Helsinki

Trip Start May 07, 2005

117

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Finland Helsinki, Finland
Monday, September 26, 2005

We were feeling pretty foolish by the time we got to Helsinki. First off we had the dates wrong and our host was expecting us a day early. Fortunately we cleaned that up pretty well. Then we missed our ferry so we took a later one to Turku and planned to take the bus to Helsinki. We would arrive in Helsinki at about the same time as if we had taken the correct ferry but it would be more hassle. No problem. We were even a bit happy because we would briefly get to see Turku. So we got off the ferry and found our bus. It wasn't going to leave for over an hour (or so we thought) so we put our bags on board to do some brief sightseeing. When we came back the bus had left. After scrambling around trying to figure out what happened from people who didn't speak English we finally realized that we forgot to reset our watches from crossing a time zone. Grr. The next bus wasn't much later so we took it and hoped our bags would be waiting for us. They weren't. Sigh. After some phone calls we learned they got moved to the main bus station in Turku but would be put onto the next bus to Helsinki

Dave's Bird Friend

. A few hours later we were happily reunited with our bags.

The rest of our time in Helsinki was nice though. Our host was interesting. He had worked as a urban planner and knew a lot of house building, particularly in an ecological way. He mentioned one thing that I hadn't realized before -- that dense urban living is the most environment-friendly way to live because city planners can be very efficient.

The interesting thing about Helsinki is that it was under Russian rule for quite a while and has much of their architecture. We saw a church with "onion domes", a student library with some very old books and documents like the first dictionary to translate Finnish to another language (it was to German and only had about 20 words). We took a ferry to an island that houses a large fort, called the Gibralter of the North. It saw a lot of action and was captured by the Russians for quite a while, which the Finnish were not happy about and the commander of the fort was disgraced for surrendering when even his own men did not want to.

We went to a church that had been carved out of stone. Interesting.

They had a nice outdoor market every day. We bought a small fish snack from a vendor who warned us to watch out for seagulls. I laughed it off but immediately three seagulls stalked us and occasionally one would swoop at us. We bought fish from a zealous fisherman and wife. He proudly told us how bankers in expensive suits would patiently wait in line because his fish was so good

Fish Market

. As we were talking to him one of the advisors to the Prime Minister (or whatever they have) came up for some fish. He was especially proud of his salmon. I asked about Pacific salmon. He said it had no flavor. What about Alaskan salmon? No, still not as good as Finnish salmon. We bought a big fillet from him to bake for dinner. It was extremely good but while I can tell the difference between farm salmon and wild salmon I can't differentiate among different types of wild salmon. We also bought some smoked salmon which he warned us was not the highest quality. It was the best we had ever had. Later we learned that "cheap" smoked salmon usually means imported frozen from Canada and smoked in Finland. We also learned that the smoked salmon we like is called "hot smoked" and the nasty slimy smoked salmon that people eat on bagels (or just about anything in California) is "cold smoked".

Amazingly we made it to the airport on time to catch our flight to Copenhagen.