Greetings from Helsinki, Finland. Talk about a country where everything is embedded in a giant forest, this is it. As we flew in you could see the trees covering everything that isn't paved, plowed, or mowed. In that regard it resembles British Columbia. As I write the local time is 11 p.m. and it is almost bright enough outside to read a newspaper without artificial light. Finland is far north and the longest day of the year is a couple of weeks from now.
The architecture I've seen is modern without being inspiring. It is a sort of grim functionalism that metaphorically has its shoulders hunched against the everlasting winters. Perhaps that is the Russian influence, in the past Finland has been both a Swedish province and a Russian grand duchy. One outstanding exception is a rock church we visited - carved out of the living rock with a circular footprint, and roofed over with a soaring ribbed ceiling that is about half glass, this place was amazing. It almost awakened religious feelings in DrC, which is saying something.
Like Rio, Helsinki is a city wrapped around various bays and beaches. Unlike Rio, it doesn't include steep mountains in the city limits or run to huge squatter slums. That is the difference between the tropics and the sub-Arctic. Living here without serious heating would be very marginal, perhaps nearly impossible.
We've been stuck in the capital, which is fine, but I suspect that the DrsC would better enjoy driving a small rented RV through the vast wooded up-country of Finland. Perhaps the next time we're here.
Tomorrow we're off to Estonia, a short ferry ride across the estuary (the mouth of the Neva River?) which divides the two countries. In Estonia the locals have been in a tiff with the Russians over plans to move a statue of a Soviet soldier/hero from a public park to a less-conspicuous location.
Estonia spent unhappy decades as an Soviet Socialist Republic, that is, as a Russian colony. A sad-for-Estonia by-product of that status was that large numbers of Soviet military retired in Estonia with their families and are still there. They may make up as much as 40% of the population and they have no interest in becoming culturally Estonian.
Estonia wants these Russian-speakers to assimilate and learn the local language; they don't want to do that, or to go home. As a tiny country sitting across an undefended border from giant Russia, Estonia can't afford to offend the Russian military which could occupy Estonia in an afternoon without breaking a sweat. It will be interesting to compare what we hear about the conflict from Estonians and from our guides who are ethnic Russians.
