Helsinki - A Small Delight (June 20)

Today was fairly quiet in Helsinki, Finland in comparison to Saint Petersburg. As it is the summer, Helsinki was very beautiful and contained lots on nice buildings and parks. Like the other Northern Capitals we have visited we found a clean and very enjoyable city.

The prominent languages are Finnish and Swedish, with Finnish being always listed first. Sweden controlled what is now Finland for several hundred years. After the Swedish occupation, the Russians took over for another hundred years until Finland finally declared its independence in 1917, leveraging the Bolshevik Revolution.

During our walking tour of the city, we saw the legislature building the rock church (picture) and even partook of some fabulous pastries. After our enjoyable excursion, we returned happily to the ship. (Jesse)



Again, as with the rest of the Northern European cities we’ve visited so far, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. The experience was very interesting, and it was nice to become enlightened as to some of the history of Finland. On the other hand, it seems that this culture does not have such a heavy focus on its history as other countries we’ve seen.

Today we actually went on a walking tour, which is made possible by the fact that Helsinki is actually a comparatively small city. Helsinki proper only contains about 500,000 people, and it is very nice and clean and safe.

Throughout our tour we learned about the Finnish culture and language. We saw a huge, relatively modern church that is the main cathedral of the city. We also saw the city’s theatres, opera house and parliament. Helsinki was a very neat cultural experience, and is a very nice place. (Jacob)