A week in Finland

Time to enjoy a bit of Finnish summer! This year, I only had time to head over for about a week, so it turned out to be a rather intensive affair.

I started my trip in Helsinki, where I stayed for a couple of days. I had a nice walk around Helsinki, as always, to check out what's new in the capital of Finland. Unfortunately, as the weather was rahter dodgy, Helsinki was not at its finest.

I met up with my cousin Jukkis and dad for lunch in Mei Lin, which is probably the best Chinese restaurant in Helsinki (well, at least the best one I've been to - and my cousin Rasse's Chinese wife seems to agree with the assessment as well). What's great about Mei Lin is that the food really is authentically Chinese - which means very hot in this case (as Mei Lin's cuisine hails from Szechuan).

In the evening, I headed off to Katja's and Janne's place, where we enjoyed a game of Brass - one of the best board games around. The afore-mentioned Rasse came along as well. Predictably enough, Janne won. All in all, a great nerdy way to spend an evening!

The next day, I headed off to Turku with dad. The plan was to meet Jani and Jocke for a "couple of beers". I arrived in Turku a bit ahead of schedule, so decided to have a walk around. Thankfully, the weather had turned very nice, and Turku certainly looks at its best in summertime, when the weather is nice. I checked out all the main landmarks, which aren't that numerous actually.

I met up with the lads at one of my favourite Turku drinking establishments, Koulu. It's a microbrewery located in an old school building (Koulu means School in Finnish). As expected, lively debates were had with Jani in particular over the recent Brexit (I suppose the conclusion was that we agreed to disagree on the matter). We headed over for a burger lunch at nearby Shamrock (an Irish pub), after which me and Jani headed off to Parainen by taxi, to spend the night.

Normally, I would of course stay at Rågard, our summer house, but this time around it wasn't possible, since there was no running water. So I ended up heading over to Kyrkäng instead, to Berit's place, where my dad was also staying. No problem with that - it's a lovely place. There is a nice sauna, and one can swim in the sea just down the road. What else does one need from a Finnish summer cottage ? I even had a morning run before catching the bus back to Helsinki the next day!

The plan for Wednesday was to chill out with Aki and Riku in Kirkkonummi, and then meet up with Jocke and Jonas for some beers in the evening. Before that, I managed to squeeze in an improvised lunch with Pete (a friend of us who used to live on the Cote d'Azur, but who's since relocated to Singapore). Good to catch up with him!

After my brief excursion to Kirkkonummi to meet up with the "brothers", I sped back to Helsinki, where I met up with Jocke and Jonas at the BrewDog pub in Punavuori. I really liked the place, it's a bit of a craft beer's mecca, so just my kind of place. After hanging out and catching up for a bit, we headed over to Sports Academy to check out the 1st EURO 2016 semi-finals, between Portugal and Wales. My heart felt strongly for Wales, but alas, Portugal proved the stronger (I'm afraid my somewhat illogical dislike of Ronaldo means I can't bring myself to hope for Portugal to win!).

Next day was my last day in Finland before flying to Paris - wow how quickly did that week go!? Again, I had a busy schedule. Things kicked off with me heading over to Sörnäinen, towards the east of Helsinki, a place I'm not at all familiar with. It's a suburb with a working-class past, which is being gentrified rapidly, in the wake of nearby trendy Kallio (much of the area resembled a big construction site). I met up my colleagues Jose and Jean-Luc for lunch in Teurastamo, the old meat handling/butcher site of Helsinki, which has been transformed into a rather attractive collection of restaurants. Good to catch up with them, even if the context was a bit sad. Microsoft had recently announced the termination of their mobile phones business, which they had acquired from my former employer Nokia. This effectively meant the end of mobile phones RnD in Finland.... Anyway, the food was good, that's what's most important ;-)

For the evening, I wend to a rather cool event called Monsters of Rock - a concert, as the name implies. The line up was impressive (if one liked metal, that is...): Amorphis, Opeth and last but certainly not least: BLACK SABBATH (on their farewell tour). Amorphis and Opeth were great (the Opeth lead singer is one of the funniest musicians I've seen live!). But of course most people were there to see Black Sabbath. And they did not disappoint - even if Ozzy's age is starting to tell... 

That brought an end to a short, but sweet visit to Finland!