Olso vs. Helsinki

Viime viikonloppuna, kavini hyvä ystavani jotka asuu olsossa. (Last weekend, I visited my good friend who lives in Oslo.) It was his birthday. And he had a party. So not only did I get a tour of Oslo but I also experienced a snapshot of what it's like to live in another Nordic country. Hence my observations are entitled "Oslo vs. Helsinki". And let's kick-off with the Presidential Palace, which is considerably more palatial than the Finnish (bungalow) equivalent and even has a Christmas tree in the centre.

Norway seems somewhat detached, both physically and culturally, from the Finland I've got to know during the last three months. In fact, I actually believe there were more similarities between london and Oslo than Oslo and Helsinki (minus the size, scale and cosmopolitan make-up of London). My ex-flatmate is Norwegian and she said, rather candidly, that Norwegians, especially young Norwegians, had got a little complacent with the cradle-to-the-grave welfare state that has been so buttressed by North Sea oil.  I see a lot of comparisons here to the sense of entitlement that many young English people seem to exude (myself included). The Fins, unlike the Norwegians and the English, have a somewhat different persona. Finnish history is the history of a hard slog and the Finnish national attitude is conspicuously Finnish self-deprecating (at least to outsiders). Of course, having oil is not all bad: take, for example, the fantastic Olso Opera House, which is not only architecturally sublime, but also operated with the most laid back and welcoming Norwegian-vibe possible.

This is the same building, but we're now on the roof. And you can follow it up to almost the very top.

I was greeted by pouring rain when I first arrived. I came from rain in Helsinki and all three of Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki are pretty miserable in the rain. Which is why I think they're all deviations on a Mancurian-theme. But with nicer modern buildings. This one is has something (or a lot) to do with the Nobel Peace Prize.

Fortunately it had cleared up by the afternoon and on the Sunday, after my friend's birthday party, I was kindly taken to the ski slope (the site of the Winter Olympics) for some fantastic scenery. The train journey (which is akin to the London Overground) was typically Scandinavian. In other words, smooth and pleasant: the opposite to England.

Last year this place was covered in snow. Fimbulvetr – I'm not so sure.

Of course Helsinki "wins" – it has been my home for three months and will continue to be so for the next three. (While you can erase cabin fever from being stuck in a small cabin by simply leaving the cabin, you can't erase cabin fever quite so easily if you've got it from being stuck in a small city for six months.) But I love cities, and seeing another one from the perspective that I saw it was an unforgettable experience. Thank you to Matthew and Ida for a lovely weekend.

Homesickness, Porvoo

The relentless rain we are currently experiencing is pretty miserable. Of course, having lived in London for the past five or so years, and being from Leeds, which, while admittedly not getting as much rainfall as Manchester, is still pretty wet and miserable, you might think that I am somewhat well-adjusted to this kind of weather. And of course it provides an excellent topic of conversation (incidentally, I didn't realise how much I talk about the weather until I came to Helsinki, and I didn't appreciate how useful it could be when making small talk). But the quality of the rain here is different. It's not worse (assuming cold rain water does in fact have a quality spectrum). It's just different. It just doesn't feel like England.

Perhaps the comfortable shoe of weather-related small talk is now the vessel through which I am experiencing my first pangs of homesickness. I don't think attending the heavy metal bar PKRL (which is an abbreviation of perkele, a naughty word in Finnish) last night did much to alleviate this feeling. To be far, we (myself and my comrade from Stockholm) had a pretty good time. The only hairy moment was unrelated to heavy metal, and involved a mildly intoxicated Zambian lady wanting to know what we did for a living. On telling her that we were lawyers (which in hindsight was a mistake), she sat down next to us, insisted we told her where we worked (don't worry, she was convinced we worked at "Russian") and managed to extract a business card from my friend.

This weekend wasn't all doom and gloom. A very nice lady from work took us to her hometown of Porvoo, Finland's second city (I should clarify: it's the second oldest city; there are only c. 50,000 inhabitants, 30 per cent. of whom are Swedish-speaking Finns). Alexander I, the Russian Tsar who annexed Finland from Sweden, lived in Porvoo for a while and apparently had a mistress (and at least one illegitimate child) who hung out in the town square.

Porvoo is famous for being the birthplace of the Finnish independent state. It was at Porvoo cathedral that Tsar Alexander I convened the Porvoo Diet and declared that he would govern Finland in accordance with its ancient laws, which led to the "myth" of Finnish constitutionalism, and which in turn led to the ineluctable rise of Finnish nationalism, and which ultimately resulted in the reality of Finnish constitutionalism and the independent state in 1917. Unfortunately lepers were not allowed in this cathedral. They had to hang out beneath the bell tower, which is located in a separate stone building next to the church. And funnily enough, Finnish speaking Finns were not allowed in the church either, and they had to hang out in this red wooden building next to the bell tower.  You can see that there was a definite hierarchy in Swedish Porvoo.

Kallio, sunshine

Every city has a working-class district, or rather a traditionally working-class district that has now become "hip", bohemiafied (I made that word up) by a commingle (I did not make that word up) of yuppies, art students and trustafarians. For London, that district comprises certain parts of the East End (Fashion Fields, Columbia Road, Brick Lane, Hackney...) For Stockholm, as I recently discovered, the area is Södermalm, aka SoFo, as in Stockholm's answer to London's Soho (but really more like Stockholm's answer to the East End). Since the sun was shining, and since I hadn't really been to Kallio until now, I decided to go for a wander. I'm sure that I didn't stumble upon the coolest places and, since it was a Sunday, they would have probably been closed anyway, but here are some nice photographs.

Predictably, Kallio is deserted, and also predictably, there is a great big church which dominates the skyline.

It's the working-class district so high-density housing is part of the bargain. However, unlike the ex-working council estates in London, the surrounding area is clean, quiet and strikingly harmonious.

Or it could just be that the residents are in hibernation.

I felt a little more at home when I saw a sign for an Indian Market.

And if I wasn't feeling at home already, I saw this bus parked in the market square. Of course, one can't really blame the Finns. With Helsinki being so expensive, it must be hard to resist a flat-pack sofa.

 

All Saints' Day, lonely weekend

Saturday was All Saints' Day, a Finnish bank holiday, despite hardly anyone in Finland being Catholic. This meant that almost all the shops were closed on Saturday. Not knowing many people in Finland, and in the absence of not being able to spend at least some of my weekend shopping (most shops are closed on Sundays), the upshot is that I've scarcely left the house for 48 hours. I've also slept quite a lot and consequently I'm having trouble separately dreamworld from reality. At least being a hermit has allowed me to practice my Finnish. My favourite thing about Finnish is that it's so crazy not even Google translator gets it right. Makes me think that nominally I'm learning a new language but really I'm learning a secret code that someday will help me to take over the world. With the help of the Finnish army.

Minä puhun suomea vähän nyt. Totta kai, minä asun Helsinki enkö niin?

I can speak Finnish a little now. Of course, I live in Helisnki don't I?

Despite my uneventful weekend, I did have time to notice that something big is happening in the central square. My conclusion is they've either begun constructing the winter ice-rink or someone has made the most controversial town planning decision in Finnish history.

P.S. There were no fireworks for me this weekend. This is very sad because I've always loved fireworks ever since I was a little boy. I thought about getting some myself but they're illegal on any day but Independence Day. I also have no idea where to buy them from.

Anteeksi, saisinko ilotulitus kiitos?

Excuse me, where can I buy fireworks?

How to Marry a Finnish Girl

While browsing the Academic Bookshop I stumbled upon a book called How to Marry a Finnish Girl. It seems that some dude from Brazil has written a book about his love for Finnish women, or rather his love for chasing Finnish skirt.

Included in this *cough* illustrious book are chat up lines that range from the cheesy ("Can I have your autograph, Miss Finland?") to the crude ("Let's go ice-fishing so I can put my rod in your hole") to the quite amusing in a rather juvenile kind of way ("Tell me your name and I'll write it in the snow with my yellow pen"). The book goes on to describe how Finnish men have trouble expressing their emotions (which apparently leaves ample opportunity for the effeminate foreigner) and claims that Finnish girls are better than Swedish girls because they hate their fathers. Naturally I'm tempted to buy a copy and send it to Timo Soini but unfortunately it's quite expensive.