Easter: A four day long weekend. What a great time to visit my friends Kristie and Ville in Helsinki, Finland. I caught a flight on Thursday night which arrived at Helsinki airport at 1:30am Friday morning. Ville, being the gentleman that he is, was good enough to drive out to the airport to pick me up. Kristie, even more jumpy and excited than normal due to a couple of coffees just before leaving a 30th birthday, joined him. It was great to see the two of them. They’d come to Australia over Christmas and visited me in Collingwood and I’d promised them I’d return the favour. Ville drove us back to Krisite’s place and then we said our goodbyes as he was heading off to St Petersburg for Easter. I promised I’d come back to Finland in the summertime and spend some more time with him. This place had better be good.
Karhutalo: That’s the name of Kristie’s apartment block. It means bear-house and a lot of the locals know it. There are two small statues of bears at the front steps. Kristie shares her apartment (which is very rare in Finland) with two men who are rarely there and two other girls. I’m pretty sure they’re all Finnish but one or two may be Swedish. Most of them are artistic types and their apartment is decorated accordingly. They have a coffee table painted as a monopoly board featuring local streets and land marks. There’s also the Absolut toilet. The door is painted to resemble an Absolut vodka bottle and the inside is covered with absolute vodka advertisements. I love quirky stuff like that.
Good Friday: We wandered around and visited the sites of central Helsinki. The rock church, the Lutheran church, the other large church (sorry I forget which type it is – Russian Orthodox if I had to guess). We climbed the torni (tower) and stopped in for a quick bite at Kavhila Eslanade (café esplanade). I had a Finnish coffee (basically a strong percolated coffee) and Korvapuusti which is similar to a coffee scroll with sugar on top – very tasty. On Friday night we were invited to dinner at Karrolina’s house. She cooked roast lamb and made me carve it because I was the only Australian male there. Great food, poorly carved!
Pictionary: After a couple of bottles of wine and a glass of vodka we had a quick game of pictionary. Fortunately for me it was in English although there were a few words here and there that were very difficult for the Fins. “Pounce” apparently has no direct translation into Finnish. But they also don’t have a word for “please” which I thought was stranger. In the end the girls won against Lori, Antti and I by one square! Next time boys…next time.
Seurasaari: A small island museum with many traditional Finnish buildings and boats. On the way in we were attacked by a squirrel, which we chased around for 10 minutes trying to get a photo of. The results aren’t worth posting. A bit peckish from the chase Kristie made us stop and buy some makkara. For 2 euro I was handed an uncooked sausage in a piece of paper and pointed in the direction of some embers burning in a small brick barbecue. Kristie assured me the makkara was already cooked and just needed to be heated on the fire. We threw some more wood on, got some flame out of the reluctant embers, and cooked the sausage on the end of a stick. With plenty of dead horse and mustard it was quite nice.
Finnish Food: After Seurasaari and the makkara I was keen for more substantial Finnish food. We met Antti, Kristie’s boyfriend, at a traditional finish restaurant. I had Herring with mashed potato and beetroot. Antti had meatballs with mashed potato and beetroot. Kristie had salmon soup, which didn’t come with mashed potato and beetroot, about the only thing on the menu that didn’t.
Sauna: After 2 days of site seeing it was time to chill-out Finland style. We arrived at the Hermanators house with a slab of beer, a towel each and a change of clothes. I was told nude saunaring was the way it was done, and after a couple of beers I was content to give it a crack (terrible pun Blazza!). Kristie, being the only girl in the sauna, was permitted to wear bathers. It was flamin’ hot!! But I suppose that’s the point. The thermometer read 80 deg C and even got to 85 after Hermanator poured half a bucket of water on the hot coals. There’s unwritten rules that the person in charge of scooping water onto the hot coals must sit on the top bench, must sit up straight and must be the last to leave. Therefore when half the bucket went on we tried to outlast Hermanator. I lasted about a minute and a half, but Kristie made Hermanator sweat it out for about 5 minutes. Out of the sauna, it’s either a quick shower and into the pool or a quick dash outside in the 0 degree air. Very exhilarating!
Aussie Bar: Yes there’s an aussie bar in Helsinki. There’s actually 2. One’s called the Outback, is run by Americans and is about as Australian as apple pie. The other is the Aussie bar, as the posters on the wall say “run by descendants of criminals”. It’s a great little bar and so Australian it doesn’t even serve fosters! They do stock a good range of aussie beers including XXXX, Hahn and Coopers. Antti bought us all a Hahn (foreigners?), then I bought everyone a Coopers. We finished the night with a quick burger and fries on the way home (I guess some things are the same all over the world).
Sunday: A very lazy day of watching DVD’s interrupted only with a quick trip to the supermarket so I could buy some local candy to take home. I bought several Tupla (my favourite Finnish chocolate bar), some Karl Fazer chocolate blocks (Finland’s finest), some Marianne (chocolate covered in mint flavoured boiled lollie) and some Panterri (Finnish liquorice).
Monday: Another lazy day strolling around taking in the sites and sounds of Helsinki. Lots of water, lots of trees, and green and gold trams that reminded me of Melbourne. It’s a nice city, full of wide cobbled streets, a mix of traditional and modern style buildings, and some large park areas. We stopped off for a quick local beer and I tried the local blueberry cider, then a quick bite before catching the bus back to the airport.
It was a great little break for Easter and really good to catch up with Kristie. We travelled around Europe together in 2001, which was the first time she’d ever been on a plane. Now she’s been living in Helsinki for nearly 3 years, speaks the language and has a great bunch of Finnish friends who managed to get me into a sauna naked. What can I say? Pfff...dunno.
My Finnish vocabulary (in full):
Olut: Beer
Talo: House
Karhu: Bear
Karhutola: Bear House
Moi: Hello
Kiitos: Thankyou
Korvapuusti: A delicious coffee-scroll type thing
Kavhi: Coffee
Kavhila: Café
Torni: tower
Island: saari
Tupla: Double (I know this only because it’s the name of my favourite Finnish chocolate bar)
Sauna: sauna