“There are those who stay at home and those who go away, and it has always been so.” – Tove Janssen

With only one and a half days in Finland, my observations are limited. The city of Helsinki, where we spent all of our time, was unassuming, with some surprises – like the beautiful train station designed by Eliel Saarinen. The city reflected its inhabitants, which our guide, Liisa, said were quiet and shy. Which was easy to believe, when we learned that both Nokia and Marimekko were Finnish instead of Asian.

Another thing Liisa told us is that most Finns, 80%, own their own home, though the number is declining. And once they pay off some of it, they buy a summer home where they go for their holiday. Finns love their sauna, pronounced “sowna” not “sawna”, with personal ones in almost 75% of their homes. They also like to drink. So when they’re on holiday they have a beer, take a sauna, jump in cold water or roll in the snow, eat some sausage and repeat. Even their Farris wheel has a sauna on it – the dark cars below.

Helsinki is filled with beautiful churches, the most unusual being the Rock Church. Its original design was a church to be built on top a huge granite hill in the middle of the city. It was to be quite imposing, but two young architects suggested building it in the rock, which they did with amazing results.

I also liked their new library, designed with input from their citizens. There is a floor that has stacks of books, along with a cafe and a children’s play area but there is another floor with sewing machines, musical instruments, 3-D printers, music studios, etc to use. There are reading rooms, game rooms, meeting rooms – including one with a smart wall and lots of different kinds of seating and community areas. During the mid-day when we visited, it was a hive of activity. The community voices said it should be welcoming to all kinds of people and it looked as though they were very successful.

Like most of Europe, Finland was ruled by number of different countries over its history finally declaring its independence from Russia in 1917. They had to fight several wars after that but managed defend their freedom even though they had a smaller army. Unfortunately they lost 10% of their land to Russia. They’re strong supporters of Ukraine as they have experienced Russian take over attempts.

The national food we tried was salmon soup- a carrot, onion and cabbage base with a light cream based broth served with a salmon filet – very tasty. Potato pirogies appeared on the breakfast buffets which was an interesting and fun addition. We visited another food hall and saw lots of caviar, shrimp, salmon and interesting meats – reindeer, bear and moose. Lynn and I visited a wonderful vegetarian restaurant, Yes, outside of the tourist area. I has a savory strawberry and pea risotto which was delicious. After all the wonderful seafood I’ve been eating, this vegetarian, sometime pescatarian, was craving more veggies.

Sometimes it feels as our country is so different from other countries, especially our politics. The more I’m here however, I realize we’re not unique. Although, all of the Scandinavian countries have multi-party systems instead of two, they still struggle with growing division among the parties. They also struggle with immigration. Some people recognize that they need the influx of new people to fill jobs and shore up the tax base as their population ages – retiring and relying on state pensions. While others fear that the foreigners will be a burden on their social services.