Soumenlinna

Got up this morning and headed out pretty much first thing. I was feeling pretty much entirely unsick and I had wanted to try out the salmon soup special at the open market. It was worth the trip, cheap, tasty, warm, and cheap (did I mention that?)

I then wandered around the Senate building area looking for the museum I thought I had seen earlier. Ended up finding a free museum about Helsinki instead. It was small and touristy feeling, but hey - you can't beat free. It was only two floors but it was cool in that it gave a feel of how the city grew up over the last 150 years.

The church down the street. Closed to the public but pretty cool from outside.

After the museum, I tried to look for the one that I had though I'd seen earlier. It had a picture of Adolph Hitler, so I though it might be a WWII museum. Its a common theme in the post Soviet block countries. They tend to be pretty cool. No such luck though. So I headed over to the public ferry to head out to the group of islands that were famous called Soumenlinna.

Finnish tradition: You engrave you and your lovers name on a lock.

You then lock the lock on a bridge over a canal and throw the keys into the canal.
Course, if you break up - then you have to dive into just above freezing waters and

200 years of sewage. Though to be fair, this better than a lot of breakups.

Soumenlinna is basically the reason Helsinki is there in the first place. Way back int he 1800s, the Swedes though it was a strategic point on the Baltic Sea. Well so did the Russians. So in a nutshell, Soumenlinna and Helsinki were tossed back and forth between the Swedes, English, and Russians for a hundred some odd years until in 1918 the Finns told the Russians that they wanted to break free and be their own country. The Russians had their own internal troubles and were on good terms with the Finns, so they said "Meh, Go ahead." This worked out pretty well for both sides as they had, and still have, great trade agreements and people crossing the borders on both sides.

The island turned into a cool place for shops, galleries, restaurants, and residential areas. Basically a cool spot to hang out for the day and chill. Walk around and look at all the old battlements.

Children under ten are not allowed to sport mustaches in Finland. This would NEVER fly in Italy.

The place was awesome. The entire place was riddled with battlements, you could walk into them and get a feel for were people were stationed. They had munition bunkers and plenty of places were people could duck out of incoming fire. Unfortunately, when the British came, their cannon were of a better, later quality. So the huge armada simply stayed out of Finnish cannon range while safely bombarding the shoreline.

Also, hobbits lived there.

The entire island group of five island could easily be walked over the bridges from one end to the other in under an hour. In earlier days, there was only one way onto and off of the island, at King's Gate. Later developments in artillery made most of these fortifications obsolete. However, it made it one cool place to wander around.

Next to King's Gate.

after walking to the ends of the island, I wanted to get a bite to eat. Unfortunately, almost all the restaurants were closed now that summer was gone. The one I did find that was open was down a dirt road next to a bunch of out of place old industrial buildings and a small pier. The sign on the main road was a small chalkboard with a printed out paper taped onto it. I was wondering if it was even open until I came right upon it. Cool place in an old fortified barracks or some such. I have some smoked salmon soup, pasta carbonara, and a Coke. Pretty tasty and the first time I'd seen a egg yolk sitting on top of the pasta.

"Sorry bra, no high fiving allowed on the island."

So I just got done getting most of my things packed and I'll be heading out for a beer with Pete and his Finnish friend Cecily. Be gentle to me Pete, meh belly needs to be calm when I hit St. Petersburg.