Helsinki

Finland… what do I think about Finland? I think it was COLD. And that frightened me because it was March. And all the Finns I met kept talking about how lovely the weather was. Those of you who know me well understand that I do not do well with cold – especially with windy cold. As I stood outside in the morning, awaiting a taxi, all I could think of was how horrible it must be in December when it is really wintertime.

After I got past the bone-chilling freeze and warmed up, I found myself surprised by Helsinki. It is much more industrial-looking and city-like than I had expected. I suppose that this is largely due to the fact that my main points of reference are all European countries with long histories of being governed my monarchies and so I expected to see soaring palaces and opera houses and government buildings. Instead, I saw this -

 

View from the Hotel Torni where we had cocktails, a building famous for having been used by the Allied (Soviet) Control Commission in Helsinki after World War II. Torni is one of the tallest buildings in the Helsinki cityscape.

To be fair the Helsinki Cathedral, and the buildings near it are quite grand – but not in the typical European fashion. I learned that this is largely due to the history of the city (something about which I am horribly ignorant) -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki. . I learned that Finland was owned for quite some time by Sweden (who didn’t do much for the country to be fair) and then in the early 19th century, was taken over by Russia. I think Finland gained independence in the early 20th century but then spent much of the following decades being ravaged by the two world wars. Thus the architecture is not overly surprising. That being said, I have to confess I found the city rather bleak. For some reason, I kept thinking “Eastern European” (probably from films and such) – which must be due to the Russian influence, because Finland is pretty far north and is considered part of Scandinavia.

The Finnish language is craaaazy. As I’m fascinated by linguistics, I did some googling and was a bit pleased to discover that the reason why Finnish didn’t remind me of any other language is because it is in a language family with such super-popular languages like Hungarian, Khanty, Mansi, Permic, Mari, Mordvinic, Sami, Estonian, Karelian, Veps and Votic. I am usually really good at picking apart a new language and finding ways to understand how it works. While in Vienna, I even came close to understanding the structure and phrasing of German. But Finnish threw me for a loop. “Hello, how are you?” becomes “Hei. Miten menee?”. “Thank you. It was a pleasure to meet you” becomes “Kiitos. Oli ilo tavata.” Now YOU tell me if that makes any damn sense at all! Even Japanese made more sense to me, and that is a language that doesn’t even use letters! Needless to say, the language made for great fun when reading signs. There were many double vowels (lots of “aa” and “ii”) and words that are three or four letters in English ended up being 12 or 15 letters long in Finnish.

But don’t just take my word for it… this picture (left) says “Academic bookstore” (or so I was told). Even if it says more, check out how crazy it all looks together!
 

And the food… oh, dear the food. I only had two experiences with “real” Finnish cuisine, and both scared me. One was at a rest stop – basically a Finnish truck stop where we stopped for coffee. There was a buffet and it was filled with… what I can only describe as trays of different coloured mush. Oh, and there were sandwiches which looked to be filled with mystery meat. But, as everything was in Finnish, I couldn’t even figure out what was on offer. The other occasion was when we ate lunch in the hospital cafeteria in Turku. Lunch consisted of an iceberg lettuce salad plus some bizarre interpretation of an enchilada (everything was day-glo orange… and I could just barely identify peas and chicken). Yuck, yuck, yuck. The hotel food we had, on the other hand, was perfectly acceptable and very Scandinavian. Lots of fish, vegetables and cheese. And the dinner at the Salutgorat restaurant (photo, right) was amazing. Of course, this restaurant was in the poshest area of Helsinki…

 

The second day of my trip was spent in Turku, which I learned used to be the capital when Sweden owned the country. We drove from Helsinki and encountered the craziest weather. It went from being sunny (but cold) to a sudden blizzard to rain to sun again – all in the span of about 90 minutes. This is what the view between Helsinki and Turku looked like -

 

Pretty exciting, huh?

The other thing I found interesting was the amazing cultural differences. Most people in Finland are either Swedish or Finnish and I don’t think I saw very many people of colour at all. I was shocked to overhear that a co-worker had been horrified to learn that her former boss was from Africa, as she “didn’t know if she could work for a black” (I’m not sure if that was because of a dislike of black people, or just not understanding the culture) – but she was pleased to find out he was actually from South Africa, and thus was white. The other comment that caught me off guard was when the chief of surgery at one of the hospitals was talking about her newborn baby, and how everyone had bought her pink gifts. She said, “I am sure happy I ended up with a girl, because if I had a boy I didn’t want him to be a homo!” This was said in casual conversation and elicited much giggling and laughter. I personally just sat there, along with my boss, our mouths agape. I still can’t work out if maybe it was just a translation issue (her English was very stilted) – but, still. Someone should remind her that English speakers don’t run around saying “homo”. Not what I had expected from Finland, that’s for sure!

However, I have to say that despite the cold, the unintelligible language, and the mystery meat, I did enjoy Finland. I get to return end of June, and I hear that this is the best time because it is actually warm and sunny. I am looking forward to walking the Esplanade and visiting the market by the sea. Perhaps I will even begin to understand a few words beyond “Eh” (no) and “Yo” (yes)!!

Kunnes seuraavan kerran ...