A Foreign Land: Finland (Part 1)

Moi!

The first thing to learn in any country is how to say hello, and I've learned it in two new languages now. This is Finnish. I've safely returned from my travels in Finland and Russia, and I can tell you that it was a week I'll remember forever. Helsinki and St. Petersburg are both beautiful cities, though in many ways they are very different. I learned so much from traveling to both cities, and not only about history this time. I'll start at the beginning of the story though, and we'll get to them in due time!

For those of you who aren't as familiar with the Baltic region, this is a map of our travels. We travelled by overnight ferries, which was a fantastic adventure for me! I had to explain on more than one occasion that there simply isn't that much water in Colorado, and that getting to any significant body of water involved traveling at least two or three hours by plane. One thing that was interesting to me was the sheer number of islands between Sweden and Finland; we were never out of sight of land.

Henri and I met at noon to take the train to Stockholm. Even after taking it several times, it still hasn't gotten old yet, and Henri still teases me about it. We then walked from Central Station to the ferry terminal, stopping at our favorite cafe from our last wander in Stockholm to get some lunch. When we arrived at the Viking Line terminal, the road sign had an arrow pointing left that said "To Finland" as if there were a road to get there; really it's just the ferry. Ingång means entrance in Swedish, and Sisään the same in Finnish. Finnish is mostly unrelated to Swedish, but as Swedish is the second official language of Finland, everything was written in both languages.

After Henri and I found our cabin and dropped our backpacks, we eagerly explored the ferry. It was really more like a cruise ship! There were ten decks altogether, though two of them were car decks. The top deck was open to everything, and here we found the Finnish flag streaming in the wind. We were officially off on our adventure! For the first several hours we sailed through the web of waterways that connect Stockholm to the Baltic Sea. You can see on the map that Stockholm is actually very far inland for a port city. There were hundreds of islands; some were large and some were chunks of rock with a tree or two. Most had colorful houses and docks scattered on them. It was incredibly picturesque, and Henri and I stayed on the bow watching them go by until we couldn't feel our hands anymore.

This is what our cabin looked like. You can see the two lower bunks folded down here; there were also upper bunks that are folded up in this picture. Henri and I shared our room with a German girl named Sophie and a French girl named Caroline. Sophie, Henri and I got along famously. Caroline had a somewhat different purpose for traveling than we did; she was horrified when we went to bed at one (we were getting up at seven the next morning to disembark the ferry, mind) and she was skeptical of our ability to have any fun when we told her Henri studied physics, Sophie EU law, and me molecular biology. It takes all kinds, I guess, but my interactions with Caroline were mostly limited to checking the clock when she came back around four or five each morning.

Traveling on a ferry like this only confirmed what I already knew; I love traveling. Of course the biggest draw is seeing new places, but I like the traveling itself as well. I love being able to live out of my backpack, sleeping in bunks, and the people watching is always fantastic. Things like sharing a bathroom with three other people and carrying my stuff around don't bother me (although I did have significantly less to carry than most of the other students there). Packing light and the highly functional layout of the small cabins make me feel efficient and independent.

And then there is the goal of the traveling: seeing the new places. When we arrived in Helsinki we got on a bus to take us to the West Terminal, where a different ferry line would take us to St. Petersburg that afternoon. Along the way we also got a bit of a tour around Helsinki. This photo is just at the very beginning, looking back at our ferry. IT'S HUGE! The one behind it was a second Viking Line ferry that also went back and forth to Stockholm.

Like Stockholm, Helsinki is surrounded by a multitude of islands. This one is a classic example of what you could see every time you looked out to sea from the city.

While we were on the bus we learned a little bit more about Finland. There are only five million people in the country, and a fifth of that population lives in Helsinki. Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden from around 1200 until 1809, when it was ceded to Russia. Helsinki was founded by Sweden during this time in order to compete with Tallinn, the current capital of Estonia, which was at that time the major trade city on the Gulf of Finland. Finland declared independence from Russia in 1917. While they gained independence peacefully, Finland had a civil war the following year between the Red Guard and the White Guard (of similar politics to their Russian counterparts). The civil war lasted less than a year, when the White Guard won, and the country has been peaceful ever since.

This island is called Sveaborg/Viapori/Suomenlinna (the Swedish/Russian/Finnish names). It's a fortress that was built by Sweden to defend Helsinki from Russia, though the Swedes never actually finished building the fortress. It was later used by the Russians to defend against Sweden and then by Finland to defend against the Soviet Union during WWII. (The Soviets, for some reason, thought taking Finland back was a good idea while they were also fighting in a world war. Why, I'm not quite sure; you would think they already had their hands full.) In our second day in Helsinki, we visited the island fortress, so I'll save the rest of those stories for now.

During our drive we also drove down some of the main avenues of Helsinki. The city is the World Design Capital of 2012, so the shops are currently outdoing themselves. Helsinki's approach to design struck me as very Scandinavian; they believe that not only is design important in the context of well-known fashion labels and expensive luxury items, but also in everyday life. The design of the trolley system and the design of a patterned rug can have the same elegance. This functional and practical mindset is characteristic of Scandinavia. The last major landmark we drove past was the Olympic Stadium of the 1952 Summer Games.

After we'd stored our luggage in the West Terminal, the bus dropped us in one of the main squares in downtown. The obvious attraction was this Lutheran cathedral, which is a main fixture in the Helsinki skyline. I don't know very much about architecture, but I do pride myself on my ability to notice details. One thing I noticed about this church was the four cupolas around the main dome. This is very different not only from the Catholic churches Henri and I saw in Rome but also from the Lutheran cathedrals in Uppsala and Stockholm. You normally see cupolas like this on Orthodox Christian churches. I don't know for sure, but I think it's possible to attribute the styling of this church to the large influence of Russia on Finland. In any case, this church was just as beautiful as the others I've seen.

This is the organ inside the cathedral. Henri and I debated for a moment if it was the biggest one we've seen, but either way it's up there. However, unlike the churches we saw in Rome, the organ was the most decorative part of the church. The rest was clean white plaster and very simple. Just as beautiful, but in an utterly different way.

This is the main Orthodox cathedral of Helsinki. You can see the multitude of little cupolas on the facade here, though they aren't arranged around the dome like the cathedrals I saw in St. Petersburg. You can tell from a glance that this cathedral is very different from the Lutheran cathedral.

The inside of the cathedral reminded me more of the Roman cathedrals in how it was decorated, though I could tell there were differences. I'm not sure exactly what they were and how to explain most of them, which I blame on my lack of background knowledge about Christianity in general and cathedrals specifically.

One difference that was very obvious was the Russian writing on the arches below the dome. As most of you probably know, Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, making it very easily recognizable. Orthodox Christianity is the main religion in Russia, so it makes sense that the Russian influence on Helsinki would include the spread of the Orthodox religion.

This is an example of what Helsinki looked like. Though Helsinki was originally built by Swedes and later rebuilt by Russia, very little remains in the architecture of either culture. The city was heavily bombed during WWII and has since been rebuilt in a classical romance style. As I mentioned before, I have no background in architecture, but I can tell you that I haven't ever seen a city quite like Helsinki. Most of the buildings look like they've been styled after fairy-tale castles, complete with turrets and stone work. Where the buildings aren't stone, they're painted pastel yellows, red-oranges, and greens in a similar style to Stockholm (and to St. Petersburg). It was incredibly beautiful, and I found myself falling more in love with the city than I thought I would. It's more modern than Stockholm (thanks to the destruction caused by the bombings during WWII) but it's beautiful all the same.

At four that afternoon we met in the West Terminal to board a second ship for our voyage to St. Petersburg. Unlike the first time, we passed through passport control here. The difference between having an EU passport and a non-EU passport was highly obvious; Henri's French passport afforded merely a glance from the official, but he took great interest in every stamp I'd acquired up to that point (I had eight!) along with my residence permit. He was very friendly though, and wished me safe travels. Henri grumbled about dumb American passports and told me sternly I was going through before him from then on, despite my pointing out that it wouldn't matter in Russia.

Once on board we again dumped our things in a small cabin and explored the ship. This picture was taken around eight thirty that evening looking south at the many islands we were again sailing past. It was a stunning journey, and we went to sleep thrilled to be arriving in St. Petersburg the next day.

In the spirit of not overloading the server with more pictures (or you with the small novels I can write about my travels), I'll end here for now, but I won't wait until next week to write about the rest of my journey. Hopefully I'll have my stories about St. Petersburg up in a day or two.

Until then, moi moi!