The Same But Different

It had taken me all day, but here it was: the final station on the Länsimetro.  It's very similar to its brothers, of course: island platform, red and white stripe, and a light show above your head.

Does it matter when it works, though?  Does it matter when what you get is thirteen stations that shine with efficiency, glamour, style?  It certainly didn't bother me.  Disembarking at Lauttasari was as uplifting an experience as the other twelve stations, a step into a positive future.  Helsinki's Western Extension was a wonderful place to visit, and I hope that other cities take inspiration.

Like most of the stations, Lauttasari has two exits, one into a shopping precinct and one in a more residential area.  I decided to go through the latter one this time, away from the crowds, for a change.  It brought me out on a side street where a tiny arced building had been slotted into the row of buildings.

My attention was immediately grabbed by the giant tent at the end of the road.  I thought it must be some sort of temporary arena.  Maybe Helsinki had got the rights to the Horse of the Year Show and had to hastily put up a gymkhana.  It was only when I got closer that I realised there was an apartment block underneath it.  It seems that in Finland, when there's building work going on, they enclose the entire structure rather than sticking some scaffolding on the side.  I guess this is a response to the country's harsh weather.  Once I'd seen it, I spotted it all over the city.  My thought every time was: do they move out while it's going on?  Or are the residents of that block all sitting in semi-darkness twenty four hours a day? 

I'd left the metro station behind a man and two women, one of whom was pushing a buggy, and as I followed them down the avenue I tried to discern their relationship.  At first I'd thought they were all friends, two women and their GBF, but then I noticed the man and the woman with the buggy seemed to fall into step with one another.  So the obvious conclusion was that they were a couple, and the man was, against all evidence, heterosexual.  

I followed them for a while until, outside a block of apartments, they all parted ways.  At this point, the man wandered off into the distance, leaving the two women behind; one handed the buggy to the other and left, and then the final girl pushed the baby into the gardens of the residential block.  My final conclusion: the two women are lesbians who split up after the man donated his sperm to conceive the child in the pushchair and they were having a day of shared contact.  Scandinavians are so progressive.

I finally reached a stream of traffic at a standstill on the edge of the island of Lauttasari.  The bridge to Helsinki city centre was further along and it seemed everyone had decided to go that way.  I walked past, much faster than the stopped cars, then darted across to be on the coast side.  At the entrance to a boatyard I saw a familiar pink sign on a telegraph pole; the Lauttasaaren walking path I'd briefly used before.  I immediately veered off the road and into the boatyard's car park, once again prioritising random wandering over carefully laid plans and personal safety.

I was in the city but also outside it, walking along the coastal path at the backs of homes and streets.  Huge lumps of rock burst out of the water to create pools and cliff faces.  A woman in a tight costume slowly walked down the rocks and into the water to begin her wild swim in the bay.  A swan with its cygnets appeared from under a tree, unbothered by me, knowing full well she could snap my arm like a twig if I got too close.

There was a bench around the corner and I settled into it to finish my bottle of Coke and take in the view.  I was having a marvelous time.  These little trips away to visit foreign metro systems have become so precious to me.  I love the BF, love spending time with him of course, but sometimes it's good to have a completely selfish experience.  I was in Helsinki to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and what I wanted to do was look at railway stations, and I was the only one who cared.  I could spend all day doing this if I wanted.  There was no social awkwardness.

It was also temporarily filling the hole left by the completion of the West Midlands Railway map.  I've become used to having these side quests in my life and when one closes I'm left slightly bereft.  I've lost a purpose.  My hobby has vanished.  If you're a stamp collector, or a coin collector, or you collect beanie babies, there's always another one.  There's always more. 

There's a finite number of stations on a map, and the only way more will appear is if there's a massive million pound investment from government bodies.  It doesn't happen every day.  Getting the Helsinki Metro map under my belt was helping me scratch an itch.  (Get on with opening the Pineapple Road extension, would you, TfWM?) 

I lifted myself to my feet and realised, horrified, that sitting down had been a mistake.  My body had been reliant on constant movement to avoid noticing how decrepit it was; the parts had been in motion, and they were kept busy.  By resting, I'd given a chance for my body to take stock and note what was in need of a pause and it turned out the answer was all of it.  Suddenly my feet hurt.  And my knees.  And my legs.  And my back.  And my shoulders.  Basically everything below the neck was moaning at me.  All of it wanted to stop, right now, and how dare my brain lift it up and make it start moving again.

Stiffly I continued to walk, rusty, straight-legged, trying to bend knees that didn't want to bend into movement.  I was the Tin Man, only not quite so camp.  Slowly the fluids returned to my joints and I was able to walk properly again at my usual accelerated speed, but my feet were still complaining with every step, and my shoulders chafed under the straps of my backpack.  I walked back onto hard pavements and onto the bridge to the mainland. 

Cyclists burned past me in their dedicated lane (1034 that day; 465,156 in the year to date, according to the electronic sign on a lamppost) and I stepped down into the district of Ruoholahti.

For decades this was an industrial zone, filled with factories and warehouses, plus a working port.  In the Eighties though, with the closure of numerous businesses, it was reclassified as an office area, and redevelopment work swiftly began to house corporations here.

Long straight streets were lined with tall buildings and solid blocks of flats.  Regimented trees lined the pavements.  The tram that intruded looked somehow twee in amongst the solid modernity of the area.  

It's a redevelopment that's been going on for so long it's now reached the point where it's being regenerated again.  At the centre of the district is the Ruoholahdentori, an open square built on the top of an underground car park.  It's one of those open spaces that you know looked fantastic on the renders - all kids with balloons and street entertainers and laughing ethnically mixed couples - but has ended up being a bit of a dead space.  The Helsinki Conservatoire occupies one end - stick some culture in there, that'll help - but from what I could see its most committed users were gentlemen who didn't have anywhere else to go to drink their alcohol.

Now Helsinki's council has started consultation work on redeveloping it, encouraging footfall and building new residences around it to create a far more mixed community.  It's interesting how there are these waves of developmental ideas that sweep through cities but time and time again they come back to "hey, why not have people live and work and shop and play in roughly the same place so it's an interesting spot to visit all day".   

One of the men who liked to drink in public had come unmoored from the Ruoholahdentori and was outside the metro station, shouting about something, nothing, everything, waving at passers by.  I maintained a discreet distance for the selfie pic so I didn't attract his attention then dashed inside.

Ruoholahti station was the first proper extension to the west the metro ever got; to encourage growth in the area, the city built a single stop from the existing terminus at Kamppi that opened in 1993.  It served as the end of the line until the Länsimetro was built in the 21st century. 

I am of course on record as a huge fan of Stockholm's Blue Line.  Epic, beautifully designed metro stations - what's not to like?  It seems that Helsinki was a big fan too, because Ruoholahti has more than a hint of Blue Line about it.

Rock cavern?  Check.  Interesting colours?  Check.  Pieces of art scattered around?  

Check. 

It is, I have to be honest, a slightly B-list version of the Blue Line.  The Tunnelbana is inspirational in its size and breadth.  Those cavern stations would be astonishing even if they weren't peppered with odd pieces of art; they're grand and arresting.    

Ruoholahti is far more small scale.  The platforms are shorter.  They're also dead ends - the escalator hall is in the centre, so both platforms finish in a blank wall.  Nobody's written a book about the art of the Helsinki Metro, put it that way.   

This is not to say that it's bad, don't get me wrong.  If this station were in the UK I would be rhapsodising about it on a regular basis.  If it was on Merseyrail I'd probably go there on a regular basis to sit on the platform and eat my sandwiches until a uniformed security man moved me on.  It was just that the Länsimetro had shown me a distinctive, interesting and very Finnish metro system.  Ruoholahti was the Tunnelbana with a different accent, and that wasn't as pleasing.

Be yourself.  That's the key here.

Rush

Adrenaline is a very powerful drug.

I'd planned this whole trip in great detail back in England.  (Yes, of course there was a spreadsheet.)  Timings, routes, even which exit to use in the stations - all researched and carefully recorded. 

Keilaniemi was a great place to end Day One.  I'd have completed all the stations in Espoo.  I'd have completed all the stations in Zones C and B.  From there I was pushing on into the centre of the city.

Plus: look at it.  It's the Länsimetro writ large: a long elegant space with a light show above.  It's a perfect ending.

I headed up to street level because, as we all know, if you don't pass through the ticket barriers it doesn't count.  Not that there are any ticket barriers.  Helsinki's Metro - and its tram and bus network too - is entirely predicated on trust.  It is assumed that you have a ticket already when you board, so there's no need for a barrier.  There are ticket inspectors, of course, who swarm all over a train and interrogate the passengers.  This happened to me only once, when a short stout woman barked some Finnish at me while I was gazing out the window.  I don't think she expected me to look quite so frightened and quickly sized up I wasn't from round these parts, repeating the question in a much softer tone and in English.  It's nice to be treated as an adult, to be trusted, to believe that your citizens are basically decent human beings who will do the right thing.  If they tried this on the Tube it would go bust within about eight minutes.

Keilaniemi itself was a building site.  This has long been a centre for some of Finland's most prestigious companies - one of the complexes by the coast was once home to Nokia, who have since realised they don't need quite such a large set of offices, for some reason - and the arrival of the metro has seen a building boom.  Corporate HQs are now being joined by apartment blocks and the whole area is being rebuilt as a kind of Kanari Wharf.  It is, in short, not a very interesting place to hang out if you're a tourist.  

The plan was to head back into the Metro and go home.  But that adrenaline kicked in.  I was having a great time.  I was alone, exploring a foreign city, a beautiful one at that, and visiting fascinating railway stations.  I didn't want to quit and head back to my hotel for a nap.  I was pepped up on enthusiasm.  Plus, there was a tram.

Helsinki has kept most of its traditional trams, and they clang-clang-clang their way around the city centre.  They're small and have steps up to the seats and little tinny bells; they're charming, but they're not what you'd call a modern transport alternative.  In 2019, however, HSL opened Line 15: a modern light rail route that forms an arc from Espoo to the east of Helsinki.  

It's the teal line running from one end of the red Metro to the other on the map.  There was some suggestion of it actually being a Metro line until the numbers were crunched; as it is, the light rail came into being.  And there was a tram sat on the platform across from the station exit.  I dashed over and got on board.

I only went one stop, getting off at Otaranta, but at least I could say I'd done it.  I was now on the very edge of Espoo, where the coast broke off into small islands, jigsaw pieces scattered in the bay.  With the pump of hormones inside me I decided I would walk across the islands to my next station. 

The sea was as grey as the sky but there was still something so exciting about walking across it.  When we hit land again, a blue sign by the side of the road told me I'd entered Helsinki proper now.  Beyond that were thick forests of evergreens and a small side path taking me down and under the road into the woods.

Of course, I immediately dived down this side path, without a second thought.  Life is a lot more joyous if you branch off whenever you can.  Take the unknown route, the footpath that goes round the corner, the unfamiliar road.  It's so much more thrilling to find yourself in a completely alien place with no idea how to get out. 

Except... now the darkness set in.  I was smiling, happy, enjoying my stroll through the paths, when it occurred to me that I had no real idea where I was and nor did anyone else.  I was a blip on a mobile phone signal and that was it.  

I rounded corners and the fears began to prickle the inside of my head.  What if there was a band of crackheads loitering here?  What if a serial killer hovered in the woods with a knife?  What if I tripped and plunged into the water, slipping below the surface and never re-emerging? 

The really bleak part is: I realised I wasn't really bothered.  What a way to go was the main thought.  If that was how I was going to die, well, so be it.  Better to be brutally murdered on a distant island than a boring stroke at home.  Better to be fished out of the Gulf of Finland, bloated and eaten by fish, than to slip and crack my head on a staircase in Liverpool.  If the murderer had leapt out at me, wagging his meat cleaver and screaming that the voices demanded a sacrifice, I would probably run.  I think.  It's not come up yet.

We're all a coincidence of atoms and biology, a cosmic happenstance.  Our existence is nothing.  Every human is a tiny nodule on the history of Earth, and Earth itself is a mite on the back of an insect on the face of the universe.  We're irrelevant.  If the Fates decided that I was destined to die alone, unknown, in a strange city, well, that was that. 

Obviously it didn't happen, or I wouldn't be here typing this nonsense right now.  This is what happens when I find myself strolling in the silent majesty of nature.  Either I become filled with the joy of existence or caught up in the blackness.  Appropriately, in Scandinavia, the home of Ingmar Bergman, lemmings, and the general concept of drinking until the pain stops, I'd gone with the second option.

A small boy on a bike burned past both me and the sign saying he shouldn't be on a bike and woke me up from my interior.  He looked over his shoulder at me, a little cautiously, and I realised that in the pecking order of potential serial killer victims, overweight middle aged white men were quite far down the list.  Far too much effort.  (The boy was fine, by the way; he pulled up next to his mum and sister round the next corner and began climbing on a piece of play equipment).

A small bridge carried me across to the next island, Kaskisaari, past a low villa with a huge Mexican flag flying.  I guessed this was the home of the ambassador, to which I say, congratulations señor.  I don't want to make any assumptions but I'm guessing Mexico and Finland don't have much in the way of a complex diplomatic relationship that requires the ambassador being regularly summoned to the Presidential palace.  He gets to live in his coastal home and get the limo into town every day then wander back having done something very important, I have no doubt, but I'm not entirely sure what.  

Kaskisaari was privately owned for most of its history and it's only in the latter part of the 20th century that homes have crept in.  As you'd expect for an island in the bay close to one of Europe's most desirable capitals, the properties are astonishingly expensive for what they are.  They resembled small, discreet detached houses - nice, but not mansions - but an advert for a development of three new two-bedroom homes advised me they were going for €1.9 million each.  I was surprised to see a bus stop, let's put it that way, but I guess the cleaning staff have to get there somehow.

Leaving the island to the south meant using a pedestrian bridge, adding to the exclusivity; when your home is a cul-de-sac surrounded by water it's adding another zero to the house prices.  A jogger passed me in illicitly tiny shorts.  I stopped in the centre of the bridge, a wind whipping across the water to muss up my hair, a taste of salt on my lips.  I could stay here, I thought.  It's easy to win the Euromillions, right? 

A couple of twists in the path and I happened across an information board, helpfully written in Finnish, Swedish and English.  The Seurasaarenselän rantareitti is a 14km walking route that forms a circle around the islands and city fringe.  I'd skimmed just the western edge of it, but the map showed that another, different route, the Lauttasaaren rantareitti branched off here and circled the island of Lauttasaari.  

Of course I took the branch.  There was, fingers crossed, still a chance I could be flung into the ocean by a psychopath.  I realised that there were pink markers on the trees to show I was on the Lauttasaaren, and I wondered if there had been blue signs for the Seurasaarenselän walking route and I'd been too dopey to notice them.  The path curled round the edge of the island then deposited me at the back of some small apartment blocks.   

Once again, I got an insight into the communal, respectful Finnish personality.  There was a bathing pier so you could swim in the bay and behind it were drying racks for your wet clothes - out in the open, without security or CCTV to make sure nobody nicked your pants.  Towels were hanging there, alongside a public mangle to help you remove the worst of the water.  It created a picture of happy community.

Yes, that's an abandoned e-scooter.  Helsinki is as plagued with them as every other Western city.  They were usually parked at the side of the road, out of the way, but sometimes you'd have to pick your way around them on the pavement.  Another Western plague that the Finns are not exempt from is bored teenagers, as I discovered when I walked through the apartment complex to get to the road.  It was built over a steep hill and at the top were two boys, about fourteen or fifteen, squatting on ride-along toys clearly swiped from their much younger siblings.  They looked at me as I approached, a little guiltily, knowing they shouldn't have been doing what they were doing, but the moment I passed they lifted their feet and rolled down the slope, giggling. 

A bus passed me then performed a long circle at the end of the route to go back the way he came; the driver paused for an old man who called out from the other side of the road and gave him time to cross and board.  There was a sandy playground, scattered with toys - possibly where the two teens had got their rides from - and rows of apartment blocks with balconies, most of which had glass shutters over the top half so that they could keep in the heat during winter.  (Why don't we do that in the UK?)

 

 

Through an underpass and then I was at Koivusaari station, which holds the unique distinction of being the only underwater metro station in the world.  This sounds more impressive than it is.  When you hear that, you think it's connecting two distinct bodies of land separated by water - a bit like Blackfriars station in London, only under the Thames instead of over it.  In reality, it's connecting two parts of the same island, and there happens to be an inlet inbetween them.  You can see the back entrance across the way and you could walk to it if you wanted.

 

In fact, the plan was that it wouldn't be under water at all.  Koivusaari is a small island on a particularly shallow point of the bay.  The Helsinki city authorities hit on an idea to address the need for more residences: why not fill in the land around the island with the material generated from, for example, a metro tunnel, plus all the other construction projects around the city?  This was what the island had historically been used for, after all; Helsinki dumped a lot of the rubble left over from the war here in the 1940s.  You'd create a much larger island - around 50 hectares larger in fact - with an underground station right in the middle of it and suddenly there would be room for around 4000 people.

 

The idea did not go down well at all.  Attitudes to land reclamation had shifted over the decades, and the city's residents rejected it wholeheartedly.  Unfortunately, at the same time, Espoo was pressing ahead with the Länsimetro; the opportunity to build a station here was too good to pass up.  Helsinki agreed to construct Koivusaari station anyway on the promise that they'd try again with the development plans later.

 

It means the station is perhaps the most expensive entrance to a nature reserve in the world.  The second exit, on the other side of the water, was mothballed until a later date, and the ticket numbers are the lowest on the system with the exception of Finnoo.  Finnoo, though, is getting its developments right now, while the ones at Koivusaari are still theoretical.  Helsinki has come up with a new scheme that means a smaller amount of reclamation, but taller buildings so there are the same number of new homes; it's yet to get approval.

 

 

I'd got used to the calm silence of the metro stations by this point, but Koivusaari was something different; the trains that came and went rarely deposited new passengers, and there was nobody in there with me.  That unused western exit came complete with a hopeful image of the "Koivusaari of the future".

 

 

I don't begrudge Koivusaari station at all.  It makes absolute sense to build it while it's easy and cheap rather than try to create a station on a working line at a later date (ask Merseytravel how they're doing with Baltic to see why that's a problem).  It's the chicken and the egg: do you build a station to generate traffic, or do you wait until there's sufficient traffic before you build it?

 

 

Just today Jonn Elledge published a piece in the Guardian lauding Crossrail and its transformative effects on London.  He asks why the rest of the country can't have the same thing, and I have to agree.  If you build it, they will come, and metros and trams and railway stations create communities.  Helsinki may have jumped the gun a little with Koivusaari but in fifty years there will be a thriving district here.  Even if the proposed developments never happen, those two teenage boys I encountered will grow up with a fast route to jobs and universities and opportunities in Espoo and Helsinki they never had before thanks to the Metro station on their doorstep.  Transport can transform lives and improve cities, and I wish Britain would take that on board.  There should be a Koivusaari in every town.

 

The hour long walk through the islands had tired me out.  I'd gone one more station than I'd meant to.  I should really have stopped for the day.

 

Of course I didn't.