It’s been a while since my last visit to Finland, so I was rather looking forward to spending a week there (unfortunately, Mathilde couldn’t make it this time, though…). I started off proceedings in Finland, where I was working for a couple of days.
For Tuesday night, I was meeting up with Frank, a fellow Finnish-speaking Swede who like me used to work in England. The plan was to meet up for dinner, and perhaps a beer or two. Our quest for a decent restaurant turned out to be a rather challenging task, in spite of the trial version of Ovi Maps Frank had installed on his N8 ;) (which is supposed to, and did, find restaurants around the user’s present location).
Since we were blessed with excellent Finnish summer weather, we naturally wanted to stay on a terrace. But, that turned out to be hard – seems that most places only serve drinks, not food, outside. Which is a bit of a pity. We walked as far as past Kaivopuisto, to try to get to Ravintola Saari (a very nice place located on an island – you need to get there by boat). Unfortunately, bookings were required… Anyway, to cut a long story short, we eventually ended up in a Spanish restaurant (!?) two hours, and several “planning beers” later… All in all, we had a great time, even though we didn’t get to eat outside in the end ;-).
The next day, the plan was to meet up with Janne and Katja for dinner, after another hard day at the office. Again, we struggled a bit. Seems that it would’ve been a good idea to make a table booking – seems that pretty much all good places in the town centre were full. We ended up in Kynsilaukka in the end – a pretty original restaurant, in that they specialize in garlic-based dishes (they even have garlic ice cream). It used to be a pretty trendy place a few years ago (hmm, maybe more than 10 years ago actually, I’ve been away a LOONG time…). Unfortunately, we were quite disappointed this time. I paid 35 euros for my main course (reindeer steak), and it just wasn’t very good, unfortunately. But it was of course nice to catch up with Katja and Janne of course…
The next day, I was on holidays, so figured a bit of Helsinki sightseeing was in order. I didn’t get very far though, since I got a call from Riitta, to meet up. Riitta is a Finnish friend of mine who lives in England – in fact she was my Scuba diving instructor (well, dive master actually) back in England (many a dive in the murky waters of England we have done…). We ended up in Kappeli, having cappuccinos and catching up on “the latest” (a lot of it to be done, actually, since we haven’t seen each other for about 10 years). She’s still a photographer it seems, and hasn’t much changed over the years (I suppose she is probably the most Bohemian person I know – perhaps not surprising considering most of my friends are engineers!).
For the evening, the plan was to meet up for a “saunailta” (Sauna evening) at Riku’s place. All the usual suspects (Jani, Janne, Aki and Riku) were present. And one unusual suspect as well – Jani’s cousin Stephen from NJ, USA. The activities were the usual at these types of events, serious male talk in the sauna, beer drinking, eating chicken wings, and playing Grand Tourismo 5 on Playstation 3. What could be cooler than that, eh? No but seriously speaking, it really was great to catch up with the “dudes” again, hopefully the guys can make it down to the south of France at some point…
Me, Jani and Stephen continued the male bonding in Helsinki town centre (Riku threw us out before his girlfriend, who is actually expecting his first child, came back from work ;) ). We started at Vltava, a Czech pub next to the Helsinki train station (we had to give Stephen some cultural education – he was most surprised when we informed him that Budweisser originates from the Czech republic - and we naturally decided he absolutely needed to try some Budovar – the original and far superior product). From there, we continued our Helsinki by night exploration at Zetor – another Finnish institution and almost a tourist attraction in its own right (I mean c’mon, what other bar have you heard of that has a real authentic tractor as part of their interior design?). The good thing about Zetor was that we didn’t have to queue for our beer – the bad thing was that the reason for that was that we were pretty much the only customers. So we decided to head on to Teatteri (which I didn’t enjoy too much, it seems to be full of people who are a bit too full of themselves for their own good), after which we finally ended up in Kaivopiha, where the mood was rather festive. All in all, quite a memorable night (well, what I can remember of it, anyway!)
The next day, ‘twas time to head west. I did have time to catch up with Jani and Jocke for lunch at the Sello shopping mall in Leppävaara. We ended up in Chico’s, where I had a rather disappointing burger…
All in all, I had a great few days in Helsinki. It’s gotta be said, when the weather is as good as it was when I was there, it’s one of the best places around, honest. I just wish the weather was this good more often…
For Tuesday night, I was meeting up with Frank, a fellow Finnish-speaking Swede who like me used to work in England. The plan was to meet up for dinner, and perhaps a beer or two. Our quest for a decent restaurant turned out to be a rather challenging task, in spite of the trial version of Ovi Maps Frank had installed on his N8 ;) (which is supposed to, and did, find restaurants around the user’s present location). Since we were blessed with excellent Finnish summer weather, we naturally wanted to stay on a terrace. But, that turned out to be hard – seems that most places only serve drinks, not food, outside. Which is a bit of a pity. We walked as far as past Kaivopuisto, to try to get to Ravintola Saari (a very nice place located on an island – you need to get there by boat). Unfortunately, bookings were required… Anyway, to cut a long story short, we eventually ended up in a Spanish restaurant (!?) two hours, and several “planning beers” later… All in all, we had a great time, even though we didn’t get to eat outside in the end ;-).
The next day, the plan was to meet up with Janne and Katja for dinner, after another hard day at the office. Again, we struggled a bit. Seems that it would’ve been a good idea to make a table booking – seems that pretty much all good places in the town centre were full. We ended up in Kynsilaukka in the end – a pretty original restaurant, in that they specialize in garlic-based dishes (they even have garlic ice cream). It used to be a pretty trendy place a few years ago (hmm, maybe more than 10 years ago actually, I’ve been away a LOONG time…). Unfortunately, we were quite disappointed this time. I paid 35 euros for my main course (reindeer steak), and it just wasn’t very good, unfortunately. But it was of course nice to catch up with Katja and Janne of course…
The next day, I was on holidays, so figured a bit of Helsinki sightseeing was in order. I didn’t get very far though, since I got a call from Riitta, to meet up. Riitta is a Finnish friend of mine who lives in England – in fact she was my Scuba diving instructor (well, dive master actually) back in England (many a dive in the murky waters of England we have done…). We ended up in Kappeli, having cappuccinos and catching up on “the latest” (a lot of it to be done, actually, since we haven’t seen each other for about 10 years). She’s still a photographer it seems, and hasn’t much changed over the years (I suppose she is probably the most Bohemian person I know – perhaps not surprising considering most of my friends are engineers!).
For the evening, the plan was to meet up for a “saunailta” (Sauna evening) at Riku’s place. All the usual suspects (Jani, Janne, Aki and Riku) were present. And one unusual suspect as well – Jani’s cousin Stephen from NJ, USA. The activities were the usual at these types of events, serious male talk in the sauna, beer drinking, eating chicken wings, and playing Grand Tourismo 5 on Playstation 3. What could be cooler than that, eh? No but seriously speaking, it really was great to catch up with the “dudes” again, hopefully the guys can make it down to the south of France at some point…
Me, Jani and Stephen continued the male bonding in Helsinki town centre (Riku threw us out before his girlfriend, who is actually expecting his first child, came back from work ;) ). We started at Vltava, a Czech pub next to the Helsinki train station (we had to give Stephen some cultural education – he was most surprised when we informed him that Budweisser originates from the Czech republic - and we naturally decided he absolutely needed to try some Budovar – the original and far superior product). From there, we continued our Helsinki by night exploration at Zetor – another Finnish institution and almost a tourist attraction in its own right (I mean c’mon, what other bar have you heard of that has a real authentic tractor as part of their interior design?). The good thing about Zetor was that we didn’t have to queue for our beer – the bad thing was that the reason for that was that we were pretty much the only customers. So we decided to head on to Teatteri (which I didn’t enjoy too much, it seems to be full of people who are a bit too full of themselves for their own good), after which we finally ended up in Kaivopiha, where the mood was rather festive. All in all, quite a memorable night (well, what I can remember of it, anyway!) The next day, ‘twas time to head west. I did have time to catch up with Jani and Jocke for lunch at the Sello shopping mall in Leppävaara. We ended up in Chico’s, where I had a rather disappointing burger…
All in all, I had a great few days in Helsinki. It’s gotta be said, when the weather is as good as it was when I was there, it’s one of the best places around, honest. I just wish the weather was this good more often…
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