Ich Komme

So I'd visited all the stations on the Amsterdam metro.  I'd visited all the stations on the Stockholm metro.  What could I do this year?   I needed to visit a foreign city, one that wasn't outrageously expensive, with a varied and architecturally fascinating metro system.  It needed to be big enough to be worth the trip, but also, not so big that I got overwhelmed by its size and ended up rushing around.  I needed a place that was interesting and different and preferably somewhere I'd never been before.

Helsinki has the world's northernmost metro system, a network of thirty stations that originally opened in 1982.  For many years it lopsidedly carried traffic from the east of the city to the centre until, in 2022, the final phase of the Länsimetro, or Western Extension, opened, bringing fast underground trains to the neighbouring city of Espoo.  

It seemed ideal.  The hundred stations of the Stockholm Tunnelbana had tired me out in the end.  Something like Paris or Berlin would need a lot more time than I had available to visit.  A smaller network would enable me to be thorough, take my time, not overexert myself.  Helsinki is off the beaten track but not completely alien like, say, Tashkent or Pyongyang: it was still a wealthy European democracy a couple of hours away.  (Having said that, if anyone wants to pay for me to go to Tashkent or Pyongyang to visit their metro stations, please be aware I am very much up for that).  More to the point, it was at a stage where it wasn't currently being expanded, unlike, say, Lisbon or Oslo, so I wouldn't feel annoyed this time next year when they opened a load of new sparkly stations I hadn't seen.   

I set off from the world's most miserable airport, Manchester, on a Scandinavian Airlines System flight via Stockholm to the Finnish capital.  Right away, I was confronted with a wonderful piece of railway architecture.  Helsinki Airport is linked to the city centre by a loop of rail - the I line in one direction, the P in the other.  I'll be honest: I've now reached the stage where I judge cities that don't have a dedicated rail link into their centre.  Dublin was nice and all but I had to take a bus from outside the terminal and that's vulgar.   

I descended below on a giant escalator into a tall concrete box.  Projected on the wall as we drifted down was an opera.  You don't tend to get many operas in railway stations; usually this space would be devoted to a fifty foot high commercial for Bodyform or the newest flavour of Mountain Dew.  It provided an intriguing introduction to Finland, though it was lost on the noisy family in front of me who yammered endlessly and occupied the entire escalator with their large suitcases and even larger bodies. 

A turn and another escalator and we were fully lowering ourselves into a concrete slit, a void that swallowed us up and took us below.

At platform level it was exactly what you want from an airport station: two platforms, but all the trains go to Helsinki Central.  You don't have to think about it.  Grab the first one you see. 

I'd already bought my ticket on the HSL app while I killed time at Manchester Airport, drinking a bottle of Coke Zero that cost me four pounds and nineteen pence.  Five days of unlimited travel in all four Helsinki zones - all modes, not just metro - cost €39: about £33.  The ticket was on my phone and no paper was required.  Simple.

I took a P train, for no reason other than it was the one on the right, and began my journey into Helsinki.  A few days of Finnish fun lay ahead of me.  I was, as you can imagine, beside myself with excitement.  Get ready Helsinki: here Ich Komme.