Last Day in Helsinki, 2/19/10

After another week in Helsinki, I leave for home tomorrow. We woke up to temperatures around -16C (3 F) this morning. We had a light snow almost continuously all day but the accumulation was still less than a couple of inches. The picture below is the hotel parking lot. As you can see, some of the cars haven't moved in a long time as there are several inches of snow on top of them. Where they have cleared the snow the piles of snow are well over six feet tall.

We have eaten really well while here, maybe too well. Wednesday night we went to a recreation park and rented skis for some cross-country skiing. I made it around their 1 km track about 4 times, although at an extremely slow pace.
After skiing we went out for dinner. Thursday night we went out for dinner again at a Russian restaurant in downtown Helsinki. The food was excellent and the restaurant was unlike any I have ever seen before. The inside was small rooms with beautiful art work on every wall of different scenes from Russia. I had Chicken Kiev. Several of the guys in our party went for "Ivan's Sword" which was literally a large sword/skewer with beef, lamb, and bacon on it. The presentation was every bit as impressive as the food tasted. I am will need to faste for two weeks after I get back to Texas.

Greetings from Helsinki, February 2010

I can now honestly say I have been to Finland in winter. I have never seen so much snow in my life (obviously not a skier). We spent our first day back in Helsinki enjoying the nice weather. It was -6C according to one temperature sign we passed (21 F). But it was sunny with no wind and the colder weather had dropped the humidity significantly from our last trip, so it felt comfortable. The sun appeared to be about 35 degrees above the horizon compared to about 20 degrees in December and the days are three hours longer now. I took a short walk around the hotel this morning including a short walk into the woods where I took this picture. You don't want to stray off this path in the snow. It has been packed down hard by all the people using it. The snow is unpacked on either side so if you step off the path you sink down a foot or more.

Tapani, Tom, and I took a bus into downtown Helsinki in the afternoon. The streets are clear but you see snow stacked in huge piles everywhere from the snow plows and shovels. The Esplanade looks completely different from our visit in December. We walked from here down to the harbor. It was frozen solid. Tapani told us that the harbor is still used during the winter, courtesy of icebreakers that come through on a regular basis.

Independence Day in Finland

Today is Finland's Independence Day, the 92nd anniversary of their independence from Russia. All of the stores and restaurants are closed today. Even the hotel restaurant was closed at lunch time, but it will be open for supper.

The picture above was taken at the big shopping mall near our hotel. It was taken around 2pm this afternoon during my walk. As you can see, it is very quiet. A little further in the walk it actually started to snow, the first I have seen since arriving over two weeks ago. I tried to get a picture, but as you can see (or not) the snowflakes are very small.

I walked between three and four miles last night and again this afternoon. I remain thoroughly impressed with the abundance of quality walking/jogging/biking trails. Bikes do not ride in the streets here but on the asphalt trails alongside all of the major roads. The path above is very typical. In some areas where there is a lot of both foot and bicycle traffic you will see a white line down the middle to the trail separating the walking/jogging area for the bicycle area.

Another nice thing for walking here is that the population density is so low here that there are green belts everywhere. The picture below is just two blocks from our hotel, about 2 miles south of the airport, and in the middle of the city of Vantaa.

Tomorrow begins our last week of work before heading home. We have made a lot of progress these past few weeks but it will be good to be home.

120509 in Helsinki

The weather continues to be unseasonably warm, it was above freezing (barely) all day today, but seasonably wet and dark. We did not see the sun at all today. Jouni Hanninen took us to Hvittrask today. This is a famous old home built by three well know Finnish architects around the turn of the century. The architects had their office in this house and lived here for several years. They were so close, that two of them exchanged wives after a couple of years.

The interior of the house is totally unique. Each room was designed by one or more of them and is different from the other rooms in the house. The bedroom below is a good example with a multi-colored fireplace in the corner, custom built furniture, vaulted ceiling, and decorative painting. And of course like all good Finnish houses it is on a lake with a big sauna at the side of the lake.

The most famous of the three archtects was Eliel Saarinen. He designed several buildings here in the Helsinki area including the main train station downtown before moving to the United States. He is primarily known for the Chicago Tribune building and the Cranbook School in Michigan. His son also became an architect and designed the arch in St. Louis among other things.

Tom Lassiter, Lanshu Wong, Tom Powell and Wei-Yan Shih take a break from working to see some of Finland.

After spending a couple of hours walking around Hvittrask, we got in the car and drove to Espoo and Helsinki. We drove by the Nokia corporate headquarters in Espoo. It is a beautiful glass and steel complex of three buildings on the coast line. We also drove by some of the fancier homes in the Helsinki area, on the coast or near it of course.

The design of the buildings here is something to see. No bland square or rectangular buildings to be seen anywhere. Even the water towers are unique. Last week we saw one in Tuusula that looked like a large building on stilts. Today we saw one that looked like it was designed by Jules Verne for the set of the War of the Worlds.

Tour of Helsinki and Tuusala 11/28/09

One of our hosts, Anssi Korhonen, graciously offered to drive Tom Lassiter, Lanshu Wong and I around his home town of Helsinki. After driving past the Stockman department store, the Zoo (the Finnish Parliament, home of 200 animals), the Olympic Stadium, the American Embassy, the apartment where Anssi lived as a small boy, and assorted other sites around downtown Helsinki we stopped at the Alexander the Great Cathedral. The statue in front is of Czar Alexander II of Russia.

We stopped at the American Embassy for a picture, but when I got out of the car the guard immediately approached and asked what I was doing. When I asked if I could take a picture I was told I could take a picture of the flag but none of the buildings. After snapping the picture he asked me to pull up the image on the camera and let him take a look at it. As I got in the car and we drove away my friends kidded me about my potential good news/bad news predicament. Good news - "Honey, I am at the American Embassy", Bad news - "I may be here for a while".

After driving around Helsinki, we headed north to the Lake Tuusual area. It is about 30KM north of the downtown area, but actually fairly close to the airport area where our hotel is located. This area was the center of the Finnish artist community in the early 1900's with the building of Halosenniemi in 1902 and Ainola in 1904. Halosenniemi (Cape Halonen) was the home of the famous Finnish painter Pekka Halonen, his wife, and their 8 children. It is located on a small pennisula jutting out into Lake Tuusala. Today the house functions as an art museum and has been fully restored to its orignial style. Ainola, the home of Jean Sibelius, was built in 1904 and is located a few kilometers north of the Halonen home. The area was also the home of several other Finnish writers, poets, and artists.

Anssi started our tour by slipping a CD of Willie Nelson performing at Billie Bob's into the car stereo to make all of the Texans feel at home. However, as we approached the Lake Tuusula area, Willie Nelson was changed to a recording of Finlandia. Clearly, this area has deep meaning to the natives of Finland.

The weather here continues to be unseasonably warm, but very wet, and of course it is very dark. Anssi told us this year is one of the two warmest Novembers in the last 100 years. It has been in the 40s all of this week but is forecasted to drop below freezing tomorrow or the next day.

The bottom photo is the Bonus Inn where I will be staying for the next three weeks. Today may have been the best weather day we will see during our stay. It reached the mid-40s and as you can see from the photo, we actually saw some blue sky. Sunrise was around 8:30 this morning, but at noon the sun was only about 20 degrees above the horizon, as high as it would get for the day.

Tom, Lanshu, Tapani, and I spent several hours in the afternoon walking around downtown Helsinki including the harbor area. It is a very interesting city with casinos, high end shopping, a financial district, lots of restaurants and hotels, embassies from all of the large countries of the world, and a lot of people. Unlike American cities, there is minimal automobile traffic, but a lot of people walking everywhere. I asked Tapani, who is from Turku about 100 miles west of Helsinki, if the relatively nice weather was the reason there were so many people walking around the city. He said that no, this was typical. Even in February when the temperature drops to much colder temperatures, people will be out and walking.Even though the air temperature was not that cold, it felt colder because there is no heating from the sun and the humidity is high. It didn't rain today but there was still water standing everywhere. I was glad to have the new boots, coat, and gloves.

First Looooooong day of Trip

After leaving Plano at 2pm on Friday, I finally arrived at my hotel room in Helsinki at 4:15pm on Saturday afternoon. Since Helsinki is 8 hours ahead of Plano, that would be 8:15am in Plano or 18 hours after I left home. It was a very long day, and yet very little sunshine. The sun was almost down when we landed in Helsinki around 3:45pm. The picture is my bed in the hotel room and clearly the highlight of this day. As you can also notice, I secured a pint of sleeping potion (Beamish Irish Stout).


More tomorrow,
Tom