Arrived in Helsinki

This is the first day of my summer 2011 Nordic adventure.  I cashed in some frequent flyer miles way back in January and booked flights to Helsinki via Frankfurt and back with a stopover in Denmark on the way home.  The Lufthansa flight was fine.  Changing planes in Frankfurt was an adventure with miles and miles of tube-like corridors to walk.  Some of the workers there had bicycles.  

Leena met me at the Helsinki Airport.  She'd taken a direct flight, gotten there earlier and spent a bit of time with her Mother before coming back to pick me up.  We took a cab to her friend Lysse's place - and what a wonderful house. 

She has the top floor in a late 19th century Victorian mansion in the Kaivopuisto area, home to

lots of embassies.  We are next door to the Estonian Embassy and down the street from the U.S. one.  The Russian one a few blocks away has a looming Classical presence and was built with Finnish war reparation money to Russia after WWII.  Leena wouldn't let me pictures of embassies..

Afraid of falling asleep we got started our explorations immediately of the city.  The sea is a block or so away and surrounds the city on three sides.

We walked along the water up to Market Square, stopped at the Old Market and browsed the interior market as well as the open air stands selling vegetables, crafts, furs, prepared food and tourist stuff.  And then we had to do lots of window shopping on the Esplanade - admiring all sorts of Finnish design goods.

It was such a beautiful day I got a sun burn and the outdoor cafes were full of Finns (and others) soaking in the sun.  Helsinki is a very clean and very green place, with lots of parks and statues.

After replenishing Leena's tansport pass we caught a tram at the Central Station to Leena's Moms to say Hi and pick up a forgotten phone charger. 

Then back to our wonderful accomodations with a stop at the grocery story for provisions. 

Helsinki

I'm not doing too well here.  It's been over a week since my last post, so here goes.

Positioned on a rocky headland cradling the Baltic Sea, Helsinki was established by Sweden to catch up with Russia's expansion of its Baltic trade routes.  But it only really began to grow after the construction of Suomenlinna fortress off Helsinki's coast in 1748 which brough thousands of builders and soldiers and their families to the city.  Then in 1808 during the Russian occupation, the entire city was levelled by fire. 

Reconstruction began in 1817 - once Swedish FInland had become property of the Russian empire - and architech Carl Ludwig Engel and planner Johan Ehrenstrom based their city planning directly on St. Petersburg and he built a capital that was remarkably Hellenic in look.  They developed a grid of wide streets and Neoclassical, Empire-style brick buildings.  This grid forms the basis of the modern city and around Senate Square the planned grandeur is evident.  When Engel came to town, the city had a population of 4000; when he died, it had grown to hearly five times that. 

The square itself, overlooked by the gleaming Lutheran Cathedral is still the city's single most eye-catching feature.  A few blocks away, past the South Harbor and the waterside market square, is the handsome tree-lined avenue of the Esplanadi, with a narrow strip of greenery along the center.

Oh, I can see that this post really should have been about Finland's history of being batted about between Sweden and Russia, but I guess that will have to come next.