Turku, Finland Proper, Finland/Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland
H: 0/-1 L: -9/-14 Weather: Light Snow, Turning Clear/Scattered Clouds
I took the opportunity on Sunday morning to sleep in. Like, a lot. I've found that nothing eases the transition to a vastly different time zone like sleeping way too much on the day after you've made the time zone switch. For me, sleeping in "a lot" meant 10:30am, but that was about 11 hours of sleep. It felt really, really good. Since then, I haven't really had any issues with jet leg! Apparently forcing myself to stay up during the whole of the ferry ride to Finland helped.
We headed towards the Turku port, where I had just arrived the day before, to check out the castle. Turku is one of the oldest cities in Finland, so it has no shortage of relatively old things. Interestingly, most of them were Swedish, Finland started its life as a united entity as basically a colony of Sweden, with Turku being eventually made its capital. As such, Turku has some of the longest-lasting institutions in the country: the oldest newspaper and the oldest theatre, for example. Both of those are in Swedish.
Turku's castle was built in two stages: the first in the Middle Ages (c. 1300s), the second in the Renaissance (c. 1600s). The entire castle complex largely fell into disrepair in the 1900s before a successful renovation brought it back. But the renovation lent an odd air to the castle. Although there definitely were old things here and there, they were often overlain with modern touches: fire alarms, electric lights, wood platforms to walk on, and so on. It felt somewhat like the owner of the castle was doing some renovations but was letting some lucky groups of visitors shuffle through.
Still, there were some cool artifacts that were preserved from earlier times in Turku, particularly wooden carvings of saints that had all had their hands chopped off or fall off - I couldn't quite tell which. It was interesting to imagine how long the carvings had been intact and who had originally worked on them.
A tour of the castle took a couple of hours, so afterwards we decided to get lunch. We were turned away from no less than two restaurants before we found somewhere with an open table, despite the fact that it was 3:30pm on a Sunday, much to our surprise. Our next stop was the city's church... again, pretty much one of the oldest churches in Finland, originally Swedish, and somehow the National Shrine of Finland, whatever that means. Like most Lutheran places, Finland went on an anti-Catholic spree around the time of the reformation, and took out all of the pretty carvings and shiny things from the church. However, the building was still massive and powerful on the inside. The Lutheran simplicity of the thing was almost a bit reassuring. As with most European churches, dead folks were buried all around the worship space. While we were there, a couple of singers were warming up for some sort of performance (perhaps in a service), which lent the space a beautiful light.
Afterwards, we adjourned to the library, where we tried unsuccessfully to find American travel guides. (I wanted to see what they had to say about Detroit.) I floated the idea of grabbing a drink and loitering around until dinner... there was a Viking restaurant that I was desperate to try, because, lol, Viking restaurant. But instead we just headed back to Essi's place and took a bit of a rest. By the time we became less dormant, it was already something like 8:30pm. Unfortunately, Finland, like much of Europe, basically shuts down at 8:00pm on Sunday evenings. No, I can't quite explain it either. But we were desperately short on dining options. Our one savior: Rokbar.
Finland is known for its heavy metal scene. I can't quite explain it either. But Finland has one of the largest numbers of heavy metal groups in the world, and Finnish heavy metal artists have apparently been reputed far and wide for their prowess. One Finnish heavy metal band shocked the world when it won the staid Eurovision contest (also known as the Europe-wide music contest that introduced the world to ABBA, Céline Dion, and Julio Iglesias) with its spirited heavy metal antics. Apparently, this has led to a culture-wide phenomenon, such that there are now heavy metal-themed restaurants and bars. Rokbar is one of them. Thus, my second evening in Finland was spent nomming on a pork-and-mushroom sandwich and drinking a delicious Finnish lager at the only heavy metal-themed bar in Turku. It was delicious and completely unthreatening. We returned back to her apartment quite tired, but we still rallied to make a YouTube video for some friends before getting to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up with some time to spare before the bus, but unfortunately Essi wasn't so lucky. So, on my own, I negotiated a bus to the middle of the city, a short walk to the bus station, and then figuring out how to get on the long-distance bus that I had reserved. I could tell that, for a couple of the bus station employees, I was taxing their usable English, but because my Finnish vocabulary consisted of "Hello!" ("Moi!") and "Thank you!" ("Kiitos!"), we didn't really have any other options. Eventually I made it on the bus. Which was gorgeous and convenient and even had a screen with the current destination, time-to-destination, next stop, and everything else you could ever want. It was nice. The scenery made me realize how appropriate it was that many Yoopers are Finns.
In Helsinki, I had time to visit a church—built into a rocky hillside—and to have lunch at a Australian-owned bar (that featured delicious salmon pasta, nom nom nom!), before it was time to head for the harbor. Helsinki is a more Russian city than it is a Swedish one, so it was interesting to find Cyrillic writing when out and about. Eventually, I boarded my boat (after accidentally trying to plug in my details into the reservation system for a rival ship company... oops). This ship was... er... a bit less classy than the one I took from Stockholm to Turku. There was basically no where to sit except in a bar, so I planted myself in a bar that ended up featuring a rather repetitive band playing songs that sounded like they were from some Old Country. Also crappy internet. I was less than amused. But I was making it to Tallinn!
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