Fabulous Finland

While sailing into port in Finland, you can't help but notice how beautiful the landscape is. It reminds me of Northern BC.  Helsinki is quite the busy and modern city, although it had a much different feel than any of the previous places we'd been.  It seemed more country and less cosmopolitan, if that makes any sense. Not that it didn't have amazing and intricate buildings and culture, but our brief visit gave us more exposure to less of that.

We started with a city tour, which took us around downtown. Being right on the water, Helsinki is beautiful in the summer, and even though our day was a little cloudy, it was warm and pleasant outside. We went to a park and relaxed a little while taking in the artistic feats of a local sculptor, and marvelled at the view at the water's edge. Apparently, one in five families own a yacht (at least a small one).

Summer doesn't last long here, and if they are lucky, they might get 5 months of water time before it starts freezing.  When the water freezes over, Finns switch over to skating and skiing on the surface.

The Finnish language is totally different than Norwegian or Danish or Swedish. It actually belongs to a totally different family, which includes Hungarian and Estonian. 90 percent of people in Finland speak Finnish, and only 6 percent speak Swedish, although it is a very bilingual country in terms of signage.  Here are some street names in Finnish that I copied from a map:  Uudenmaankatu, Eteläesplanadi, Töölönlahdenkatu

Crazy, eh? (Our American friends have been teasing us about the "eh" a little bit.) With all those vowels it's no wonder that sometimes people think my name comes from a Nordic country!

Education here is totally free.  Even students from abroad are able to study in Finland free of charge!  However it is quite expensive to live in Finland, so we are told that there are not too many takers on that deal. 

At the end of the city tour, we headed to the market and did a little shopping. We also had lunch - it could have been moose meatballs and reindeer sausage, but S and I settled for crepes.  Delish!  Then we walked around the city: there was a jazz festival going on, there were street performers, live music, some of the buildings were named after animals... Oh, it just goes on. We could have spent much more time there than we had. 

In the evening, we went to Hvitträsk, which is a home that was designed by some famous Finnish architects (Saarinen, Gesellius & Lindgren) around 1900, now turned into a museum.  Very cool.  It would be so great to design your own home out in the woods somewhere. It was funky and colourful and fun. There was also a sauna, which apparently the Finns are big on. It was a whole other building built down at the beach of a lake. They would steam themselves for 10-15 min, jump in the lake (best in winter, after cutting a hole in the ice), come back out, re-acclimatize, and then start the whole process over again. 

Our local guide said that some new apartments in the city were all outfitted with saunas, but the non-Finns didn't know what to do with them and used them for storage!

Other random facts we learned:

- Finland was part of Sweden for 650 years until Sweden had to give Finland to Russia after losing to them in a war. Finland was then ruled by Russia for 110 years until their independence in 1917.

- For part of that 110 years at least, Finns enjoyed more freedom and independence under Russian rule than they had under Swedish rule (and the Finns loved Alexander the II better than the Russians, who assassinated him!)

- Health care is organized and affordable, but not free. 

- 32-35% income tax (up to 64% for highest bracket).

- Ice hockey is the most popular sport.  Yah!!

We definitely could have used an extra day (or more!) in Stockholm and Helsinki. Just getting little tastes of these places! On to Russia...

Cheers,  :)

Elaan