Helsinki is more or less what I pictured a Nordic capital to be. I’ve seen plenty of pictures of Reykjavik, Iceland and either it took a page out of the Finnish book or the other way around. The weather cleared up the next day and so we were off to walk around the city and to see what architectural or cultural wonders there were to see.
Pretty people have a way of deflecting attention away from humbler looking folk- unfair but true- so that accurate estimations of the ratio of pretty-to-ugly people are impossible to make. There were so many pretty people in Finland, all with bright blonde hair, fair complexions, and blue eyes; it was practically everyone! I remember thinking the same thing about Moscow until I decided to empirically determine the prettiness level by counting the interval between pretty people on the metro escalator. It was about 10% pretty, 1 and 10 people, which I reckon is about average. Now, I wonder if I’d count on someone’s pretty list ☹
Anyway, we were in a hotel room that looked over a school playground so the sounds and screams of recess came in through the window. I observed, once again, that kids are the same everywhere even if they speak Finnish.
Helsinki is full of nice parks and green space but lacks adequate litter legislation and/or trashcans because there was as much garbage on the ground as there was grass. It was a holiday weekend though, so I’ll give the Finns the benefit of the doubt. The tulips and flowering weeds had hatched in a multicolored array of flare. Late May is idyllic in these far northern climes.
There is a nice waterfront with old wooden dinghies docked. Weathered looking women sell fresh herring from the deck. We went inside an old market that is now set up for tourists. They sold lots of fish.
Finnish food is like other Nordic cuisine, which is to say that it is heavy on salted fish. But, it also takes a lot from the Russian culinary tradition with heaps of bland earthy vegetables, tasteless dairy products and fatty meats. Reindeer steak was perhaps the only uniquely Finnish dish I encountered.
One night we ate at a Finnish restaurant where dad ordered the “Russian appetizer.” Salted pork fat (сало, really Ukrainian I think), pickles, green onion, and an ice-cold shot of vodka. I had a similar plate at my friend Alisa’s flat in Moscow. It was funny to see my dad assimilating.
Helsinki is a quiet town and not much goes on there. It has an artsy streak, typical of most cities of a certain size. Frankly though, I wouldn’t make it a destination. To be fair, I didn’t get out too much because the family was jet-lagged and no one really wanted to do a whole lot. Still though, I didn’t get the sense that it would be the kind of place where I could adventure endlessly, spend many drunken nights, or ride bikes for hours. Maybe I just didn’t have the best time; go see for yourself.
The best local beer: Karhu III
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