Quiz time! Can you guess what the three people in the title of this post have in common? I'll give you the answer in the next post...
So I decided yesterday morning to make it my goal to find someone in Finland who doesn’t speak English. So far I’m failing.
Yesterday morning I decided that after my relaxed breakfast and peaceful moments of writing, I would go for another self guided walking tour, one that I found in my guidebook, just like the one I did in Moscow, which I really liked. I started back in the square by the harbor where I had taken the ferry to Sveaborg. Most of Helsinki’s main attractions are located in or near this area. The route took me about 3.5 kilometers through the city, passing a dozen or so sites of interest. Some of the highlights included some excellently designed buildings by Finland’s famed architect, Alvar Aalto. He designed some of the city’s main art galleries and one of their main concert halls. I passed by some interesting statues, government buildings, the city’s university. Then I took a detour to the Temppeliaukion Kirkko, a modern Lutheran church that had been dug into the middle of a hill. It is known locally as the rock church. It was a little difficult to find the entrance actually because it felt like a hidden, underground military bunker. But eventually I did find the secret doorway and inside was this beautiful little church with walls that were made of just bare rock. There was a skylight that burst through the rock overhead. The pews had been painted a glowing turquoise color and there was a small balcony above the entrance for a large pipe organ. It was a pretty cool place.
Then the tour took me to the Finland’s national stadium, the Olympic Stadium that they built when they hosted the 1952 Olympics. The stadium (pretty small by today’s standards) has a single tower that rises above the side of one of the stadium’s entrances. For 5 euros, you could take the elevator up to the top, something like 30 stories in the air, and take a look out at the city. So I walked into the entrance and was greeted by someone who looked like Ghimli, the dwarf from “The Lord of the Rings” movies, who gave me a big smile and a cheery, “Hey!” (a typical Finnish greeting). I asked for a ticket and in perfect English (obviously) he told me how to use the elevator. I was the only one around at the moment. The tower really did offer excellent views of the city, of the harbor and the Bay of Finland to the south and the west, to the forests in the north, and of Russia to the East. It was great. I could also make out the stadium pretty well, being directly above it (which is how I know how small it was). But it was pretty chilly up there so I didn’t hang around too long. I took the elevator back down, looked at a small exhibit they had on memorabilia from the 1952 games, and thanked the large, Viking-like Finn for the visit. I finished the tour, after a leisurely five hours of walking, at the city’s western harbor coastline and then walked back towards the city center.
I went back to the hostel in the early evening to relax a bit and use the internet. I basically wanted to do some major planning for the next week or so. Here’s the gist of the plan I concocted. I will check out of my hostel early in the morning tomorrow, hop the early ferry to Tallinn in Estonia for a day trip to the old, Gothic city, take the ferry back in the early evening, pick up my bags from the hostel, and then hop the overnight train north to a place called Rovaniemi, or more commonly known as the North Pole. Okay not really the North Pole but this small northern city in Finland’s Lapland region is on the Arctic Circle, is famous for being the birthplace of Santa Claus (I’m not sure what the story is behind this one, yet), is home to one of my favorite snowboarders, Antti Autti, and is apparently an excellent place to see the northern lights. It has always been a dream of mine to see the northern lights and apparently this time of year is when it occurs and this weekend in particular is supposed to have a lot of “solar activity” which somehow translates to excellent chances to view the lights, as long as it’s not cloudy. Chances are still pretty hit or miss so the fact that I only have one or maybe two nights means my odds aren’t high. I’d stay longer but there really are no hostels and the cheapest accommodations aren’t cheap. But I’ll give it a shot anyway.
I also decided to buy a Eurail pass at the train station. There are many types of passes but the one that I bought gives me 15 travel days, on pretty much any train in Europe, first class (I could only choose first class), within a two month period. Most trains I don’t even have to reserve, I just show up and flash my pass. I get 15 trips, whether they’re Helsinki to Rovaniemi or Helsinki to Barcelona, and I can use them whenever I want within those two months, for 900 euros. I thought that was a pretty reasonable deal. I also get discounts, some of them big discounts, on things like ferry tickets and other means of transport. I’m getting 50 percent off my Helsinki to Tallinn and Helsinki to Stockholm ferries. So I have the pass and booked the train to Rovaniemi for my first trip. After a couple of days up in the north pole I’ll take the train back down to Helsinki (or maybe detour to one other Finnish city) and then hop the overnight ferry to Stockholm in Sweden. That’s as far as my planning got me, but I think that will keep me occupied for a little while.
After my evening of planning, I met back up with Bruno, my Brazilian roommate, and we decided to go out to a restaurant for some dinner and then a few drinks at one or two places in the city’s hip bar scene. We first wen to a restaurant/bar near the hostel called Cafe 9, a small, clean, chic place packed with well dressed Finns relaxing after work. We went up the bar and asked the pretty Finnish girl for a menu and a beer. We got a dark, local beer, sort of sweet tasting (a hint of honey?) and we each ordered a reindeer sandwich for dinner. Reindeer is the country’s national dish. The Sami people (a traditional minority group who live in Lapland) herd reindeer professionally up in Lapland and they use the meat like Americans use beef from cattle. They use reindeer for sandwiches, for steaks, they boil it in stew. It tasted pretty good. But I think the other flavors and sauces that were included in my sandwich masked the true flavor of the meat. I’m going to try and find a place to get a reindeer steak in Rovaniemi (although it might feel weird chowing down on reindeer meat, so close to Santa’s village and all). Next to us was a group of four older Finns, two men, two women, who were talking in Finnish so I didn’t know what about. But then three of the group left and the remaining old woman turned to us and asked us where we were from, in English. Then she told us she was a book critic for a newspaper in Finland and just finished reviewing a Finnish book about a teenager who is having gender identity problems, or something along those lines. She was a little difficult to understand (and I think she had had a fair amount of wine) but she told us the other three with her were journalists and they were having a professional meeting of some sort. Then she talked for a long time while Bruno and I politely nodded to something we could not understand. But the longer she talked about whatever it was, the more passionate and frustrated she became. I could pick up words like “democracy” and “socialism” but that’s all I got. I don’t know how we got to that topic, if that’s the topic we got to, but when she was done ranting she downed her last glass of wine, stood up from her chair, and said, “See you,” putting on her coat, and walking out the door. We could see her through the window as she hopped on a bike and cycled away through the snow. I looked over at Bruno and said, “Let’s move to the next place.” Bruno agreed.
After some searching we found a bar with a Spanish theme, but they still served some reasonably priced local beers (although still expensive by world standards) and we stayed there for the rest of the night. Young, professional Finns came in and filled the place. It had a pretty cool vibe. I talked with Bruno at length about Brazil. He’s from Campo Grande, a city in the country’s far west province, in the heart of South America, near the border of Bolivia. He’s the first Brazilian I’ve met who wasn’t from either Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo. But he sold me on all the cool things there are about the country and I told him how much I want to travel there next year for the World Cup, which Rio is hosting. I hope that trip works out...
We left after a few hours and crashed at the hostel. Bruno had an early flight to catch to Oslo and I slept in until late in the morning. The first thing I did today after making breakfast was to head to the train station to buy my Eurail pass which I did with ease. The station has a system where you have to take a number, like at an American deli, and wait your turn patiently in a cozy sitting area while the numbers flash above the tellers on a board. I went from China where hundreds of people try to cut each other to the front of the line and cram into the front of the queue, crushing each other in the process, to Russia where people queue up behind a teller and each person takes an hour for some reason to process, to now Finland where you have to take a ticket and wait patiently to be helped, people efficiently shuffling in and out. Pretty interesting, these countries border each other. Anyway, I bought my pass and reserved a seat on the train to Rovaniemi, and then walked to a museum I had wanted to check out when I passed it the day before, noticing it had been closed. It is a free city museum that has one, changing exhibit. The current exhibit was entitled “Made in Helsinki” and talked about the history of the different industries that were synonymous with the city. Stuff like carpentry, textiles, piano making, clothes makers, silversmiths, etc. All the different guilds from the last few centuries. And they had a range of items on display. It was a pretty cool museum and even better because it was small (and free). You could walk through the exhibit in about an hour. I don’t really like museums that take days to see when you don’t have days to see them. This museum did a pretty good job of getting to the point.
Then I walked back to the city center and ordered a salmon sandwich and lingonberry juice from a cafe, and made my way to the museum of Finnish design. I wanted to stop in here because Helsinki is so well known for design and has been dubbed in the past as the design capital of the world. But I don’t know anything about design so I wanted to go to the museum and check it out. This museum was also relatively small, which I could appreciate, and did a very thorough job of explaining the evolution of design within the city’s history. Although, to be honest, I think the text was written for designers, it was a bit technical. I enjoyed my time there, but I don’t feel a lot smarter about design. They did have some really excellent pieces on display of furniture and dishes and other household items from the last century. The museum was mostly filled with design students, probably on a class trip, with their sketchpads, sitting cross legged sketching chairs and sofas on display.
I had had my fair fill of museums, walked around a pretty neighborhood with old, Scandinavian apartment buildings and lots of dog walkers, and then hopped the metro to a few stations to the north to go check out the Kotiharjun Sauna, one of the few remaining public saunas in the city. Apparently, Finland is famous for its saunas. The city used to have these public saunas all over the place but recently many have been shut down as Finns have opted to use shared saunas within their apartment complex or private ones in their homes. But this sauna was still open and is sort of a historic place to visit. I never got the banya experience in Russia so I figured I should try out the Finnish saunas while I still had a chance.
I ducked in to the entrance, a small room with a small booth where the attendant sat (the entrance looked a bit like a hostel entrance actually), I asked him what to do since I’d never been to one before, and he said I just had to pay 15 euros and walk through that door, pointing to the door on my right. I said, “Okay”, and then walked through the door. It immediately opened up to a sort of antiquated locker room with lockers made of wood and with numbers written in a font typical of the 50’s or 60’s (I think). The room was filled with old Finnish men sitting in towels in groups of three or four, sipping beers and chatting with one another in Finnish. I walked to the far side of the room, chose a locker, and undressed. I wrapped myself with a towel and walked through the next door that opened up to a shower room. Here, you could take a compulsory shower, and then leave your towel behind before heading through the last door, the sauna. Apparently Finns have a strict nudity rule in their sacred saunas. By that I mean you have to be completely nude. You can’t even bring in your towel. So I showered, and then walked in to the sauna. The sauna room was small, but had a series of escalating steps that led steeply to a high row of wooden benches in the top portion of the space. You could sit anywhere along this bench at the top which bordered three sides of the room. The near corner had the furnace. The sauna was one of the old, non-electric types, heated by a wooden furnace. The furnace was huge and black, probably made of iron, and had a large door where you could toss logs of wood inside. They stored the logs underneath one of the walls of the room that had a slight overhang. There was a pipe that led inside the furnace and a small handle that acted as a lever that could allow water to pass in and out. Occasionally, men would use the lever briefly to allow water to spray into the furnace, which created the steam that heated the room, intensely. The space was dark and looked like, to me anyway, one of those old Roman bath houses you might have seen in the movies. And it was filled with large, old, nude Finns. The way it works is you shower, then sit in the sauna until you can’t stand it any longer, then go back and rinse off under freezing cold water from the shower room (which is apparently good for your circulation), and then take a break in the locker room and drink beer and chat. And then repeat, over and over again. I repeated this cycle three times before I couldn’t do it any longer. It was relaxing but every once in a while a particularly old Finn would enter the room and really lay down on the water lever before sitting down which made me feel like my skin would catch fire. Every time I took a breath, fire would enter and consume my body. There was no escaping it. I toughed it out for about 10 minutes each time. It was pretty intense but it was also really cool. Afterwards, I walked out of the building feeling really refreshed and clean, passing a skinny guy in nothing but a towel sitting on the frozen bench outside the door, his skin either red from the sauna or red from the minus 10 degree air - awesome.
I’m back at the hostel now, eating some dinner and writing this post. I just ducked in to my hostel room and found my two new roommates, two Japanese guys now sleeping in the upper bunks, and both are wearing those hygienic face masks. I don’t know what to make of that. Either they’re both super sick (which is why Japanese people wear masks in Japan) or they are afraid of hostel germs, either way it’s probably a bad sign for me!
Tomorrow I’ll wake up early and try to catch the day ferry to Tallinn. Next stop: Estonia!
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| A local tram in the city center |
Yesterday morning I decided that after my relaxed breakfast and peaceful moments of writing, I would go for another self guided walking tour, one that I found in my guidebook, just like the one I did in Moscow, which I really liked. I started back in the square by the harbor where I had taken the ferry to Sveaborg. Most of Helsinki’s main attractions are located in or near this area. The route took me about 3.5 kilometers through the city, passing a dozen or so sites of interest. Some of the highlights included some excellently designed buildings by Finland’s famed architect, Alvar Aalto. He designed some of the city’s main art galleries and one of their main concert halls. I passed by some interesting statues, government buildings, the city’s university. Then I took a detour to the Temppeliaukion Kirkko, a modern Lutheran church that had been dug into the middle of a hill. It is known locally as the rock church. It was a little difficult to find the entrance actually because it felt like a hidden, underground military bunker. But eventually I did find the secret doorway and inside was this beautiful little church with walls that were made of just bare rock. There was a skylight that burst through the rock overhead. The pews had been painted a glowing turquoise color and there was a small balcony above the entrance for a large pipe organ. It was a pretty cool place.
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| A concert hall designed by Alvar Aalto, the famous Finnish designer |
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| A look inside the "rock church" |
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| The front of the House of Parliament in Helsinki |
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| The Olympic Stadium built for the 1952 games |
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| The stadium in 1952 |
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| A view of Helsinki and its west harbor from the top of tower |
I also decided to buy a Eurail pass at the train station. There are many types of passes but the one that I bought gives me 15 travel days, on pretty much any train in Europe, first class (I could only choose first class), within a two month period. Most trains I don’t even have to reserve, I just show up and flash my pass. I get 15 trips, whether they’re Helsinki to Rovaniemi or Helsinki to Barcelona, and I can use them whenever I want within those two months, for 900 euros. I thought that was a pretty reasonable deal. I also get discounts, some of them big discounts, on things like ferry tickets and other means of transport. I’m getting 50 percent off my Helsinki to Tallinn and Helsinki to Stockholm ferries. So I have the pass and booked the train to Rovaniemi for my first trip. After a couple of days up in the north pole I’ll take the train back down to Helsinki (or maybe detour to one other Finnish city) and then hop the overnight ferry to Stockholm in Sweden. That’s as far as my planning got me, but I think that will keep me occupied for a little while.
After my evening of planning, I met back up with Bruno, my Brazilian roommate, and we decided to go out to a restaurant for some dinner and then a few drinks at one or two places in the city’s hip bar scene. We first wen to a restaurant/bar near the hostel called Cafe 9, a small, clean, chic place packed with well dressed Finns relaxing after work. We went up the bar and asked the pretty Finnish girl for a menu and a beer. We got a dark, local beer, sort of sweet tasting (a hint of honey?) and we each ordered a reindeer sandwich for dinner. Reindeer is the country’s national dish. The Sami people (a traditional minority group who live in Lapland) herd reindeer professionally up in Lapland and they use the meat like Americans use beef from cattle. They use reindeer for sandwiches, for steaks, they boil it in stew. It tasted pretty good. But I think the other flavors and sauces that were included in my sandwich masked the true flavor of the meat. I’m going to try and find a place to get a reindeer steak in Rovaniemi (although it might feel weird chowing down on reindeer meat, so close to Santa’s village and all). Next to us was a group of four older Finns, two men, two women, who were talking in Finnish so I didn’t know what about. But then three of the group left and the remaining old woman turned to us and asked us where we were from, in English. Then she told us she was a book critic for a newspaper in Finland and just finished reviewing a Finnish book about a teenager who is having gender identity problems, or something along those lines. She was a little difficult to understand (and I think she had had a fair amount of wine) but she told us the other three with her were journalists and they were having a professional meeting of some sort. Then she talked for a long time while Bruno and I politely nodded to something we could not understand. But the longer she talked about whatever it was, the more passionate and frustrated she became. I could pick up words like “democracy” and “socialism” but that’s all I got. I don’t know how we got to that topic, if that’s the topic we got to, but when she was done ranting she downed her last glass of wine, stood up from her chair, and said, “See you,” putting on her coat, and walking out the door. We could see her through the window as she hopped on a bike and cycled away through the snow. I looked over at Bruno and said, “Let’s move to the next place.” Bruno agreed.
After some searching we found a bar with a Spanish theme, but they still served some reasonably priced local beers (although still expensive by world standards) and we stayed there for the rest of the night. Young, professional Finns came in and filled the place. It had a pretty cool vibe. I talked with Bruno at length about Brazil. He’s from Campo Grande, a city in the country’s far west province, in the heart of South America, near the border of Bolivia. He’s the first Brazilian I’ve met who wasn’t from either Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo. But he sold me on all the cool things there are about the country and I told him how much I want to travel there next year for the World Cup, which Rio is hosting. I hope that trip works out...
We left after a few hours and crashed at the hostel. Bruno had an early flight to catch to Oslo and I slept in until late in the morning. The first thing I did today after making breakfast was to head to the train station to buy my Eurail pass which I did with ease. The station has a system where you have to take a number, like at an American deli, and wait your turn patiently in a cozy sitting area while the numbers flash above the tellers on a board. I went from China where hundreds of people try to cut each other to the front of the line and cram into the front of the queue, crushing each other in the process, to Russia where people queue up behind a teller and each person takes an hour for some reason to process, to now Finland where you have to take a ticket and wait patiently to be helped, people efficiently shuffling in and out. Pretty interesting, these countries border each other. Anyway, I bought my pass and reserved a seat on the train to Rovaniemi, and then walked to a museum I had wanted to check out when I passed it the day before, noticing it had been closed. It is a free city museum that has one, changing exhibit. The current exhibit was entitled “Made in Helsinki” and talked about the history of the different industries that were synonymous with the city. Stuff like carpentry, textiles, piano making, clothes makers, silversmiths, etc. All the different guilds from the last few centuries. And they had a range of items on display. It was a pretty cool museum and even better because it was small (and free). You could walk through the exhibit in about an hour. I don’t really like museums that take days to see when you don’t have days to see them. This museum did a pretty good job of getting to the point.
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| A piano from the "Made in Helsinki" exhibit |
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| Local wares from the new silversmith shop in downtown Helsinki |
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| This symbol is everywhere in the city - I think they're proud of it |
I ducked in to the entrance, a small room with a small booth where the attendant sat (the entrance looked a bit like a hostel entrance actually), I asked him what to do since I’d never been to one before, and he said I just had to pay 15 euros and walk through that door, pointing to the door on my right. I said, “Okay”, and then walked through the door. It immediately opened up to a sort of antiquated locker room with lockers made of wood and with numbers written in a font typical of the 50’s or 60’s (I think). The room was filled with old Finnish men sitting in towels in groups of three or four, sipping beers and chatting with one another in Finnish. I walked to the far side of the room, chose a locker, and undressed. I wrapped myself with a towel and walked through the next door that opened up to a shower room. Here, you could take a compulsory shower, and then leave your towel behind before heading through the last door, the sauna. Apparently Finns have a strict nudity rule in their sacred saunas. By that I mean you have to be completely nude. You can’t even bring in your towel. So I showered, and then walked in to the sauna. The sauna room was small, but had a series of escalating steps that led steeply to a high row of wooden benches in the top portion of the space. You could sit anywhere along this bench at the top which bordered three sides of the room. The near corner had the furnace. The sauna was one of the old, non-electric types, heated by a wooden furnace. The furnace was huge and black, probably made of iron, and had a large door where you could toss logs of wood inside. They stored the logs underneath one of the walls of the room that had a slight overhang. There was a pipe that led inside the furnace and a small handle that acted as a lever that could allow water to pass in and out. Occasionally, men would use the lever briefly to allow water to spray into the furnace, which created the steam that heated the room, intensely. The space was dark and looked like, to me anyway, one of those old Roman bath houses you might have seen in the movies. And it was filled with large, old, nude Finns. The way it works is you shower, then sit in the sauna until you can’t stand it any longer, then go back and rinse off under freezing cold water from the shower room (which is apparently good for your circulation), and then take a break in the locker room and drink beer and chat. And then repeat, over and over again. I repeated this cycle three times before I couldn’t do it any longer. It was relaxing but every once in a while a particularly old Finn would enter the room and really lay down on the water lever before sitting down which made me feel like my skin would catch fire. Every time I took a breath, fire would enter and consume my body. There was no escaping it. I toughed it out for about 10 minutes each time. It was pretty intense but it was also really cool. Afterwards, I walked out of the building feeling really refreshed and clean, passing a skinny guy in nothing but a towel sitting on the frozen bench outside the door, his skin either red from the sauna or red from the minus 10 degree air - awesome.
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| The entrance to the public sauna |
Tomorrow I’ll wake up early and try to catch the day ferry to Tallinn. Next stop: Estonia!
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