March 19, 2001 (Day 12)

March 19, 2001 (Day 12): Helsinki, Finland: Eurohostel – 10pm

Morale:  good.  I am as ready as I am ever going to be for Russia.

We had the sort of morning that would shock anyone who knows us. By 10.30am this morning, we were awake, sauna-ed, showered, and fed. In addition, we had also been to the amazing Helsinki Post Office to mail home a package of souvenirs – including the incredible sweaters we got in Estonia – then to the train station to obtain Russian customs forms (in English), and to the ATM to get more Finnish Marks. It served as a dry run for tomorrow. The 6.30am train to St. Petersburg is going to be hell.

As if the nature of this trip was not unusual enough, I am trying to do more things outside of my comfort zone. Today’s adventure was to sit naked in a hot, unventilated room with my fellow man (actually “men”) – what the Finns call “sauna.”  It was only less uncomfortable than working in Germany over a hot summer, a country where they do not believe air-conditioning has a place in office buildings. The sauna was an eye-opening experience. After I showered, I felt a lot cleaner and much warmer. The best way to describe it was like being warm from the inside out, as opposed to wearing a jacket which tends to warm me from the outside in. The experience left me much better equipped for another day in the cold.

Between coffees served in bathtub-sized cups, we took a bus tour of the major sites in Helsinki.  In addition to being out of the cold, another intriguing part was that one of the ten languages the tour was conducted in was Latin. It did not help me out much, but I am sure it was a relief to the mitre-wearing chap in the back. Despite the fact that the tour was billed as an “Expert Sightseeing Tour” no experts were identified during the entire tour – not even at the University. I suspect it was feeding time at the Social Sciences pen.

We visited the Temppeliaukio Church (a.k.a. the Rock Church) – an impressive space blasted out of granite with a ceiling made of copper wire, making it look as though the building has crashed into the earth from outer space. The acoustics are impressive and it doubles as a music venue. The tour also took us to a memorial to Jean Sibileus, considered one of Finland’s greatest composers. The monument looks like a lot of silver organ pipes, although the artist was actually inspired by Finland’s forests.

As with all good tours, it provided me with a healthy dose of useless information.

• Finland constructs about 60 percent of the world’s icebreakers – useful on the Helsinki morning commute for about eight months of the year.
• Finns have more mobile phone numbers than fixed phone numbers.
• Fifty percent of the population has library cards.
• Finland is officially bilingual: students learn both Finnish and Swedish in school.
• Faberge is buried in a Helsinki cemetery.
• The Helsinki city plan is modeled on St. Petersburg and Tallinn.
• “Onion” domes on Russian Orthodox churches represent flames.
• There are 5 million people in Finland and, the story goes, 2 million saunas.

A bit of laundry was in order. We managed to have everything washed and mostly dry by 1800. We spread out what still needed to be dried before tackling dinner. A little packing when we got back and then a beer to relax.

Tomorrow: Russia.

Excerpts from Anna’s journal included.

• Baltic
• ChasingFogg15
• Finland
• Helsinki
• Travel