29/9/09 - Helsinki

Today Tuomo took me to see Helsinki and the island Suomenlinna. Finding out price of publ ic transport is akin to a swift kick in the groin. A painful initial shock followed by a lingering sense of unease. Back home I could get around all day for the price of a one way bus ticket to Helsinki. I'm glad Tuomo has a car for the rest of the week. In contrast the food prices seem very reasonable. I got a full meal from a chinese that I couldn't manage to finish for the same price as the bus fare.

Anyway...

Helsinki itself is a nice place with a large number of beautiful buildings, the Cathedral shown being one of the most noteworthy. The weather was clear all morning so I managed to take a lot of photographs which I might put up later.

After showing me around some of the city we headed to the harbour to catch a ferry over to Suomenlinna. The island is a UNESCO world heritage site and I could see why as it had yet more beautiful buildings and scenery. More importantly, however, it has a statue of a lion stabbing its own head.

And yes, that did justify a large, centred photograph. It even looks in pain.

Once we had finished exploring the island we headed back to the city to meet Antti, but seeing as we were early Tuomo showed me some of his favourite shops. There we several cool ones, including the geekiest shop of all time (think games workshop combined with Forbidden Planet and a shop that sells gratuitous amounts of board games), but the small pick and mix shop was the best. It was glorious, on all the walls nearly to the ceiling there was tub after tub of sweets. I would have taken a photo but I was preoccupied. Perhaps if I go again...

In the evening we went over to Anni's parents house. In Finland the idea of a villiages comes across very differently than in Britain. The houses are very spread out and surrounded by forrests. It is a lot more isolated but a lot more peaceful.

Back at Tuomo's place I experienced my first proper sauna. I don't think my body has every experienced 95 degrees celcius before. I think Tuomo was enjoying himself. He explained that there were two ways to add water to the stove. Slowly pouring the water over causing a slow build up of heat, or dumping it all on at once. "Nothing hap...OH SWEET JESUS MY EYES!!!" We really should have these in Scottish homes.

28/9/09 – The Journey Begins…

…at an unnatural hour in the morning. Getting up at 4am meant I went to bed at 8pm the previous night. I was of course not tired at this time so didn’t get much sleep. After saying goodbye to my family (David looked truly thrilled to have been woken) I set off to the airport.

My first flight was delayed by 35mins, but this didn’t bother me much, as I’m not in much of a hurry for the next nine months. It has been years since I last flew and I forgot how much of an enormous child I am when it comes to this. I must have been the only person on the plane staring intently out of the window with a grin on my face as I felt the acceleration on the runway, and the weird feeling in my stomach as we took off.

Sitting above one cloud layer and beneath another brought Skies of Arcadia to mind. Hopefully after my travels I’ll be reminded of something I’ve seen or done by games and books rather than the other way around.

I arrived at Heathrow without incident and, after taking a picture for a random Chinese woman, headed to my next flight.

The first flight reminded me about some of the good things in flying, the second flight served to remind me about some of the bad. I ended up sitting next to an older man who looked like a professor in his tweed suit. Only the Dan Brown book he was holding made me think otherwise. As it turned out he was remarkably incompetent. He spent a good few minutes trying to cram this book into the pocket in front of him which was clearly too small for it. When this failed he tried again only this time he removed the stuff that was already in the already too small pocket. Upon his inevitable failure he settled for ramming it between him and his armrest. When we took off he forgot to fasten his seatbelt, an act that was missed by the stewardess because he had managed to conceal it with his opened copy of the Financial Times. I was hardly surprised (though I did want to beat my head off the seat in front) when he ended up arguing with a steward that his cheese sandwich was an egg sandwich before finally conceding that it was in fact a cheese sandwich. The man clearly leads an epic life. Then there were the pilots.

The first guy to come on over the comms had an excruciatingly squeaky voice. The second clearly didn’t use English as his first language as he had difficulties forming complete sentences. The first flight had made me think that the posh English pilot stereotype was in fact accurate. These two shattered that particular illusion and didn’t leave me feeling especially confident. The line, “Some guy is giving me hand signals. I’m not entirely sure what they mean,” didn’t help any.

Despite all of this we arrived on time and my first impression of Finland from the air is that it is indeed very flat and covered in lakes. At Helsinki airport I managed to miss Tuomo and had to phone him despite the fact that he was wearing his bitchin’ hat.

At his place he showed me around and then let me settle in. I was introduced to Anni and we ate dinner which consisted of what his family call “mössö” which is basically a meal made with whatever is around. One of the first words I learn in Finnish and it doesn’t exist outside his family.