Goodbye to Helsinki : 09/09/06

So it's goodbye to Helsinki. In the end it was hard to escape the sneaking notion that Helsinki was really Melbourne. There's the weather, the trams, the bicycles, and the drunks. But there are two observable differences. The street signs are strangely, both in Finnish and Swedish (two official languages - why is it so?); and there's a large population of blonde people.

So I shall post some pictures, say arrivaderci to Finland, to sanity and to my blog, and heave my 'ports' onto the Sibelius to see what awaits.

The Tempelliakio Church : carved into a cave near the heart of the city


Cobbles : where would Europe be without them?


And water. Water is everywhere, although I still found myself carefully measuring the amount I used. Finland is beautiful. It has the world's best education system (interestingly the children have the lowest 'contact' time in all of Europe); it also has a feeling of connecteness, people speak to strangers, they laugh a lot, they're often very beautiful. I've enjoyed myself enormously.