Day 1 in Helsinki, Finland

It's weird how you find your way through a foreign city. You take notice of familiar words in the signage in front of buildings, even though they may mean very different things. "Apollo theatre," "Forum," (yes, the Romans, everywhere) "Diesel." Some I know from American culture, others from capitalism, but they are the signs I remember telling me where I am along a route to a destination. When you can't pronounce the street names (which are in both Finnish and Swedish the two official languages) it's this kind of mnemonic practice that becomes important. Our hostel is a short walk from the main rail station, and signs for the Metro are all over the city. Cobblestoned everything, bikers, little parks in weird shaped blocks of the city, it is definitely more of a traditional city with tall buildings, densely spaced than Reykjavik. Helsinki was voted the design city of 2012, and has an entire district dedicated to design; fashion, architecture, product design- design is in everything here. It is the home city of two of my favorite Architects, Eliel and his son Eero Saarinen.

Again, the air is fresh with a chill in it, but the day was really nice, 67 degrees. Alternating smells of perfume, cigarette smoke and crispness as you walk through. I think I was the only person in the city wearing sandals, but I'm ok with that. I inadvertently ordered an entire 14" pizza for myself, the remaining half of which is sitting on the table next to me at the hostel as I write this. Passed by at least two karaoke places, out of which I could hear badly sung English songs. Hilario. Everyone speaks English, and they can usually tell you're a tourist and switch over, though sometimes I've had to ask. I came across a market where they were selling make your own dried fruit and nut trail mix with wooden crates full of dried bananas, apricots, cherries, cranberries, just about everything and peanuts, almonds and cashews. They also had a cheese stand, candy stand and soaps, purses, etc. There was a little show set up in the middle of the square in front of the Forum mall, where I stopped to watch four girls do this pseudo Latin dance routine. Though they had a decent audience the applause was weak, people must be used to this kind of thing- performances randomly on a Monday late afternoon, maybe its just not that impressive.

One ingenious thing is the way they put parking lots in the interior courtyards of buildings. There's a drive and arched opening for cars to go through into parking lots beyond the street front. Its a great way to accomodate cars while not sacrificing the cityscape with open parking lots all over the place (think, Detroit, or L.A. no disrespect but, you know what I mean). There's a nice sensibility of keeping the city for the pedestrian, and tucking cars away, underground or behind the street building line, inside building courtyards.

Happy happy happy to be here! Going back out to explore, this time with sneakers and a fleece.