Helsinki (Finland)
05 AUG - 07 AUG
Something that I noticed in Helsinki was that come 10pm the number or people that were monumentally trashed and wondering the streets increased exponentially. I didn't quite understand that little oddity until it actually dawned upon me until one evening whilst I was making my way back to Suomenlinna island, it was a little after 11pm. I was sitting in the ferry terminal having missed the last ferry back by a manner of minutes. Sitting in the terminal for about 5 mins a tall lanky Finn stumbles around one side, pointing at who knows what, talking to the images in his mind. This, fortunately or unfortunately is the type of person I tend to attract, for better or worse I knew that he'd want to strike up a conversation the moment he located the door (it took a while for him to work that out). I'm sitting in one corner of the small terminal, this guy sits diagonally across from me having an animated conversation with the ticket booth. He then rips out a packet of cold frankfurts and battles with the pack for about 2-3 mins. Sitting there, watching him, somehow I felt a little hungry and wondered if he'd offer me one, and the pissed bastard does. He gestures in that over animated drunken way like 'Hey mate,come and get it'. I politely refuse but find it strange that he offered. At the point I knew that once he'd 'sighted' me that a conversation would ensue, whatever the hell that was going to involve. I discover that Niko doesn't know a lot of English, conversely I don't know a hell of a lot of Finnish. He asks me where I'm from and I tell him I'm Australian, then out of left field in perfect English Niko rips out this line, 'What do you call an Australian taxi?'...'I don't know Niko, what?'...'A kangaroo!'. Niko LOVES IT! He literally LOVES his own joke and starts up into hysterical fits of laughter. He laughs so hard that an aneurysm would have been on the cards and because of that, I start up into fits of laughter, it's freakin' contagious because I think that line was the only perfectly constructive line of English that he either knows or could have ripped out from his inebriated mind at that moment.
Catching the ferry home - view to Helsinki
Market Square - Helsinki - Finland
Fast forward a couple of days later and I'm waiting for the line 6 tram down to Helsinki west harbour where I was going to jump Tallink Express ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn. The 3B tram pulls up in front of me and there in the tram I see a familiar yellow vest, beaten hat and weathered face of Niko. I yell out to the guy, 'Hey Niko!', he looks at me in that manner that you normally reserve for occasions when you see a strange Spanish/Uruguayan/Serbian or whatever the hell I am, call your name out, he gives me that 'Who the f*** are you look'. Niko, at 11am on this morning is still trashed and I believe that to be his perpetual state. The tram pulls away from the stop and I give Niko a Brett Holman for his troubles, for the unlearned this is either one or two thumbs up, aka Brett Holman that plays football for Australia, (well, apparently he plays football, I'm still a disbeliever). All I could think at that point was 'Niko, you're still trashed bro!'.
Centre of Helsinki - Hakaniemi
Then there's Petteri, the morning that I wake up and start packing my gear for Tallinn good 'ole Petteri hands me a Koff which is a Finnish beer. It's 9am Petteri, what's you're problem mate, are you Australian or something? Petteri has also been drinking for most of the night, he's got a few days off from his excavation job and is getting trashed, again. I met Petteri a few nights earlier also, his English is equivalent to that of Niko. We try and converse but we struggle badly. For a man that was hammered however he comes up with the ingenious notion of calling his wife at 1am to translate the conversation. Obviously she thinks this is a brilliant idea and I can hear the anger and frustration in her voice, and yet she persists for somewhere close to 10 mins, allowing a drunk Petteri to get to know me a little better. From what I could figure Petteri does excavation work and travels down from his hometown of Kuopio in the north to work in Helsinki, he does three weeks stints om and then heads home for a week, or something along those lines. He's a nice guy, but ranks as one in a list of hammered Finns that I witness in the days that I was there...which brings me to the original point...Supermarkets sell cheap alcohol readily and freely at prices significantly cheaper than one would pay for them in a bar. The issue is that they stop selling alcohol relatively early, I think somewhere close to 7pm or thereabouts, which means that you get quite a few hammered Finns wondering the streets once their golden purchases have taken affect. The devils hours between 7pm and midnight are something to behold.
Freestyler - rock the microphone, straight from the top of his dome
Helsinki streetscape
On the back of Henry's Pub we have Robert's Coffee...now all we need is Julie's tobacconist and we're sorted!
Is this gull giving me a 'Whatchu talkin' about Willis' look...
This brings me to my last couple of days in Helsinki, which aside from meeting amusing pissheads was a little tame but not too bad never the less. I spent most days cruising around the city just checking it out, doing my own little bit of discovery but nothing too extravagent. As per last entry, it's a nice place, no doubt. Not somewhere that I'd want to stay for any real extended period of time, well not solo in any case, but a nice enough place to visit. Typically Nordic, typically conservative and chilled in that restrained Scandanavian manner. That's a tough one to explain, it's chilled, liberal in some ways but still conservative in others. You get the feeling that not too much would phase the Finns but if you pushed them to their breaking point then you'd have a massacre on your hands. Thankfully I didn't irritate too many enough to see an actual trigger on the 'flipout'.
Not the most inspiring photo, I know...but here's the deal, that little courtyard is also tacked onto Helsinki's best brewery, and just behind that is the dock where I'd catch the ferry to the city centre...thankfully this was the view from my room, jump out the window and make it to the brewery in 10 seconds!
On the way out, leaving Helsinki behind and out into the Baltic sea
