The train was supposed to get into Helsinki at 8:30 or so, but after the previous trip I expected there'd be some delays. It was not the case! I woke up at 7:45 expecting to be about halfway there. The guy I shared the cabin with noticed I was awake and told me "15 minutes... Helsinki!" It was a big shock. I hurriedly got my stuff packed up into my bag and put on all my clothes. It was true; we were in the inner suburbs of Helsinki. I could even see the big white cathedralbuilding that I'd visited on my first day.
My bag is packed so I'm watching the suburbs of Helsinki move past. There is an amusement park that can be seen. (rollercoaster on left, ferris wheel to the right).
We landed in Helsinki. This evening I was heading back to Manchester so I decided to work out how I would get back to the airport. When I arrived the bus dropped me off at the train station, so I should be able to catch it here again to go back. A guy at the information booth who spoke english "just a little" gave me a brochure for each of the two airport busses. The brochures had a map showing where the stop was in relation to the train station. I went and found them because I hate feeling lost at the same time as being late for somewhere.
I wasn't really sure what I would do in Helsinki for this day. I had a brochure on Art-Nouveau architecture around Helsinki. Apparently Helsinki has a good selection of that stuff. But first I wanted to find the sandwich store Subway to get some food. Unfortunately I soon realised that it was Sunday, and so most of the shops were closed until 10 or 11am. It was about 8:30.
Somehow, after wandering around for a while it eventually became 10am and I got in to Subway. I wasn't sure how I would go explaining which pieces of salad I wanted on my sandwich. They probably have their own names for most. I told her that I only speak english, and sorry about that. She said that was very good because she hardly speaks Suomi and is much more confident with english. She is from Estonia. I am very impressed by the amount of languages that people in Europe are able to speak. This lady must have spoken at least three quite competently.
Somewhere in this foreign land I'm hoping to find a tasty sandwich.
No sandwich here. The ground is very ice-y on every street in Finland. Except one street that has no ice at all for some reason. It's usually okay to walk on, because they put these small rocks down. But sometimes there'll be a patch that is just smooth ice which can make you slip a bit.
After my sandwich I walked a tiny section of the architecture walk.
This building has carved figures from or inspired from Finnish mythology.
One of the buildings on the list was the tourist information place (it happened to be in a nice building). I went in and asked about the ferry to the big sea fortress they have here (it's supposed to be one of the best sea forts ever constructed). I was expecting that I wouldn't have enough time to see it and that it'd be expensive since I heard it involved a ferry trip. But the lady told me the ferry was only 4 euros and that I should have enough time to see it in a couple hours. The ferry could be seen from the window and she pointed it out to me.
Unfortunately the next ferry was leaving in 2 minutes. I couldn't really make that. So I walked a little further along the architecture trail. Along the way I found the art gallery, called the Ateneum. It was free, so I had a little look inside. They had some nice paintings by Finnish artists which was a perspective I'd not really seen before. There were lots of depictions of Finnish scenery, and some of industrialisation, and worker uprisings. They also had a Van Gogh painting (the first van gogh ever acquired by a gallery) and another by the famous artist who moved to Tahiti because he was disgruntled with his society (forgot his name).
The ferry runs every hour. I had originally planned to take the one leaving one hour after the one I missed, but I enjoyed the gallery so I spent some extra time and took the one two hours later.
The ferry ride was amazing. The harbour is mostly ice. The path taken by the ferry has cut a route through the thick ice, but there are still lots of chunks of it floating around that the ferry has to ride over. I thought that this experience alone was worth the 4 euro price. I took a few pictures but they didn't capture the mood properly. The motion of cutting through the ice couldn't be captured. So I took a few videos. This is the first time I've taken videos with my camera and I wasn't sure how it would affect the batteries, so I jerked the camera around a lot trying to capture as much as possible. Next time I'll refine my video technique!
This duck thinks it is a great day for a swim. I disagree.
The other side.
I think the videos came out very well for a cheap camera.
The fort (Sveaborg, but I think the Finnish have a different name for it) is on an island. There are actually a few islands very close to each other with bridges between them. There are a lot of buildings on the islands for military things and for where they lived (people still live there). I spent a while wandering around.
These houses were built by traders, I think. People who provided a place to get food etc to the military people on the island.
In this park someone had built a kind of igloo.
Icicles.
An old submarine. I think the sign said that this was built by the Finnish and then some German people were interested in it to get some ideas for their submarines which they later became famous for.
Pretty deep snow! (later I saw another sign like this, and it was only a few feet high ):
Nice view of the city. There is a building on the right which looks very intriguing and I'm regretting that I didn't see it. It looks similar to the Empire State Building in shape, except it has a much larger spike on the top.
This guy thought it'd be a great idea to slide down this very steep hill which ended with the ice of the sea. From the top, the hill drops so steeply that you can't see what is over the side of the hill. Also I think it would be difficult not to gain a lot of speed before hitting the ice at the bottom. I really thought he was about to die! So I took a picture. All his friends were freaking out too. He managed to stop himself, and lives another day.
These people walked down to the ice where one of them put on ice skates. They then walked back along the ice to the mainland and the third one skated back.
A nice American took this photo for me. The cannons are massive.
Some people on parachutes with motors attached to the back. By applying more speed to the motor they can gain height. They can also steer.
This path up to the top of the wall looks very slippery. It's a bit narrow and is covered in snow. The drop to the left is about 4-5 metres. At the base of this, I read a sign from the back since it was slightly transparent. It said "on entry". I was confused. On entry.... what? I walked up and along the walls and then found that all the ways down were blocked by a low metal barricade. That led me to believe that it probably actually said "no entry". Whoops. Nit views from the top though.
The drop from the wall is really precarious. I almost think that walking along here shouldn't be allowed.
I almost lost one of my gloves. But I found it again right where I'd left it. Yay!
Crazy sign.
The dock.
My water is starting to freeze. There is only a tiny line of text on the back saying 'carbonated water'. I didn't notice until after I'd bought it. Damn.
Snowflakes! This is part of my arm. It was snowing very very lightly (you could only occasionally see tiny flecks floating through the air). Very cool that these snowflakes stayed in their snowflake form.
I spent 2 or 3 hours wandering around this old fortress. A lot of the buildings were closed because they were buried in snow, but it was a unique way to see it. I caught the ferry back and took a few more videos.
These dogs came back with us on the ferry. They were freezing! There are more dogs stuffed into the wheeled bag. The black dog is shaved to its skin. Its legs were shaking from the cold :(
I was very hungry so I went to find a pizza store. I found one that was buffet pizza. But it looked a bit average. So I went to the store next door and ordered a 'normal' sized margeritta. I was not sure where this pizza was going to come from. The shop was very small and he didn't seem to have any ingredients lying around. It turned out that he took the vegetables out from his fridge and cut them up individually just for my pizza (after rolling the dough specially). It was a very good pizza. Glad I didn't go to the buffet restaurant.
This pizza is actually about 13-14 inches. Excellent.
Ice skating rink outside the railway station.
-10 today. Quite a warm one.
I couldn't really think of anything else I wanted to do with only an hour or so left so I decided to head to the airport. I found the cheaper bus this day. I asked the driver if it stops at the international terminal as well, because I was tired and felt like asking trivial questions to reassure my tired self. He looked at me with a blank frustrated expression. He didn't seem to speak any english and was frustrated at people assuming that he should. Fair enough.
I got to the airport. I was a bit early, so I decided I'd try and work out some details of what would happen when I got back to England. I was a bit nervous because at the point of arriving in Manchester, my plans ended. My plane was getting into Manchester at 10:15pm and from there I had no hostel or hotel reservations, or train or bus ticket back to Nottingham. Manchester is about 90km straight line from Nottingham.
I spent some time on my netbook using the free airport internet investigating possibilities. By the time it came that I should line up for check-in, I still didn't have any concrete plans. Just a few possibilities that I'd try and choose from when I landed.
I checked in and went through the check to see if I had any dangerous items. I forgot to take off my watch which made the metal detecting machine beep. So the security man gave me the pat down.
Customs stamped my passport to say I was leaving Finland (this didn't happen in England for some reason).
I got a window seat! I'm also at the emergency exit, so I had to familiarise myself with how to open the door. I thought it was neat.
The flight was quite tiring. I was very tired but couldn't get to sleep. We landed, and I got back through customs. I was a bit worried about getting back through. But while in Finland I noticed that when I first got into England, they stamped it saying that I'm allowed entry into the UK for 6 months! Yay.
Then I had to face the problem of what I was doing now. Here are my choices: catch a late train to Nottingham that involves getting off the train in Sheffield at midnight and then catching the next train from Sheffield to Nottingham at 5am or so (this is the only train option and there are no busses). So I would need to pass through the night and catch something the next day. Options: pay for an airport hotel at 85 pounds for the night; catch a train into Manchester, find a hostel somehow and then get a bed for 20-30 pounds; or sleep in the airport. For the next day, the transport options are: catch the early 3 hour train back at 5am, or the cheaper 4 hour bus at 8:30pm.
After investigating the hotel (hearing that it'd be 85 pounds), I decided to look at the terminal which other travellers had said was good for sleeping in. The journey to Manchester to find a hostel seemed way too much effort for this time at night, and the hotel was way too expensive, unless an extreme need for it came up. Having a 5 hour stop over at Sheffield train station was identical to a stopover in the airport, except I thought the airport would be safer. The chairs in the terminal seemed reasonable. I tested it out by lying down for a bit. I felt like I could fall asleep, so I went for it.
Walking to the terminal.
This is the view from my chair where I spent the night.
Me, a little unsure of this prospect.
I laid on the chair over top of my bag so that hopefully no one could steal it. It wasn't that comfortable. At 1am I was woken up by a police lady. I think she must have been trying to get me up for quite a while. I'm a deep sleeper. She just wanted to know where I was headed to and where I'd come from etc. She was happy with my responses and thanked me for helping her out. She was nice. I think there is a loose policy where it's okay to sleep in the airport if you're a traveller stuck between modes of transport, but it's not okay if you're a homeless person because that's outside the purpose of the building. During the night another traveller arrived on a chair nearby. He was sleeping on his suitcase.
At one point I woke up and saw three people streaking through the airport. I don't know if it was a dream or real. My position was accurate. Every detail of the terminal was accurate, and the route where they ran was logical. Very strange.
A few times I had to wake up and change the side that I was sleeping on, but overall I slept quite solidly. I woke up at about 4am when the terminal started to be populated by people. After waking up once or twice and despite the growing crowd beside me, I persisted and got myself back to sleep. I was getting fairly casual about it. Eventually I got up at about 4:30.
I was feeling quite tired this morning so I had a slow start. I was also enjoying the comfort of the hotel, and thought that since I paid some good money for it, I should get some good value from it with a good sleep-in etc. I have spent the last month in budget accommodation and nice, but spartan university accommodation. So this was a welcome dose of comfort.
The view in the morning.
Eventually I got out there. I was interesting in going on this trip organised by some people where you ride around on snowmobiles and going through the forest and other places. But the day before, I had seen that it seemed to have been cancelled for today. The lady at reception kindly called them to ask what the full story is. It was cancelled, but I was able to hire a snowmobile and drive around on it myself. That sounded pretty cool.
I went down there and they told me that the the snowmobile hire happens from their other office in the next town which is 5km away. Damn. I was also interested in trying skiing. So, before getting over to the other town (the other town is away from the mountain, by a lake. This town is at the base of the main skiing mountain) I went to the ski hire place. However, since I had checked out of the hotel I had my bag with me. I needed a locker, but all the lockers were very small so my bag would not fit in. They said they didn't have any bigger ones, so there really wasn't any way I could do the skiing. A bit disappointing! Still, it was a bit late in the day and I wasn't really sure that I wanted to spend my last time in the arctic by falling into the snow lots. I think it would be difficult for me to learn to ski in such a short time. I would like to come back here someday with more time, because I think the skiing could be really fun and the mountain looked really impressive.
There was another place in the town that rented snowmobiles. I made a little inquiry, but they were 35 euros or so, plus cost of petrol. You also had to fill it up with petrol before you came back. I really didn't feel like messing around with that in a place where I don't speak the language. Plus, paying for petrol is a depressing experience which I was enjoying having an absense from.
So now I decided to head to the next town with the snowmobiles. Earlier, when I had asked the guy about the snowmobiles he said that there is a bus that goes there, but that he has no idea what times it runs. He also said it's not really within walking distance. But I decided I'd try the walking.
Making my way out of the little village.
It might sound like a risky thing to walk the long way to the other town when the guy said I probably shouldn't. But there is a main road ride next to the path with cars going by every 30 seconds or so. Also, I think I would get just as cold if I was skiing. The main thing that was concerning me was that I wasn't entirely sure I was on the right road. Most of the signs have ice covering a lot of the words.
After travelling for a little way I had to step off the side, away from the road, to use the outback bathroom. I walked a little way along a path through the thick snow that had been compressed by other walkers. From there I decided to step off that a little bit. As soon as I did, I fell into the snow up to my waist. It was a bit of a shock and I was slightly stuck in the snow. I wasn't sure if wriggling might cause me to fall more into it and then become submerged (I don't understand snow at all). I managed to get myself out and back onto the compressed snow. I had lots of bits of snow all over me and quite a bit in the opening to my shoes. I had to get it off or else, when it melted, due to body heat, it would turn to water and get me wet which might make me very cold. I took my gloves off so that I could better do that. I spent a fair while making sure I got it all out. After that I realised that after my bare hands had been wiping away the snow for so long, they were now very numb and cold. I was getting a bit worried by all this. I had been walking for a while and wasn't sure if I was on my way to the intended town, or heading towards endless wilderness. I breathed warm air onto my hands for a bit which didn't do much and then I put my gloves back on. After about 10 minutes of nervous wriggling of my fingers my hands stopped feeling like ice and started feeling very warm. Hooray I was going to be alright!
The hole where I fell in. It's deeper than it looks! While my hands were freezing I had enough time to take a picture.
I kept walking a bit more and finally found the town. Yay!
This guy has a sled. The town is just a little beyond the bridge.
The town had a souveneir shop. I went in there to warm up a bit. Then I went to find 'Yllas Adventure' where they do the snowmobiling etc. When I got there, I was feeling not so sure about doing snowmobiling by myself. I didn't really feel in the mood to learn to drive a new vehicle. It was quite expensive at 45 euros for just one hour. I decided to do some ice skating on the lake instead, since I know I can ice skate, and it was cheaper. I will definitely have to go back sometime and do the snowmobiling with an experienced person and a bunch of other people. It would have been really good.
Ice skating was quite different to how I imagined. The ice was much more rough than what I'm used to. I think they hadn't cleaned up the top layer very recently, so some bits of snow had melted onto the top which caused some rough and bumpy bits which made it a bit harzardous to skate in some sections. Although some other sections were very smooth and I could get some speed up. Also, the ice skates were the kind that are strapped to the bottom of ordinary walking boots, so they didn't clamp my ankle into a tight position like I am used to. At first it was quite difficult, but I got more used to it. When I asked about the safety of the lake with regards to cracking, they told me that the lake is frozen right to the bottom! It's a big lake,too. So, that's a lot of freezing.
You skate around a track rather than a big open area.
Big crack in the ice. I was told that because it has frozen so deeply into the lake, the changing sizes of the water when frozen has caused these big cracks to appear. They're going to pour water into them sometime to try and fill them up. They were a hazard. You have to skate over them to make sure you don't get stuck and trip.
After a while I stopped skating and contemplated what to do next (I had gone the whole skating time without falling over, except about 20 metres from the end where my skate cracked into a soft bit of ice and sent me tumbling a few metres). It was becoming late afternoon and my train was leaving at 6:40pm. I wanted to get some food before I caught the bus to the train station. The people in this town said that the bus does stop in this town, but they didn't sound quite as sure of the location of pick-up compared to the lady at reception back in the hotel. Also, there would probably be other travellers waiting at the hotel for the bus, so I thought I would be more certain of catching it if I was there. I really didn't want to miss the bus. So I decided to walk back to the hotel. It was quite a nice walk the first time, allowing me to see some forest, and I felt more confident now, knowing that it is the right road. It is nice seeing some more natural forest rather than the little huts of the ski resort.
After I had just left the town, I saw some people scrambling out from the forest through the thick snow and onto the path. I caught up with them as they sat around getting all the snow off them. They were about 6 people from China. They had just got here, off the bus. The bus dropped them off on a road which bridges over this one (the bridge in the picture above with the sled rider). They had to clamber down the side of the hill formed by the bridge crossing, and then onto the path, and then they were told that their accommodation would be a short walk up the path away from the town in the direction I was heading in. They were quite friendly and talkative so I decided to walk with them. Early in our conversation, when they asked where I was going, I said 'Yllas Saaga' in a slight Finnish accent (due to realising that the Finnish won't know what I mean unless I say it properly), and I think they thought I was Finnish! That was the first thing I'd said. They seemed confused, thinking that I was a speaker of Suomi, so I assured them that I don't speak it at all, and then asked if they speak english. They did. They were all computer programmers in C, C++ and some scripting languages. They were in Finland for a company training trip, saying that there is some technology here in Finland which they are being trained on. After a while, they turned left down a road toward where they needed to go, and I kept going on the same road.
It was about 3:30pm at this time, and the sun goes down at about 4. So I think it was getting colder. But because I was walking quite fast so that I'd have enough time to eat and catch the bus, I was getting hot rather than cold.
I made it back to the ski resort at the base of the mountain and got a margherita pizza from Tikka Pizza. They gave me a free cup of tap water with it. Fantastic.
My hair is frozen. In this town, I think -18 was good weather, whereas it could get to -30 or lower after the sun went down.
Awesome log cabin.
After that I walked back to Saaga Hotel to wait for the bus that was coming at 5:05. Bus arrived on time and we had a pleasant journey to the train stop. When we arrived, the train was already there! After the previous day of it being 4 hours late, I wasn't expecting this. But there were employees on the train fixing up the rooms and sheets etc so we had about 40 minutes to wait until we could get onto the train. I waited inside the building at the train stop. I met a nice girl and her mother who I think were from Russia. We were both confused at what the announcements were saying over the speaker. They were saying that the train was going to be a little late, so we should wait inside.
I got on the train and found that I was sharing the room with an older man who'd finished a skiing trip. He could only speak a little bit of english. He was friendly but a little awkward. He kindly gave me some hot tea which tasted very sugary, and a plain roll. I took off a few layers of clothes and sorted my stuff out. Then I got into bed and fell asleep listening to Bill Frisell's Where in the World album. I was feeling very tired. I slept through the whole night without waking.
