A fortnight in Finland
“Finland’s landscapes are a glorious variation on the themes of forest and water, where the comforts of modern life are never far away. Yet each region has its distinct character, from the wilds of Lapland to the inspiring lakes of the East and the archipelagos of the South-West. Finland is full of interesting contrasts, such as the four seasons, the midnight sun and the long winter nights and the different cultural heritages of the Eastern and Western parts of the country” is how the website visitfinland.com, the official website of the Tourism Department of the Government of Finland describes the Country. And during a visit to Finland, I discovered this was to a large extent true. What is more, it combines the good points of many Western European Nations while avoiding the bad, thereby making it an idyllic location.
Finnair, the official carrier of Finland, operates direct flight from Delhi and Mumbai regularly to the Capital of Finland, Helsinki. I took the flight from Delhi, from where the flight operates all seven days a week in the early hours of 17th of August 2009. The distance from Delhi to Helsinki is about 5200 miles. At Delhi airport, I was rather surprised to find the flight is fully booked most of the days because I thought places like London or Frankfurt or Paris would be destinations more sought after by Indians. Also while there are many more people from such countries coming to India, I have seen very few Finns in India. While talking to some of my co passengers, mostly Indians, I discovered that they were using Helsinki as a transit destination, planning to take Finnair flights from Helsinki to Heathrow, Frankfurt and the like, because that works out cheaper! A Sikh gentleman based in Birmingham told me that he has done it more than twenty times and has never once ventured out of the Helsinki Vantaa Airport. He doesn’t know what he has missed. And that is the secret of crowded flights to Helsinki.
The flight itself was pleasant, with the crew decidedly competent (as I discovered when a frail blonde girl fainted soon after take off) but unlike the sweet beauties that one is accustomed to see on Indian flights, the Finnair crew was decidedly matronly though brisk and efficient. I was served something which I was assured was vegetarian and a miniscule bottle of red wine, after which I went to sleep.
The Helsinki airport is at Vantaa, located to the north of the Capital Helsinki. The distance between Delhi and Helsinki-Vantaa is roughly 5300 kilometers and is covered in slightly over six hours. The flight takes off at 1:00 AM local time and reaches Vantaa at 6:00 AM local time after flying over six hours. Helsinki in summer is two hours and thirty minute behind IST (and that makes a ‘late to bed, late to rise’ guys like me normal). The crew is courteous, efficient and has some Indians among them. Since it is a night flight, not much food and drinks are served but the return flight is much better.
It was rather bleak and gloomy at 6:00 AM when we landed at the Helsinki Vantaa airport early on the morning of 17th August. It was supposedly midsummer in Finland, but for a Delhiite it seemed like the 28th of December rather than the 17th of August. 12 degrees Celsius and drizzling and cloudy at 10 AM. Disembarkation, customs and immigration were quick and easy, probably because I had impeccable documents. No buses at Helsinki Vantaa Airport, just aerobridges. Outside the Airport, it took just a minute to engage a taxi. All taxis in Helsinki are equipped with the latest GPS monitors and touch screens, with a radio connection and WiFi enabled, so that they can accept credit card payments. Vehicles drive down the right as in the US, and the vehicles are all left hand drives. I, who normally likes to sit on the front with the driver, invariably rushed and took my place near the left front door, and was invariably met with the question “Would you prefer to drive?”, before realizing my mistake. By the time I sheepishly made my way to the other side someone else had already occupied the coveted seat, and both the window seats on the back too. Nevertheless, after the auto rides in Delhi, such rides came as a pleasant surprise. The only note of warning is that whenever you hear the price of anything, repeat anything, in Euros never mentally convert it into rupee equivalent, for if you do, you will be able to do nothing in Finland. For records, the six kilometer taxi ride from the Airport to the hotel cost me over 2500 rupees.
We were booked in at Hotelli Tikkurila, a Spartan hostel in the town of Tikkurila. The taxi ride took about 15 minutes. By the time we arrived it was drizzling, and gloomy, and the time was 8:00 AM (10:30 AM in India). And at 8:00 AM on a Sunday, in a northern European city, even if it happened to be a national capital, there was hardly anyone out on the streets. The drive was similar to a drive out of Delhi airport what with flyovers, underpasses, white on green roadsigns and the like and the landscape was stark, with granite jutting out of the ground, but green with conifers nevertheless.
The roadsigns were a revelation though. We in India are very familiar with bilingual, trilingual and even multilingual roadsigns – even Delhi has roadsigns in four languages, but in Finland, where Swedish happens to be the second language, every road sign is in Finnish and Swedish. ‘Perfectly fine’ you may say, but then, each town’s name, each square and street name was totally different in Finnish and Swedish! It is like calling Pandit Nehru Marg as ‘Learned person from a family that lived beside the canal Road’ in English or Kamala Nehru Marg as “Lotus from beside the canal Road’. Helsinki itself was called Helsingfors in Swedish. All my education about proper nouns being non translatable went down the drain during that fortnight in Finland.
Finnair, the official carrier of Finland, operates direct flight from Delhi and Mumbai regularly to the Capital of Finland, Helsinki. I took the flight from Delhi, from where the flight operates all seven days a week in the early hours of 17th of August 2009. The distance from Delhi to Helsinki is about 5200 miles. At Delhi airport, I was rather surprised to find the flight is fully booked most of the days because I thought places like London or Frankfurt or Paris would be destinations more sought after by Indians. Also while there are many more people from such countries coming to India, I have seen very few Finns in India. While talking to some of my co passengers, mostly Indians, I discovered that they were using Helsinki as a transit destination, planning to take Finnair flights from Helsinki to Heathrow, Frankfurt and the like, because that works out cheaper! A Sikh gentleman based in Birmingham told me that he has done it more than twenty times and has never once ventured out of the Helsinki Vantaa Airport. He doesn’t know what he has missed. And that is the secret of crowded flights to Helsinki.
The flight itself was pleasant, with the crew decidedly competent (as I discovered when a frail blonde girl fainted soon after take off) but unlike the sweet beauties that one is accustomed to see on Indian flights, the Finnair crew was decidedly matronly though brisk and efficient. I was served something which I was assured was vegetarian and a miniscule bottle of red wine, after which I went to sleep.
The Helsinki airport is at Vantaa, located to the north of the Capital Helsinki. The distance between Delhi and Helsinki-Vantaa is roughly 5300 kilometers and is covered in slightly over six hours. The flight takes off at 1:00 AM local time and reaches Vantaa at 6:00 AM local time after flying over six hours. Helsinki in summer is two hours and thirty minute behind IST (and that makes a ‘late to bed, late to rise’ guys like me normal). The crew is courteous, efficient and has some Indians among them. Since it is a night flight, not much food and drinks are served but the return flight is much better.
It was rather bleak and gloomy at 6:00 AM when we landed at the Helsinki Vantaa airport early on the morning of 17th August. It was supposedly midsummer in Finland, but for a Delhiite it seemed like the 28th of December rather than the 17th of August. 12 degrees Celsius and drizzling and cloudy at 10 AM. Disembarkation, customs and immigration were quick and easy, probably because I had impeccable documents. No buses at Helsinki Vantaa Airport, just aerobridges. Outside the Airport, it took just a minute to engage a taxi. All taxis in Helsinki are equipped with the latest GPS monitors and touch screens, with a radio connection and WiFi enabled, so that they can accept credit card payments. Vehicles drive down the right as in the US, and the vehicles are all left hand drives. I, who normally likes to sit on the front with the driver, invariably rushed and took my place near the left front door, and was invariably met with the question “Would you prefer to drive?”, before realizing my mistake. By the time I sheepishly made my way to the other side someone else had already occupied the coveted seat, and both the window seats on the back too. Nevertheless, after the auto rides in Delhi, such rides came as a pleasant surprise. The only note of warning is that whenever you hear the price of anything, repeat anything, in Euros never mentally convert it into rupee equivalent, for if you do, you will be able to do nothing in Finland. For records, the six kilometer taxi ride from the Airport to the hotel cost me over 2500 rupees.
We were booked in at Hotelli Tikkurila, a Spartan hostel in the town of Tikkurila. The taxi ride took about 15 minutes. By the time we arrived it was drizzling, and gloomy, and the time was 8:00 AM (10:30 AM in India). And at 8:00 AM on a Sunday, in a northern European city, even if it happened to be a national capital, there was hardly anyone out on the streets. The drive was similar to a drive out of Delhi airport what with flyovers, underpasses, white on green roadsigns and the like and the landscape was stark, with granite jutting out of the ground, but green with conifers nevertheless.
The roadsigns were a revelation though. We in India are very familiar with bilingual, trilingual and even multilingual roadsigns – even Delhi has roadsigns in four languages, but in Finland, where Swedish happens to be the second language, every road sign is in Finnish and Swedish. ‘Perfectly fine’ you may say, but then, each town’s name, each square and street name was totally different in Finnish and Swedish! It is like calling Pandit Nehru Marg as ‘Learned person from a family that lived beside the canal Road’ in English or Kamala Nehru Marg as “Lotus from beside the canal Road’. Helsinki itself was called Helsingfors in Swedish. All my education about proper nouns being non translatable went down the drain during that fortnight in Finland.
And like the Mullah ka daud, my post about Finland too ends in Wadi. Except for the opulence, greenery, weather and cleanliness, a typical small town in Finland like Tikkurila reminded one of Wadi in 1970.
posted by Ramdas Iyer at 12:35 PM
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