A frenchman in Helsinki

“Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Helsinki, it is 3.45pm, the weather is cloudy…”

I had all these good memories from Stockholm in my head and was so excited to compare these both cities. Helsinki is at the very north of Europe, very Scandinavian in my mind. But just in my mind…

It’s like baking a tasty chocolate cake. You do your best to get a delicious dessert. You are very enthusiastic and can’t wait to have a bite. But when you take it out of the oven, you see the cake is burned. Damn!

This is the Helsinki recipe:

• First, take the Finish people who aren’t very expressive.
  
• Then take a bad welcome with a strange accent.
  
• Have a walk in the city.
  
• Ask somebody how to get to the city centre. “But, you arre in tha citty centrrre!”, this one man answered.
  
• Go to the main shopping street then get pictures from Helsinki’s Cathedral before going back to the village by the harbour.
  
• After that, try to find a good restaurant with great food (a hard mission).
  Finally, get to a cool place with fun people and great music. If you can’t find anything, just go back home.
  
• I’ve heard about the rivalry between Sweden and Finland. But I guess rivalry is not the right word. I’d go with difference, because there’s really no competition. Sweden is truly the big brother. The chief!

Helsinki is the most unexciting capital I’ve ever been to. It’s not even a city, it’s a town. Just a cute town, nothing else. It’s definitively boring. People are not fancy. Instead they are very conservative and not trendy at all (don’t go to Finland for shopping unless you have a bad taste). Clubs are dodgy and it’s freezing seven months a year. What’s the point?

Text: Remi Gremilett, 2008

Länk: http://www.helsinki.fi/