Helsinki :: Finland
Where you can order coffee with a text message.
Places: Tallinn, Helsinki, Imatra & Helsinki
Coolest thing I did: Had a proper outdoor sauna and ended it with a swim in an icy lake.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Finns managed to hold off the Soviet army with far less men for the entire cold war.
If Friday in Tallinn was about going to the many bars in town, Saturday night was all about going to the clubs. There are two big ones, one for the Russians who skip over the border for the weekend and one for the Estonians. The Russian one was a bit of a spectacle. It was moving along as you would expect and overly trendy Western club to, expect there were alot more blokes walking around in suits and leather jackets with no necks. Russian Mafia? Perhaps, or maybe just blokes who want to be. Then, for no apparent reason, the music stops and there are contents, including watching two girls race through punch bowls of whiskey cola a shot glass at a time (these people are sick), and watching two sets of girls from the crowd race to undress each other with their teeth (watching the blokes do it was far less compeling for me). The Estonian one was like the first without the strange contests, but the people there are much friendlier. This may not bode well for the comming couple of weeks in Russia.
Helsinki was a return to the well designed, clean future of Scanders. I think because of the influence of Nokia in just about everything here, the Finns are far more technologically outgoing than their other Nordic mates. There are far more cutting edge trendy cafes and bars here and most of them are full of people who look like they mugged people comming off the Matrix set for their clothes.
I have just witnessed a girl order a coffee by smsing the bar, which I think may be a step too far. However, it does seem sensible that you can pre-order practically anything with your mobile and just punch a code into the ticket machine at the station instead of lining up. Quite clever these people.
The Russian influence on Finland is quite visible in Helsinki. As it's only been a serious town since late into the Swedish rule and the early Russian one, alot of the town is modelled on St Petes (the city, not the Vatican). There are baroque buildings surrounding squares overlooked by Eastern Orthadox cathederals, and I've read that some B grade movie producers shoot Russian scenes here on the cheap (much like they will probably do in Morocco now the Muslims are the bad guys for hollywood). They haven't decided (which seems to be the norm with recently freed people) to drag over all the Russian monuments, and statues of Alexander 2 (the Czar) and the Russian imperial eagle (which has two heads) still adorn the main market squares. I think there is something to be said for leaving such things intact for histories sake, however, I come from a country that hasn't had to fight for it's independance (hell we just had to vote and we couldn't even do that right) so I probably don't know.
I took a night out from cities, as I was getting serious church/castle/bloke on horse lag and went out to a place called Imatra. There isn't much there, but the youth hostel is perched on the side of one of those idylic Finnish lakes you see in tourist brochures. This gave me alot of time to myself, and to do some deep thinking, which has helped alot. I was getting a bit harried about organising everything to do with getting to and from Russia, and I feel a whole lot more relaxed. A lot of that has to do with the sauna. The had a proper pine wood sauna on stilts over the edge of the lake, so you sit inside, breathing in stupidly hot, pine soaked air until you've built up a permenant sweat. Then it's right outside to plunge into the icy lake (12 degrees, a bit warm they said!) where you get a feeling of invigoration you're not likely to get elsewhere. I was quite breathtaken by the view, which was a mirror perfect lake, the sun still over the horizon at 10pm, it's red glow contrasting with the dark pines ringing the lake. This feeling of contentment lasts until you realise your feet are getting very numb and it's time to get back into the sauna. Whilst another one go was enough for me, the Finns like to go back in and out all day.
I've found out I'll be in Russia right when the start of the mid-summer festival starts. Whilst it's not a big deal over the border, it's the biggest day of the year for Scanders. They were already piling up wood on floating pyres to burn over the lake on Friday night. Apparently, all over Scanders people abandon the cities and go out for a nearly pagan renewal with nature. For so few people (24m in all the Nordic countries) to have so much beautiful scenery, it's little wonder they hold on to their nature worship. Kind of like Australians in a way, except we only worship the sun and sea.
I got talking to an older bloke standing by the lake about things and he asked how long I had been out of the army. He was taken aback that we have no national service at all, which seems inconceivable to a country that's been the buffer against the USSR since the end of the second world war. I just told he we didn't have much of an army because we had no one to fight (despite what Johny Howard seems to think, man, did he miss a good oppertunity to shut up when the Iraq war was on). He told me the province we were standing in (the Eastern lakes of Finland) is about 2 thirds in Russia, the bit they managed to take during the second world war. What had happened was due to the pact made between Stalin and Hitler (two of the most un-top blokes that ever lived), Finland would go to the USSR if the Germans could have Poland. Thanks to the "Allies" watching things in Eastern Europe without doing anything, the Finns had to fight a winter war with the Red Army to save their homeland. Vastly outnumbered, fighting in feet of snow with bad equipment, the Finns held most of their country for the entire duration of the European campaign and maintained a buffer with Sweden over the whole cold war. This old bloke was quite proud of this, even though Finns don't strike me as chest beating jingoists. He mentioned his wife's family come from the part that's now in Russia and they recently went back to see the house where here mother grew up. These are people of about 55-60, so we're not talking ancient history here. It reminds you just how mad the world had become last century.
So, off to St Pete's tomorrow. I've been getting tips from a couple of Aussie blokes who just got off the trans-siberian from China and have just been where I'm going. The stories of bad services and theivery are everywhere, so I'm a bit more cautious than I probably would have been. We shall see.