We spent 9 day sin Helsinki and on our last day we decided to go to a another island that didn’t get good reviews on Travel Advisor.  When reading the negative one star comment we realized that the reason they didn’t like it was because it was “just a lot of walking” in the outdoors.  We hit the road running after that comment.  We didn’t need another museum, or exciting place to eat……we needed nature!  We found it.  Check out the photos below.  The island’s name was Seurasaari.

 

After a long morning walking on the island – we obviously had to have some Texas style barbecue to end the day.

 

The “B” was a great place for barbecue.  Not exactly Texas or southern barbecue, but pretty darn good.  The waiter proudly noted that the smoker came all the way from Texas, but it’s really from Tennessee. Close enough, as far as they’re concerned. — at the “B” restaurant.  Last photo is of our plates – Brisket and a Finnish-style APA on the left, pulled pork and Frisco Disco Citra IPA on the right.  All and all – a great way to end our trip to Helsinki!

Clay and I are staying at an AirBnb just north of downtown Helsinki.  We have a local market near us (Hakaniemi Market), but we much prefer the Old Market Hall by the sea even if we have to ride the Tram instead of being able to walk..  Oh, how I wish I had a market like one of these in Austin.  This is a photo of our favorite – the Old Market Hall

Lazy day on Wednesday, and we didn’t even leave our Airbnb until after 1:00PM. With only a light breakfast and starving – we decided to go to the Old Market Hall  and check out the famous soup stall we had read about. Only 3 soups on the daily menu and we knew before we went it would be the Bouillabaisse. We were not disappointed. After lunch we toured the Hall and I know if I lived in Helsinki I would be a regular.  Check out the photos of the food!

Maggie and I are hardly novices to public transportation – far from it; we’re big believers and daily users, at home and when we’re on the road. We even got used to the old system in Austin, when bus service was unreliable, the routes changed numbers as they went through downtown, and many bus routes only ran every 45 minutes, even during peak times. The Austin system is much better now: breakdowns are rare, routes don’t change numbers, and the frequency of major routes is much higher.

Good mass transport systems are common in Europe, and the Scandinavians in particular have made public transportation a priority. The concept of loading everybody on the same vehicle, regardless of class, income or title fits in well with their spirit of egalitarianism. They put a lot of effort into making the system easy to use: trams or buses run often during peak hours, usually every 5-10 minutes, so unless you have a specific appointment, there’s no need to pay attention to the schedule – even if you miss a bus, the next one will be there soon. At every stop there’s an electronic sign, updated in real time, that shows when the next bus, tram or subway train will arrive. The systems run on time, almost always. Taking the tram, we’ve made some transfers from one line to another where the scheduled layover was just five or ten minutes, and never missed the connection.

The most difficult system we’ve dealt with is the one in Helsinki. Everything I’ve said about the frequency and reliability of the lines applies here, but it’s sometimes hard to figure out which line or what stop you need.

First of all, because Finland used to be part of Sweden, the stops are labeled in Finnish and Swedish – and since English is so common, a few of the major stops are also labeled in English. You might be looking for the stop that’s labeled Hakaniemi/Hagnäs, or Rautatientori/Järnvägstoget/Central Railway Station. Every bus and every tram car has a screen that flashes up the name of the next stop, but the names are flashed up in each language sequentially, so you’d better pay attention, or know the name of your stop in Finnish and Swedish.

Second, we’ve used the #2 and #3 tram line to get to a lot of places, but by riding the trams, we figured out that the #2 and #3 were really one line laid out in a figure 8, with the middle of the 8 being in front of the central train station; it was the #2 line on the upper left and lower right of the 8, and the #3 on the upper right and lower left. The line changed numbers at the top and bottom of the 8, so riding east at the bottom of the route on the #3, we looked up and the line had become the #2. Confused? It took a while to get used to, but it wasn’t so bad once we did. Except we didn’t figure it out until July 2nd, the day that the routes changed and the previous explanation no longer applied. The new #2 now stops at the park just down the hill from us, so it’s much closer. We don’t know what happens at the top and bottom of the route any more. That threw us into a tizzy for a couple of days, until we realized that we’re still using the old map.

Changes are understandable; routes need to be changed every so often to fit changes in population, and the time to do that is in the summer, when more commuters are on vacation. (A major change is in the works in Austin, so the system will be radically different when we get home.) Not a major problem to us vacationers. It’s just another problem to solve, something new to memorize. All of that keeps the brain pliable, which is a reason to travel in the first place.

You can not spend all your traveling days in the big city, so off we go to Suomenlinna Island.  Although it is a short 10 min. ferry ride from central Helsinki, it feels like you are a long way away from the hustle and bustle of the city center.   We deliberately waited until the weather prediction was perfect (60ish) and it was!  We then joined the locals on Suomenlinna Island, the site of a fort built in 1748 to defend Sweden from Russia.  Later it was captured by the Russians and used to defend against the British, then as a prison during the Finnish Civil War.  Finland’s history is pretty complicated, we’re just getting a handle on it now. All that fighting is done now, so the fort is a park and several historical museums.

Below are a few photos we took from the ferry, and then some beautiful landscape photos.  We wandered off the main path through the island, and caught beautiful sights that you would miss if you didn’t wander around.

 

There are six museums on the island, but true to our interests, we skipped several and focused on the ones of historical interest.  The Suomenlinna Museum had a short film charting the island’s past and runs every half an hour.  Well worth seeing, I might add!  It helped us get a better handle on Finish history.  Our favorite museums were the Manege of the Military Museum and the Vesikko submarine.  Below are a few photos from the museums we explored.

 

The first photo is of a uniform of the women’s auxiliary force from WWII. The Finns will tell you (repeatedly) that is NOT the Nazi swastika, it’s the Finnish swastika. Even though Finland fought on the German side in the war, the official story is that they were fighting against the Russians, not for Germany. The full story may never be known.   The submarine is a Finnish one built in the 1930s that served in WWII.  It has been fully restored, and yes it was very claustrophobic to me (Maggie).  Clay thought it must have been hot, noisy and smelly on the inside.   Only men were on board, women are too smart for that service I think.

If you find your self in Helsinki, I would recommend spending a day on the island.  We spend about 8 hrs on the island including hiking, eating at one of several cafes on the island, as well as exploring some of the museums.

The English language news website Finland Today reported that recently the weather in  Mäntsälä in southern Finland had “exceeded the definition of hot,” which in Finland is defined as 25ºC (77ºF). They’re not used to that. Last year, the Summer Solstice Festival in Rovaniemi in Northern Finland was interrupted by a snowstorm.

We may envy their cool summers, but they pay for it. Even as far “south” as Helsinki, in the summertime it never really gets dark at night; at 2 AM, it’s like twilight. Getting the kids to bed at a reasonable hour must be a real struggle. If it weren’t for sleep masks, Maggie and I wouldn’t have been to sleep yet. You can bet it’s the other way around in the winter. People tell us that in winter, it never gets fully light; they get a few hours of dim to moderate sunshine in the middle of the day, and then it’s night again.

Us simple folks from Austin aren’t used to this. Our weather is a different brand of crazy. In the springtime, we’re keeping a lookout for lightning, tornadoes and flash floods – sometimes on the same day – but hardly anybody worries about freezing to death at the ROT Rally in June. We define “hot” a whole different way. If we try to fry an egg on the sidewalk and it’s hard boiled by the time it hits the ground, it’s hot. In Finland, “hot” is when you leave the parka at home. In the summertime, Austinites avoid the sun at all costs. Here, people find a sunny spot and bask like lizards. They’re not so much tanning as building up a store of Vitamin D to last through the winter. While we’re shivering in our coats, they’re sending their kids out to play in shorts and T-shirts.

You have to give the Finns credit though – they’ve learned to thrive in a place where the sun barely rises all winter long. We would be suicidal; Finland is the fifth happiest country on earth. Maybe they’re nuts; maybe Finns, like Texans, have learned to brag about their bad weather; or maybe this is the weather us lily-white people are genetically adapted to, we’ve just convinced ourselves that the Sun Belt is where we belong. It’s hard to say, but they’re definitely on to something that we could learn from.

It is pretty obvious to most friends that Clay and I are not lacking in food.  One look could convince anyone of that noticeable fact.  We arrived in Helsinki with an impression that we should be worried about food prices.  Anyone that has been to Norway & Sweden would understand our concern.  We had read that Helsinki was expensive as well, but not nearly as outrageous in our personal opinion.

Staying at an Airbnb we were delighted to see that our host had left us a long list of suggested restaurants in our “not so touristy” suburb.  We learned from tour books and our host as well that the main meal of the day is lunch.  Lunch buffets are a tradition here, and in our local neighborhood we found the typical prices to be in the range of 8-12 Euros each.   Hurray for the Olmsteads.  We will not go hungry any time soon.

Our typical day in Helsinki consists of a breakfast at “home”, a large lunch at a local restaurant buffet, and a light dinner or late dessert at a local place or our apartment.  Today’s delightful dessert was at a place we spotted from our tram coming back from a visit to the Rock Church (covered in another paragraph).  We hopped off and were delighted to find Fika is celebrated in Finland as well as Sweden.  (Finland was once part of Sweden)  Princess cake is a Swedish specialty cake, and I am so happy that the tradition survived the Russian rule of Finland, from 1808 until 1917.  Guess the Finns like Princess Cake as well as Maggie.

Here we are, relaxing at our favorite place for coffee in the afternoon, the Early Bird. Great coffee almond croissants to die for (notice the clean plates). All served in an atmosphere that’s more comfortable than staying at home.

Yes, the food here is very good.  Typical Finnish meals – like in Austin, food consists of local fresh and natural ingredients.  East and West influences are everywhere!  Summer fresh foods include new potatoes, salmon, sausage, herring, strawberries, and blueberries.  Fresh fish – everywhere!  Fish soup everywhere especially salmon soup.  If coming to Helsinki check out local specialties and you can find reasonably priced food.  Trust me – you won’t go hungry if you plan ahead and avoid a lot of overpriced tourist restaurants.

We finished our trip through Norway with more stunning scenery. We took a bus and the Rauma railway from Ålesund to Oslo. The railroad passes through the Rauma River valley, which in Norway is known for skiing, salmon fishing and the sheer cliffs on both sides. The valley is steep and narrow, so that the railroad passes over 32 bridges and through several tunnels; one of the tunnels is a hairpin turn inside the mountain, so the train enters the mountain with the river on the left and exits with the river on the right. We took a few pictures, but it’s really hard to get good pictures from the train, and impossible to get pictures of the old stone bridges the track is built on. For those you have to go to the professionals.

 

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Once again, as slow as we travel, we passed through too quickly. If you stay in the area, you can see herds of wild reindeer and musk ox; in the winter, you can spend the night in the Bjorli Snow Hotel, which is built out of snow every winter and melts in the spring.I don’t think I’ll be able to talk Maggie into that one, but it would be an adventure.

We arrived in Ålesund late afternoon and upon exiting the cruise ship, I only wanted to get a good nights sleep at our beautiful waterfront hotel.  We woke the next morning to beautiful warm sunshine, and temperatures in the 50’s.  For me I was grateful to  walk on non-moving ground, and explore this sweet little town.  It is known as the gateway to the nation’s waterways.  We planned on spending two nights before heading on to Oslo to catch our flight to Finland.  Mistakes are made on every trip and this was our first (& hopefully last) major one.  We did not allow ourselves enough time in Ålesund.  There was no way to change our itinerary at this point.  My advice if coming to Norway is to give yourself a few extra days to explore this town.

After breakfast the next morning, we decided to start our day by getting some much needed exercise.  The famous viewpoint, Aksla, gave us a panoramic view over the city, the coast, and the mountains.  To get to the 418 steps that lead to the top, you walk through a charming park before you begin your journey to the top.

Not yet tired of being in glorious sunshine, we walked around the city and discovered we had skipped lunch, so oblivious we were to time in our merry wanderings around town.  Here are five of the many photos we took after the more strenuous morning hike.  (Slideshow)

 

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After our growling stomachs reminded us that we had forgotten lunch – we headed to a local seafront restaurant.  While we were in Oslo, we had met an American citizen originally from Budapest who had just come back from Ålesund. She gave us the name of a local restaurant that she and her husband had really enjoyed.  We headed straight there for our early dinner (or late lunch?) arriving at 4:00 PM with no reservation. The food was amazing and because we arrived so early, we got the best seat in the house.  Being right on the waterfront we obviously had to order fish, and come to think of it, that was all that was on the menu.  Norwegian fresh fish from the North Sea will not be quickly forgotten.  The name of restaurant if interested:  Sjøbua. 

 

After such an early dinner we decided the night was still young, so we headed over to the local movie theater to the Wonder Woman movie, which both of us enjoyed.  The theater itself, the beautiful Løvenvold kino, was worth seeing all by itself. It was built in 1923 and had this old movie projector in the lobby.  Clay could not tear himself away from it, and I noticed the theater manager kept a close eye on this strange American tourist.

Leaving Ålesund this next morning was bittersweet.  We only had one full day to explore, and no time to check out the museums and investigate more hiking and water sports that this  town offers.  If you go to Norway, I would suggest that you stay in Ålesund for a few extra days – at least 4or 5 as a minimum.  Normally, Clay and I do Airbnb’s, but this time our two night stay at the Radisson Blu was so perfect, I would highly recommend you skip the Airbnb and book this hotel.  So long Ålesund.  We loved you.  Hope to see you again when we plan better.

A trip to Norway just wouldn’t be complete without seeing some of the fjords. The fjords aren’t just a natural wonder, they are the source of much that’s in the Norwegian character: ruggedness, independence, an arm’s length respect for nature, and a firm belief in the equality of everybody. To fully understand this, we would have to explore them all. That would be covering a lot of ground: the voyage up the coast from Bergen to Kirkenes takes six to eight days, and that’s with limited stops at each port. The roads to  the fjords are limited by choice; the Norwegians don’t want a lot of roads and tunnels carving up the landscape, so the best way to see a fjord is by boat.

Maggie and I wanted to see two fjords: the Sognefjord, the longest and deepest in Norway, and the Geirangerfjord, named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. That’s hard to do all in one trip, so we split it into two. To see the Sognefjord, we took the train from Bergen to Myrdal, then down the mountain on one of the steepest train trips in the world, the Flåm Railroad,  and then got on a fast tour boat that would cruise down the fjord and back to Bergen.

This is a great one-day trip. On the train, you get up close to the mountains, with the jagged peaks above you and a rushing river below, past raging waterfalls, plunging in and out of a series of tunnels, killing one landscape and being born into a completely different scene. In the middle there’s a stop at a waterfall for an interlude of a woman dancing to piped-in music, evoking the mountain spirits people once believed in.

Flåm is a nice little village, where you could spend an hour in the shops or a lifetime exploring the surrounding glaciers and parks. We just had three hours, so we ignored the cheesy cafe and snooty restaurant, getting a great meal in the pub instead, wandered through the railroad museum and boarded the boat to see the fjord.

The Sognefjord is more than 120 miles long and up to four miles wide. When you’re cruising the waters, the bottom is more than 3,000 feet below you; looking up, you’re situated in a mountain range that rises 6,000 feet above. Sliding past the granite walls, we got an appreciation for the awesome forces that created this landscape. Starting from one hundred thousand years ago, northern Europe was covered by a layer of ice thousands of feet thick. At its furthest extent, the ice would have extended from the North Pole nearly to the Black Sea. When the ice retreated  eleven thousand years ago, it had taken the solid granite of the Norwegian coastline and carved it up into huge canyons. Even traveling at about 30 knots, it takes three or four awe-inspiring hours to go from Flåm to the mouth of the fjord, then another half hour or so through the protected waters of the coastal islands back to Bergen. It’s an all-day trip, but well worth it; as our friend Albert Cantara put it, the Sognefjord has a “majestic silence.” Passing through it is like a long meditation.

To see the Geirangerfjord, the Hurtigruten cruise line is the go-to choice. It’s like a water-borne bus service that carries passengers up and down the coast, 365 days a year. Maggie and I started in Bergen, sailing overnight to Ålesund. In late June, the North Sea should be just about the smoothest it gets – but for us non-sailors, we wouldn’t want to see it any rougher. The rolling and pitching was one thing, but the short jolts at irregular intervals were hard to sleep through. On top of that, the ship had a definite list to starboard, so lying in our beds, our feet were below our heads. (My brother Jeff, who is a retired deck officer in the Merchant Marine, told us that was normal, possibly due to the way they were taking fuel from the tanks.) Maggie and I slept fitfully and silently, hoping to let the other sleep through it. In the middle of the night I flipped the pillow to the other end of the bed, thinking that it would be easier to sleep if my head were higher. I think it worked, but when Maggie woke up, she looked over and saw my feet when she was expecting to see my face – not a pleasant sight first thing in the morning.

At 5AM we gave up on sleep and oozed out to the gray light of the observation lounge, to join the haggard passengers who had endured the night on couches and chairs, in the vain hope that staring at the horizon would bring some relief. They looked rough. I wonder if they thought we looked any better. I doubt they cared.

Fortunately, once the ship reached the fjord, the water was glass smooth. We could eat breakfast, drink coffee and generally start to feel human again. Once we got lost in the beauty of the fjord, the miseries of previous night were forgotten. The Geirangerfjord is much narrower than the Sognefjord, so we got a closer look at the villages that cling to the mountainside and the waterfalls that cascade over the cliffs. We wondered what it’s like to live there year round. The people at the top live a short distance from the people at the bottom in a horizontal sense, but the only possible road between them goes out of sight in both directions. We wondered if it’s a close-knit village, or if they live separate lives by choice.

Now we’ve gotten a visit to two of the major cities in Norway and a sampling of the fjords. We’re going to spend the next couple of nights in Ålesund before we’re off to Finland and the next leg of our self-guided tour. It’s hard to believe that’s it’s only been a month, and we still have July and August to go. We don’t have to keep reminding ourselves of how lucky we are to have this opportunity and each other – that’s obvious every day.

 

Clay and I have found the people of Bergen, Norway to be very warm and “mighty neighborly” as we say in the South.    In fact, we have found that just like back home, you have the remarkably good people, as well as the godawful types.  But, more often than not, it is the good guys that we manage to meet that make such an positive impact on us.  Bergen was no exception to that rule.

We started our lust for travel years ago though our jobs which took us all over the world. But, what we found was that work related travel wasn’t the meaningful travel that both of us yearned for.  (Weirdly, our companies wanted us to work – not play tourist – imagine that!)  We found our travel cravings satisfied only after we retired and opened ourselves to home exchanging, and now Airbnb apartment rentals where we could stay for longer periods of time to get to know the city, country, and especially the people better.  We have met the most amazing people that we now call friends from those stays.  People like Ellen in California that we have home exchanged with so many time that we have lost count; the lovely couple from Australia (Molly and Tony) that we exchanged homes & cars for an entire month, and of course the Walking Tours of England which introduced us to Odette, Ron, Patti, and Kathy; and of course more recently the lovely couple, Andras and Timea (now married) that we met in France, but caught up with again when we visited “their” Budapest last year.

Here in Bergen we accidentally ran into a wonderful man who was a sailor in the Norway equivalent of the Merchant Marines who walked us to our destination instead of just giving us pathetically lost tourists directions.  In the process we learned about his past and his many adventures.  We also met two interesting men at a local pub that invited us to join them at the permanently reserved table for the locals.   They captivated us with the stories of their lives, and facts about Bergen and Norwegians in general that we had not observed or read about in any tour books. One of the men had been to Houston and Galveston when is he was working on ships.   When he learned we were from Austin, he talked about his love for music, SXSW,  and Austin musicians.  He appeared to know a lot more than some Austinites know about the live music capital of the world.  He scored some real points with us when he mentioned his love of Stevie Ray Vaughn! He had actually hung out with Jimmie and the Fabulous Thunderbirds on one of their tours.

It would not be fair to share only the good stories, but we have had a few negative experiences, but ironically it is with tourists – not the locals.  On the train yesterday to Flåm, we met four obviously wealthy, large, and rude Russian tourists. Unfortunately, we kept running across them during the rest of the day.  During our stop in Flåm, we ate at this lovely restaurant, and of course, here they come with no reservations demanding a table (which they got 😦 ), and then proceeded to be very rude to the waitress.  She was almost in tears several times and we could see her quietly telling the other staff members how rude they were.  They ordered the most expensive item on the menu, and later we saw it being delivered to their table.  Hope they left her a good tip because she deserved it.  Later, getting on the boat back to Bergen, they were rudely breaking in line, but stopped just behind us.  Clay and I were holding our ground, and they must have sensed that I would have called them out for cutting in line.

Of course, we had to run into a rude American tourist at a local 7/11.  She got up to the counter where you pay with nothing to buy, but plenty to say – loudly of course.  She kept insisting she wanted a diet coke – not what they had in the store.  Some lovely local woman tried to convince her to buy Coke Zero, but “no!” she wanted a regular Diet Coke – not Coke or Coke Zero.  Finally when she gave up on a Diet Coke, she left in a huff, leaving me there as the lone representative of America –  embarrassed for her and my country.

I don’t want to leave this blog on a negative note, so I will continue on briefly to say the following.  We love the differences in our cultures, the languages, the foods, and the interesting quirks of the multi-national people that we meet. Lord knows – the world would be a much more boring place if only people like Clay or me were in it.  Thank you to all the lovely people we have met along our adventure.  You have been the “super stars” of our vacation time.  Yes, your museums are beautiful, your scenery is breathtaking, but you are the perfect examples of humanity that makes earth such a wonderful place to visit and explore, and that, my friend, is exactly why we travel.