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Our second day in Helsinki began with a good hostel breakfast, and because we were trying to be economical we made a sneaky lunch using materials from the food hall. We weren't the only ones.
We started by taking a walk through the old Olympic area (Helsinki hosted the 1952 Olympics) - sure enough there was a big statue of Paavo Nurmi, Finland's greatest Olympian. We gradually made out way down to the city centre, stopping by a market and sampling some jäätelöa (ice cream - something that would become a daily ritual on this trip).
Our plan was to travel to the nearby island of Suomenlinna, which is famous for its old fortress that was famous for being the main defensive post of Helsinki. However, some other business had to be taken care of first - I'd run out of ciggies. It was at this point I realised that Finland is seriously strict about the sale of cigarettes. After walking around for a while and finding nowhere that sold them, I eventually asked a woman who was smoking one where to buy them. She looked at me pitifully and to me that I would have to go to a shopping mall some blocks away... She even offered to sell me an extra pack she had to save me the trouble! But they looked like menthols so f*** that. Anyway, we went to mall and eventually found the non-marked location for cigarette sale. The woman gave me a 'menu' where I chose my brand and only then could I actually see her take a deck from a locked cupboard. I thought Australia was getting hard about selling ciggies, but this was something else. At least in the mall we found a place where they sold Salmiakki, a Finnish chocolate with a strange salty filling. Despite the description it actually tasted awesome, and we ended up buying more later.
So, onto Suomenlinna. First we had to take a pleasant little ferry ride for about twenty minutes before arriving. The island was extremely pretty, amongst other things it had a church with a lighthouse at the top of the steeple, some big old 18th century cannons and various pretty little houses and defensive buildings. There are actually a few hundred people who still live on the island, although I imagine it wouldn't be the most convenient place to live. At the south end of the island there were also a few interesting houses which were built directly into the hills - definitely had a Lord of the Rings vibe or something similar. After 3 hours of exploring the island we decided it was time to head back, where we went and visited a nearby Russian Orthodox Church with a spectacular interior. Way better than those plain Lutheran ones, no doubt.
We were getting hungry, but instead of getting something proper we decided to stop past a fancy ice cream/chocolate shop and go for round 2. We shared a great big bowl, which was seriously good ice cream but also not that cheap.
It was also getting towards the time where we would have to meet our couchsurfing host, Ville. However Mari wanted to visit a special 'rock church' (built directly into a rock face) which looked like nothing on the outside but was supposed to be quite interesting on the inside. However by the time we got there, sure enough it had closed. This was one of the first of many examples of us being accustomed to Spanish Time (like normal time but about 3 hours later) causing small problems for us in Eastern Europe, where some things actually close quite early.
Anyway, after collecting our bags and taking a train right out into the Helsinki suburbs, we managed to track down Ville's apartment. However, he wasn't there. We didn't realise but he'd actually gone to the train station to meet us! Fortunately, after some time he came back and found us. Ville was a really nice guy who gave us lots of interesting bits of information on Finland - language, customs etc which we hadn't picked up while there. Apparently they refer to vomiting as 'speaking Norwegian', which is pretty funny. Mari was also introduced to the Moomins, a children's show which happens to be one of Finland's biggest cultural exports in Europe. A few days later she would end up buying a Moomins t-shirt. What a dork.
One cool thing we finally saw this night was the fairly well-known principle of 24 hour daylight in far Northern Europe. I took a picture at 3am when it was still quite light and easy to see everything going on outside. Not surprising that theres hardly any crime in Helsinki, there's b***** all places to be a dodgy b****** with all that light...
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