After one very long 8 hour flight to Zurich followed by another three hour flight to Helsinki we arrived safely but tired. As you may already know, we treated ourselves to bowls of pea puree soup with potato krustini (approximately the size of a US quarter) A perfect beginning to our stay in Helsinki.
Today was a beautiful weather day and we spent much of it exploring different areas of Helsinki by tram. We walked along a beautiful harbor area and saw the Russian embassy. Quite a place.
Helsinki is a good city for dogs. It appears that most neighborhoods have small wooded parks just for those guys. The dogs here appear to be very happy even if their owners never smile or say hello. I wonder when unfriendliness became a cultural trait here in Finland. Peter finds it perfectly understandable, after all why would you say hello to a perfect stranger.
Later in the afternoon we stopped for drinks and a snack at Stockmans, a department store complex. It was lovely. We sat outside and the sun was still very high in the sky. I believe I got a bit of a tan as I snacked on my Danish pastry with merlot. Our next stop was back down to the harbor for what we expected to be an outdoor jazz band concert. The band was either a community or high school band and beginners at that. We went into the restaurant next door for coffee so we couldn’t & wouldn’t hear the music.
We spent the evening back at our hostel where we rested our feet and observed an intercultural spat at the hostel cafe. Finn’s can be very tempermental. Not sure who the others were but there appeared to be intermarital tensions happening within the second group–possibly Middle Eastern backgrounds. In any case, it appeared that things calmed down once the diners began to drink shots of something or other.
We leave tomorrow, Wednesday at shortly after noon for Petrozavodsk and will meet up with another couple from Toronto at the airport here. Fortunately the flight to Russia is only a little more than two hours.
Dobry vecher (Good evening)
