Finland, Finland, Finland.

Woke up and missed the morning sauna again. I might have to just fork out the cash and hit an evening sauna. Anyways, Philip (Berlin hostel mate) suggested heading out, so I got washed up and we headed out to check out the town. Our first stop was at the dock open market for some munchies.

Y'know those free samples of things that are tasty when you hand them out nice and warm, but once they get cold...

Yah, the tiny whole fish were tasty at first. After a while though, the saltiness started to get to the point where I couldn't finish them. Plus they are kinda nasty once cold. They had a special on salmon soup that Philip got. A bowl of fresh salmon soup, bread, and a cup of coffee for 7 euro. That's a good deal in Finland.

After breakfast we parted ways though. I still had a day left on my 48 hour hop /off bus tour and he didn't want to spend the money on a bus. Which is cool, he was doing things on the cheap and Helsinki is a very walkable town.

I hopped on the bus and took the tour around. It managed to answer a question I had about the odd tables by the waterfront I encountered while walking around on my first day here.

All over Helsinki they have spots like this. And apparently in the spring/summer, the Fins grab their rugs/carpets off the wooden floors and wash them in the water from the Baltic Sea. The water is far less brackish, so perfectly suited for the task and they use a traditional pine tar soap. Then the carpets are left on the table to dry.

Cool street art on the side of the building by a marina.

The tour was fairly short but the guide was cool and it gave me a pretty good idea on some of the culture that Finland is based on. They have a word "sisu" which means independence, rationality, willing to face death in the face of adversity. Its why when the Russians tried to take them over in WWII, they were able to fight them off with a third the army and a small fraction of the heavy weaponry. At the end of the war, they chose to bypass the Marshall Plan and paid of Russia in record time to keep themselves free of debt. The closest thing we would have would be I guess "rational bravery".

I wanted to stop off at their Olympic stadium to check out the tall tower they have that allows the best panoramic view of Helsinki. Its pretty cool, rather than let the massive Olympic building go to disrepair, they converted the stadium into office buildings, a hostel, and a cafeteria in the middle of it all. I would have minded renting a place there for an office.

View from the top.

I took off and hopped back on the bus to travel down one stop. I wanted to hit the Finnish National museum to check out the history of their culture. There aren't a lot of museums in Helsinki, so its good that this one was a damn good one.

It started off with pre-history. Basically examples of clothing, tools, and building in the stone/bronze/iron ages when there was't a lot of written history. They didn't talk much about the Viking, which was cool I had Viking history by the shitload in Dublin and Oslo. Not much changes in that respect. They did have cool information about how their culture developed over the last century. They used to be ruled by Russia, but this ended peacefully and they still maintain a close trading relationship with Russia. They kind of bridged the gap between the West and East when they started trading good that the Soviets liked (furs, fish, reindeer meat, etc) and won the respect of the Soviets during WWII for their fighting determination.

And here we see an example of early Renaissance papal fisting practices.

I then headed back down into town and hopped on the tram back. I hopped off at the Hard Rock Cafe to have a burger, Coke, and fries. Before winding my way back to the hostel. Now I'm just hanging out blogging and likely will head out to meet up with Pete with Philip in tow.

I self-entitled this one "Three Naked Guys Beating the Crap Out of an Anvil"
Please, friends don't let friends blacksmith naked...