I’ve finally caught up enough to get a chance to write up the trip to Finland last week. There are still plenty of things that need doing, and I’m not feeling too good so concentrating on actually doing them is not easy…I think its a combination of jetlag and a cold or something I picked up in my travels. Starting to feel better now but still coughing horribly.
Diplomatic relations – not giving the game away – On the saturday night before flying to Tampere I went to Midnight Mess. There was something of a strange air to the place when I arrived, but I couldn’t figure out what was different. There was due to be a show tonight, not just the normal music. There were a couple of guys in the corner who looked decidedly uneasy, like they didn’t fit in but had to be there for some reason.
One of the people I met claimed to be the wife of a diplomat, and was impressed that somebody actually believed her (theres no reason to make up stuff like that, is there? all gaijin in Tokyo have a cool story, you don’t need to fabricate one). She was bemoaning the coldness of the winter here, having intended to buy some proper winter clothes in Hong Kong….oh well.
The show was, erm, interesting. Another of Mayas informal ‘play’ sessions, though this time a bit more formalised, being set up on the stage area in Luna Si Soare. I’ve no objection to watching such shows, since shes one of the cuter girls I’ve met here. But its not something I’m going to go out of my way to seek.
After the club closed there was the usual ‘putting the place back together’ before heading on to Jonathans for breakfast. It got too late queuing for a table that I had to leave – I needed to be home to pick up my case to get the plane – so I left them to it before we got seated.
Lost in transition – Despite having been awake for twenty four hours before getting on the plane I didn’t manage to get much in the way of sleep there….I dozed for a couple of hours and can certainly see many advantages to being able to sleep there. Maybe I’ll get used to it once I’ve done some more flying.
The films on the inflight entertainment system were not even on the ‘worth watching’ list, with the exception of ‘Lost in translation’. When I get back to the UK I’ll have to get a copy of this film – it pretty much sums up my time here (without the love interest, of course).
Killing time at Copenhagen airport was tedious. One of the shops there was selling ‘vikings’, which really scared me. My mother has a little wooden viking which is very much something I associate from my childhood as being a part of her family history. To see a huge array of his cousins (more perfect, without the wonky shield or missing ear) gratuitously on sale as souvenirs in an airport duty free shop shook that sense of family identity.
And the Danes still use Krones not Euros. I thought we were the only ones who’d wangled out of that one, but apparently not.
Strangers in the night – The flight to Tampere was a little late boarding – the girls at the information desk were a little bemused that anyone would be concerned by there not being a gate mentioned for a flight due to take off in ten minutes time, with no delay yet announced.
At the gate there was no sign of the plane, but it arrived after a few minutes and soon enough we were boarded and on our way.
Arriving at Tampere was an interesting experience – this is the first time I’ve landed in snow and it was not as scary as I had expected, the landing itself was ok since they’ve cleared most of the snow from the runway. Taxiing was a little more concerning, since we were obviously travelling over fresh snowfall. We wound our way around the airport to a piece of plane-shaped bare land, obviously the place some other plane had just left from.
Disembarking into the snow we dashed across the tarmac to the airport building. In many ways this reminded me of the Isle of Man airport, except this was practically closed and covered in white – they had kept a man on to open the door to the terminal building and close it again after we’d all happily gotten inside.
Driving snow – The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel was quite an experience too, my first introduction to proper driving in the snow. Its not like back in England where the slightest fall of white and everyone turns into a hopeless driver bumping into anything and everything, these guys obvious do a lot of driving under these conditions.
Snow in Finland is much prettier than what I remember of snow in the UK, too. Its got that kind of crisp dry look to it, back home it turns into a horrible grey slush by lunchtime. Admittedly this was less true by the end of the week when spring was coming and the temperatures were getting above freezing during the daytime.
Blonde bombshell – Hats are practical devices for keeping your head warm, not an expression of how much of a fashion disaster you can be – there is something more subdued about Finnish clothing. My time there got a lot more enjoyable once I’d obtained a scarf and a pair of gloves.
The people have a different attitude too, in England (and especially in Japan) blonde people have something different about them, somehow they’re more attractive or they’re more stupid, or they’re more…something, I don’t know what it is but theres something about how they view themselves that sets them aside from everyone else. In Finland, *everyone* is blonde, somehow they’re unselfconscious about it.
Size of a cow – I have never eaten so much steak in a week, including a reindeer steak (which was nice but covered in an unnecessary red wine sauce {not wince source, as I originally typed!}), and I found a steak fast food place in one of the shopping malls too. There seems to be an obsession for kebabs and mexican food – there is something surreal about eating burritos and stuffed halapenos while looking out onto a snowy road junction (“I am burrito man!” – I love Ozzy and ‘The Osbournes’, I don’t think I’ve seen a whole episode before).
Tending cattle on the Steppe – There are so many record shops in Tampere, it seemed rude not to visit them all and buy all of the Leningrad Cowboys CDs available. The record shops are so good too, theres so much good music in Finland, I must go to Helsinki one day when I’m in need of more musical inspiration. I should check out some of the clubs there too, I suppose, shouldn’t I? I’ve not really been awake enough the times I’ve been to Finland to want to stay up ’til early hours. Maybe if I visit from the UK it’ll be jetlag going the other way.
Most days I used the bus to get to the office – its a twenty minute ride from the stop just outside the hotel. Again the bus drivers seem pretty competant in the snow, many times you’ll feel like you are skidding to a halt, and you probably are, but its a controlled skid, they know how quickly they will slow down and which direction they’re skidding in and can correct it if they need to.
The supermarket trip was uneventful, I found some ‘megapussi chips’, which I assume are potato crisps (taste like it anyway, albeit with a sour cream and onion flavour) and had a go at the pick and mix, looking stupid and foreign until someone else came along and showed me how to work the labeling machine.
I was amused by ‘radio noun’, which seemed wholly unimaginative, maybe they should have paid for the premium package with their naming consultants.
Bugging me – Saturday I got to look around Tampere, as I was flying back on Sunday. So I went in search of the spy museum, which was a large numbered blob on the map I had which put it somewhere within a 500m circle. I braved the icy pavements (the snow had thawed a bit on friday and frozen again overnight to ice, then thawed just enough by the morning to be really treacherous) and headed over to roughly the area of the blob, figuring I’d see some signs once I got there – it is the first permanant spy museum in the world, after all.
There was a reconstruction of a historic village, by the riverside. There was a park on a hillside. There was an imposing, but closed, museum of local history in the centre of the park. There was a gentle walk back down the hill with views out across the lake and the amusement park. There were icicles. There were cold ducks hopeful that I would have bread for them. There was a comedy falling over in front of a family of amused looking Finns. But there was no spy museum.
Giving up on the whole thing as just a bizarre Finnish joke (you’ve got to use some intellegence to find the spy museum), I decided to head back into town, but first I’d stop by the Finlayson building to grab a coffee. Its an old mill (cotton mill, I think) which has now been converted to be a set of offices with a food court.
As I was leaving I wondered to myself, whats down that corridor over there? And took a little wander…”Spy Museum, down” pointed an arrow. So I follow some swedes down the steps, they look into the doorway of the museum, adjust their boots faff for a bit and head further on down the stairs, leaving me thinking I’ve just walked in through the out door.
But my confusion is soon allayed by the girl behind the counter who is very friendly and points out the English translations of all the little explanations and a place to hang my coat, should I feel so inclined.
The museum contains a number of genuine bugs that have been recovered from real service. Things like the phone bugs were of most interest to me, since I’ve seen such things before but they’d never felt quite so genuine.
Finland was in a unique position during the cold war because of its political proximity to the west while having such physical proximity to Russia – it seems it was quite a battleground. They also had on display some American radios that had been recovered from one of the lakes nearby Tampere.
I’m going home – The train I caught to Helsinki airport on sunday had two layers in the passenger carriages….which made for interesting times when they brought the refreshment trolly though – theres a stair lift for it to go between the mezzanine connecting the carriages and the upper and lower passenger decks. It ran on time, too, despite the snow. British Rail could never make that happen.
We passed through some beautiful countryside, looking out on a landscape like a picture postcard English christmas. The next town from Tampere (I’ve forgotten its name) had a rail museum based in a roundhouse – I’ve seen pictures of them before but I don’t remember actually seeing a real one.
Back to Copenhagen from Helsinki, it had snowed overnight over much of Denmark and the southern part of Sweden, making the countryside a patchwork of white and grey all the way to the coast.
Copenhagen airport had gained some people hanging from the ceiling in tubes, which I think was something to do with fashion, but, obviously I’m not the target market since it didn’t make any sense to me. The airport also doesn’t have enough seats, so I went to check in early.
I got back home at 2pm on Monday, too blasted to go to the office until the next day…I really must get the hang of sleeping on planes. I’ve not quite recovered from the trip yet, and I have quite a lot of catching up to do, sleep, paperwork, washing, tidying, but I think the whole thing was worthwhile. Apart from the work, which was not quite as organised as I had hoped (but was much more organised than the 48 hours notice should have allowed time for).
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