The city is clean as the cold, like the contrails of their ships and the glass of their aquariums. Helsinki mira al mar. It is located in front of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic, whose waters tend to freeze every winter.
We arrive in autumn, after reaching North Cape and that seemed like a summer, not so much because of the temperature but because of the attitude of the Finns. Markets lined the streets in front of the port and next to the Helsinki Cathedral, The backpackers rested their step in the afternoon light. People went out to the cafe terraces, some arranged on the deck of boats and the parks were frequented by redheads reading love stories at sunset or ladies walking dogs or cyclists going about their lives under the trees with burning leaves.. It has something of bucolic Helsinki, Nordic fairy tale or elves or trolls or what do I know?, but it seemed like a fable to me!
Men share that way of walking without making noise, that atypical stealth in a capital.
It has eccentricities like all European capitals. The Church of the Rock or Temppeliaukio Kirkko - which makes you want to give strange names- is buried under the ground, but 180 windows let the sun in from the zenith. Addition, It is possible to visit Red Sea fish in the capital of Finland in an aquarium that takes away the taste of salmon. There the sharks swim with the same slowness with which the ferries navigate in the port, taking enthusiastic tourists along the most intemperate coasts of Europe..
We also went to the Suomenlinna fortress - another easy name- where the cannons point to a time when the Russians were a threat. Today, everything is infected with a kind of placid candor, where even the wars of yesteryear seem civilized.
Helsinki, ultimately, stands out for its order. It happens in other parts of Scandinavia, where men share that way of walking without making noise, that atypical stealth in a capital. Shopping centers make you forget winter and trams calm traffic. Where taxis are boats and avenues do not understand emergencies, the world moves more smoothly.
Maybe that's why, the Finns drink the night in fits and starts, because this order is sometimes unbearable.
