A few days in Helsinki & Ulm

After a rather calm week on the Riviera, it was time to hit the road again for me… No fancy California business trip this time, instead it was good ol’ wintery Helsinki and Ulm this time.

Helsinki was unfortunately a more typical “winter in southern Finland” type experience this time, unlike Christmas (when I got to experience some real winter). What I mean by that is around 0 degrees temperatures, which means the ground is covered with slush (half-melted snow). And then there is of course the oppressive darkness, which reigns for most of the time (and what I am noticing now is that even the daytime hours feel more like dusk than day, when comparing to the Cote d’Azur for example). But anyway, I don’t want to paint too bleak a picture of my trip ;-). It’s always nice to visit Helsinki, and we had a nice company-sponsored meal in Mecca (a nice restaurant on Korkeavuorenkatu), followed by some more drinks at Teatteri (my old nostalgic self preferred the place as “Happy Days”, though…). I have to admit my head was rather sore the next day – good thing it was “just meetings” ;-). I also got the chance to have a quick lunch with Janne & Jani on Tuesday, before heading on to the airport…

So my trip then continued in Ulm, where I’d never actually been before. My flight took me into Stuttgart, where I met up with my colleagues Cliff and Sinhung. After eventually finding our rental car, we headed down to Ulm. We foolishly decided to trust Sinhung’s phone GPS to take us there (rather than rent a “proper GPS”), and finding the hotel turned out to be a bit more challenging that it perhaps should’ve been (considering it was located next to Ulm train station). But, anyway, thanks to some old-fashioned communication (ie. asking people for directions) we did eventually find the place. We did even have time to catch a couple of beers – starting at a rather traditional German beer drinking establishment (where I had some “original Swabian steak”) and then continuing at the hotel bar. The beer was predictably good, and rather good value for money compared to the Cote d’Azur. We seemed to be considered rather an exotic trio at the hotel bar, as well (a Finn, a Malaysian, and an Englishman – fair enough).

After a somewhat difficult day at the office, we continued our adventures in Ulm. The original plan was to meet up in town with Sami (half of the energetic Mikkola twins duo), but unfortunately he had managed to got himself a bit ill during his skiing trip to Ischgl (a bit of a tradition with the “extended Finnish expat community from the old UK days“ – a tradition I never participated in but heard quite a lot about!). So we decided to pop over for a short visit instead. Well, the visit turned out to be not so short in the end – there was a lot of catching up to do, since it’s been about 3 years since I last saw Sami. And catching up with Sami does tend to mean a fair bit of beer as well (after the first beer, Cliff was kind enough to accept the car keys!).

By the time we made it back to Ulm, it was a bit too late to execute our original “beer tour” as suggested by Sami. We even struggled to find an open restaurant – the only place that was still serving food was an Indian restaurant near the main square of Ulm (the curry was supposed to be next week – when I’m going to the UK!). We even decided to give the hotel bar a miss – we did after all want to make a civilized impression on our German colleagues at the office the next day.

The next morning, I actually had the crazy idea to do a bit of a walking tour of Ulm town centre. It is, after all, rather a historic town. The earliest mentions of Ulm date back to the 9th century AD, and it was a rather important city during the middle ages. The greatest testimony to that is the Ulm Minster, the cathedral of Ulm. It is, believe it or not, the tallest church in the world (check Wikipedia, if you don’t believe me ;-) ), and the tallest structure built before the 20th century. And impressive it is, with its dark, imposing Gothic architecture. It does very much dominate the pedestrian town centre of Ulm. The misty/rainy weather kind of added to its Gothic look. I also had a quick walk around the picturesque Fischerviertel – the fishermen’s district. All in all, Ulm seems like quite a cozy little town.

After one more day at the Ulm office, it was time to head back to Stuttgart and to France. Thankfully Sinhung’s GPS didn’t lead us astray this time, and we all managed to catch our flights back home…