The Final Four

For decades, the area around what is now Kalasatama metro station was docks and wharves.  That's what Kalasatama translates to: Fish Harbour.  As in many Western cities, however, devoting a large portion of the city centre to something as grimy and unattractive as fishing was deemed undesirable, and they were turfed out to the suburbs in 2008.  What was left behind was acres of prime real estate with metro tracks sweeping across the top.

The city had always planned on building a station here, right back to the sixties when the metro was being planned, but they didn't want to construct anything until passenger numbers would justify it.  An offer to pay a third of the costs from a developer came in handy though, and so Kalasatama opened in 2007. 

It's unique among all the Helsinki Metro stations for featuring two platforms on opposite sides of the track, instead of an island; this came about because it was the easiest way to construct a station around the existing bridge.  It's futuristic and glassy but also a little bland.  It looks like more or less any 21st century metro station in the world, as opposed to the distinctive looks on the Länsimetro.

Now I just had to get out of the damn thing.  Since it opened, a shopping centre had been constructed around the station, and I wandered into empty corridors of closed stores.  It was early Sunday morning, my third day of exploring the network, and most of the city was still asleep.  

I can't help thinking that if you have to paint bright orange lines on the floor to guide people to and from the metro, your wayfinding system could do with some work.  Especially when those lines cross over one another. 

After some fruitless wandering, that no doubt caught the attention of the CCTV monitors, I managed to find an exit to the street below.  Around me were cubes of new apartment blocks, massed rather than tall, each one with its own quirky exterior to try and break up the monotony of a district built en masse.  The supermarket didn't open until eleven; the e-scooters were abandoned on the side of the road after Saturday debauchery. 

I walked down towards the waterside, but it wasn't a beautiful stroll by the bay; there were building works everywhere.  Temporary diversions and rough footpaths guided me around to the underside of the bridges.  I knew there was a way up to the crossing, somewhere, but I couldn't seem to find it.  It wasn't a great start to my day, getting lost and disoriented for a second time in ten minutes.

I finally spotted the ramp up to the carriageway in the distance, unsignposted, and crossed the acres of concrete to get to it.  There didn't seem to be a legitimate way to get there so, what the heck.  I walked up the shallow ramp - mainly an access route for cyclists - and found myself on the road bridge with the metro to my left and the cars to my right.

Up here there was a small breeze over the water, just a little, enough to break the stillness of the hot morning.  It was another scorcher.  Annoyingly, the UK was also having a heatwave; when I'm out of the country I want everyone in England to be rained upon so I can sweep back in with a tan and make them resent me.  I wandered across the bridge, then down the off-ramp to a small backroad on the island of Kulosaari. 

The houses hid away from the road, down side paths, along cul-de-sacs, descending to berths on the water where speedboats idled.  Trees guarded them from view but there was still an openness around what were no doubt very expensive properties; no high walls or electric gates to guard the homes.

Sometimes a cyclist would pass but for the main I had the street to myself.  Helsinki hadn't yet dragged itself out of bed, because Helsinki could look at all this any time it wanted.  It wasn't some idiotic Englishman running out of time. 

Kulosaari station appeared on my right, another above ground station, and perhaps the ugliest street presence of all the ones I'd visited.  They'd all had a building of sorts, or something to attract the eye, but Kulosaari hid under the bridge with only the smallest of signs to attract your attention.  I'd passed a couple of signs with a blue P+Metro, telling me how many empty spaces there were at the station.  I guess park and rides are as inauspicious in Finland as they are in the UK.

On the platform though, it was almost idyllic.  Thick banks of trees ran either side of the viaduct, held back by cool blue glass, making me feel that we were surrounded by nature.   

I boarded the train and rode one stop to the next station.  I realise that I've not really talked about the trains on the Metro.  I've always said I'm not a train person, I'm a train station person, but I suppose I should say something about the vehicles.  They're largely big and square, bright red in colour so distinctive, but they are unfortunately constructed with some incredibly uncomfortable plastic seats.  I will never be a true lover of European railway networks until they learn to embrace the moquette.

They are very modern, with next station indicators and LED screens to show you adverts and the weather and news reports.  One thing that amused me was a smog map; as you'd expect for a relatively small city in Scandinavia, these seemed to show "zero" every single day.  There was also that damn girl for Save the Children, and an odd looking man with a microphone who I thought was probably a vanity promotion like that Angelyne woman in Los Angeles, but who turned out to be a road safety ad, somehow.  It was also through these screens that I learned that Helsinki's newspaper, the Helsingin Sanomat, uses a much groovier font for its logo than it really needs to.

I start talking about the trains and end up wanging on about a font.  This is why I don't get invited on telly to talk about the railways; I know absolutely nothing, and worse, I'm quite happy that way. 

Herttoniemi station was another one undergoing refurbishment work, though, as you can see from the somewhat battered pipework in that picture, it needed it.  The station opened on the original stretch of line in 1982 and was showing its age.

It was a dark station, buried under a bus interchange and no great looker, and I was unsurprised to learn that it's scheduled to get a new building and oversite development at some point in the near future.  It was also my penultimate stop. 

For the first time on my trip I entered the world of quiet, moneyed suburbs.  In Espoo and at the eastern extremes, the Metro had swung between high-rise estates and the richest islands; in the city centre I'd moved among dense historic streets.  Now I was turning onto single carriageway curved roads, rising up and down hills, packed with trees and small homes.

I was, I have to admit, feeling a little deflated.  My Day One enthusiasm in Helsinki meant that I'd used up the Metro in a quick burst.  I should've made it last - I should've stuck to my plans, in fact - and instead I'd eaten it all up in one go.  That lead to the inevitable hangover on Day Two and the feeling of inadequacy on Day Three. 

For all my bleating about Stockholm's 100 Tunnelbana stations being too much last year, it kept me busy and never stopped being interesting.  It turns out thirty stations is too few for me.  What I really need is something in between the two, or, alternatively, more time to really explore the larger networks.  I've got the bug though.  Three years of traveling across foreign cities has made me want more.  Ankara?  Mexico City?  Sydney?  Who knows where it'll be next?

(As I typed that, the National Lottery app flashed up a little alert on my phone encouraging me to play and folks, that's the only chance I have to ever experience the Sydney Metro). 

They're not big on pavements in Helsinki's winding 'burbs, but it didn't matter; I saw hardly any cars.  One house had its door open, while refurbishment works went on inside, the owners already covered in concrete dust.  Round a corner, the distinctive smell of cinnamon drifted from someone's breakfast, filling the street.  It seemed the ideal way to live.  

I stepped off the road and into a small, dark copse of trees, descending down the hillside.  In the distance I could see a car park and, beside it, the long flat shape of my final Helsinki Metro station.  I stopped at the R-Kiosk and bought myself a Coke then rode the escalators to the platform.

Siilitie was refurbished a decade ago and still felt new and cared for.  It was better than Kalasatama's bland glass and steel though, with interesting use of concrete, and a big circular vent in the ceiling.

I'm probably the only person who looked at that and thought "that really reminds me of the tarantula room in Dr No" but you never know; perhaps there's someone in Finland as sad as me.  I took a seat on the bench and waited for my train.  The Helsinki Metro was done; it belonged to me.  I was happy.

The City Beat

 

A middle-aged homosexual in front of a sign that says KAMPPI?

Go on, make your jokes.  I'll wait.  

Kamppi was the end of the line for many years and it still has a feeling of prominence about it.  Everything is built on a grander scale than you're used to with the Helsinki Metro.  At the end of the day, there are about 1.6 million people in the Helsinki region - big in Finland, only slightly more than the population of Merseyside - so it's not exactly desperate for huge transport networks.  The platforms are short, the escalators efficient.  It's great, don't get me wrong, but it's a single underground line.

Kamppi, though, was built with the future in mind.  The original proposals for the metro in Helsinki envisaged a cross-shaped network, and Kamppi was where the north-south line would meet the east-west one.  There are, as a consequence, unused platforms beneath the Metro line here, built in case they were ever needed, with access routes carefully screened off above.  It's unlikely they'll ever come into use.  The airport to the north of the city centre was connected to the central station by traditional rail routes, while a new tram line with Finland's longest bridges has sucked up all the investment.  Every now and then it'll be suggested that the plan is revived then the numbers come in and everyone backs away. 

The station does have its own artwork, Kaupungin juuret by Otto Karvonen.  It's a lot of direction signs embedded in the cave ceiling, designed to show the many places the residents of Helsinki have come from, while still being part of the city.  An important message in the current climate, I feel.  I looked in vain for a Liverpool arrow but it's possible it was there and I simply didn't notice it.

There used to be two exits from the station, one to street level, the other to the Kamppi shopping centre that gives it its name.  However, the entire block of land the street exit was on is currently a building site, so the only exit is through the mall.  I rose up through the escalators and exited through the curved station exit - a weirdly organic sight in the centre of this capitalist haven.

I had to take a close-up picture of the tiles on the outside of the entrance: dinosaur scales, fleshy green tiles tessellating to add to the natural feel.

Once I made my way out of the shopping centre - no mean feat; the Finns do like to be buried in malls without letting you know how to get out - I had a quandry.  My hotel was about one and a half kilometres away, and my body, brain and soul were all crying out for a shower and a lie down and probably a little nap.  Everything hurt by then.  Everything was tired.  And the crisp white sheets of my hotel room were calling.

On the other hand... a half a kilometre beyond that was my next metro station.  And I could walk across the city centre and get a flavour of Helsinki on the way.  I couldn't resist.  I left the Narinkkatori, the pedestrian plaza outside the shopping centre, and disappeared into the streets.  I had only the vaguest idea of where I was going.

What I found were dense rows of tightly packed homes and shops.  Tiny stores that had the most bizarrely specialist bent were tucked beneath apartment blocks and at the edge of courtyards.

The buildings could've been anything between three hundred and a year old; they had that strange European patina that meant they all looked distinguished and yet not museum-like.  They didn't look like they'd been preserved because of a Government order, the looked like they were still there because people lived and worked in them and kept them going. 

The road opened up into a wide public square, gardens in front of a Lutheran church where a wedding was taking place.  Here I experienced a moment of disconnect.  On the one hand there was a perfectly ordinary wedding party: bride in white, groom, joyous family members and friends.  Slightly to one side, however, was a group of people in white masks and red dresses, looking like sinister devils.

 

 

I couldn't quite reconcile the two.  On the one hand, it looked like a party of street performers had simply happened to be in the same place as the wedding.  On the other hand, I don't know Finnish wedding traditions.  In England, it's regarded as perfectly normal for the best man to shag the chief bridesmaid behind the bins at the reception.  Perhaps it's common to have satanists turn up at your wedding, only to be driven away, or embraced even: I don't know.

 

 

On a side street beyond that, I spotted one of Helsinki's most famous sights: the Spårakoff, or Pub Tram.  This is exactly what it says on the tin: a tram that circles the city centre.  Inside it's been converted to a pub/restaurant, and serves beers wines and spirits on a continuous trip.  

 

Long-time readers (hello you!) would naturally assume that I dropped everything at this point to leap aboard.  I am, after all, both a fan of public transport and alcoholic beverages.  Riding a pub on tracks is basically my dream.

What you've failed to take into account, however, is that I am also painfully shy.  If I'd boarded that tram, there wouldn't have been a nice quiet corner for me to hide in and nurse a pint.  I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the ride to myself.  Instead I'd have been dragged into a social situation, where a lot of friendly people oiled up on booze would've dragged me into their party.  I'd have been forced to interact with Terry from Wisconsin and Gert from Rotterdam and we'd have all had a marvelous time yammering on together and I'd have felt unbelievably awkward and out of place.  There was a very real danger that I would hurl myself off the tram and under the wheels to escape Nadia from Bucharest telling me about her backpacking experiences and so it was for my own safety that I avoided it completely.  I saluted the Pub Tram, and all who sailed in her, and then I crossed the road and descended into the Esplanadi.

 

As its name implies this is a long linear park built for dandies to strut along in their finest.  Constructed in the 19th century, there's a theatre at one end, plus numerous glamorous cafes to take advantage of the views.  At the time of my visit it was adorned with various pieces of modern art as part of a city-wide festival.  It meant that every now and then you'd see a lovely elderly American couple who'd probably got off a cruise ship staring at a piece of spike-encrusted wood and trying their best to wrap their heads around it because we're in Europe now Wilma and we promised we'd have open minds about their ways.

The Esplanadi ended in a square by the sea where lot of young Finnish sailors sang some kind of enthusiastic song that a lot of the crowd enjoyed very much.  I liked the idea that this was a rite of passage for Finnish sailors - a few months of training then a couple of weeks leading sea shanties in the city centre.

 

I was close to one of Helsinki's most prominent landmarks, the Helsingin tuomiokirkko, or cathedral, mounted on a ridge above its own square and prominent for miles around.  I was excited to see a prominent piece of architecture that didn't have a train involved somewhere so I limped up the hill to the plaza to see it.

 

Alright, is this a conspiracy?  Does the word go out on the wires across Europe when I'm in town?  Does Expedia sell on my information to make sure that the biggest, most prominent landmark whereever I visit will be covered with building work when I arrive?  I am absolutely sure that if you visited in June 2025 the cathedral was open and attractive to any viewer and then a week before old Scott Willison wanders into town they put up the scaffolding and the tarps and restricted access.

 

Disappointed, I crossed the square.  I had developed blisters by this point and I can tell you with absolute certainty that cobblestones are not the friend of blistered feet.  I hobbled onwards, bravely, heroically - some might say I deserved a knighthood for my valiant efforts, but obviously I wouldn't suggest that myself - in search of the Helsingin yliopisto station.

The many, many Finnish readers of this blog will have spotted that Helsingin yliopisto means "Helsinki University" and therefore this is the second station on the network to be named after a higher education institution.  It wasn't always this way.  For the first twenty years of its life this station was called Kaisaniemi, after the district it occupies.  In 2015, however, the city council renamed it to honour the 375th anniversary of the university's founding.

 

 

I call bullshit on this claim.  Firstly, who celebrates the 375th anniversary of anything?  It's a stupid number that is only vaguely notable.  You'd wait for 400, right?  Secondly, I'm sure naming a station after the University of Helsinki in 2015 had nothing at all to do with a station for Aalto University being constructed at that exact moment in time.  Football rivalries have nothing on academic ones, and I'm surprised there isn't a designated spot in between the two unis for the staff to have a fight on at the end of every term.

 

I managed to negotiate a spot amongst the damnably young and attractive and lively clientele of the station to pause and take a sign picture before plunging underground.  The passageways at Helsingin yliopisto embraced the cave aesthetic to the extent that it felt like I was genuinely in a subterranean ice passage.  It was a bit of a shock when I ended up in a lower ground shopping centre.

 

 

For those of you keeping count - perhaps the idea of other languages scares you, and you want to make sure the British are still conquering the waves - Helsingin yliopisto is the second station on the Metro that also lists its name in English so those dirty foreigners don't get hopelessly lost.

 

As you'd expect from a station planned in 1971 but not actually finished until 1995 there's a real air of budget restrictions about it.  They built this station for the demand but don't think they'll put in any fripperies, kiddo.

 

 

This is not true of the next station, Hakaniemi.  One of the earliest stations to open, it's also one of the most unique, with a wide overarching roof and an uninterrupted island platform.

 

You might recognise this spot if you're a fan of turn of the century rap-dance music.  The video for Freestyler by Finnish band the Bombfunk MC's was filmed here, and I strongly urge you to watch it for a time travel experience back to the year 2000:

A white boy with dreadlocks!  A Minidisc player!  Girls dancing in sleeveless tops and baggy pants like they're All Saints or something!  It's tremendous, and plus you get a look round the Helsinki Metro without having to tolerate my nonsense.  It prominently features the top of the escalators, an island in the centre of the platforms that raises you almost to touching distance of that roof.

Oh how annoying, I got a picture of David Corenswet as Superman in there, ah well.

I rose up to street level and picked one of the half dozen exits.  I'd hoped to end up in the market hall that gave the station its name, but I couldn't quite work out which one was correct, and instead I ended up in a small exit right by three police officers.  I took my selfie pic and tried not to look like a terrorist.

Note the blue triangle on the orange square in the sign, by the way.  That's the symbol for a civil defence centre; all the underground metro stations were designed to double as bomb shelters.  A cheery thought. 

One more station and I'd be done for the day, promise.  I pulled out Google Maps to find a route to my final stop, Sörnäinen, and hoped and prayed it wasn't up the hill.

That's the Kallio church at the top, and a thousand points to the city planners for this truly impressive vista that I really didn't want to have to climb with my sore blistered feet.  I breathed a sigh of relief as I realised my route was off in a different direction.  The cafes here weren't as upmarket as the ones I'd seen on the Esplanadi, but they were just as busy, and offered a more internationally diverse range of cuisines.

As I walked through the streets, I was reminded that Helsinki used to double for Moscow in the Cold War era.  Once it's buried in snow, you probably can't tell the difference.  Gorky Park, the William Hurt thriller, was filmed here; it was one of those films I'd seen over and over because I recorded off the telly as a teenager.  I didn't actually enjoy it - it was incredibly slow and boring and William Hurt was his usual anticharismatic self - but I kept the recording for far longer than I wanted to because I thought it was the kind of thriller I should like.  People sitting around talking and every now and then they shot someone and looked like they regretted it. 

The Helsinki thriller I actually enjoyed was John Gardner's Icebreaker, his third James Bond novel from the days when he still cared.  If you've read the Gardner books you'll know there's a severe drop off after Win Lose Or Die as you realise he's writing these for the money and nothing more.  Icebreaker is not one of his best - the plot is about (yawn) neo-Nazis, and everyone is always double crossing one another until you can't work out who is actually a goodie and who's a baddie - but it does have a girl called Paula Vacker, which is a name that's stuck in my head for decades for some reason.  I'd meant to re-read it before I came here, perhaps go to a few locations in the book, but I completely forgot until I was on the flight home.  

A long sweeping road took me past rows of town houses, with a playground and an athletic field.  Some well-dressed ladies kissed each other goodbye and headed home; cars drove past slowly, keeping to the speed limits.  It was all so civilised and charming.

I darted across the avenue behind a tram, surprised at how quiet it was on a Friday afternoon, then walked into the square at its head.  There it was: my final station of the day.  I let out a sigh of relief.

If Hakaniemi was designed to look like it came from the future, Sörnäinen was created as a shrine to the 1980s.  It's panelled with bright yellow plastic, all of which screams Princess Di haircuts and waking you up before you go-go.

This isn't a complaint, by the way.  Metro systems should reflect the period they were built and making them all blandly similar is boring.  One of the joys of moving about the London Underground or the Paris Metro is never quite knowing what you're going to encounter at the next stop - gleaming silver modernity, Edwardian tile work, shabby 1970s styling.

At some point the station will probably be made over, refurbished to whatever the fashionable style is at the time of reconstruction.  And then a few years after that, it'll get restored, and the Helsinki transit authority will issue a proud statement about how it's being made to look like an Eighties fever dream all over again.

My train came and I was able to slump into one of the uncomfortable plastic seats they put on their Metro trains.  I was sweaty, achy, knackered.  But I was very, very, happy.