My day at Helsinki - Eurovision, Helsinki, Tourist

Today (12.5.07) I went to Helsinki to, well, check out Tourists. Tourists in Finland are quite rare and since the Eurovision song contest was going on right then, I thought I'd seize the opportunity and do something that's most likely going to happen once in a lifetime. Read on if you're interested on the things that happened to me on this extraordinary day

Helsinki is about 45 mins away from where I live, so I hopped on the bus and arrived there after a ride filled with music by Apulanta and AFI. I called my friend at the station and asked her to guess where I was, but she didn't want to. She had been waiting for my bus to arrive, but she never saw it come since it left us passengers at another spot. Well, we met in a minute since she was right across the station with her friend.

First we started heading towards Esplanadi, a park where each country had their own small stand with information about the country itself. Before we got there, we came across a foreign group of 5 breakdancers dancing in the middle of a crowd of people that had gathered around them to spectate. We watched them dance and when they stopped, the crowd broke up, some dropped money into a beanie they had set on the ground, but low budget students like us couldn't afford to drop anything in there.

We finally arrived at our first destination. The basic layout of the park is a long path down the middle of it. Just a few days before the Eurovisions started a set of identical statues of women had been shipped to Helsinki from Spain and now the middle of that path was pretty much filled by statues. They seemed quite popular, as every single one of them seemed to have some sort of child climbing on them being either lifted up, or dragged down by their parents. The stands for each country were small, but the amount of them was big. Each stand had some brochures and some had extra stuff like chocolate. The Turkish stand was one of them with a flat TV on the back wall. I pity the people working at the stand, because the Turkish Eurovision song entry seemed to play 24/7 on the screen.

We sat down at the edge of a fountain as the sun shone brightly, making the air feel quite hot. Tourists came and went, taking pictures of their friends, themselves, or the statue in the middle of the fountain. We ended up in the background of a couple of photos, which was nice since we didn't really make any efforts to look cool or even sane. My friend's mother appeared out of nowhere and started talking about how she had bought different kinds of food from here and there. When she left she reminded friend not to go swimming in the pool like she had done when she was young. It must have been fun, and I doubt that I wouldn't have done it some time in my youth.

After a group of swedes had cornered us, we started feeling uncomfortable and we left. Back through Esplanadi, heading to Kamppi, a new shopping center, outside of which the Eurovision Village had been set up. On the way, my friend and her friend decided to climb on one of the statues and take a picture. They did so and we got some nice photos. When she got down, an old woman approached us and started saying things about how we are disgracing the statues. My friend told her to look around and see if there are any other statues with no children on them, which there were not. She said that such young children don't understand what they're doing (but did the parents who were lifting them onto the statues?). My friend apologised and sarcastically admitted she was very bad and evil and the woman left.

The next thing to attract our attention was a man sitting on a bench. You must check this picture of him now before you read any further. He was sitting there listening to a CD player or whatever the box in his hand was. Every now and then he'd point at a bypasser and shout "Eww, ¤&%¤#%" (English isn't the best language to use here, in Finnish it's much more colorful. Anyhow, the basic idea of his statements was to say how ugly someone was). If I'd find out he wasn't drunk, I'd be really surprised. After shouting to people for a couple of minutes he got off the seat and left, shouting "You try the seat for yourself and see if it's hard enough!" Later on we saw an elegant old man looking at statues and marking each one in a small booklet. A group of seagulls fought about a piece of Israeli chocolate or whatever, making a huge noise.

On the way to Kamppi we saw a group of girls with finnish flags and shirts saying something like "Hanna on ihQ", which would be something similar to "Hanna is hot". Just outside the Eurovision Village there was the same black man who always dances on a string (there has to be some English word for this). He was wearing a Superman outfit, which he usually wears except on Christmas he wears a Santa Claus outfit. A few steps away a person was making swords and dogs and pretty much anything you can imagine from balloons. If you ask me, the man was Danish, but I can't say for sure since he never spoke. Later on we saw a woman with a balloon bicycle in here hand, made out of atleast 3 different colors. It was a masterpiece.

Some band was playing at Kamppi and a decent cround had filled the square to watch. I took some video of the crowd and we fought our way through the masses of people and made it to the other side. The music was loud and it hurt my ears, especially the loud bass drum. We entered a tent just out of curiosity and inside there was a "room" covered with black cloth and a sign that said "Have you ever wanted to feel what it's like to be blind?" My friend's friend said that it sucked. I guess it did, because all I have to do to feel blind is close my eyes. We continued and went into another part of the tent, where DJ Xtian was spinning discs and playing some dance music. It was quite a lame place in the middle of the day since people just walked through it and there was a concert outside.

We went in to Kamppi and climbed up to the 3rd or 4th floor and took some video and pictures. Nothing interesting there, so I won't tell you anything else. Booooring.

Senaatintori, or as it was later said on TV, the Helsinki Central Square, was our next destination. The journey there was pretty rich. I've always wondered what it would feel like to walk in New York since the streets always seem so packed with people, whereas even during Christmas you rarely find that many people walking the streets in Helsinki. This time a street was so full of people I actually felt like I was in New York or some other huge city. My friend caught about half a dozen of photos of people taking photos of something. Some black guy was playing a drum at the corner of a street beside a mat which had necklaces and other cool stuff on it. A bit further we almost got run into by a Hare Krishna parade or whatever. I felt like joining them and walking around Helsinki, but I decided not to. I had never seen a monk before so now I can tick that off the list of things I want to see before I die.

Senaatintori was designed by a single architect back in some day that I can't remember now, but it's one of those must see places where everyone visiting Helsinki must go. The stairs of the church were full of people sitting, talking, eating, drinking and / or watching a band prepare to play. We walked around, I took some video of the masses of people and we finally climbed up the steps and the band started playing. TV Cameras were everywhere, well not everywhere but there was no place to stand without being able to see one. Some russian or polish reporter was talking to a camera and 2 people were filming stuff from a "crane" high above the ground.

On our way back to Esplanadi we encountered a woman dressed in a white robe waving a white flag with a cross and spinning around in circles. I'm a Christian myself, but I really don't see any point in what she was doing than saying Christians are nuts. Besides, I'd get dizzy of all that spinning.

Bla bla bla, we went to Esplanadi, took some more video of people walking around and seagulls fighting for bits of an Armenian map and then we went to Kamppi and once again to Senaatintori, where the woman we had met earlier was still spinning.

My friend's friend met her brother and they were all happy and stuff. I went to buy some icecream with my friend. I took 3 balls of icecream. Mango-melon, banana-chocolate and Dumle, which is toffee. We climbed the steps and found some nice spots. We sat and enjoyed the amount of happy people (Finland had just won the icehockey game against Russia and proceeded into the final), sunlight, icecream and music. Everything was perfect until some prick chainsmoker started smoking above the wind right next to me. I though I'd survive through one cigarette but he seemed to light another one every few minutes so I just left.

I decided to start heading home so we walked a short round around Kiasma, the museum of modern arts. The lawn behind it is a popular gathering place for goths or whatever they're called in english. At the side of the lawn someone had passed out with a bottle in his arms, how cute.

At the bus / train station we sat under a flagpole waiting for my bus to arrive. Behind us some drunk had decided to meet tourists and he walked up to a man and woman who appeared to be Spanish, shook the mans hand and chatted a little. The only thing I remember him saying was "Non comprendo espagnol" which is pretty amazing since I wouldn't know that much. I study italian, but not spanish so I would have said "Non hablo espagnol" (MS teaches that too "Habla espagnol" anyone?) Behind us police officers on horses were saying hi to all the little girls who love horseriding.

My bus arrived, I said goodbye to my friend and her friend and went in. I'll continue from here some other day in a shorter blog, because what happend from here was one of the funniest things ever. A big drunk man sat next to me...