Unlike No Other Place: Finland (Helsinki, Part 1)

The Finns are quite possibly the nicest and most welcoming people I have ever met. They treat almost like you were part of their family or a childhood friend; they were all so welcoming while I was there (in both Helsinki and Rovaniemi) that I actually felt ‘home’ in a sense. It was incredibly heart-warming and I immediately fell in love with both the country and it’s people.
While I have loved all the places I have visited on this trip, Finland has been the only place where I felt I could be happy to live. I don’t want to leave Australia, but if there were any other place I could choose to call my new home then Finland would have top the list.

Alas, it pains me so much to be living so far away. I wish I lived closer to Finland because I know I would definitely visit the country as often as I could.

What attracts me to Finland is its uniqueness, particularly against the Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden and Denmark). What most people don’t know (including myself before I read about it) is that although Finland is often classified as being part of Scandinavia, it actually isn’t, the correct term that it is part of is the Nordic Countries.
Yet you can tell it really isn’t part of Scandinavia – it’s culture and lifestyle (and language) is so much different from Norway, Denmark and Sweden (although, it perhaps shares some similarities with Sweden since they border with each other). I found Norway, Denmark and Sweden were very similar in their culture, and their language is uncanny to each other (in fact the Norwegians can understand both the Swedes and the Danes); and this could be perhaps to them being under the same governing rule many years ago. Finland is really different – the language (COMPLETELY different), the people, the architecture, the designs, the lifestyle, the culture, etc, it’s all original – and I think perhaps this is why I fell in love with it, because of it’s originality and uniqueness. It’s not Scandinavian, it’s Finnish.

So here’s how I tried to embrace the Finnish life and culture with what Helsinki had to offer:

Thursday – Kiasma (Museum of Contemporary Art)

First stop was Kiasma (Museum of Contemporary Art), I originally went there because I had read about an exhibition that was featured there by Mika Taanila called “Time Machines” which was an exhibition created with beautiful videos and challenges the art stemmed from technology. However, while I enjoyed visiting this exhibition, Kiasma offered so much more. The other exhibition they were showcasing was by Erkki Kurenniemi called “Towards 2048” – this was incredibly cool, again it’s exposure of technological innovations, but through music instead of film. Erkki is Finnish and has designed and built many electronic instruments since the 1960s. Some of the inventions I had never seen before, and some of them exposed sounds that were incredibly eerie and had tremendous affect on your mind. There was on particular invention that really struck me – it was a chair with speakers on either side of the head-rest; the person sitting in the chair then had to connect wires to their head, then magic would happen because the wires measured the frequencies coming from the person’s brain and it would convert them into music – hence the aim was that whatever you were feeling, this machine would turn it into music. Unfortunately I didn’t get to test it because the machine was slightly broken, but I did read next to it that there are still inventions being tested today to create something similar.

The other exhibition I really loved was Kiasma Hits: it was some of the best art from over the 15 years the museum has been open. Majority of the artwork is themed around the digital age, which I absolutely loved since I am studying Communication & Media studies, so all this stuff interests me greatly. I loved all the Kiasma Hits collection, but there were a couple that really stood out and affected me. The first was by an artist who sadly I can’t remember the name of – I walked into this room that was empty and just had white blank walls, after reading the description it stated that there were spots in the wall which would pick up the body temperature when you touched it, and in response the wall would reverberate this heat back to the person touching it. It was a really fun experience, and I spent a good amount of time stroking the wall in all different places to find these ‘spots’ and the feeling you get what heat is reverberated back to you, I just can’t describe, it sort of feels like magic really. Speaking of ‘magic’, the second artwork I really loved was by Markus Kåhre; it actually freaked me out when I first saw it. Again I had walked into a room, a very small room this time, which was dark at first but as I turned the corner I saw a dimly lit study space with a desk, chair, and lamp with a mirror facing it. At first I wasn’t going to go any further because I thought it was just a room showing a study space; however then the thought occurred to me perhaps the mirror would reflect something different if I went closer. It reflected the desk, chair, and lamp, but what it didn’t reflect was myself! I was completely freaked out, expecting to see my own reflection and to then see nothing. Afterwards there was a sign outside asking “how would you feel if you were invisible” and from my experience, it feels absolutely horrible, you feel like nothing, just completely non-existent to everything else.
Alas, what I loved so much about the whole museum was that it affected your mind in ways you weren’t expecting, and you leave the museum thinking about new things or old things in a new perspective. The whole museum really was mind-altering.

Arkadia Bookshop

This was quite possibly one of the COOLEST bookstores I have ever visited. When I first walked in there was a reading area and the reception, and the man was incredibly nice and told me to explore all the nooks and crannies of the whole shop. Downstairs is really where the store gets its ‘cool’ vibe. As I walked through the numerous books on shelves and in boxes covering all topics in all different languages, I came to a room which had artwork and a chalkboard, I discovered this was where they had events like readings, debates, concerts, etc. Continuing to walk through the doors into new rooms, I came to the end, which was the chapel room – they had left wine and water on the table that you were welcome to help yourself to. The rest of the store had many different reading areas, games to play such as table soccer, and just incredible amounts of books that you were welcomed to simply read or buy if you chose to. Some of them were new books, others were old with their creased spines indicating just how much the book had been read over the years. I could spend days in here just reading and simply loving being surrounded by all the different books.

Kanna’s

This restaurant has been around since 1939 – traditionally it was a sailor’s ‘hangout’, where the sailors would come to eat big portions of hearty meals and seafood while enjoying a pint of some alcoholic beverage (and I am told it was also where they could come to pick up a new sailor wife, or perhaps just a one night fling). In my Helsinki map made by locals, their description of Kanna’s stated “If you want to enjoy big portions of traditional Finnish food and feel like a hardworking sailor from back in the day, Kanna’s is well worth a visit”. They were not lying about the portions, after my meal here I felt like I didn’t need to eat for the rest of my holiday.

I was a little greedy and chose to have an entrée as well as a main, however this was solely because they had reindeer but only as an entrée. I really wanted to try reindeer, and it is eaten regularly by the Finns (particularly in the north in the Lapland region, but I’m not sure if it is eaten often in Helsinki except by tourists like me). Anyways my entrée was lightly salted reindeer marinated with jaloviina and thyme and served with ligon berry vinaigrette (I absolutely love ligon berries since coming to Scandinavia, they eat it with a lot of meals and it tastes so good!) and horseradish cream. I must admit I wasn’t blown away with the taste of reindeer, but it was tasty nonetheless. I think perhaps it could be related to venison as a similar cut of meat, it was very tender and had no fat (which I loved because I hate fatty cuts of meat), but it was quite thin slices. Overall it was good, but it’s not like I’ll be craving to have reindeer again once I’m back home, to be honest I’ll be more excited about having a good slice of roast beef once I’m back home.

Afterwards for my main, I had a meal called “Finnish way of living” – I immediately chose the dish specifically for its title, but the food was amazing as well. It was fillets of Baltic herring fried in butter and filled with onion and dill, and it was served with mashed potatoes, beetroot and pickled gherkins. When I received this meal I realised they weren’t lying when they said ‘big portions’. It was huge! Usually whenever I order fish I generally only get two fillets, but these guys gave me four! I struggled to finish the meal, but I did my best and only left some remainders on my plate. I quite enjoyed mixing it with the pickled gherkins, but not so much with beetroot. That’s still a vegetable I’m trying to gradually love, but it’s taking a while for my taste buds to agree.

Overall Kanna’s was a really nice treat; they offer good food for a relatively cheap price especially considering the portion sizes you receive. It isn’t fancy, but that doesn’t matter because you can still see glimpses of the old sailor hangout from the 1940s. Furthermore there was some quirkiness to the place too, for example the sign for the toilets. There were two doors opposite each other and a sign in the middle, which stated “Men to the left, because women are always right” – it gave me a good giggle and topped off the great experience I had at Kanna’s.

- See more about Finland in upcoming posts -