Come have a sow-na
This is a lesson in how to forget a city. With Russia dominating the planning and preparation, the regionalism of the Baltic being the first stop, the only thought that had gone into Helsinki was that there is a ferry there from Tallinn and a train out to St Petersburg. So ignorant was I that it was a surprise to find that Finland uses the Euro.
The RoRo ferry over was pretty rough and not that fun, just like the Interislander a route which this boat will probably be used for in the near future, apart from the last bit as you come into the harbour and pass these cool little islands with cute wee houses on them.
One of these islands is apparently a big tourist destination but it is called Suomenlinna which sounds a lot like semolina which is a dessert I detested as a kid and we knew nothing about it so chances of a visit were not good. We were about the only ones not walking off with the maximum allowance of duty free, apparently people make this trip return just to buy booze as even with the price of the ferry it’s still cheaper than the local bottlie. No need for us though as the bounty of Russia was on the horizon.
Quite why finding accommodation the Suomi capital was so difficult we never did find out. Forcing us not only to spend the Saturday night in a camp ground the extensive lodgings search would come back to throw up some more unpleasantness on our last night there. With every single hostel booked out or closed for the winter we widened the search to apartments and hotels with no luck, emailed everyone we knew who had ever heard of Finland, and finally paddled the way of a bit of couch surfing all with no result. Sorting all this had taken most of an afternoon in Tallinn and also most of Arnika’s Skype account, there must be something truly awesome happening in Helsinki.
Initial impressions off the ferry are of a nice city, definitely more like Western Europe than the previous two, slightly reminiscent of Copenhagen but not quite. We buy some smoked salmon fillets right off a boat, some fresh bread and have a super tasty lunch right there on the steps to the water. The rest of this waterside market was either tourist crap or amazing furs, mmm so so soft and warm. Say what you will about guide books, but it is handy to have at least a map of a place and a couple of starting points for inspiration for things to do. Especially when none in your group knows a single thing about the place. Still we managed to nose our way around, get caught up in some political campaigning – they were offering free coffee – and find some interesting shops.
Most exciting though was when I remembered to look for some Tove Janssen for a friend and dragged the others into a second hand bookstore. No Tove sadly but this sort of place is interesting even when you can’t read the titles, so we meandered our way back through the shop then there was a brightly lit white room with nothing in it apart from a narrow door to one side. In a truly wonderous discovery this door led to caves full of strange chicken skeletons holding balloons, an empty concrete bunker like room filled with origami butterflies.
Maybe it was because this magical land has its own time but when we emerged the bookstore was dark and locked.
Dark and locked would probably also be an apt description of the town on a Saturday night. Showing no signs as to why everything was booked out we ended up walking around and around following people to nowhere for most of the night. Perhaps this is a little unfair to the place as we had found a nice little place to have some starter drinks and most people looked really good but they just didn’t seem to be going into anywhere interesting looking.
The next day we found out two things; that we were about four blocks from finding a great area of bars and, as the sign says “on Sundays we take things easy” which pretty much means everything is closed. The first discovery came when we managed to check into a hostel in the Erottajanpuisto locale the second when we walked around said hostel looking at all the great places we could have gone that were closed for the day apart from one nice place where I spent most of the afternoon.
On Sundays we take it easy – in case you can’t read the blackboard behind the generally confused, probably honeymooning, Asian couple.
Thinking the day was over I headed back to the hostel fully intending to make a start on learning my Cyrillic alphabet and get a good nights sleep in to prepare for 7am train the next morning. However now was the time for Hospitality Club to show its true colours and whatever else it wanted to as is its cultural want. Responding too late to our pleas for accommodation help we were picked up by an overly friendly guy, always a worrying start, and taken to his incredibly lush place for a sauna party. Dominating one wall of the upstairs living room was a photo of our host dressed up as a sailor and going by other pictures around the place his parents had a fondness for dressing the poor guy up for embarrassment.
This was my first experience of a hospitality club party and judging by the people it attracted really makes me wonder about using it again, to say that we were sitting there awkwardly was an understatement but at least in such a nice place it would be well catered right, wrong we were going to have to get through this without the aid or alcohol. The worst of them was unfortunately another kiwi guy who was a complete prick, typified by his boasting that overseas fidelity was unimportant because as a foreigner he could have his pick, all while sitting right next to his absolutely lovely, but a bit naive, girlfriend. Just when we were desperately trying to think of a polite way to make an exit things took a turn for the worse when the nights theme was brought up. Suddenly we were downstairs in a really small room with the exit blocked by three extremely unattractive but very naked guys trying to convince us to also get nude and join them in a smaller dark room. Thinking very quickly I “remembered” that our hostel had a curfew that we were in danger of missing and so with a quick tram ride we were back to safety.
Bring on Russia.
Tags: cafe, ferry, Finland, food, Helsinki, hospitality club, market
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