Helsinki is a beautiful city, it is clean and the people are
friendly. Every green space, no matter how small, is perfectly manicured and
many are planted out with riots of colourful flowers. We have been told that
some of this friendliness grows with the summer sun, and we were there at the
peak of Helsinki’s good weather.
Sometimes in Australia we take good weather and long days
for granted, but not the Finns. They embrace summer to the point where every
little green space is filled with people picnicking, sunbaking, running,
playing, cycling, or just relaxing and watching the world go by. It seemed like
the whole city had taken the day off to enjoy the sun, we passed by a ‘beach’
which was an inlet less than the size of a tennis court with murky water and
very full of slime-like seaweed but despite this every inch of it was full of
people swimming in apparent blissful enjoyment. When the temperatures for
January look like this you can see why.
The streets of Helsinki are really interesting. Every street
corner has pedestrian crossings on all four roads, there are on-road and off-road
cycle lanes everywhere, and who gets the right of way isn’t determined by size.
Cars, bikes and pedestrians really are on an equal footing.
The contrast with Manchester and Liverpool is really
striking. While both English cities have lovely areas the overwhelming feeling
as you enter them is that they are industrial cities that have grown up. Any
street art, or building decoration is, well, not quite lipstick on a pig, but
you get the idea. The streets are also spotless – I didn’t notice how little
chewing gum there was in the streets until we got to Manchester, where it’s
everywhere. We saw ordinary people picking up rubbish on the streets as they
went past.
It is striking how the buildings in Helsinki have been
adapted to the weather conditions. They have tall, steeply pitched rooves with
snow fences along the bottom to protect pedestrians (and I just discovered that
they also keep snow on the roof to help insulate the building). The windows
have an outer single glazed window, then a foot of space – sometimes with
little displays of ornaments - then an inner double glazed window. The
apartment doors are double doors, with space in the middle for leaving boots to
dry. Most doorways have grates or grills outside and big doormats inside to
catch snow and water from shoes and boots. For all this, the buildings are, by
and large, beautiful. Clean, colourful and immaculately maintained facades are just about everywhere.
