Helsinki

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164_6445-4.JPGAlthough geographically close to Denmark and Sweden, Finland is a world away.

Prior to arriving I learned that while Danes and Swedes originated from Europe, Finns are descendents of central Asia. In fact, Finnish is linguistically closer to Turkish than Swedish. Joylani noticed that the people are tall, really tall. She was surprised that most of the women were significantly taller than her (and me). While Joylani noticed the Finns size, I noticed that they looked different in other ways. This week has reinforced what I observed on my first trip to Denmark and Sweden four years ago: they are good looking people. There are a lot of beautiful people in Denmark and Sweden. Finland, not so much. Their style didn’t help too much either. People dressed weird in Finland. Not weird like high-fashioned Parisians, but weird like 1980’s rock videos. Even the female manikins in stores had mullets and mohawks. Enough knocking the Finns.

Time to knock their capital. Helsinki didn’t impress me. It’s not as clean or efficient as Copenhagen or historic and beautiful as Stockholm. A relatively new city build by Russia, its architecture was bland and uninspiring. We spent our day perusing a flea-market, strolling along a lake, and exploring downtown. It was a nice day, but that’s about it. Its not that I expect the extraordinary, but Helsinki wasn’t even interesting.

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