Helsinki, Espoo, Nuuksio, and Everyman’s Right
In August I participated in the “Bright Student Conference” put on by the League of European Research Universities in Helsinki, Finland. The first person I met in Finland was on the bus from the airport, a student studying in the Netherlands who incidentally was born and raised in Ottawa, Canada (we identified several mutual acquaintances). In fact, the conference of EUROPEAN students had 4 Canadians, and 3 of them were from Ottawa!
My accommodation was a comfortable institutional cell in a Student Union run hostel. Despite the Spartan appearance, I was informed that it was equipped with a sauna, for which I was given a passcode on a small scrap of paper and told the times for the male and female use the following morning. Although I had not brought a bathing suit, I read that Fins like to bathe naked and there were separate times for guys and gals, so I decided to inquire discretely to the front desk attendant about how one goes about taking a Finnish sauna. She wasn’t very forthcoming (I imagine it was a stupid question), so I decided to wake up early and give it a shot. It was hard to find. I walked out of the hotel, around the block, into a construction zone where a workman took of his hat to me, through a door, down into a basement, along a corridor, and opened a large metal door using my passcode. Inside, I found two girls were getting undressed. I fiddled with my stuff for a minute to see what they did. They entered another room, naked. I followed suit, discretely observing for cues about behaviour. Inside was a thin strip of swimming pool, like a lane had been sold separately from an average sized pool. There was a row of showers along one side, and the sauna part of the sauna through a wooden door. I took a shower, did a couple of laps, took a shower again to wash off the chlorine, and then entered the sauna where I made a lot of steam and lay down on a person-shelf for a couple of minutes. When I was hot, I repeated the procedure until the time ran out. It was quite nice. The Fins have good ideas. Not always, though, in bathrooms they seem to make no distinction between the shower and the bathroom itself, meaning the floor gets entirely wet when you shower and your socks inevitably get soggy when go back in to brush your teeth or get something that was forgotten.
The conference itself was quite entertaining, with some guest lecturers on topics relating to “Europe as a Knowledge Society”. I learnt some things about reindeer herding in Lapland and its sustainability issues (it was used as an example in a wider discussion). I also ate part of one at a reception. We participated in work groups in which we were instructed to come up with answers to some questions over the course of periodic brainstorming hours. I had hoped the goal was to produce something a little more practically implementable rather than discuss values and history at a high theoretical level, but it was an interesting exercise nonetheless. Most of the participants were top research Masters students in various disciplines, so plenty to share and discuss (though some were trying constantly to prove their own intelligence by commenting and arguing on every little meaningless detail at rates of over 500 words per minute) and a good time after hours at various official receptions, and exploring the city and its bars (I had a cocktail for 8.50e, ouch!!). The last dinner was a traditional “sit-sit” dinner, which appeared at first to be a nice formal dinner in a very old building. After the alcohol started flowing, in a variety of sequential forms, a song-leader would stand up and propose a toast and lead everyone to sing songs, usually in Finish or Swedish and of questionable content. Then we, sitting in assigned seats male-female-male-female, would toast to the three members of the opposite sex around us, drain our glasses, and eat a few bites of our rapidly cooling meal before the next one. If we were especially unlucky, we would be forced to rock back and forth linking arms or even standing on the chairs while performing these activities. After not fewer than 5 hours, my collection of glassware still contained a judicious portion of my allotted beverages and we were being ushered towards the coat check. The Fin across from me, a big Viking of a lad who had been in undergraduate for the past 12 years and when asked of his speciality would reply “student life”, asked me with some consternation if I was aware that the establishment had no provision for take-away leftover drinks. I assured him with relief that I knew it was the case. A genuine touch of tragedy crossed his face, but only for a moment. He politely reconfirmed I had no further plans for my drinks, and proceeded to methodically drain each glass.
I had the opportunity to meet and talk to a lot of students and professors, but 2.5 days is not a lot to base a lasting relationship on. You never know who you will meet again, though – after the conference, Gio arrived and we went to stay at some friends I had met at the St. Petersburg summerschool earlier this year. They kindly offered us a room in their apartment, a bit outside of Helsinki in a place called Espoo (hahaha. Sorry, I should not laugh at the names of other people’s cities…) from which we made a camping expedition to Nuuksio, Helsinki’s local national park.
The landscape in Finland is very Canadian, which made me happy: glacially scraped rocks, northern vegetation, and lakes (though not too many hills). Finland also has “everyman’s right”, which states that you can camp wherever you want as long as you don’t bother anyone and stay 50 m away from them. What a magnificent idea! In the park itself, fire pits are prepared with benches and grills, some even with a sort of gazebo shelter, and split dry logs are provided free of charge as firewood. What luxury! We got rained on a fair amount, but pitched our tent, cooked some sausages, and when it really started to pour curled up in our sleeping bags to watch the end of the Star Trek Voyager series (less geeky than it sounds) on Gio’s little laptop. I melted my shoe a bit trying to dry it and now my foot doesn’t quite fit normally and I look like a hobo. An entirely satisfactory experience.
We returned to our friends’ place the next day, and took them out for dinner as a thank you (at a Tibetan restaurant – Finnish food is hard to find in Finland!). The last day, we crammed our belongings into a large locker in the central station and for 4 euro were free of it for the day. We went to an island fortress by ferry and explored the numerous tunnels in the fortifications using my LED headlamp, and taking strange X-Files pictures of each other in the strange lighting conditions afforded by the combination.
My conclusion about Helsinki was that it is a satisfactory and liveable city with a nice transportation system, but is not overly picturesque or remarkable. The old town is quite nice with the cathedral, main piazza, and old university buildings, and there are some tall ships moored down in the port. Anyway it was fun, and the furthest North we have been; just over the 60th parallel.