Finland

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.

In my work, I struggle almost daily with this issue: is an experience actually a unique and living slice of this culture or is it a cliché kept alive by the tourist industry. For instance, in Finland: the sauna.

There are only a few public saunas still around in Helsinki. Why? Because, with the affluence here, most people have them in their homes or cabins. Gritty working-class neighborhoods are most likely to have a public sauna. So, I got on the subway and that’s where I headed. Finding the address, my first sight made it clear: this place was not for tourists. Outside, a vertical neon sign in simple red letters read: SAUNA. Under it, a gang of Finnish guys wrapped only in small towels and enjoying bottles of beer filled a clutter of white plastic chairs–expertly relaxing.

As there wasn’t a word of English anywhere, I relied on the young attendant at the window for instructions. He explained the process: pay €7, grab a towel, strip, stow everything in an old wooden locker, wear the key like a bracelet, shower, enter the sauna…and reeeeelax. “Was it mixed?” “No, there’s a parallel world upstairs for women.” “What about getting a scrub?” He pointed to a woman in an apron and said, “Talk directly with her…€6 extra.”

The sauna was far from the sleek, cedar pre-fab den of steam I expected. Six crude concrete steps with dark wooden railings and rustic walls created a barn-like amphitheater of steam and heat. A huge iron door closed off the wood stove (as it was busy burning its cubic meter of wood a day). The third step was all the heat I could take. Everyone else was on the top level–for maximum steam and heat. Taking in my towel, I wondered if it was used for hygiene or modesty. Once inside, the answer was clear…neither.

People look more timeless and ethnic when naked with hair wet and stringy. The entire scene was three colors: grey concrete, dark wood, and ruddy flesh. There was virtually no indication of what century we were in. I fantasized I was in the 1700s. From the faces, somehow it was perfectly clear: this was Finland…and these were tough working class guys. Each had a tin bucket between their legs–for cool splashing of the face. I didn’t talk to anyone actually in the sauna as I sensed they weren’t thrilled to have tourists as voyeurs in their domain. (I knew this was a lost opportunity…not good travel.)

I asked the young attendant about birch twigs. He explained that by slapping your skin with these, you enhance the circulation and the roughed up leaves emit a refreshing birch aroma. He insisted it must be birch for chlorophyll–that opens the sinuses. But the bin of birch twigs sat on the bottom concrete step, unused.

Part two of a good sauna is the scrub down. The woman in the apron–looking like a Stalin-era Soviet tractor driver–was dousing one guy who sat on the plastic chair looking like a lifeless Viking gumby. I asked “Me next?” She welcomed me to her table. Wearing a white and green vertical striped house dress under her tough apron, she scrubs men one at a time all day long. Sitting on the table, I ask “up or down?” She pushes me down…belly up…and says “This is perfect. I wash you twice.” Lying naked as a fish on the plastic sheet…I felt like a salmon on a cleaning table ready for gutting. With sudsy mitts she works me over. She hoses me off…which makes me feel even more like a salmon.

It’s extremely relaxing. (It would be entirely relaxing but for my anxiety that I might show how much I’m enjoying the experience.) From deep in my scalp to between my toes, she washes me twice. Stepping back out into that gritty Helsinki neighborhood, I have affirmed my hope: that the sauna is no cliché kept alive for tourists.

I’m out for the evening in Helsinki. My guide, Hanne, explains, “We call Wednesday our little Friday.” There’s an energy in the streets. Our mission: to visit the restaurants I recommend in my guidebook and find new, better ones. I find Helsinki the least expensive of the Scandinavia capitals–the restaurant scene is affordable and fun. And there are plenty of distractions.

A huge demonstration fills the main boulevard. (The street is actually named “boulevardi”–given that grandiose title two hundred years ago. Back then–in Europe’s then newest, now youngest, capital–the concept of a grand boulevard in Helsinki was somewhere between absurd and wishful thinking.)

Then I realize they’re not demonstrators…but choral groups. From all corners they converge on the massive steps of the Lutheran Cathedral which normally overlooks Europe’s finest neo-classical square. Today the steps overlook thousands of locals, dropping by to hear this massing of the choirs. Eight hundred singers fill the steps–each group represented by a placard–to sing a rousing set of anthems. While I can’t understand a word, the songs are sung with a stirring air that must tell of a hard-fought history and a thankfulness to be who they are–the people of Finland. Then, the balloons are freed, and the groups disperse kicking off a festive week called “art goes to the pubs.” Each choir sets off to an appointed bar…and the city’s drinking holes are filled with song.

Leaving the crowd for our evening’s work, we pass a poster of a demonic-looking rock band. Hanne explained “hell froze over this year.” Europe’s biggest TV event is the annual Euro-vision Song Festival. (Most famous to boomer travelers like me as the event Abba won back in the 1970s with their breakout song, Waterloo.) Finns are perennial losers in the event and locals have long said, “When Finland wins the Euro-vision Song Festival hell will freeze over. This year, people from all over Europe telephoned in their votes and Finland’s Kiss-inspired heavy metal band “Lordi” (led by a soft-spoken charismatic Laplander) won with a cute little number called “Hard Rock Halleluiah.”

At the curb, there are no cars. I get halfway across Boulevardi boulevard and look back at Hanne still waiting. As if in needless defeat, I return to the curb. She says, “In Finland, we wait. It can be two in the morning and not a car in sight, but we wait. That’s why we have such low crime.” I said, “Germans respect authority too.” She said, this is different. “We buck authority…but follow the laws…even little ones.”

Finns seem to have a fun-loving confidence. I asked, “All of Scandinavia is so prosperous but only Norway has oil. How is this?” Hanne said, “Norway has oil…Finland has Nokia. It’s like Microsoft for you in Seattle.” Then I asked, “What then, is Sweden’s trick?” Hanne shows the standard Scandinavian envy of the regional powerhouse saying, “They never get in a war. They’re always rich…just collecting money all the time. The Swedes are like our big brother. They always win. Like in ice hockey. We won only once…back in the 1990s. The Swedes–assuming they’d win–already wrote their victory song. But we won. We Finns still sing this song. It’s the only song Finns know in Swedish and every Finn can sing it…even today.”

The Finns are so prosperous that they’re the first Europeans to do away with the Euro pennies. Prices are rounded to the nickel and the one cent and two cent coins are now officially out of circulation. (I am particularly happy today. Each Euro country has its own versions of the Euro coins and I’m filling my coin book with a set from each country. I have an ethic that I only take coins out of circulation. My big trick is befriending a waitress and getting her to let me paw through her change purse to find missing coins. The only gaps I have now (not counting the collector sets from Monaco, San Marino, and the Vatican City–which go immediately out of circulation when minted) are Finland and Luxemburg. They mint so few compared to the behemoth countries that you don’t see them outside their home countries. I dropped by a coin shop and purchased the Finnish penny and two cent coin (at €3, that was 100 times their face value). In the shop, I commented “it would be difficult to find these in circulation and the keeper said, “you are wrong…it would be impossible.” (So I didn’t break my ethic.)

Of the many restaurants we surveyed, the most elegant had a dining hall perfectly 1930s–Alvar Aalto-designed Functionalism. The kind of straight design and practical elegance Finns love. A private office party was raging–a crayfish party. It’s crayfish season–at $10 each, it’s far from a budget meal. But all over town Finns are doing the crayfish tango: suck and savor a big red mini-lobster, throw down a glass of schnapps, sing a song and do it again. With a “hundred bottles of beer on the wall” repetitiveness, it just gets more fun with each round.

Hanne shows me the table of Mannerheim, the heroic George Washington of modern Finland who led their feisty resistance to the USSR and is likely personally responsible for artfully keeping Finland free during and after WWII. No Finnish military leader will ever again hold Mannerheim’s rank of “Field Marshal.” But any one can sit at his favorite table…and suck a crayfish.

We step onto the rooftop terrace with a glorious 8th floor view of Helsinki. The late-setting sun is gleaming on both the Lutheran cathedral and the golden onion domes of the Russian orthodox church. They seem to face off, symbolizing how east and west have long confronted each other here in Finland. (Europe’s second mightiest sea fortress–after Gibraltar–fills an island in the harbor…the reason for Helsinki’s birth.)

Below us on the neighboring rooftop, six bankers wrapped in white towels are enjoying a sauna. In all great office buildings–whether banks, insurance companies, or research institutes–a rooftop sauna is an “elemental and essential part of the design.” (Free snacks and drinks at the sauna after work from 5:00 to 9:00 is an almost expected perk.) One big fat guy was so pink from the heat that–with his white towel wrapped around his waist–he reminded me of a striped pool ball.

The Finns seem happy. Their woman president, Tarja Hallonen–just re-elected for a second 6-year term–has an 80% approval rating. And they are proud of the way they tackle challenges confronting their society. With the coming of bird flu, they tented their famous market and everyone here seems to crow about how those Swedes had a case of bird flu…and the clever Finns did not.