Now that we’ve already told you that we had a guest coming over we want to share a bit of what we did together. This is a story of a little roundtrip that took us from Turku/Helsinki back to Turku/Helsinki … Once upon a time (that was last week Wednesday 😉 ) there was a woman arriving in Helsinki. At the same time two exchange students in Turku got onto a train taking them to Helsinki as well … Yeah, that was the start. Sounds easy, but it was not. Buying tickets at a ticket vending machine that tells you everything in Finnish or Swedish is not too helpful. And no, the Swedish was not close enough to understand which ticket to choose or how to get to the end. Luckily a Finn was nice enough to help us out here 🙂

Day 1/2: Helsinki

Off we were to meet Ulla in Helsinki. We met at the central train station where Ulla had arrived somewhat earlier. She had visited a museum in the meantime. After dropping our luggage off at the hostel we had a little walk around the city – mainly to find something to eat 😉 We ended up eating Pizza (which was pretty good). The next day (Thursday) we did a sightseeing tour through Helsinki seeing churches, the presidential palais, the market hall, etc. In the afternoon we picked up a rental car and drove to Porvoo.

Day 2/3: Porvoo

Porvoo is a small town just east of Helsinki. It has a lot of nice wooden houses and a cathedral, which kind of looks like a huge house. Over night we stayed in a beautiful hostel that is situated in a nice wooden building and only has 10 rooms of differing size. Sweet 🙂 The next day we did a little sightseeing round in Porvoo to see everything they’ve got. It’s not very big, but really nice. All the wooden houses and old streets make it look as if it’s still from some ancient time.

Day 3: Glacial Mills

And again, off we drove towards Hämeenlinna. But first we went to some glacial mills just along the way. At least we tried to. Imagine us driving along, then there’s the sign saying that the parking lot is only 200m ahead. Well, we saw the parking lot … but there was no way of getting onto it through the big snow wall surrounding it. We turned around and went on to Hämeenlinna after that experience. That’s winter in Finland we suppose.

Day 3: Hämeenlinna and Iittala

In Hämeenlinna we went to the fortress (= linna). It’s changed very much into a castle over time. It is one of the impressive brick building that are rather rare for Finland. Very nice to visit actually. The attempt to eat some typical pea soup at the market place failed though as we were too late 🙁 Our next stop took us to Iittala, a town and a glass factory, where we mainly stumbled upon some impressive prices (imagine an 8x8cm glass cube with some artistic stuff inside for about EUR 500). But the chocolate you could buy in the chocolate factory close by was tasty 🙂

Day 3/4: Tampere

Next stop: Tampere. In Tampere we arrived rather late. In the evening we only prepared some pasta (that we had bought in the local Lidl 🙂 ). The next day we walked around in this rather interesting city that has a very industrial history. Somewhere we read that it’s sometimes said to be the Manchester of Finland, probably also because of the many brick buildings. It has a nice flair though and much of its industry has been turned into museums and other stuff over time. One encounter was interesting. We tried to get onto a tower (like a TV tower) and walked a bit for that. Upon arrival we had to learn that it’s closed from January till the end of March or something, because it’s too cold?! Strange people. Especially considering the fact that the alternative tower a bit away was open to visit.

Day 4: Rauma

Rauma is supposed to be an impressive wooden town and we saw lots of wooden buildings. But it was too cold to enjoy and there was not too much special about the houses. Porvoo had been nicer. After a quick lunch we headed on to Turku where our journey would end.

Day 4/5: Turku

In the evening we only went to bed after driving a round through the city as we were pretty exhausted from our trip. But the next day we showed Ulla most of the city. Sadly enough the market hall was closed and the cathedral was busy (guess what 😉 ) so we would have to come back later. We saw the market place, the river (that we walked on of course 🙂 ) and lots more. We also ended up  visiting Turku’s castle. That was really cool to visit. The only downside was time. If you ever want to visit a castle and see every single room and more, go to Turku Castle … We gave up after we had done the main castle and about 2/3 of the museum (which is in the outer fortification like a front castle). We enjoyed it though.

Day 5: Aurajoki and Naantali

We still had some time on Sunday after the exhausting castle visit, so we went to see the falls of the river Aurajoki which is the big river in Turku. It’s a bit away from Turku, but it was interesting to see. It is covered in ice in many parts, but it still flows rapidly especially at the falls. There are some wholes where you can nicely see that. Afterwards we went on to Naantali as it is supposed to be a nice town as well. And it really is. The houses are just beautiful. There’s also the Moominworld, but as it is closed now the town was a nice and quite place to visit. We think it (together with Porvoo) was actually nicer than Rauma that is often said to be the nicest wooden town in Finland. The highlight of this was the sea. It is still totally frozen and there is a track for ice skating prepared on the sea, for example. We had a nice walk on the ice with Ulla – a must-do when you are in Finland during winter. It’s so cool 🙂

Day 5/6: Turku

Sunday night we went to have dinner at Harald’s, a viking restaurant in Turku. Among other things we had reindeer of course 🙂 On Monday we visited the (important) cathedral and the old market hall in Turku before we said good bye to Ulla and returned to our life as university students attending courses again …

Okay, this has been a loooong post, maybe the longest post ever on this blog. But you just revisited 540km of history 😉

(click the picture to see a larger version)

Tags: guest, hämeenlinna, helsinki, naantali, porvoo, rauma, roundtrip, tampere, trip, turku

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Posted in Uncategorized by Johannes H. Glitsch 3 Comments