…when I posted my last entry describing the journey to Finland I should have pointed out that I was back in Tokyo…sorry for the confusion, and heres part two…
Our meeting in Helsinki was adjourned when we reached an impass at around 2pm (having refused to be distracted by the strange man offering to take us to the sweet factory). A drive to Tampere was the only way to get progress – two hours across Finland for more meetings. Then abandoned at the railway station at 6pm, narrowly missing the train and having to kill nearly an hour desperately consuming coffee to stay awake. So much for Tokyo time, its a two hour journey back, then I’ll need to get some food.
We passed a Happy Train, which I wanted to have a go on, but it didn’t look much different to a normal commuter train to me. Maybe people on the early morning run need reminding.
The trains in Finland are quite different to those in either Tokyo or England – theres no barriers on the stations and the platforms are quite low. It seems, also, that they don’t have much in the way of tunnels, since the carriages are taller than elsewhere.
I got back to Helsinki at 9pm, by which time I didn’t have the energy for my planned trip to Zetors ‘tractor restaurant’. Next time.
On friday morning I was free to roam the city – my flight back was at 5pm – so the first thing to do was to get acquainted with the subway system….I could only find one line, which, conveniently enough, ran directly under the hotel, with the entrance over the other side of the road. Most of the city runs on trams, there are tracks everywhere, the reason for this becomes obvious when you get down into the subway station. The station is hewn out of solid rock in a very rugged Finnish way, the kind of digging technology to create these kinds of caverns has recently been developed.
The trains themselves are constructed almost entirely from 80s bright orange plastic, with no evidence of modern technology having been brought to bear at any point during their construction.
Again, the ticket system appears to rely almost entirely on trust, there are no barriers before getting to the trackside, only notices in Finnish telling you to get a ticket.
After getting off after a few stops, I walked back by the dockside to the city centre. There was a disappointing lack of record shops on the way – I tried getting in to one place that looked interesting, but the door was locked so I moved on before I disturbed the shop owner too much by trying to open it.
I had to check out from the hotel at midday, so I decided to head straight to the airport – this was probably a mistake, since airports are quite dull if you’ve got to wait there for four hours….
The journey home was busier than the flight out, and I even managed to get a few hours sleep. Changing at Osaka was a little tight time-wise, since I only had an hours transfer time anyway, then we were running (flying) 15 minutes late, so I had a quick dash around Osaka airport to try to find the next checkin desk.
This flight was quite short, the other passengers were nearly all Japanese and alert, while I’d just spent 9hours on the red-eye flying over China and Korea. The lady next to me was telling me all about he sons and how they were getting on in their business when I managed to knock coffee from the stewardesses hand all over everything. The poor hostess was very concerned that either me or (particularly) the lady I was talking to would be upset with her and complain to the airline about the incident….There was an embarrassing amount of apology going on, I felt quite bad since it was really my action that had caused the problem in the first place, and I assume I should have been apologising too, but I’m too gaijin for that.