Finland

• Helsinki
  •  Good Deal from Finnair Airlines

1. Buffet Lunch in Yacht Club
2. Park in Helsinki
3. Kamppi Shopping Centre
4. Reindeer Meat
5. Finnair Bus to and from Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport
6. Shopping Streets
7. Sanoma House and Public Library
8. Cruise Around Suomenlinna Sea Fortress
9. Pizza Making at Home

FINLAND

Helsinki (20 – 24 May 2013)

Good Deal from Finnair Airlines

I had a very good deal from Finnair at this time. The planned destination was supposed to be just Belgium. I had a friend in Helsinki who asked me to stop by and visit him. I discovered that Finnair could have a transit time of 7 days in Helsinki before continuing my journey to Belgium.

I grabbed the deal for only SGD 1,083 which was so cheap! I stayed there for 7 days at my friend’s house which was too long just visiting a city. When I returned from Belgium to Singapore, I selected the stopover time for just 2 to 3 hrs.

I would just like you to take note that Finnair does offer such a service of a long stopover time in Helsinki. If you have not visited Helsinki, maybe you should just check it out and see whether you could stop by and visit for a few days like what I did before proceeding to your next destination.

1)  My first lunch after landing in Helsinki. We went to a buffet lunch in a yacht club. It cost €12.90 which I think was not expensive to eat in Europe. However, the spread of the buffet was very limited. Probably around 7 dishes to choose from comprising of salad to the main dish of 3 choices.

As I walked along the street of Helsinki later, I saw that many restaurants offered buffets at around the same price. My conclusion was that food in the restaurants of Helsinki was not that expensive as compared to some other parts of Europe.

2) I went to this park, near the city area of Helsinki. This was a very beautiful park with a lot of green for people to sit on the slab for resting and meeting. I had a sandwich for € 5. There was an exhibition of some sort for a special sports event.

3) One morning, I was wondering what to eat for brunch. I went to Kamppi Shopping Centre which was very near to where I was staying and I had this nice chicken salad. The café also had a very nice cosy atmosphere.

Some buildings around Helsinki was very nice and modern. I could not help but take some photos of the buildings. The underground train station of Kamppi had a lot of shops too. Although there were a lot of people, I still felt that Finnish were rather cold people.

I asked some questions on a few pieces of Max Factor mascaras that I wanted to buy. Although the sales assistant responded, I still felt a lack of warmth from her eyes though she was friendly. Maybe they were struggling to speak in English? I was not sure.

The Finnish generally didn’t make a lot of eye contact with me, unlike some other European countries that I had visited. Maybe they weren’t interested to look at the Asians at all or maybe it was just me hmmm…

4) Reindeer meat?? I couldn’t believe that this could be eaten. We went to a Finnish restaurant where my friend ordered a plate of reindeer meat. I think this is a common dish in northern Europe but not in other parts of Europe. I ordered cod fish which I was sure to like it in whichever way they cooked.

I tasted the reindeer meat in great curiosity. I would describe the taste to be even stronger than beef, a very savage kind of taste which you either like or hate. I would say the taste was indeed strange and unforgettable for me.

I wouldn’t say I would hate it but I think I would not want to finish the whole plate nor would I order a plate by myself the next time. I am not a beef lover so I reckoned the taste of the meat was too strong for me to handle.  At least I counted myself fortunate to have tasted such a unique dish in Finland which I never knew existed.

5) I saw a Finnair bus that would bring people to and fro the Helsinki Airport for € 6.30 in the city centre. Finnair bus schedule time was also displayed on the board. The bus driver will collect cash from the passenger. It is advisable to prepare the exact amount of the fare to expedite the queuing time.

6) I like the shopping streets in Helsinki city centre because the design of the routes on the map was organised and it was easy to cover every street.

7) The city centre in Helsinki has one of the most numbers of easily accessible free wifi that I could use in a few places without any hassle. In this shopping centre was one of them with the wifi network.

8) Stockmann was another popular shopping mall and the stretch of street was especially vibrant.

9) Right at the front of Stockmann was a café filled with patrons having a beer during summertime. I had one there with my friend chit-chatting and the environment was very upbeat.

10) I took the photo of this building because I simply love such design!

11) Sanoma House was another impressionable building that looked so vulnerable and yet trendy. The entire building was created primarily from translucent glass which gave a very pristine design. It was the brainchild of Professor Jan Söderlund and Architect Antti-Matti Siikala in an architectural competition organised by Sanoma in 1995.

12) I also walked into a public library to take a rest discreetly. I was very curious to see how their public library looked like.

13) I had spent a lot of days walking alone in the city centre and on the street covering most of the places of interest and every little corner while my friend worked. He suggested that I went for this cruise which would go around the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress.

I was a bit hesitant to take a cruise initially because it could be quite boring for me to be alone on a ferry. As I have run out of idea where to go next, I decided to take the cruise which cost € 20 for an hour ride to pass time. Inside the ferry, I paid another € 15 to have a buffet lunch as I reckoned I had a lot of time (1 hr) to eat inside the cruise.

Since I was alone, I was arranged to sit at a table with an Australian couple – Mr and Mrs Goldberg. They were so friendly and we began to talk non-stop during the trip sharing about our travel adventures. All of us were not even paying much attention to the island nor hearing the narration.

I was invited to visit Newcastle near to Sydney where they stayed and they even offered to host me for free. They told me how beautiful the beach was and that I could ride camels on the beach.

The Finnish buffet was mostly made of cold food and was rather sour. It tasted quite similar to what I had in the yacht club on the first day when I arrived. I concluded that this might be how the typical Finnish food tasted like.

On the bottom right of the image, one strange-looking jelly texture food with some meat in it caught my attention. It was something I had never eaten nor seen before in my life. I was explained by Mr Goldberg that it was likely to be compounded waste of meat. It tasted bland.

Overall it was a nice acquaintance to meet beautiful strangers everywhere I go and whom I will call them friends later.

14) Our chatty conversation was interrupted suddenly at one point in time when we heard that the red submarine we saw afar at Suomenlinna was the last Submarine Vesikko in Finland.

15) Back to my me-time again after the ride and while walking on the street, I was attracted by this sandwich shop which was operating its business in a van. The 2 men behind the counter encouraged me with their positive gestures when they saw me taking photos of the van.

Another amusing thing was that the signboard displayed outside the shop was written in Chinese which they intended to attract Chinese customers.

16) My friend making pizza in his house. He was following a recipe on his phone. The pizza didn’t turn out to taste nice. The crust was bland although it looked good.

The more interesting thing about this photo was that my Swedish friend is tall, standing at 1.91m. Taking a photo with a giant was fun as you can see how he towered over me, even when he knelt down, he was almost the same height as me.