Leaving behind the satisfying Stockholm, I took a train in the morning (early dawn). After about an hour on a plane, the Helsinki Vantaa Airport I arrived at wasn't all that big an airport.. What surprised me was the fact that 'snow' had piled up like this.. (mid-February..) If you look to the left you can see the Finnish flag fluttering. The Finnish flag is a blue cross on a white background.
Walking on out, I was glad to see 'Korean' written under the Chinese characters for 'Exit.' I was really glad, and I still find it hard to forget that feeling. Seeing Korean at a foreign airport within Europe was the first and last time I did so here, so maybe that made it all the more special. Well, while I was over there, since 'English' was already my everyday language, English was actually more comfortable, but seeing Korean after a long while is still really welcome. Having a language of one's own makes you think about the scarcity value of one's own language; do English speakers ever think about this, when English is always visible? But Korean isn't always visible.
This was a 'cafe' I found inside the airport after passing through the arrival gate, but the prices were so steep that I gave up.. I decided that from now on ordering a single piece of bread and a coffee somewhere was a luxury, and resolved to save money. Since Finland uses the 'euro,' I wanted to make do with the euros I had left.
I took this on the way out to catch the bus, but the focus was shaky so I ended up taking an off-target photo.. After that, I dropped my bags at the guesthouse and headed to a nearby market. Why head to a nearby market again, you ask? Because of food... a person has to eat to live. On top of that, the guesthouse I stayed at in Finland was a really small guesthouse, so there was exactly one kitchen where you could cook, and I just had to buy ingredients. The ingredients I bought were purchased at the market below.... As I mentioned before, if you buy ingredients at a market, with the money for one meal eaten out you can buy ingredients to make three meals, and it was the same here ㅎ
The building number and opening hours.. anyway, the certain thing is that it's roughly open until 6. Saturday? Or Sunday? At any rate, there are days it's only open until 4..
I'd also seen the name 'Saluhall' in Stockholm, so by now you can infer that 'Saluhall' is probably a word meaning roughly 'market.' Is it just me? I think you all would agree too..
Interior photo 1
Interior photo 2
This is interior photo 3. Around this photo I bought 8 euros' worth of vegetables. For meat, I remember buying pork belly near the spot you can see in photo 1.. I bought about 5 euros' worth.. and that's how I prepared three days' worth of ingredients. Then I put those ingredients back at the lodging and headed to Helsinki Cathedral. The cathedral you see below is Helsinki Cathedral..
With few people on the steps and the white sunlight reflecting off the cathedral, this photo became a once-in-a-lifetime shot commemorating my visit to Helsinki Cathedral.. It's truly an unadorned cathedral.. The green dome cap is a design that reminds me of Korea's National Assembly building.. lol The entrance was on the left side, as seen in the photo. I heard that in summer the steps are packed with people, but winter is winter. Winter travel is the off-season for every European destination, so I got to enjoy such a leisurely trip. This day was no exception.
This is a photo of the pipe organ inside the cathedral. European cathedrals always have a pipe organ; Helsinki Cathedral, by its shape, has five squares joined in a cross shape, so the pipe organ is arranged in a circle in the rear space like this. This pipe organ was also no joke in size, and it was the same here. Compared to pipe organs elsewhere, there's nothing especially distinctive. Actually, I don't really know where you'd have to go to see a distinctive pipe organ. They're all pretty similar everywhere.. The only thing is that pipe organs are very hard to see at cathedrals in Korea? The only pipe organ I've seen is the one at Myeongdong Cathedral..
This is a photo of the cathedral pews. There are especially many Japanese tourists in Helsinki, and I don't know why. Maybe the influence of the film 'Kamome Diner' is fairly large.. Compared to other European capitals, 'Helsinki' had overwhelmingly more Japanese people. Really, really many. There were Japanese folks everywhere.. Of course, since they didn't speak English either, I couldn't even talk with them.... Helsinki, with its especially many Japanese visitors.
A panorama shot from beside the cathedral; I struggled to take it right as the sunlight got blocked..
This is the plaza in front of the cathedral. This was exactly the day I arrived, so it was the first time the weather was this nice on my first day in Helsinki. Because after this day the weather got bad again and it was just cold the whole time. But on the first day at least, it was truly crisp winter weather. Until those 'clouds' you can see far off arrived. There were plenty of Japanese people in this plaza too, and, well, a tram runs along the 'roadway' you can see up front, so it's also a good spot to go nearby and catch a tram. And if you go a bit past the buildings you see in front, the seaside appears, hehe. This is the shot taken from atop those steps I mentioned earlier. I bet in summer there are lots of people in the plaza, right?
I took a selfie ㅎ where on earth are my eyes looking, honestly ㅎ Anyway, those steps and the cathedral are shining. If you don't come on a clear day like this, you wouldn't be able to capture the cathedral shining like that. Leaving behind the regret of wondering whether a better camera could have taken in all that bright light better.
This is the path passing 'the buildings you see in front' that I mentioned earlier. If you look at the lower left, you can see tracks for the 'tram.' Ah, and you might feel there are notably few cafes on the streets, and that's true. A really empty neighborhood.. Should I say Helsinki is the most unadorned and least charming among Europe's 'capitals'? Simple, unembellished, with monotonous buildings and few people themselves. In Paris, Stockholm, or Denmark, the streets around such a big cathedral are, well, enormously bustling or splendid, but here, certainly because it's Helsinki, it's monotonous with few people... Among the capitals of European countries I've visited, Helsinki was the most 'frugal.' So it's actually safer, too. Since there aren't especially many people, I worried less about safety.
This cathedral is also one that appeared in Kamome Diner, supposedly, but I never actually watched the film.. Still, visiting a city after seeing a film is a wonderful thing. Thinking back to when I went to Paris after seeing Before Sunset, films make me see 'cities' anew enough to still feel the urge to go to Vienna. Just for that one thing — feeling like I'm in the spaces from the film — people revisit the cities they saw in films. Of course, I didn't watch the film, but I just went. A red-brick cathedral following a white one, hehe.
If you look closely on the left, you can see a 'rope' strung up to keep people from climbing the steps at the 'entrance,' and indeed that was the case. So it was because the cathedral's open hours had ended that they'd strung up the rope, but most tourists climb up regardless. Westerners and Easterners alike, everyone crosses the rope to tour the cathedral.. Personally I wanted to go inside the cathedral, but since it was after closing there was no time to enter.. And so I wrapped up the day's itinerary around 4 p.m. After this there are more photos from wandering around that day, but due to the photo-count limit I'll continue in part 2.
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