Helsinki Times

Pour me another glass of Helsinki, please!

I was just sipping my apple cider (one of the Finnish drinks that don’t actually fit my preferences) when this idea crossed my mind about the city that made me fall in love with it at first sight. If there were a drink called Helsinki, what would it be like? I immediately pictured a sweet, fizzy, fancy-colored cold liquid in a tall glass, so that everyone can have a taste of the Finnish spirit. I even made up a recipe in my head.

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Kallio… Oh Kallio

It’s early afternoon on a Friday, I think, and the buzz of the alcohol is already making me feel like I am coated with electric fur. Helsinginkatu has turned into a long squeeze of toothpaste: I watch it coiling on itself as it falls. Boozing is a habit that many residents of Kallio have failed to break. Their existence is in danger of shrivelling and fading into slobbering, nonsense syllables. This is to lose track of how one’s own mental furniture is arranged in one’s head. If there is any truth in Wabi-Sabi – the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection – then I will surely find it here in this working-class area of the Finnish capital, now slowly gentrifying.

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Two years trying to be a Finn

I can’t believe it’s already been two years since I left the UK and arrived here in Finland to start a new life. Have I embraced my new homeland and all things Finnish? Well, I’m trying to.

I’m trying to speak the language and regularly attend language courses with my fellow immigrants. We all sit there collectively shaking our heads and smiling at the black comedy that is learning Finnish. Slowly we discover the many devious methods that Finns use to make their language as complicated as possible for foreigners. Then we are told that as well as formal “written Finnish”, we must also learn “spoken Finnish”, which is different. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

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Spring fever

THE SUN is shining and I’m looking out at my garden, which is covered in clumps of snow and bits of tulip leaves poking out here and there. The Finnish spring has arrived, and the snow is melting with a vengeance - but with it all the blobs it has concealed are being released into this soup of yuck. No one really cares though, because the sun is shining and summer is coming.

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Helsinki – an eventful experience not to be forgotten

As we walked through the airport exhausted from our early flights from Dublin to Helsinki, we passed the automatic doors, and suddenly our tiredness was replaced by the fierce cold that pierced our cheeks and made us lively again. We were refreshed by this frosty air and ready for the rest of our journey.

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The changing colours of Finland

AFTER living in Finland for two years I can now safely say that I have come to appreciate the reliability of the Finnish weather. I know, I know, how very British to be talking about the weather, but Finland has an annual weather pattern of four clearly defined seasons that would make Antonio Vivaldi proud.

Snow is to be expected from a typical Finnish winter and boy are we all happy when it finally arrives. The soft white carpet makes those dark afternoons feel so much lighter, not to mention how strikingly festive it looks with the trees drooping in the same bright stuff. Okay so it’s cold too, and unbelievably so at times, but you just have to layer up and get on with it. I challenge anyone to walk along their local paths in the clearings of the trees and not feel the inner warmth and giddiness that this snowy silence provides. It’s as if you’ve just stepped out of a wardrobe into your own deserted Narnia.

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Quiet happenings

Finland, the land of a thousand lakes: I love the shimmering melancholy in this land of snow and ice. For me Finland is totally different from Sweden, where I’m from. As a poet and a writer this country fits me like a glove. Even if Finland and Sweden are close to each other geographically, they seem like two different worlds.

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Commuting on the public shame system

THERE was a time when I tried to fit in.

My ears burned with shame when my two-year-old son practiced his scales on the bus. “Do re mi fa so laaa TIII DoOO,” he sang, so off-key that some angry lady plugged her ears and turned to us with that winter-worn Finnish expression that says, “See here! We are not here to be happy, sing, or otherwise make noise! How dare your misbehaving brat intrude on my solitude?”

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Helsinki, an appreciation

The sky is softly lit, with helical twists of snow rising past my window. I strain for signs of the sun – a faint yellowish solar blur – somewhere out there in the morning gray. Soda straws of ice, some of them two meters long, wait to impale their unsuspecting victims in the courtyard below. Squealing shrilly, ravens are perched on bare trees shivering beside bikes locked in their appointed places under mounds of snow. Helsinki, the Baltic-fronted city with breasted ragged bluffs and a soft spot for nature, is waking up and coming to life.

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Falling flat

Everyone waits for a white Christmas in Helsinki. The dark city seems to be gobbled up by the grey flagstones, and even the white church looks gloomy in the long twilight. Then, the snow comes, and it comes with a vengeance.

Swirling snow obscures vision, causes fender benders and drops temperatures down to -15 some days and 0 on others. This is when you see people take the most spectacular spills. Despite having lived in this climate for as long as I have, I’ve not yet actually “eaten it”, except while walking the dogs, but that does not count because they caused it really.

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