Europe 2023: Upptäcker Helsingfors

Languages

As a Welsh person, who grew up in the era of road sign painting when English only road signs were still a thing in Wales and many were being painted green, I'm fully aware of bilingual nations, but hadn't known that Finland was one of them. As I mentioned yesterday Finland has Finnish and Swedish as joint languages though the languages are very different. Finnish being a Uralic language along with Hungarian, Estonian and Sami, whereas Swedish is a North Germanic language developed from Old Norse and is therefore in a similar variation of the Indo-European language group as English, which is West Germanic, but has many words borrowed from Old Norse.

Today's blog title is Discovering Helsinki in both of these languages. It is worth noting that Helsinki was founded by the King of Sweden Gustav Vasa in 1550, so is a much younger city than the three cities we've been visiting earlier in the week, it still has lots to see however.

A short riff on the complexities of English

One of the quirks of the English Language is that early Christians in England (the same isn't true for Wales!) adopted local words to translate some of their key concepts. So, as Neil Gaimen so cleverly points out in American Gods, the Paschal feast, called Pascua and Pasg in Spanish and Welsh respectively is called after the Norse God of re-birth - Eostre in English. The Norse God of the Underworld gives her name in English to the underworld - Hell. Hel being the earlier form. Whereas it is infierno in Spanish and uffern in Welsh, both who retain the Latín form of the word. So, be it Hell Hounds or Helsingfors; which incidentally is the same root as the Danish castle in Helsingør, a place made famous by Shakesphere as Elsinor.

Enough of reflections on languages, on to this beautiful Friday.

Morning

I woke a little earlier than yesterday, getting up at 3am and blogging about Warsaw last Sunday!! Drew reviews the blog when he wakes up. I next upload the photos from yesterday in Tallinn and on the ferry to Flickr. Before doing our ablutions.

Breakfast

We went down to breakfast at 7am. The Holiday Inn here in the centre of Helsinki offer an amazing selection of food, even more than we have had at Holiday Inn's elsewhere. These include three types of pickled herring; one in oil and dill, another in mustard and a third in a tomato sauce, like a salsa texture but without any chilli.

It being Friday, I avoided meat, but who needs meat where there are so many other lovely flavours.

Drew was also pleased to be back somewhere with a good selection of sweet treats. You'll see his final (third) plate of breakfast in the bottom photo below.

Senate and Cathedral

We left the hotel at 8am aimed with our list of targets for the day this is our route:

We began by catching the M1 (metro) to the Senate station, where both the Lutheran Cathedral and the Senate Building are located.

The Cathedral is on one of the heights of Helsinki and the Grand Square, with its great statue of Tzar Alexader II and the Senate Building are signs of the long era of Russian Rule.

It is worth mentioning that Helsinki was Swedish from 1550, its foundation, until 1808, when the whole of Finland became the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland, with the Tzar as Grand Duke. This position remained until 1917, when Finland became independent at the end of World War 1. It lost some 9% of its territory to Russia in the Winter War of 1939-40 it remained independent.

Presidential Palace

We walked down from the Senate Square and came to the seafront. Helsinki has a shore which winds back and forth across the city, so much so that it almost feels like an island - whichever direction you walk you won't be far from the sea.

We came to the sea front

and walked along it looking at the market stalls selling all kind of things, both to locals, and all kinds of tat to tourists!

This led us to the Presidential Palace which is a striking building.

We also accidented upon the, far less formal, changing of the guard at the place. No marching drums here, just two guards and a military policeman walking along the road. The traffic light means you can only see the former in the first picture and the latter in the other, but I was impressed by Drew's quick thinking to get them at all.

Uspenski Cathedral

Close by the Presidential Palace is the Uspenski Russian Orthodox Cathedral which dates from 1868 and is remarkably striking - like a little bit of Russia in Western Europe.

You can even see the Lutheran Cathedral from the Orthodox one, as both of them are high above the rest of the city.

Kallio Church

From the Cathedral we strolled along the seaside and a harbour which was filled with pretty boats.

We were quite taken by the Spanish influenced bar which made a pun, in English, of its name - not the Old Man and the Sea, but the Old Man and the Si!

We located the tram stop for the number 7 tram and headed from the stop at Snellmaninkatuto to Bjorngarden

Note that Bjorngarden is the Swedish name for our stop whereas the map uses the Finnish one. Drew who has been learning Swedish for a few years noted that it meant Bear Park! Luckily the bear was only a statue

At the top corner of the bear park was the Bear Park Cafe (yes it was named in English!) where we stopped for a coffee.

You'll note again the point I had explained to me in Vilnius, that European Americano's are not the same as American ones. Effectively a large Americano is half the size of a large Latte - as is evident from the picture above. At times when you are more interested in the fluids than the flavour of the coffee this can be annoying!

We had come up to this part of town to see the Kallio church, which we had seen in the distance when we were out on our walk yesterday afternoon. The church is 65 metres high, and its cross is 94 metres above sea level. Apparently, the Estonian coastline can be seen from the tower. It has a large tower which is visible through the straight streets of Helsinki for miles. It is the northern end point of a 2.5 km long street

The church was very influential during the independence movement and its National Romantic style reflected the political philosophy of the time. The Church was used for preachers who supported the emergence of a separate Finnish identify in the Grand Duchy.

Havis Amanda

After our coffee and church break we got back on the no 7 tram to Hallituskatu and tried to find the Havis Amanda mermaid so often mentioned in the online guides to Helsinki. We realised, as we travelled, that we were going close to the part of town where we had been earlier and then discovered why we'd not seen the mermaid earlier. She is away being restored.

In her place there are old photos of the site, which is used as the gathering site for the people of Helsinki when they are celebrating New Year or other major events.

The message in place of the sign says:

Conservation and renovation
The beloved Havis Amanda sculpture with its sea lions has been transferred to be conserved as part of renovations performed on the fountain and its surroundings. The aim is to return the sculptures in the renewed basin in autumn 2024. The square's archaeological excavations may influence the schedule.
Completed in 1908, the fountain and its bronze sculptures form a work of art designed by artist Ville Vallgren, in addition to its artistic value, the work holds special significance in terms of cultural history and the cityscape.
The statue has gone through a lot over the years. People have climbed on it during various national celebrations, and the salty and windy marine climate has also worn the sculpture's surface.
The artwork has been maintained on a regular basis. Now is the time to carry out thorough renovation and conservation procedures for the first time.

The puzzle of why we'd not seen the statue resolved we walked up the Esplanade Park and saw its pretty statues and flowers.

Old Church Park

We walked from the Esplande into a quiet park outside Helsinki Old Church, called Old Church Park.

This are that included monuments to those who had died also provides a lovely setting for lunchtime picnics - as was evident today as we walked through.

The park also had a memoiral statue to Elias Lönnrot, the collector of Finnish oral poet who did so much to capture the Finnish traditions while thet still existed.

Folllowing a little more strolling we caught the M2 (metro) back to Central Station

Post Office

Well, they say the road to Hell is filled with good intentions, in this case it is the road to Helsinki. We bought post cards for my brother and sister and Drew's mum back in Brussels on the second day of the holiday, but we have been carrying them with us ever since (one day short of two weeks). We looked for post offices in Germany, but while we saw many postmen on their delivery cycles, we didn't see a single post office - the same has been true everywhere else, until Tallinn yesterday, when we saw a Post Office, but it was 8.30am, so they weren't open.

Well lucky for us there is a Post Office actully in the Central Square in Helsinki right outside our hotel, so having got off the metro we went to buy stamps.

I explained I needed two for the UK and one for Australia and she showed me three different types of stamps. I explained, as best I could that I needed two of one type and one of another. It then become clear we were ralking at cross-purposes. It was one fee for all overseas stamps, but I was allowed to choose between three different designed stamps. Confusion resolved I bought the stamps and headed to the hotel.

Afternoon

We were back at the hotel at 1pm, we both wrote our cards and Drew popped out to post them in the same place as we bought the stamps.

I completed last night's photos, meaning we are almost up to date on Flickr.

Our 24 hour transport ticket runs out at 2.30pm so we stop in the room and have some tea, siesta for an hour and complete the second blog post of the day. Warsaw to Vilnius!

I even take advantage of this quieter afternoon to edit this morning's photos and prepare them for posting later.

As we are Silver-Elite members of the IHG Rewards club we are eligable in this hotel to a later check out. I pop downstairs to reception and confirm the arrangements. At no extra charge we are able to check-out tomorrow at 2pm, which is very helpful with our ship departing at 5.15pm tomorrow.

At 5pm we buy our new 24 hours tickets (to make sure we can use them to get to the ferry tomorrow. Then we shower and dress up for dinner - which is a special (aka poncy) one and which deserves its own blog post.