad I had it. It was chilly on the water, even before we set off, and we hadn’t left the harbour area before it started to rain. Well, I’d say “‘drizzle”‘ but the few raindrops were the big heavy kind. Not enough for those of us on deck to take cover but enough for us to pull the blankets over our heads. By the time we’d made our way out past Sirpalesaari and seen Loyly in the distance, the rain had stopped and we could feel the warm sun again. We went past Suomenlinna, under the new bridge and past Laajasalo and Kulosaari and then did a big circle around Mustikkamaa, the leafy island where most of the embassies live, past Korkeasaari and round to Katajanokka. From Korkeasaari yesterday I’d seen a fleet of large ferries moored off Katajanokka and wondered about them. Now I discovered they’re actually Finland’s icebreakers, who don’t have a lot to do this time of year. As we headed back into the harbour, a freezing wind came up. I wished I had another blanket. Ten more blankets. Funny how the temperature skyrockets when you’re back on dry land.

I walked home (I hadn’t measured any walking today and needed my 2km) to finish off my bread and butter, dump my shopping and pick up my jacket ready for that trip to Suomenlinna I keep saying I’ll do. This was helped immensely by the walk back from the harbour only being 1.9km. I needed to go out to do my extra mileage! So at last I made it to Suomenlinna for a proper late afternoon/evening there, without the worry about the wind warning or the giant threatening cloud. I sketched the swimming bay, ate a korvapuusti I bought yesterday, panicked that the Tallinn/Stockholm ferry was going to plough into the island at speed, finally found the King’s Gate, discovered that Strava didn’t record my walk around the island properly and finally got the 8.40 ferry back. Then it’s five or ten minutes up the road to the tram stop, ten minutes for the tram to arrive and it delivered me to the top of the road.

Tomorrow I need to be on the airport train by about 1pm so I’m going to leave my luggage at the station again and decide what to do later.

Finland: 29th May

Breakfast this morning was (slightly stale) baguette left over from last night before going up the road to get the tram to the station where I had to find the 16 bus out to Korkeasaari, which is the island with a zoo on it. First Helsinki bus, discovery that my cardboard five-day ticket has some secret electronics inside it as it makes the ticket reader ping when I hold it against it, and twenty minutes through some very cobbled streets and some open roads only to discover, as I crossed the bridge to Korkeasaari, that the cathedrals are just a couple of hundred metres away. There’s a new bridge being built and I later found a sign explaining all the works: in 2027, they’re planning to open a new light railway which will run along the bottom of this island, connecting it directly to the city centre. I’m not entirely certain why this light railway means Korkeasaari is getting its own tram stop but whatever, it’s going to get easier to get there.

I was expecting something more like an Alpine wildpark, a semi-open place where mostly native animals roamed and the shores of the island were always visible. And there were bits of shore, mostly roped off because of nesting barnacle geese, but it felt a lot like a normal zoo. There was a tiger and three camels and some wallabies (these come under the title kengurut in Finnish) and monkeys and moose-like things and yak-like things and everything you’d expect in a zoo except elephants and giraffes. It’s a labyrinth and between the rocks, the enclosures and the trees, it’s mostly very easy to forget you’re on an island rather than just in a zoo on land as normal.

I didn’t take the bus all the way back to the city centre. I hopped off after about four stops and got the metro back instead. Not because there was any particular reason to, just because it was a method of transport I haven’t used yet. It turned out to be a good idea – I spied some empty seats from the platform and when I went to sit on them, I discovered that some of them were empty because there was an enormous black and tan dog asleep under them. He looked up when a small poodly thing boarded and had a good sniff but stayed down and stayed quiet and when it was out of sight and he’d sniffed enough, he went back to sleep.

Back at the station, I got in a bit of a tangle about finding a tram down to Senatintori, Senate Square. It would have been quicker and easier to walk. Trams leaving from the central station, I think, take a bend around the shopping centre to get to Aleksanterinkatu and so go in the opposite direction to the one I expect. I got there eventually. This is really Helsinki’s main square and it seems the done thing is to sit on the steps up to the cathedral. So I did. It was a warm day (I went out in shorts!) but it’s breezy and apparently the steps are immune to breeze. It’s the warmest place in Helsinki to sit and the stone is warm from the sun as well.

I wanted to go into the cathedrals. The white one is Helsinki’s main Protestant/Lutheran church. It’s a big white confection with corners and domes and gold and it is utterly underwhelming inside. Even St Paul’s isn’t as bare and boring. Oh yes, you can see the inside of the five domes but they’re all sponged in pale blue with no decoration at all. Uspenski Cathedrall, the big red Orthodox one, is closed on Mondays and still apparently the place to have your Helsinki photoshoot. As I walked around it in the hope of figuring out which door is in use, I spied the shop/pier on Korkeasaari through the buildings behind the cathedral. I compared the distance to the distance back to the main station. If you could walk on water, it’s not more than a mile away. Easily walking distance. But you have to go around the edge of the bay and you have to walk through a giant construction site and so taking a bus right out of the city is still the best way to get there.

What else was on my to-do list? The big wheel. That’s just down by the sea. I’d go and see if I could get on. No reason why not – it was going round and with no one on board. Surely SkyWheel couldn’t say “too busy, come back in 45 minutes”? They didn’t. They gave me a ticket – an actual ticket, not a receipt! – and sent me round to the queue, which was the two groups who’d been in front of me at the ticket office. We had our photos taken and I must remember to download my photos, and then I boarded from gate 4.

I had no idea how many times we were going to go round. It seemed to go pretty quickly and I was glad, and not surprised when we went a second time. Not surprised at the third. I was surprised when we went round a fourth time, though. Obviously I had a cabin to myself so I could hop from side to side depending on what I wanted to see. Views over the bay and out to Suomenlinna. Eye-level views of Uspenski. Birds-eye view of Allas Sea Pool. I saw the hot tub down below and finally found the sauna cabin four or five in front of me. I think I’ve had enough sauna but if I was here with a few more people and it was worth the money, I’d definitely go for the sauna/hot tub/SkyWheel package.

By now I was hungry and tired. I wanted some food and I wanted to swap my shorts for trousers so I could go over to Suomenlinna for the evening again. I took the tram up to Stockmann and did a little shopping – ok, I did a little wandering around feeing that this place is too big and too expensive and is full of things I don’t particularly want to buy anyway, but eventually I found the big gourmet supermarket hiding on the minus second floor and stocked up on bread, drink and korvapuustia and came home.

I knew what would happen. I ate my bread, I charged my phone, I changed into my trousers and then I lay down on the bed to wait for the bread to settle down and here I still am. I am never getting up at 2am for a flight again. It just isn’t worth it.

What are tomorrow’s plans? Well, I still have plenty on my to-do list. Uspenski and the Church in the Rock are the main things to cross off. I might go over to Seurasaari but I’ve been there before and with limited time left, I might find another island, or go to that beach, or find another sauna. Can I be bothered with another sauna? Carrying wet swimming things around just to sit in a small room that’s too hot? I know and appreciate that it’s a Finnish tradition but I really prefer the Icelandic tradition of sitting in warm water. That’s virtually unknown here. I wish the nice pool up the road was open because that would be the perfect last-evening thing to do. Maybe I’ll go back to Suomenlinna tomorrow night.

Finland: 28th May

I was quite chuffed last night that I went to bed early thanks to the time difference. It didn’t occur to me until this morning that it worked the other way round in the mornings – when I woke up at just gone 9, that’s 7 in time I’m used to. Going back to sleep wasn’t an option: I had a booking at Loyly at 11:15 and I had to have breafast, get ready and figure out how to get there. I didn’t have much in for breakfast. I had a cup of apple juice while I was getting dressed and I thought I’d walk to the supermarket and get some more ciabatta. It’s a bit of a pain but it’s like living on a campsite, where you walk to the shop and get your fresh bread in the morning. I made it all the way downstairs before I realised it’s Sunday at which point my phone informed me that the K-Market wasn’t open until 10am today. No fresh bread for breakfast. I made do with TUC biscuits and a couple of pieces of chocolate. It’s not breakfast but tomorrow I can fetch my fresh bread for breakfast from the Lidl I’ve discovered literally two streets down the road. If you use the self-service, you have to scan your receipt to open the gate to leave, which is a novelty.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. After my imperfect breakfast, I gathered what I needed, put suncream on my face and walked three streets down the road to the 6 tram which would take me within a four-minute walk of Loyly. Four minutes for a snail, perhaps. I had a better idea after Allas about the Finnish feelings about time so I knew that at 10.45, I’d better entertain myself enjoying the view and the sun on the shore instead of trying to get into the building just yet. Blue sky, sunshine and warmth is such a novelty here for me! From my chosen rock, I could see the sauna side of Loyly’s deck and the famed Baltic swimming spot. It might have been warm and sunny but it was breezy and I suspected there wouldn’t be many swimmers today, not with the sea as rough as that.

Most of the building is actually a restaurant and cafe. The sauna occupies only about a third of it. As yesterday, there are maybe thirty lockers and just enough space for half a dozen people to change at once. On the other side are the showers and the then beyond that is the sauna area. Both saunas – both public saunas, anyway – are massive six-foot metal boxes. You lever the lid off with a foam-insulated handle two feet long and then use a massive ladle to tip water in and again, you feel the temperature shoot up the second the water hits the stones inside.

The second sauna is visible inside, in that you can see the corner squared off where it must be but the door is actually outside. This is the smoke sauna. It didn’t feel any different except that it’s dark – the main sauna has a glass wall and a big glass door but the only glass in this is a single window upstairs on one side. Your eyes so adjust but you can see every single newcomer struggle to figure out where there are seats. The other clue that this is the smoke sauna is that you can occasionally see people with patches of soot on them.

In between saunas, you can use the showers or you can sit in the lounge or you can do as most people do, sit outside on the deck. I did that for a while – sunbathing on the edge of the Baltic! – but I was acutely aware that it was sunny and I was lying in the sun and I’d only put suncream on my face. It occurs to me now that I took it with me, so I could have gone back to the lockers and put some on but at the time I was just vaguely aware that I didn’t want to get burnt by deliberately lying out in the sun.

You get two hours, which is plenty for me. When I was dried and dressed, I went to the restaurant. While I was figuring out how to get into the sauna, I’d spied a huge plate of korvapuustia, Finnish cinnamon rolls . Actually, I spied them in the supermarket yesterday but really wasn’t in the mood for trying something new. Now I was. I took my korvapuusti and my Coke and went out onto the deck, only to decide it was too bright to sit in the sun and find a seat in the shade where I could actually see what I was eating. The korvapuusti was tasty. Very sweet, not overly cinnamonny, a very good idea. Just twice the size I could manage. For future reference, I’ll be carrying around one of the little paper bags I brought my bread rolls in just in case I need to transport half a korvapuusti home again. This time I had to put it in my hat.

I’d spotted the Lidl on my way to the tram this morning so I stopped for fresh rolls for lunch and I’ve been writing this so far while eating those. Then I had a little rest – I got up at 2am yesterday! – which became a longer rest and it was getting on for 5 by the time I packed up my stuff and headed out again. I thought I’d go to Suomenlinna. I watched the ferries going backwards and forwards from the pool yesterday so I knew there was plenty of time. Bonus: the ferries are zone A in Helsinki public transport and therefore are free with my 5-day ticket.

Suomenlinna, which is the Castle of Finland, is a former fortress guarding the bay from invading Swedes/Russians, depending on the year. These days it still seems to be home to a naval training place but a lot of it is mixed open air museum and old buildings turned into cafes. If you’re there betwen about 10am and 5pm, there’s somewhere for a drink and a snack approximately every five minutes across the entire chain of islands. Afterwards, next to nothing, although there’s a kiosk on Susisaari that was still open as I was walking back. After 5pm, it’s quieter than during the day – you’ll still have someone walk in on you every time you think you’ve found a spot to take a selfie undetected but it’s not busy. It’s a nice place to amble, especially the last island, whose name I’ve forgotten. I know it’s a lot of military buildings with turf roofs and cannons pointed out to sea but it looks like Hobbiton and there are ponds and geese in the middle. Unfortunately, Helsinki had a wind warning at the time so it was chilly (well done me for bringing that packable jacket!) and there were threatening-looking black clouds. I nearly turned back and ran for home at the sight of those but when I stopped to look, they seemed to be heading away from Suomenlinna and towards Helsinki so I stayed.

An hour and a half after I boarded the boat back, the sky is so clear and blue that I’m half-tempted to go out again. It’s quarter to nine and I want to go to bed early tonight. I made plans for various places to get fresh bread on the way home but there’s a mini supermarket by the quay on Suomenlinna. I got in, got bread and juice (raspberry, pear, strawberry & lemon) and made it back to the quay before the incoming boat had docked, so I’m sitting at my desk with my orange juice and a plate that I’ll wash up tomorrow. I stayed out longest on the boat. I was still there when we docked and everyone else had retreated inside. It was chilly and my hands were cold from holding the camera out but I can survive a cold breeze for 15 minutes. It was a lot warmer back on the mainland. I walked up to Senate Square and took the 7 tram all the way back to the top of the hll again. So that’s three things crossed off my to-do list plus one I didn’t now existed. Zoo Island tomorrow and I’m hopefully going to squeeze in at least the two cathedrals afterwards and maybe finish the day on the big wheel.

Finland: 27th May

2am is a bad time for an alarm to go off, even to go to Finland. I made it to Heathrow with no problems: well, I made it to the edge of the airport with no problems. A mis-reading of the satnav led me to the gates of the staff car park with no easy way to escape. It’s effectively a slipway off the road that runs around the airport so you can’t just turn round and go back to the traffic lights you shouldn’t have turned right at. Obviously I couldn’t go in and straight to the exit because I’m not staff so there were a few panicked minutes of “What do I do???” before I spied the gap in the bollards between the entrance lane and the exit lane and managed to reverse to it without hitting the handful of incoming cars.

Next problem: got through security just before 5am to find my gate wasn’t announced until 6.30. Excellent. That gives me a leisurely hour and a half for breakfast! But at that time in the morning, there was nothing open except Pret, and they don’t do toast. The pink place with the “Instagrammable Lattes” menu opened but they only had pretty toast, not proper toast. Spuntino’s does proper toast. The internet eventually told me it opens at 5.30 but it didn’t actually open its doors until 5.45 and then I had a second lot of toast and I was still desperately trying to catch my waiter for the bill at 6.27 so I was rushing after all.

I snoozed on the plane until Denmark. Followed the west coast up to Skagen, across to Sweden, all across the south of Sweden, across the Gulf of Bothnia, across lots of tiny scattered islands that actually weren’t the coast of Finland and then we were in Finnish airspace and making our descent. I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed a desceent quite as much as I noticed that one. It felt like a long, controlled dive. Which it is, but usually it’s fairly gradual and you don’t feel it.

Vantaa is a fairly small airport, at least in comparison to a lot of capital cities. There were 21 passport desks and only four open – two for people with real passports and two for the rest of us so that was a bit of a queue (and then she stamped my passport in the back instead of the front!). Lots of food places, cafes, restaurants, supermarkets etc in arrivals. I got some crisps and chocolate for the journey, since breakfast was fairly early and I’d missed lunch. I found the station, which is down at least four floors in an open-fronted lift that just plummets into the abyss (I did it twice, once because I needed to and once because I wanted to film it) and then went down to the platform. I’d planned to get a five day AB ticket but Vantaa is in zone C and it worked out cheaper to get a five day ABC ticket than my planned ticket plus a separate ticket from and then back to the airport. It’s a nice easy train, much easier than figuring out (or checking in advance…) which bus to get.

I sat in the sun outside the central station to eat my little lunch and then, since my room code wasn’t going to be delivered for another two hours, I left my luggage in a locker and walked down to the harbour. There was Allas Sea Pool, sparkling in the sun. I’d considered bringing my swimming things and spending the afternoon in the pool but in the end, it seemed easier not to pull my suitcase apart on the floor of the luggage room at the station and I hadn’t bothered. I did get a ticket for the Flying Cinema, though, since it’s right there. It’s a bit like FlyOver Iceland – a drone film of spectacular scenery and they swing you around in a big chair and spray you with water to make you feel like you’re up close to waterfalls. It’s not quite as good as FlyOver, though. For one thing, just as you’re starting to feel like you’re zooming across a landscape, it abruptly changes. The movement is sometimes jerky and it really felt like it was struggling up one mountain. And FlyOver lifts you up so your feet are off the ground and you’re sitting above a huge concave screen that fills your entire vision, whereas Flying Cinema leaves your feet on the floor, the screen is the usual big rectangle and you have to wear 3D glasses to feel like you’re in it, which is awkward for those of us with glasses. But it was a good way to fill 15 minutes and I do recommend it.

I checked my phone when I came out and I had my message from the hotel. Room code! So I walked back to the station, retrieved my luggage and walked up to the accommodation, not helped by my phone refusing to use the mobile data. The map that I followed halfway there abruptly decided it wasn’t going to work so that was good. I knew by that point that I had to walk up the top of the hill, turn down that road that I can see from here and it’s a street or two down on the right and I soon came across the street sign so I knew I was in the right place.

Once I was in and could be bothered, I went out for some real food. The tiny supermarket across the road didn’t have anything except too many people so I put the chocolate and the basket back and went to the big one up the road, which is indeed big and laid out bewilderingly. I got everything I needed eventually. Finland is big on “tummaa leipa” which is dark rye bread and anything else is hard to find but there are ciabatta rolls which go nicely with the butter I found. You have to weigh them and print the label for them so thank you to the people I witnessed doing that.

When I’d eaten, I decided to go to Allas for the evening. It was still sunny and warm. I got down there, queued in the shop to be told (at 7pm) that they were full and only had slots for 7.45. Pool closes as 9, which means they lock the door. You have to be out by 8.40, so I’d only get an hour instead of the three hours you usually get. Fine. I went back to the rooftop bar to look at it while I waited. This is full? I have had baths that are more crowded! No one in the sea pool, two people in the kids’ pool and maybe eight people in the geothermal pool. No one sunning themselves on the decking anymore. Unless the saunas were packed like sardines, Allas has a very odd idea of “full”.

I understood a little better when I finally got in. They’re very short on changing space and lockers. That’s definitely something they need to improve because if a dozen, maybe a couple of dozen, people on a sunny Saturday afternoon constitutes “‘so full we’ve closed our ticket office”, that’s a problem. This is a glorious geothermal pool right in the heart of the capital of the country that invented sauna. This place should be heaving! The Blue Lagoon would laugh in their faces.

They could learn a lot from the Blue Lagoon. I didn’t even try the cold sea pool. The kids’ pool was lukewarm, which is cold when you’re on the edge of the Baltic in a swimming costume. The geothermal pool was better but I’d expect heat, not warmth. It was warm enough to drift back and forth as the sun went down but definitely not the “‘geothermal heated pool” I’d expected. The sauna was quite pleasant and definitely warmed me up quickly, after scurrying the entire length of the decking back to it.

I didn’t stay for the full hour. It was about 8.35 by the time I decided the sauna was getting too hot. I got changed, I walked back to Senate Square and took the tram back to the top of the hill above the little tree-filled square opposite my hotel and when I’d hung everything up and eaten some chocolate, I went to bed. It was only about 10.30 when I turned off the light but that’s 8.30 at home and that’s a good thing after getting up at 2am.