Impressions from Helsinki

This entry will digress a little from my “back in Bulgaria” theme and go back to my “travelogue” beginning.
Last night, I came back from Helsinki where I spent 4 days visiting my sister (who had the crazy idea to turn her back on the opportunity to go to Spain for a year, and went to Helsinki instead…. go figure :-)). Well, the first thing you might imagine Helsinki to be is coooooold. Well, yes, it was, but the weather that I came back to in Sofia was much colder, so that wasn’t really what I found distinguishing about Helsinki.

Helsinki is first and foremost a modern city—there isn’t really an old town or anything similar. Second, it is a city on water—there is water everywhere, ferries, and sea gulls; you get that smell in the air and you know you are near water. To me, Helsinki really reminded me of Hamburg (where I spent one year of my undergraduate studies in 1999-2000)—same architectural style, same level of modernity, same weather, quite expensive, bound by water…The Finnish language we all know is very different from any other Western European language. But I personally had no idea exactly how different it was, until I visited. The word for “center” as in city center sounds similar in many languages: centre in English, centre in French, Zentrum in German, centro in Spanish, център (pronounced tsentar) in Bulgarian… well, in Finnish, the word is keskus. The word restaurant, also quite international and similar in most European languages is ravintola. So, most certainly, no matter how many languages you know, you most probably will not be able to understand a single word when spoken to in Finnish :-).

Well, I could start talking about Finns and their relationship to alcohol, tell you how expensive it is, etc. etc. Instead, I will just tell you this story… took place on my flights to and from Helsinki; I think it will illustrate what I want to share very well. So, I am sitting on the flight to Helsinki from Frankfurt (after barely making my connection and running across most of Frankfurt airport, after my flight from Sofia departed with a two hour delay). Anyway, the time comes for food and beverages to be served. On my previous flight (Sofia to Frankfurt), I saw people ordering a variety of things to drink—from mineral water, to Coke, to beer. Well, on this flight, every single person (and I really do not exaggerate) except me ordered red wine (and still mineral water). I thought, “Man, Finns must really like red wine.” Then I remembered how expensive alcohol is supposed to be and it made sense. Well, that was one thing. On the flight back however (Helsinki to Muenchen), we first start the same routine with the beverages, everyone orders red wine… until we get to two men who are sitting across the aisle from me, and what do they order? Wine and ………beer. I couldn’t believe it!! Alcohol could be expensive, you might want to drink as much as you can to offset the price of your ticket, binge-drink etc. but mixing wine with beer just seems like too much. So, so much about Finns and alcohol.

And with that I will leave you for now. Pictures coming soon…