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If you spent a couple of days in Helsinki as a tourist, the city might well seem a little austere… the imperial Russian architecture of the central city with its wide, windwsept boulevards are a real contrast to the cosy, canal-side ambience of other Nordic capitals like Stockholm and Copenhagen.

I was lucky enough to be staying with friends who live locally, who showed me a different side of the city, despite the overcast rainy weather. If you know where to go, Helsinki is quirky, friendly and just slightly surreal.

The central city is very compact, but the suburbs stretch for miles in all directions… Helsinki really only started growing in the late 1960s, and intelligent city designers have interspersed housing with parks and an extensive network of cycle tracks. Getting around by bike is a breeze.

Cycling into town on Saturday morning we came across a most un-Finnish sight… an American football team practicing in a park in Kumpula.

On Sunday we took the ferry to the fortress island of Suomenlinna and I tried out a traditional Finnish game called Möllky, which (unsurprisingly for a country which is mostly covered in trees) involves throwing a bit of wood at other bits of wood.

Unfortunately, some of the best Helsinki experiences couldn’t be caught on camera. There are DEFINITELY no photos from Mari and Jacob’s sauna!

And unfortunately it was too dark in Siltanen (a bar on Hämeentie near the centre of town) to document one of the weirdest nights out I’ve ever experienced… the entertainment included a DJ in Native American headdress telling us all to play football in the afterlife, a novelty folk duo from Jyväskylä singing about buying pot plants, an apparently-very-famous Finnish movie star performing karaoke to classic early 70s rocksteady records, and a nostalgia DJ who played Finnish disco hits. Apparently the words to the Finnish version of “I Shot the Sheriff” translate as “I’m taking the train to Mikkeli“. Well, I don’t know about Mikkeli, but I’d like to be back in Helsinki one day soon.

The blog has been silent this week while I’ve been travelling in northern Europe. Now I’m back home, I hope to write several catch-up posts about the experience, including photos and videos. I’ll just need a few days to get it done!

Morning on the Aurlandsfjord, Norway

Great blog posts combined with internet access in the office can make for a dangerous mix. After reading Rushan’s post today, I had to rapidly dry my eyes (really) and pull myself together again before heading into a meeting! Perhaps luckily (or not?) nobody spotted the brief lowering of my at-the-office mask and I was soon back talking about the importance of consistent branding and recommending a programme of ongoing background media outreach.

Rushan is exploring the unpredictable and sometimes massive implications of even our tiniest actions on the lives of others. If you think too long about this, you can freak out. I’m sure for most people looking back at their lives so far, the “what if” scenarios are endless and sometimes frightening. I guess we need to learn to be more conscious of the way we treat others and ourselves, for even the most insignificant act can have far-reaching effects on others. The butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil…

In no particular order, here are some thoughts that kind of all link back to this theme.

Go to Finland
It was early in 2001. An endless European winter and the pressure of finishing my Honours dissertation 12,000km from my university conspired to get me a bit depressed. I was thinking about heading home immediately at the end of my employment contract in France. Mum phones me. She convinces me to stay a while longer, tells me that I should go and visit some friends of hers in Finland. The trip to Vaasa later that spring turns into 3 wonderful weeks on trains and ferries around Nordic Europe. I cross the Arctic Circle, see the Midnight Sun. I come home to New Zealand a month later than planned, just in time to fall into a temporary job opening that convinces me that I shouldn’t go to Journalism School. The temporary job becomes very, very permanent. I learn about the importance of consistent branding, and a random guy gets hold of me at work one day and asks if I’d like to join a funk band.

When Mum called me long distance in 2001 to kick me out of my rut, she would have no idea that her conversation would mean that I wouldn’t become a journalist, that it would lead me to local funk scene stardom (haha), or that it would cause me to sit in a meeting today making a business case for an ongoing programme of media outreach. In fact, she still doesn’t know how that conversation shifted my life sideways. Maybe I should tell her sometime.

Little Things
Yes, there is some music today. The boys from Trinity Roots keep coming through for me, and I thought that this song was particularly appropriate.

Trinity Roots – Little Things
From True: Independent/TR_02 [Buy]

Please please please check in mine eyes
For I and I have nothing to hide
As I wipe the slate clean, share this with you
Take on my own, the pain of your soul

It’s the little things
That really matter

These fine fine lines, make for trying times
And trying times, make you strong
You take your strength, pass it around
Pass it around and then move on

It’s the little things
That really matter

© 2002 Trinity Roots

Making a Difference
Tomorrow is polling day in New Zealand’s General Election. I’ll be doing my bit by voting against what I see as fear, ignorance and greed. I know people who have chosen not to vote tomorrow, thinking that it won’t make a difference. I hope they’ll change their mind tomorrow morning and turn out cause their own tiny ripple in the grand scheme…

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead, anthropologist