5. June 12, 2024: Oulu — Ferries and Taxis and Driving and Walking

Hei Hei !!
Hectic morning having early breakfast, repacking, and getting off the ferry at the port in Helsinki, but we arrived exactly as promised at 10:30 a.m.; found taxi immediately to take us to the Helsinki Airport (perhaps a bit of a circuitous route we are taking in Finland, but it made sense based on when we wanted to be back in Helsinki). It’s been 5 years since our last visit, and the country remains as peaceful and beautiful as ever. The roads are perfectly paved; there’s a lot of new construction (with each building being more architecturally well designed than the next); no evidence of homelessness as housing is a major priority and the government has been successful in drastically reducing the numbers (which were extremely small to begin with); their public schools are rated among the top in the world; and health care is free for everyone.

Anyway, we flew to Oulu which is on the west coast of Finland, about one third to the north. We used Oulu as our driving starting point since we are headed north of the Arctic Circle and this eliminated a lot of driving. We had been to Oulu once before—many years ago when we lived in Finland—but that was in the winter when the city was covered in snow. Oulu is a city of about 215,000 and is often called the capital of Northern Finland. It’s also considered an innovative city where new technologies are embraced and where residents see themselves as part of a living laboratory when it comes to the environment, healthcare, and the arts. It’s compact and walking is easy and encouraged. Pedestrians reign supreme and cyclists as well as drivers stop for pedestrians and obey all traffic laws. Oulu is also home to a large university (by Finnish standards), a professional theater, and many music venues.

From what we can see, there is a thriving art scene…and of course the fact that the sun is now setting at a little before midnight and rising at 2 a.m., it’s easy to see the city at all hours of day and night. At least one of the photos in this email was taken at 11:45 pm and the sun had not yet set completely.

After picking up our rental car (we used Sixt after having a terrible argument with Hertz on our last rental in Cleveland a few weeks ago), we headed to our hotel—Lasareti Nordic Art Hotel, which turns out to be very pleasant, new, and situated at the edge of a lovely park and on the river (which we can see from our room).

Lasareti is located within an arts complex, so as we arrived to check in there was a concert right outside. It’s also very central so we can easily walk everywhere. Right after checking in, we headed out to see the town—passing the art museum and the history museum, the main church, and many pedestrian-only streets. We also traversed a wonderful park with numerous bridges that enable you to move easily over small lakes and the Oulu River which meanders through the park. Finnish cities tend to have numerous, large, very well-maintained parks so this was not unusual, but it was delightful. There is public art scattered throughout the city. Finland invests heavily in promoting the visual as well as other arts, so the products of those investments are visible. Frankly, although the design quality of products, graphics, and buildings is extremely high, the visual arts (painting, sculpture, etc. done as “art”) has never been at the standards of Finnish fabric, clothing, dinnerware, furniture, and other consumable products.

From the market area, we wandered across the bridge to Pikisaari, an island that is part of Oulu. It was historically the location of shipyards, and the only inhabitants were the workers of the companies. Today, Pikisaari is an artists colony with studios and housing for artists and craftspeople. Some time in the 1970s the city turned over the site of a former wool mill to the Arts and Crafts School and later a new school building was completed. It was fun to walk around and find sculptures and other art forms along the waters edge, in the forests, and on the walking paths.

From Pikisaari we headed back toward the center of town to have dinner at Hugo – a restaurant we had read about. While we hadn’t intended to order the full six-course meal, we got very tempted when we read the menu. And the six courses, they promised us, were each quite small. Thus, we convinced ourselves it was OK since we never had any lunch. What they didn’t tell us was just how wonderful every morsel would be. From the asparagus soup that was presented initially as a medley of trout roe, small pieces of asparagus, tiny toasted malt bread crumbs, crunch brown bread crumbs, egg whites and fresh chives—on top of which they poured this amazing asparagus puree…. To the beef tartare with marinated cucumber juice, crispy egg, horseradish, parsley and egg yolk…. To the wild garlic risotto with scallop and scallop foam… to the wagyu beef with fried cauliflower.. to the amazing dessert—–the meal was memorable, and Hugo is a sweet place with very friendly staff. We sort of rolled out of there, very happy we had to walk about a mile to get back to our hotel. Hopefully, we walked some of those calories off (??) By the way, there are a lot of stories about cauliflower in Finland; I’ll try to relay the point tomorrow. Too tired now. By the way, this gourmet Finland is also something that has emerged in the past 15 to 20 years. When we lived here, there were very few (if any) restaurants exploring creatively with food. Food was pretty basic. Of course we didn’t have any money, so maybe we just didn’t know what was out there. But I truly think these kinds of places have come into being in recent years.

One last thing about being back… some of my Finnish is returning !! I was never fluent and could barely converse, but I did know a lot of words and could string them together to (sometimes) make myself understood. Of course when we lived here only those with higher education spoke English. Many workers actually knew English but were embarrassed to speak (perhaps they way I feel about speaking Spanish). Nowadays (and for the past 20 years or so), everyone speaks English and they speak well. Of course they are also fluent in both Finnish AND Swedish since Finland is a bilingual country and speaking both languages is required. But still it is nice to begin to bring back all those words that I knew (some very essential ones like ice cream and how much does it cost, and numbers, and the niceties like hello and goodbye and thank you and how are you).. Actually, I’m pretty good at reading menus and getting directions. But people realize right away that we are foreigners, and they immediately flip to English, so I don’t get much time to practice my minimal Finnish.

I’m signing off now. More tomorrow when we explore more of Oulu and also drive south to visit a small town we want to see.
Fern

PS – As in years past, we are continually impressed with how well versed everyone is on world politics and US politics (from the guy at the rental car desk to truck drivers to people on the street). And economic concepts that baffle typical Americans are often discussed by Finns with ease. Perhaps because they are such a small country they feel it is a necessity to understand world dynamics.