Libre Magazine

My first ever introduction to Finland , never mind Helsinki , dates back to the early 1980s in the back of my grandfather’s car on the way to Kiltonga Nature Reserve just outside Belfast . The purpose of our visit was to feed the resident ducks or ‘Drakey Lakeys’ as I called them. These rubbernecking webbed feet swimmers were often impatient so I would always have the bread already broken into manageable one gulp chunks before we even reached Newtownards. The drive was as pleasant as the destination itself and my eyes would always effortlessly scale the volcanic plug up to Scrabo Tower, a gothic looking turreted landmark visible from most of North Down. At the roadside my seven year old brain registers that Newtownards prides itself on being twinned with Kemi, Finland. I became less interested in city twinning than finding out where Finland was in the world. It could have been a place inhabited by silver fish slick with viscous toxic compounds and dissolving black eyes.

Twenty seven years later and I am more of an urban geographer than I ever was as a seven year old child. I am making the journey from Vantaa into Helsinki. I look up nervously as we pass under motorway bridges mimicking giant reed flute caves armed with solid ice stalactites heavy and sharp enough to impale this number 615 bus. I manage to arrive safely on the north side of Rautatientori Square, the pumping heart of another new city and the farthest east that I have ever ventured. I am belittled by the Finnish National Theatre and even at night this Art Nouveau statement is impressive with its sober facades carving out the political legitimacy of National Romanticism.

I glance up at the illuminated Rautatientori clock tower that times the dense ganglion of trains, trams and buses that branch out into Helsinki and beyond. At first there is nothing much to be seen here except snow and elevated neon signage under a velvet black sky, the dirty snow has already installed itself and the clean snow is moving in behind. On the short walk to Kruununhaka the childhood stage begins on the icy streets where walking has to be relearned. In the sub zero temperatures water has temporarily lost its battle with gravity as I step over icy tongues hanging out of the mouths of vertical drain pipes.

Any city is a labyrinth for the newcomer. I start thinking about the simplicity behind Anton Corbijn’s photos and I would later be captivated by his ‘Retrospective’ exhibition in Tennispalatsi. Corbijn’s black and white shots of U2 in Death Valley encapsulated the Irish in America in a place ‘where the streets have no name’. In Helsinki however, it is not that the streets have no names but rather strange and bewildering ones. My Belfast pronunciation of Mannerheimintie, Kaisaniemenkatu or Pohjoisesplanadi will surely always sound a little odd to the Finns.

After some urban walking and anecdotal observations I notice that the streets are yoked together by squares around Rautatientori and at Hakaniemi where market stalls are scattered across coble stones. The secondary bus depot is also based at Rautatientori Square that feels busy but more open on the eastern side extending towards Mikonkatu. I have since exited from the main south entrance of the Central Railway Station to feel four pairs of eyes on my back. On either side of the massive castle like doors Eliel Saarinen’s muscular upper body statues hold glowing spherical lamps that radiate a soft glow on to the faces of the commuters who pass between them everyday. Directly across the Kaivokatu I am stuck by Makkaratalo’s decorative railing coiled around the third floor parking lot. I was not surprised to learn that this ‘sausage house’ topped a Helsinki Sanomat poll as the ugliest building in the city.

The level of pictorial advertising in Helsinki is noticeable much in the same way as it is in American or British cities. Image laden walls around office buildings and scaffolding offer the finest static surfaces for informing the denizens of the latest fashion trends. Adverts are not always so static. Now and then you see trams painted all over with some brand, Ray-Ban ‘Genuine since 1937: never hide’. People are encouraged to appreciate the hue of Helsinki’s sky through the latest sunglasses, Outsiders Original Wayfarer, Aviator Large Metal, Original Clubmasters or the slick Jackie Ohh II design.

Travel by tram should be more than anything else a journey into a past that I never experienced. Belfast’s electrically powered trams provided service until the system closed in 1954, nineteen years before I was even born at the Ulster Hospital. In Glasgow’s Museum of Transport I would sit on the No. 3 Coronation tram that used to travel south along Union Street at Gordon Street. With its rounded front panels and enclosed top I could only guess at how many of the twelve million people that this eight wheeled bogie carried to the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Bellahouston Park.

It’s March 2008 and I am making my daily commute to the geography department at the University of Helsinki. I am listening to the Blade Runner ‘End Titles’ on my iPod. I am on a low floor tram snaking up Hämeentie* *towards Kumpula where I see the giant football shaped radar that balances on top of the observatory tower. The giant football looks like it could be kicked off its elevated penalty spot to win some cosmic world cup final making one player the brightest star in the galaxy. It is quite something to watch a city burst into life to Vangelis’s synthesized futuristic music that still sounds ahead its time. I saw motorways carry heavy traffic under bridges from Junatie, a gateway to the Leposaari. All that cellulose caught in the Finnish sun is lost as cars belt under the tram and the smell of kerosene fades east towards Alppila.

Perhaps I don’t have to be able to properly pronounce the strange names of Helsinki’s streets and districts to truly appreciate it as a city. As for learning the language, well that’s an entirely different matter.

To view more photographs of Helsinki by Gareth Rice, click here.