Satunnainen

"Ooooh, more Helsinki posts!" said no reader ever.  It has gone on a bit, hasn't it?  It's gone on so long that when I wrote the first post someone messaged me to say they were going to Helsinki later in the year on holiday so they were looking forward to reading about it.  That person has subsequently had their holiday and come back to the UK and I'm still here writing it up.  In my, defence, I've had a lot going on at home so I've not had the space to carve out two hours to yammer on about Finland.  Also, I loved it all, so I wanted to give it the attention it deserved.

The point is, though the Helsinki Metro is all finished, there's some other transporty things I did in the city, so here they are, gathered together for your "pleasure".

The 15

Last year, when I travelled on the Lidingöbanan in Stockholm, I made notes as I travelled, a stream of consciousness that I put on the internet.  Finding myself in Helsinki with no more Metro stations to collect, I decided to go on the 15 tram and do the same again.  If you recall, this is a loop line that goes from Itäkeskus to Kellaniemi via the north of the city, entirely avoiding the middle of Helsinki.  Unlike the trams in the city centre, this has been built to modern light rail standards, with its own rights of way and bridges. It takes over an hour to get from one end to the other (time via the metro: less than thirty minutes) and nobody would do it unless they're an absolute nerd.  Oh look, that's me.  Here are some vague thoughts, hammered into something resembling a blog post.  It's ok, I don't mind if you don't read it.

Oh they are request buttons! I wasn’t sure. An old lady has pushed one to get off at Roihupelto. It seems to be a large retail park. 

I went to swap seats to the little two - I’m currently on a 4 - then I spy it’s for disabled people and back away. Here I have a little table with a USB socket but I’m charging off my battery anyway.  

Running down a grassy median with a lane of traffic and cycle lanes either side. Rocks and forests and now we’re on devoted track through fields. How far out are we going? This is positively rural.  I thought it would be suburbs all the way. Two old ladies, one in floral, one in animal print, haven’t stopped talking since they boarded. Meanwhile across from me is a straggly bearded fat man in denim reading a comic. He puts it away and takes out another one with Donald Duck on the front, looking annoyed in a snow drift. Donald Duck, not the man.

An expanse of large glass buildings that scream business park; it is completely devoid of life until we get to Viikin tiedepuisto, a park, and suddenly there’s a shopping mall and a quaint little red cabin. Floral has got off here but animal print remains. The seats are faux yellow leather but the best part is the aircon, blowing at maximum throughout. Stops are plain with minimal seating. An entire family gets on at Viikinmäki, three generations, and they spread themselves around the hinge in the tram. 

I’m still wet with sweat.  My face is dry but my shirt is disgusting. I should’ve changed it. At Oulunkylä there’s a railway station, cream clapboard and looking like it’s from the 19th century: a K train passes through and pauses as we move on. A woman takes the seat opposite me but she perches on the edge so that she can face the direction of travel. There are new apartments everywhere. Is Helsinki experiencing a boom or is this the effect of the tram? Five, six storey buildings with retail at the ground floor. A building site with a crane and more being built and then some older, more 1980s blocks. The family get off and the grandad whips out a camera and starts filming the building works. What a loser. Ahem. 

Across the motorway the buildings are starker and more old fashioned, though the tram has clearly caused a new quarter to be constructed. Houses now, little tin looking buildings in pastels and surrounded by thick gardens. Hämeenlinnanväylä is under a flyover, and it’s like being back in Amsterdam. Three young men in white vests board, one Black, one Asian, one white, oozing attitude and cockiness. They only last one stop. The white boy has a cigarette behind his ear. 

All weather football pitches with people actually playing football in this scorching weather then we’re in a tunnel under Huopalahti station. Yellow tile at the stop then another new neighbourhood under construction. 

We pause at Vihdintie - to even out the schedule no doubt - and Donald Duck packs up his comic and moves to the door to exit at the next one. A roundabout over a motorway junction, thick trees and daisies and past a McDonalds drive in which is empty even though it’s lunch time. There’s a huge hole in the ground to my left with the remnants of a building at its centre; I’m guessing an old factory. 

A man got on stinking of BO and I wonder if that’s what I smell like too. He had crutches and a coat on and a thick beard but he disembarks at the next stop. So many trees, mature and high, between buildings, along side tracks, like construction is only permitted in clearings. Another tunnel, unlit, smooth. The track is hidden behind fences and we end up at Ravitie where two twelve year olds get on, one with blonde dreadlocks poking out from under his baseball cap. The road we’re passing down is silent. No cars. A single walker in athletic gear. Starting to feel hungry. May have to invest in a sandwich. 

Apartment blocks and a large wide ring road. The boys are watching a video on their phone and we can all hear it, of course. Leppävaara station, under the overpass, then a stop beside the shops around the corner. An A train waits at the platform as we pass. The boys get off for the mall. It’s a popular stop. Their place is taken by a teenage girl with a badminton racket who immediately starts talking on her phone. We pause again, probably because this is such a popular stop - time to accommodate crowds. 

Take a swig of Pepsi Max - the aircon is now getting to my throat. How long have I been on here? An avenue between seven story blocks, new with the tram line, the trees still young but the flower beds blossoming. Up a slope past multi storeys and office blocks. Another motorway crossed and then a stop in the middle of a forest, apparently; there doesn’t seem to be anything around and nobody boards or alights. A few small houses, white homes behind fences, parasols poking up, then back into the countryside via a dizzying bridge over a motorway. The driver puts his foot down until we stop at another one with seeming no purpose; it’s right by the motorway junction and that’s all. Still, a young woman gets off here and she doesn’t look like she’s going hiking so who knows. 

Following the highway.  Maari has a huge drum like building like an atrium which looks impressive but is probably just an office block. We’re in the back of Aalto University and now there are teaching blocks and laboratories but the students have seemingly all gone home for the summer. The tram pauses at a square across from the metro station - a different entrance to the one I used. The next stop is the one I disembarked at before, Otaranta, and I can get glimpses of water through the trees. Badminton girl gets off here. 

Now it’s the final stretch to the terminus, four or five of us left, me the only one who came all the way - an hour and change to travel round the edge of the city. The voice cheerily announces metro station and terminus in three languages and then we stop. 

Tikkurilla

My last day in Helsinki was an awkward one.  I had checked out of my hotel at ten am, but my transport out of town wasn't until the evening.  I had my big heavy backpack with me so I didn't want to go to a museum or something, and it was roasting hot again, so I simply rode some trains and buses and metros all day to keep myself amused.  It doesn't take much.

I took a random local train from Helsinki Central and got off at Tikkurilla.  This was a stroke of good fortune, as it turns out this is something of a star station.  A wide glass bridge dotted with shops and facilities spans the tracks.  It was big and impressive while also being incredibly practical.

Either side were shopping malls with direct connections to the station.  I had a bit of a wander round, smirking gleefully to myself, then went back down to the platform for another random train north.

Yes the Swedish name for this station is Dickursby.  No that isn't why I stopped here.

Kerava

My randomly selected train terminated at Kerava and I disembarked in a small town on the edge of the city.  The station building was getting a lick of paint as I arrived, refreshing its soft pink woodwork.  I used a wood-panelled subway under the tracks to reach the station square.

Everything about it was charming.  The building sat neatly surrounded by open land; the lack of ticket barriers and fencing made it feel so much more welcoming.  Buses idled outside in a small exchange, ready to take train passengers onward.  There were a couple of small cafes and shops in the buildings nearby.

I hovered outside the bar, mulling whether to indulge myself with a quick pint.  This is where I'm meant to go off on a rant about the price of beer in Scandinavia, but have you been to a pub in the UK lately?  The A frame outside said a half litre of beer was €9, about £7.80 at today's prices.  I'm writing this with a pint of lager beside me which cost £4.80 so that fabled gap between British and Finnish beer prices is considerably narrower these days.  I passed on the beer in the end, because I knew I wouldn't be able to have just one, and I had a long day ahead of me.

There were, incidentally, some posters on the wall advertising an upcoming concert from Erika "Ich komme" Vikman.  Europe may not have embraced her at Eurovision but clearly Finland still loved her. (Käärijä, of "Cha Cha Cha" fame, had performed at an open air festival in a Helsinki park on the previous Saturday, and I had genuinely considered going until I realised I would only know one song and the rest would be in Finnish.  Also, going out on a Saturday night?  No thank you). 

Can I use this point to mention just how massive Finnish trains feel?  When I got on the one back from Kerava it was like boarding a space ship.

Oulunkylä

If you did read that load of old nonsense about the tram journey further up the page, first of all, bless you.  Secondly, you might have noticed a mention of Oulunkylä station, one of the points where the railway lines and the 15 tram cross.  I decided to jump off and take a closer look at it.

I was sadly disappointed.  Though the station building looked lovely from the street, closer inspection revealed it had been converted into private homes.  It's tremendously disappointing when that happens, no matter where you are in the world.  I want railway stations to be stations, dammit, and even if you don't want to have the full ticket office experience (though you should) it's nice to have a waiting room for the passengers that's not just a bus stop that thinks it's fancy.

There is at least some artwork at the station, in the form of a giant slanted clock at the entrance to the subway.

The theme continues in the murals on the wall.

I'm not sure why Oulunkylä is time-obsessed, but I'm going to take a moment to pat them on the back for at least having a clock that works.  It's a modern miracle.

That definitely says Oulunkylä.  The sun was in exactly the wrong place to to get a decent photo with all the text visible.  As usual, if you would prefer I went back and took a proper sign picture, please feel free to send me a Finnair ticket.

After that there was a lot of buses, which are great; today Diamond Geezer wrote about the consultations for Superloop 13 in London and it was a reminder that Helsinki has a load of trunk route buses that do express services and they don't feel the need to hype them up as a fantastic innovation that will change the city.  Helsinki's just great to get round.  It's fun.  Go if you can.

And yes, I did go on one of the old trams.  It was rickety and noisy and packed.

So I'd taken a plane to Helsinki.  I'd gone on the underground and commuter trains. I'd ridden the buses.  I'd gone on the trams and the light rail. What possible form of transport was there left for me to take?

A ferry, of course.

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.