WTF
Magazine. Welcome to Finland indeed!
Helsinki seems like a great place, despite
the chilly Baltic wind that blows from time to time.
Having done
some tourist bits on Saturday, I headed out later for my first full-on night
out, mainly at a huge, traditional pub with a live venue upstairs. They have an odd system of charging here -
entry is free, and the cloakroom is a few Euros. But you have to pay at the cloakroom even if
you have no cloak, so it's basically just a cover charge. Upstairs they had a blackjack table, so I set
myself a limit of 20 Euros ready to lose it, but somehow managed to leave with
55 Euros, through total spawnyness.
Alko - Finland's state
owned monopoly off license, and the only place licensed to sell beer over 4.7%,
wines and spirits. Good name!
When he was
chatting, the croupier talked exclusively about Formula 1 (very popular here, I
saw a chap dressed completely as Lewis Hamilton, with the full Sparco suit
complete with all advertising). The
croupier wasn't a fan of Hamilton
though, but he pleased the two friendly Spaniards at the table by going on
about Alonso - 'He a real Race Driver!', and tried to appease me by saying that
Coultard had qualified 12th!
Anyway,
when I left the pub Helsinki
was in full Saturday night streets packed with drunkards getting kebabs mode,
and I promptly managed to get completely lost on my way back, but I eventually
found my way after walking around for some time!
Unfortunately
I didn't make it to the tourist attraction in Espoo called 'The Weegee House'. See: www.weegee.fi
They've got
a great city bike scheme, you pay a 2 Euro deposit to unlock a bike, then you
get it back when you return the bike to any one of the stands that are all over
the city.
Good
placenames here as well - my favourite is Töölö (this street goes there), but Espoo and Porvoo are good too. Most things seem to end in 'i' though.
Unfortunately
the afternoon of the day I arrived was the only sunny period, the other two
days have been overcast and mostly raining.
Managed to get some iStockPhoto-graphing done though. Seems like there's plenty to see here.
This large
UFO landed just before I arrived - here's a photo from today...
Nah, it's
actually a church - Temppeliaukion Kirkko - which is cut right down into the
rock. Pretty impressive inside. The photo in the dark above is genuine... but not taken by me!
Will - that's the best I could do, there's at least one more in the photo gallery... bet you can't pronounce that right to the end!
And to finnish... hadn't heard of this Scottish whisky before I came to Helsinki...
