The Baltics: Suomi (Finland)

Finnish wizards used to sell wind to storm-stayed mariners. The wind was enclosed in three knots; if they undid the first knot, a moderate wind sprang up; if the second, it blew half a gale; if the third, a hurricane. Indeed the Esthonians, whose country is divided from Finland only by an arm of the sea, still believe in the magical powers of their northern neighbours. 

  --The Golden Bough, Sir James George Frazer

Windy country, that Finland. Cold, too. Those were my first impressions when I stepped out of my Ryanair plane and onto the tarmac at Tampere, Finland. Where is that, you ask? Well, it's about 177 kilometers north of Helsinki, or as I experienced it: a twenty minute bus ride, an hour's wait at the train station, and then another two and a half hours southbound on a very nice train.

One of the first things I photographed upon landing. Because I missed the bus that was waiting when we arrived (it took only cash and I had no Euros, plus the ATM/currency exchange office were located in another terminal that was about a five minute walk away) I had time to explore the airport, sadly mostly closed because I'd arrived too early. I was intrigued/horrified by this. 

Intrigue: reindeer and cranberries on pizza, you say? 

Horror: 8.90 EUR are you fucking kidding me?? Do I turn into a superhero after consuming it? Does it magically transport me to Helsinki? Will it make the bus arrive sooner if I buy it? WTF?

"Amerikar Hodari", a sign that greeted me at the Tampere train station. Is this what you think of us, Finland?!

Anyway, the joys of flying budget airlines. I'm actually not going to complain about being deposited so far from Helsinki, however, because: A) I knew what I was agreeing to when I bought the plane ticket and B) the train ride gave me an opportunity to peep a bit of the southern Finland landscape, as can be seen in the photo above. Things I observed: wind (plentiful), farms (bountiful), trees (basically its own population within Finland? So many trees, everywhere, big beautiful evergreens that made me feel like I was traveling through Ontario). So, it was a little inconvenient but ultimately lovely.

The train station where I arrived!

Helsinki is awesome, by the way. Fucking expensive, but really clean and beautiful. And they have trams which go all over the city; you can very easily buy a 24-hour pass, something I appreciated as I had just about 24 hours to enjoy the city by the time I reached my hostel.

As I was making my way there, I passed the first of many churches I would stop to marvel at, the Uspenski Cathedral. This panorama shows how close it is to the port area, in which my hostel was located.

Passing closer by it on the way to my hostel. Trying desperately and failing to find an angle at which to photograph the thing without capturing either a seemingly purposeless metal pole or street signage. I was carrying my giant backpack so after a few fruitless attempts I gave up and moved on.

After checking in and buying my public transit pass, it was time to explore!

Oh look, the tram routes are printed on the seats!

Passing some public art on my way to...

The Temppeliaukio Church, or the "Rock Church"! It doesn't look like much from this angle, but you can kind of see how semi-subterranean it is. Also, vines! That concrete wall jutting out from the hillside is the back entrance.

Moving around to the front entrance. Apologies for the dark photos... I just had my camera on automatic settings and apparently this was its reaction to a cloudy, dark Finnish afternoon. Even though I was shocked by how cold I was in Helsinki (and even did some clothes shopping to better equip myself, despite the high prices) the upside was that because I was so far north I had hours and hours of daylight. So even though I arrived at Tampere in the late morning and it took me quite a while to get into Helsinki, find my hostel and put my stuff down, then navigate my way across the city to this church (it was about 4 or 5 by the time I got here), it was still basically early afternoon, light-wise. Cloudy early afternoon, but decidedly still daytime.

The inside of the church was incredible, and I'm not sure if these photos do it credit but here we go anyway.

The church was built in 1969. The original plans for it date back to the '30's but obviously the execution of those plans was disrupted by WWII and the upheaval that followed. It's famous for its excellent acoustics and apparently is a popular place for performances. I think I remember reading somewhere, or maybe there was a tour guide discussing this, that when it was first built people had mixed feelings about it because some thought it was ugly. But eventually it became a beloved landmark in the city. By the way that is actually the cave's rockface that makes up most of the church's walls, including little dripping streams of water!

Moving on, I passed through some very nice and oddly well-manicured gardens in a nearby public park as I took myself on a walk...

HUGE anti-Scottie bias in Finland. Sad!

So soon enough I found myself at my next destination, Sibelius Park. It's a really nice place, big enough that once you get on some of the trails within it you can almost forget that you're in a city and really get in touch with your Nanook of the North roots.

However, I didn't dawdle for long as the sky looked increasingly threatening. I was in the park to see the Sibelius Monument, which I had seen featured on Richard Ayoade's Travel Man and also on Atlas Obscura. It's the first picture of this post. Interesting monument, and kind of fun to climb up and really take in the many odd details of this abstract sculpture dedicated to the famous Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. I listened to some of his compositions while I was writing this post and particularly enjoyed this one, the Lemminkäinen Suite!

From afar:

The whole piece, closer:

Closer...

CLOSER...

Ooh, artsy angle now!

And one more of that very northern sky looming over the afternoon's activities:

Getting back to the city center, I checked out the Pohjola Insurance building, built in 1901 by the famous architect Eliel Saarinen. Well, famous if you do crossword puzzles because those guys love to use his name. He shows up all the damn time!

This building is cool, although I didn't explore the inside and only got a couple pictures of it. It's covered in wild/mythical creatures and you can see more photos of it here. From that article,

"The term “Pohjola” refers to a mythic land from the Finnish epic the Kalevala in which the Northern region of Pohjola was ruled by an evil witch. It was also believed that the roots of the World Tree could be found in Pohjola, which may explain the many reliefs of trees and squirrels across the building’s facade. More broadly the word refers to any northerly direction."

Onto the next church! The Kamppi Chapel or the "Chapel of Silence."

From the outside, it kind of looked to me like a play on Noah's ark?

Closer look at the texture of the wooden exterior...

A lone bird judging me from its perch on high:

Inside was, as you can probably imagine, a very surreal yet serene egg-shaped chapel. Peaceful, with natural light. It was nice, I stayed a while.

Continuing this church theme I've accidentally established, I passed the Helsinki Cathedral. This may be where I encountered the most tourists in the whole city, in fact, it was kind of insane how many giant tour buses lined the square that sits in front of this church.

I believe this is a statue of Tsar Nicholas I, which seemed to have a semi-permanent bird sentry stationed atop his head.

Another angle...

After all this church-visiting I was famished and earlier in the afternoon I had passed a brewery, named simply Bruuveri, where I returned for a couple pints of a VERY dark stout and a reindeer burger. How was it, you ask? It tasted like venison. Maybe a burger is not the medium in which to consume reindeer, but I was juggling the competing interests of wild hunger and a very real need for libation. So. Needs must when the devil drives, you know? Anyway I spent a while in the sub-subterranean pub enjoying my beers and relaxing and it was about 10:30 when I finally reemerged to ground level. Imagine my surprise when this was the level of daylight I was greeted with!

WHAT?!

As I was passing the train station I snapped this photo. Check out the clock above the doors. 10:40 PM. At no point in my Baltic adventure did this phenomenon become any less amazing or mind-blowing to me.

One more shot on my way home, still reeling.

The next morning, the weather was actually really lovely for a few hours before things clouded over just in time for my ferry ride across the Gulf of Finland to my next destination, Tallinn! 

Stopping to smell some... of whatever flowers these are...

I will not tell you how many tries it took for me to get my camera to even somewhat properly focus for this picture. Let us say it was... too many... and leave it at that.

I took advantage of the sunshine and momentary warmth to purchase a delightful coffee from this fine establishment, which I drank outside on the bench. I then went back inside and bought myself a canvas bag with that slogan on it ("COFFEE IS MY DRIVER") because nothing has ever been more true for me.

Cool record store I passed...

I took a little tram ride out to the National Museum of Finland, having passed it the day before and wanting to get a better look at its architecture (also having several hours to kill before it was time to head to the port). 

Who doesn't love a good bear statue?

Waiting for a tram and enjoying some sunshine...

Across the street from the very modern Finlandia Hall! Ah, the contrast!

Unfortunately I didn't have time to go inside either place because I had one more very important stop to make before heading on to Estonia. The fish market! On my way there, I remembered to snap one of the street signs. In case you can't see, that sign is in Swedish, Finnish, and Russian. Cross-cultural, no? A testament to Finland's long and complicated history of being both Baltic and Nordic.

As you can probably imagine, I haven't eaten a lot of fish while living in the landlocked nations of Kosovo or Hungary so I was MORE than ready for a salmon infusion, stat. And this marketplace delivered in spades.

This guy hooked me up and then agreed to let me photograph him. Not all heroes wear capes.

Oh yes. This sauce was actually way too much, it was like a really thick garlic cream sauce that was wildly unnecessary for the salmon and yet not enough to mask the (in my opinion) wretched taste of those tiny, greasy fish on top. So they were scraped aside in favor of the salmon. The vegetables were okay, a little soft but hey it's an open-air market and they'd probably just been sitting out there for a bit so no hard feelings. I wasn't there for the veg in any case.

Priorities.

Surprising amounts of fresh fruit, some of it even from Finland! Mostly raspberries and strawberries, the citrus I believe was all from southern European countries (Spain, essentially).

Knick-knacks!

Taking in the darkening skies, the ceaseless wind, and the harbor.

Waiting for boarding of the ferry to begin at the port, taking a rare selfie to capture my feelings upon noticing the encroaching weather pattern.

TBC!