Exploring Helsinki.

Deciding I couldn't really claim to have been in Helsinki if all I've done during the nearly three weeks I've been here is sitting at the dorm and enjoying debconf, I went to explor Helsinki today. Both because I wanted some sportivity after all this hacking and because I find €3,40 for a bus ticket hugely expensive, I went there walking. I left for lunch around 11 AM, and made my way to downtown Helsinki right after that.

Sorry, no pictures—I don't have a camera.

The first part of the walk was long, but nice. I was told before I got here that Finland has nice forests. Apparently, that is even true in urban areas. I followed a road that crosses two bridges and one island to end up at the land area just north of the peninsula that contains downtown Helsinki. From there, I obviously headed in a slightly more southwarth direction, which led me through a suburban area with some villas. Suddenly, I saw a bus from a travel agency. And another one. And yet another one. Then two bus drivers making smalltalk. It occurred to me that there had to be something interesting to see here, so I walked around the corner.

Turned out there was the entrance to some sort of park there. Looking on my map, I saw a rather large island, which was connected to the land I was on by a foot bridge—one that I could see right in front of me. It looked interesting, but because I wanted to see Helsinki and because the island seemed to be pretty large, I decided not to enter it, but rather to move on. I was later told by Hanna Olila (a local helper) that this is a rather famous piece of nature in the area, popular among Helsinkians (or whatever you call an inhabitant of Helsinki).

Some half hour (or so) later, situated in the hollow part of an interesting curve in the road, I stumbled upon a gravel court of tennis. There were some people already on the benches which surrounded it, and there appeared to be an entrance fee. Intrigued, I looked a bit closer at the court, which had all kinds of markings suggesting it to be the court where someone would soon be playing a match for the Davis Cup. So I asked someone queueing up what this was all about; I was told this was indeed a Davis Cup, one between Finland and Bulgaria. Finland was represented by Finland's top player, a guy called Jarkko Nieminen—I don't know the name of his opponent. Asking what the price was, I decided not to pay the entrance fee; €20 is reasonable for a match on that level, but it's not something I want to pay when I'm just casually passing by. Luckily the fence was not of the type that makes looking over or through it impossible, so I stayed and watched the first set (which was won by the Finnish guy by breaking his opponent's service at 4-3, giving him the advantage on his service game which he easily won to make 6-3), but I left after that.

A few minutes after leaving the tennis court, the building density grew higher, and I suddenly found myself in downtown Helsinki. I moved on, until I bounced on a port. This was not a surprise—as I said before, downtown Helsinki is located on a peninsula, which means there's sea everywhere on the northeast-south-northwest parts of the city. I then had a look at my map again, and turned towards the more central parts of the city.

After yet a few more minutes, I stumbled upon a bar that was actually open (after having found several that were not), and sat down for a while, enjoying a cola. I deserved that, after a two hour walk.

Next, I started walking through the city at random. I saw several nice places; the square next to the trainstation, the trainstation itself, a yaught port, a church on top of some 20m (or so) high rock. Unfortunately that church was closed; but standing in front of it, I had a nice view over the city. One building was standing out: the cathedral at senate square. So I moved there. This one was open, so I went inside and had a look. Nice church; I like looking at churches, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw.

The catheral is a protestant one. There was a statue of Luther, so I suspect a Lutheran church, but for all I know it could be Calvinistic. They were advertising a free concert at 20:00 tonight (which by now is probably over already), and the organist was practicing or testing out the organ, playing a few notes every now and then. Other than that, there wasn't really much to see. I knew protestant churches and cathedrals are much less decorated than Roman Catholic churches, so I (falsely) assumed there would be no decoration at all in this church.

Boy, was I wrong. The cathedral surely isn't as baroquely decorated as some Roman Catholic churches are, but in their soberness, they still manage to make it an immensely beatiful place. I stayed there for a while, looking at the surroundings.

Next, I went for some Sushi. I had already seen the Sushi bar at around 15:00 (IIRC), but found that way too early to eat, so I decided to wait a bit. In the mean time, it had already become 18:00—a not uncommon time to eat in Belgium—so I went back looking for that place and ate there. I've never done that before (mainly because I know of no Sushi bar in or around Antwerp, where I live), and although it certainly wasn't bad, I wasn't really fond of it either. Maybe that's because I was alone; I can imagine it being a lot more fun if you're with a group of people. The 'Sushi Train' concept is quite nice, though. They should apply that concept to other types of food.

After that, I wanted to go back to the dorms; however, on my way back, I stumbled into an open-air exhibition called "Earth From Above", a bunch of pictures all of which were made from a helicopter, from all over the world (and yes, by one person). Those were quite nice, not just because of the subjects of the pictures or because of the immensely beatiful colors; also because of the stories they told. Every picture came with a short text describing what you were actually seeing (which often was necessary, because some took me some time to understand). There was one picture of an abandoned city near Chernobyl; another of cut trees floating on the Amazone river; yet another one of uranium mines in Australia; a fourth of Scarlet Ibises flying over a black background where the story told that they were endangered by extinction because of them being overly hunted. And so on. The message the artist wanted to relay to his audience was pretty clear: we need to rethink how we interact with the world, or there will no longer be a world in the future. All in all, he did so quite successfully, I'd say.

In the center of this exhibition, there was a huge world map, approximately 20m x 10m large (but I'm extremely bad at guessing sizes). It was nice to have a look at such a large map, and figure out where in the world you've already been...

It was almost 20:00 by then, so I decided to call it a day and get back to the dorms. Which I did. To find out that people thought I'd already left, including Jonas Smedegaard, whom I still had to buy a beer, and who had already left for the airport. Sigh. Guess that'll have to be handled differently, then. Oh well.