Dublin :: Ireland
How the Finns get down.
Places: Helsinki & Tallinn
Coolest thing I did: What goes on in Estonia stays in Estonia.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Finnish word for milk is "Maito".
In a place as extreme as the Nordic north of Europe summer can't seem to come around quick enough, and moving from the eternal nights of mid-winter to the white nights of summer is probably one of the best reasons you could have a 3 day party. So myself and Mark found ourselves in Finland to celebrate what they call Vapuu, or the May Day weekend. It was interesting going back to Helsinki, as it is returning anywhere, just to see how much you can remember and what's changed since. Last time I was there was during the lead up to the mid-summer and much of the city was empty. This time it was the exact opposite.
Things were made much easier by having someone to stay with who could introduce us to what it is we were supposed to be doing. On one of the afternoons there is a ceremony when a white sailors cap is placed on a statue of a woman in the middle of Helsinki. Everyone was pretty much wearing the same caps. From what I could gather, the placing of the hat on the statue made people very happy and want to drink lots of champagne. I'm all for that. The story behind the hats isn't exactly clear to me, but it has something to do with finishing some kind of schooling, I think University, but so many people were wearing them it was hard to work out if this was a country of very well educated people or perhaps I got it wrong and the hats were for graduating primary school. The recent University graduates also wear overalls like a formula one team would wear, made in different colours depending on which faculty you were from. I pity the dudes who had to wear hot pink.
It has to be said, the nightlife in Helsinki is good fun, but it isn't exactly what you'd go so far as to call wild. We went to a few bars, which were all very cool inside (or Irish themed, for some inexplicable reason), and with a very laid back atmosphere, but not too much in the way of the joy or merriment you would expect from people who had just come out of months of complete darkness. We also went to a house party of people we were at least 3 degrees of separation from and that seemed rather tame, even if everyone was pretty well drunk by the time we got there. It's all very polite. Again, very welcoming, and good fun, but a bit reserved.
The Monday is reserved for a picnic in one of the big parks. We went to one where the people must easily have numbered in the thousands. Lots of people bring blankets and tents (which I kind of expected), but some go so far as to bring their couches, armchairs and even beds. It was a carnival atmosphere, but one tempered by good old fashioned common sense. Even when there were streakers, they seemed to get polite applause more than jeering and screaming. I suppose it's got something to do with that famous North European comfort with ones body that us Anglo Saxon descendants missed out on somehow. The group who invited us to their picnic were very welcoming, but we shouldn't have slept in as long as we did and were very behind. We also discovered that drinking yogurt and vodka actually makes for a pretty nice drink.
We had a night over at the father of our host's place for a traditional hot rock sauna, which was quite enjoyable. I don't know who was the first person to decide that making yourself extremely hot, then rapidly cold (in this case, a shower followed by beer was the method) was a good idea, but they were onto something. After four straight days of abusing myself with alcohol and lack of sleep, it went a long way towards fixing me up. The hospitality we faced in Finland was second to none I've experienced.
So we got the quick boat to Tallinn to see how another part of the world had changed since last we visited it. I last went to Estonia about 3 years ago, and Mark's last trip would have been closer to six year ago.
Two things strike you as being different this time. One is that the impact of the rapidly growing economy are visible everywhere. Last time I was there, about half the buildings in the old town were still run down and the new town had a very Soviet grey feel to it still. Every usable building now seems to have been done up, and the nightlife is starting to spill out of the stone walls into the rest of the city. Shopping malls and high rise is going up in the distant skyline and there is a feeling of energy about the place.
The other thing is that the people seem dead sick of their country being invaded every weekend by stag parties from the UK. We were taken aback at just how unfriendly many people were the second it became clear we spoke English. That definitely wasn't what I recall from last time. I guess that's the flip side of having cheap flights, people get sick of having drunken Pommy fools show up vomiting on things, getting into fights and groping women. We tried to go back to Hollywood, a night club people with Estonians that I went to last time, but the crowd was very hard to break into.
The best finds were the places that aren't obviously trying to cater to the Ryanair crowd. We found not one, but two places that did Arabic style Hookah pipes, so it became almost a ritual to sit around every afternoon and go through a copious quantity of apple tobacco. Both these places were quite well laid out, but the one in the new town could have been anywhere in Scandinavia with it's decor, DJ and gorgeous waitresses. We found more of the same in some other bars, and it shows that the pseudo-German beer halls and Irish pubs can co-exist with something a bit trendier.
Our trips out to some other clubs outside the walls were also more fruitful. One that seemed to cater to an older, mostly Finnish and Estonian crowd turned out to be an excellent laugh, despite our misgivings at the music at first. We also went back to the club frequented by the Russian speaking Estonians that I visited last time and that also seemed to have more going for it that good old Hollywood. We also learned the plight of the Russian speakers first hand, with girls saying things like “the Estonian speakers look down on us because our Estonian is so poor”, followed up without irony with “serving girl! Where are my Russian meatballs!”.
It's lucky we didn't want to go looking at churches and castles again, because most of the days were spent asleep, which is a good idea when you're getting back at around 7am every morning.
Its interesting to see places you only vaguely remember visiting last time and how the memories come rushing back as you walk around them. I had a mental picture of both Helsinki and Tallinn that was surprisingly actuate in some places, but terribly wrong in others. I'm interested to see how some of the other places, especially the ones I liked most, like Berlin, have been warped in my memory.