I started in Tampere (pronounced as in 'What's she gonna look like with a chimney on her'). Now it's the second city and I'd heard that it was a bit industrial. And yes, you could see three industrial chimneys whilst standing in the town square but if you walk for about ten minutes then this is the view. Ridiculous. That's not industrial, that's lakes and trees and sky and clouds and not a fat lot else.
I snuck down to Helsinki for a night. Now there's one of those cities that I had pretty clear visions in my head of how it was going to look / be before I got there. Obviously I was wrong, it wasn't the edgy cool that I had in my head, although there were a lot of soviet straight lines. The city itself varies wildly between being a proper buzzy metropolis and a tiny fishing village, sort of epitomised by the town square being on the harbourfront and used as a berry market. For the record, all markets should be berry markets - normally I avoid them because they're chock full of idiots, this one I just wandered around salivating.
Talking of salivating, I didn't go to Finland expecting culinary delights but I did inadvertently stumble on two. The first, reindeer, was a whole new meat for my tickboxiness, the second, mustamakkara, was like an especially juicy blackpudding. Both were made ace by lashings and lashings of lingonberry jam.
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