Helsinki: Somewhere Between Bland and Mellow

Helsinki blossoms if you take time for a walk. I came upon the flea market — a square filled with folding tables stacked with stuff. The days are long gone when Helsinki flea markets were full of treasures sold by desperate Russians from just over the border. This was just stuff being shuffled from one family to the next.

Wandering under the sun through the square, I closed my eyes and listened to the soundtrack of 300 Finns at a flea market. It was almost silent. I could have been in a mountain meadow. At this moment, Finland seemed somewhere between bland and mellow…very orderly.

Two powerful icebreakers were moored across the harbor. Since they are capable of breaking through 15 feet of ice, you know this place gets cold in the winter. At the shore is a wooden deck with washing tables built out over the water. The city provides this for locals to clean their carpets. A good Saturday chore in the summer is to bring the family carpet down to the harborfront, scrub it with seawater, and then let it air-dry in the Baltic breeze. Whenever I’m in Helsinki, I go to a neighborhood sauna. The sauna on the cruise ship from Stockholm or in the hotel is just not right. I want to be with Finns, not tourists. My guidebook has long described one particular sauna as being in a poor neighborhood where people don’t have saunas of their own. That’s old news. Now, like so many old neighborhoods, with the general affluence of our age, this place is becoming trendy.

People of all walks of life come here for a relaxing break. It’s a personal thing…a time for some peace and quiet. Finns say the sauna is a great equalizer — here, wearing nothing and slapping your back with birch twigs, there are no bosses. Everyone’s equal. The sauna has a particular appeal during the long, cold winters. There’s a big cooler just inside the door where people put their drinks (if you want a beer, you have to bring your own). It’s stacked with BYOB bottles and frozen bundles of birch twigs.

Sitting there, naked and sweating, surrounded by sauna experts, not knowing a word of Finnish and not knowing the routine, I felt a little gawky. Locals can seem stern and off-putting. But as soon as I talked to someone, I realized how deceiving that impression is. It’s a lost opportunity when tourists let their awkward self-consciousness bully them into silence. Break the silence and you’ll likely enjoy a warm avalanche of acceptance — and a great conversation. Almost always, when locals look unfriendly… it’s a misperception. I bet they feel a similar awkwardness — or at least believing that assumption helps me break the ice.

Leaving the sauna, I walked back to my hotel — impressed again at the way five million Finns can maintain a distinct culture here in this far-northern corner of Europe.