This morning I tried to wake up a little early so that I could do some more sea-watching from the boat before we made landfall. We were losing an hour so I spent waaaaaay too long trying to figure out when that meant I should set my alarm for and finally settled on the wrong time only to wake up naturally anyway. I tried to walk into breakfast, which I saw everybody else just casually doing, but was told my ticket didn’t include breakfast. I continue to have no idea what kind of ticket I booked – having finished the ferry ride hasn’t offered any clarity. Instead I sat and sea-watched from indoors for a while before heading up to the roof deck to see our final approach into the Helsinki harbor. What had started as a completely clear day was fully overcast by the time we made our approach. It was freezing up there and I was underdressed, but I’m a trooper when it comes to the wind because…boats are fun!
As soon as we disembarked and went through “customs” (which was, in essence, a crowd of people rushing for the door that only people of color were getting pulled out of to be checked…oy) I wandering to the sidewalk and waited for the wrong tram/streetcar before realizing my mistake and heading to the correct stop a few blocks away. Streetcars are my absolute favorite so I wanted to make the most of my ride, but unfortunately I had no idea how to buy tickets, nor did I have any Euros. The resulting confusion ended with the kind but officious driver allowing me to ride for free. I made it to my hotel, which appeared on the map to be a bit of a distance from the tram stop but was actually only two blocks away (this is a continuing theme in Helsinki) and dropped my things off at the hotel. it was about 10:45am and my room was not going to be ready until three, which was fine except that because of the terrible internet connection I hadn’t gotten to do any Helsinki research on the boat. I had no idea where to go or what to do or what to even plan to do. My only recourse was to quickly google…something…while in the hotel lobby so I located a design museum that seemed near-isn and headed out.
It turns out that Helsinki is teeny tiny, and everything that appears far away on the map is, at a maximum, a 25 minute walk. The design museum that seemed “maybe” nearby was around the corner. I had idly thought maybe I’d see a little bit of the city on the way there but the only city I saw was the block beyond it because I actually missed it the first time around – it came up so quickly and I was thinking about coffee. The museum had been open for a mere nine minutes when I made my way inside but I killed some time at the cafe with a latte and a fresh-out-of-the-over cinnamon bun. The museum, by the way, was really cool, although their permanent collection was sort of hilarious. It was staples of Finnish furniture and design from the last century, but a lot of it was a little rough around the edges. It was like they got the thrift store version of most of the chairs, chipped wood and peeling paint included. There was, however, some interesting deco stuff, a few fun modernist pieces, and the most hilarious thing of all – a display dedicated to the most famous of Finnish design pieces, the video game Angry Birds.
The special exhibit was actually pretty special – it was a whole floor dedicated to the designs and process of Eero Aarnio. You’ll definite recognize his work (the original hanging ball chair, for example), but the exhibit also had roomba-style displays that moved around the room without bumping into you and it was sort of mayhem but also pretty cool.
The final exhibit was a vague celebration of the history of Finland through design that’s theme seemed to be “we’re not Swedish, we’re not Russian, we’re better than all that.” It was a little vague, but one area that it really shined in was it showing off some of Finland’s famous glassworking. Some pictures (with captions if you scroll over them):
I saw online that Helsinki’s “design district” is right by the museum so I strolled a round a bit – first through a park in the wrong direction that was pretty but didn’t lead me anywhere, then through some of the design district side streets and the main drag. I should probably do that loop in a more organized way tomorrow, but I looked in a couple of interesting stores, passed a while slew of old radio and audio equipment resellers (why?) and finally landed at a cute little cafe that had no menu in English but only had one salad and one panini option anyway. The owner translated the ingredients for me and I ordered the salad and a hot chocolate for after. The I sat and pretended to read a travel magazine that was laying around in Finnish. Let me tell you, it’s not an easy language to decipher. I might as well have been reading in a different alphabet. Why is every single word so long? And why are there so many vowels? It’s chaos! Also, it’s nearly impossible to read the street signs here because every street’s name is an unfathomable combination of letters that’s roughly 700 syllables long. Despite this, however, I had a lovely lunch and by the time I was finished it was just about 3pm, when my room was going to be ready. I headed back to the hotel, assuming it would take a little while to get there, only to find that it was directly around the corner. Oh, Helsinki.
At the hotel I did some more googling and decided to visit a sauna. There is one in particular that’s also an indoor public pool and switches off days for men and women since in Finland people generally sauna in the nude. I’m always looking for a chance to swim, so it sounded like the place for me. It’s called Yrjönkadun Uimahalli, which I never want to have to say or spell again, and it turned out that, like all things, that it’s only a few blocks from my hotel. It’s also one of the more interesting saunas because it’s an old deco building – it’s the first indoor pool in Helsinki – and was recently refurbished. I had initially thought I’d want to do the sauna thing tomorrow, but tomorrow is not a women’s day so I decided I’d better get on it. Before heading there I walked down the main neoclassical drag, Esplanadi, and took some pictures before it got too dark. I also stopped into a giant bookstore just out of curiosity to see what they were reading. A lot of what they’re reading, as it turns out, is in English – the store had almost as many books in English as in Finnish and they were intermixed in many of the displays. A truly bilingual country at this point.
After getting my fill, I headed off into the great unknown of Finnish sauna-ing!
A lot of guide books/sites/advice made a big deal out of the fact that for nervous foreigners, Yrjönkadun now allows you to swim with a bathing suit – that used to also be banned. I think the more interesting things is that they let you swim in the pool without one. I don’t have a bathing suit with me so this bizarre public swimming in the nude ritual was the only thing keeping me in the swim game. I figured it’d be sort of like the Korean spa, and it basically was. Middle aged women walking around naked are sort of the same in any culture. Because I was feeling fancy I rented one of the “cabins” on the second floor which gives you access to three additional saunas that the main area doesn’t have. This includes a wood sauna and steam sauna, and for the additional price (14 Euros total) you get two hours to use the facility, a little curtained off section with a bed, hooks, hangers, and locking drawer, a towel, a bathrobe, and a weird piece of paper that you sit on in the sauna and gets destroyed almost immediately because saunas are where people sweat and paper is…paper. Traditionally Finns like to do a lot of sauna-ing and then swimming in cold water. I went into the wood burning sauna, then did some laps in the pool, then did the steam sauna followed by a brief sting in the regular sauna and some more laps in the pool. Then I laid down for a few minutes and it was just about time to go. All in all a very pleasant and relaxing experience. Obviously I didn’t take any photos in there, but the phone thing wasn’t as heavily policed as I expected. Very interesting.
I took a long way back so that I could go into a Marimekko because…I’m in Finland. The nearest one turned out to be in a mall so I can confirm once again that malls are all the same. Then, after returning to my hotel and changing, I set asked the front desk for some dinner suggestions and walked around until I found one that didn’t have a confusing lack of directions concerning how to get a table and order. On the way I had a bizarre thing happen – a drunk possible teenage idiot threw an open container of ranch dressing at me. It just missed so I was fine, but a little confused. What kind of plan is that? Good thing I was feeling so zen from my sauna!
I got some pizza and now I’m back and heading to bed. Till tomorrow!
Lila is Traveling 