Helsinki

Before I left Finland altogether, I spent a couple of days in the capital, Helsinki. And I thought I'd make a little blog post about that here. From the blog statistics, I can see that not everyone that reads this blog is Finnish, so hopefully some of this will be new to you :D The purpose of my trip to Helsinki was to see some friends and relatives. So here's a few photos...

This is the side entrance of the main railway station. You can't really see it in the picture but it says RAUTATIEASEMA JÄRNVÄGSTATION. That's "railway station" in Finnish and then samma på svenska (which means "same in Swedish"). Helsinki is one of Finland's bilingual municipalities, so all the signs and everything are in both languages. People are often surprised when I tell them that I know Swedish and that Finland has two official languages. Here's a map showing you the different language areas in Finland, and the colour explanations are below.

(This picture is from Wikipedia.)

I lived in the east of Finland, and I still had to learn Swedish in school, just like everyone else in the country. Don't get me wrong, I liked studying Swedish, it's a super easy language to learn and it's fun. But a lot of people don't like studying it. And I admit that for me too Russian, for example, would have been a lot more useful than Swedish, living where I did. It could have opened doors to better summer jobs, and of course you meet a lot more Russians than Swedes in Eastern Finland. So that map sort of makes you wonder...

It is probably kind of a relic from when the area of Finland was a part of Sweden, and all the government, administration and culture (like literature and stuff) was in Swedish, and Finnish was considered a language of the lower classes, and not really a civilized language at all. Even after the position of Finnish language improved, and after Finland became independent there has always been a minority of Swedish speaking (or bilingual) Finns, and now that there is talk of maybe making Swedish optional in schools, some seem to fear that this would jeopardize the position and the services of the Swedish speaking population. Which is like 6 % of the inhabitants of Finland.

By the way, Helsinki in Swedish is Helsingfors.

During my holiday I visited my relatives in Tohmajärvi, and took this picture of the door of the local food store.

It says "welcome" in Finnish and Russian. Tohmajärvi is situated in the east about 10 kilometers from the Russian border, so a lot of their road signs etc have the texts in both languages. But during Christmas and New Year a huge amount of Russians travel to Finland for shopping (apparently Finland is cheaper and the quality is better) and skiing etc, so even in Helsinki there would be temporary signs and notifications in Russian.

But now I got sidetracked, let's get on with the pictures.

Here's another one of the railway station in the city centre.

There is an Irish bar called Dubliner in the city centre too! I just happened to pass it. (Finnish people think Ireland and everything Irish is cool. Especially the pubs.)

Helsinki has big buildings.

Ale in this case doesn't refer to beer, but it's short for "alennusmyynti" which means SALE. (And rea is the same in Swedish.)

I went to Stockmann (a big department store) and their food section to buy a cake and everything looked pretty yummy.

There's the world trade center. Helsinki version.

Christmas lights were still up!

Helsinki is Finland's biggest city, and it differs from the rest of the country in a lot of ways. The city is built completely differently than the average Finnish town, the architecture is partially a lot older. It's also the only place that has trams, local trains and a metro system.

That's a tram.

This music video by Bomfunk MC's was filmed in the Helsinki underground! So watch it if you want to see what it looks like and hear a Finnish song. :D (The lyrics are in English though.)

Waiting for the tram to take me to my destination... 

That's the cake!

That's some building opposite me. I believe it's still the Stockmann building.

That board tells you when the next tram is coming.

That's all the pictures I took, but anyway, Helsinki is a nice city to visit. It's big but not too huge and it has a lot of things to see. The first time I visited Helsinki was when I was... around 10 maybe? We bought Helsinki cards, which are these cards that they make for tourists, and for whatever the price is you get access to all the public transport and reductions on museum tickets and things like that. Nowadays my dad lives in the neighboring city called Vantaa, so when I would visit him I would often also go to Helsinki. It's a 40 minute bus drive. And now a few friends also live there so I go there to meet them too!

There are some nice buildings in Helsinki that I didn't get the chance to photograph now, but I borrowed some from other sites...

This is the parliament building. That's where the magic happens (= they make all the big decisions). This is basically right in the city centre. I think they have a big extension building now behind that one... I guess they couldn't fit the 200 MP's in there. I got the picture from here.

Another beautiful building is the Helsinki cathedral. It faces the Senate Square, which was built in the 1800's (as was the church), so the architectural style is very coherent. I got the picture from here.

But yeeeaaahh I suppose that is all I have to say about Helsinki right now. Go visit! And go during the summer, it'll be a lot nicer. It's often very windy and rainy in the winter. Kinda like Galway...