Travel - Thinking Woman's Diary

Helsinki...autumn

Written: 22nd Feb 2011 | Last Updated: 22nd Feb 2011

Travel is always affecting, usually stimulating, often life-changing. Occasionally, it can also be unpredictable. For reasons unknown, things go awry and spoil even the best-laid plans. Bad weather, missed flights, grubby hotels, food poisoning, indifferent people, credit card fraud, even terrorism, can deflate, delay, distress and detour one’s perfectly composed itinerary.

Fortunately, things generally work out...and for us (despite a last-minute flight switcheroo due to strikes in Paris), when we visited the Finnish city of Helsinki for one week in late October/early November last year, we were privileged to experience the Pearl of the Baltic in all her autumnal glory.

Autumn is a particularly pleasant time to visit Scandinavia; the damp, chilly air called for coats, scarves and gloves, but not thermal survival gear. Remembering a few winters spent in Canada, where skin, hair and eyeballs froze as you stepped out the door, the Finnish fall weather, though often gloomy, was what I’ll call atmospheric - befitting a northern seaport - and made a nice change from our warm Australian spring.

Since my last visit in 1992, Helsinki has developed an invigoratingly fresh, upbeat attitude; it’s super confident and sophisticated. Restaurants serving Finnish cuisine (once maligned by international food critics) are inventively world class; downtown shopping offers an enticing mix of au courant global couture/ready-to-wear and local creations; and you immediately sense an elevated awareness and appreciation of architecture, art and design; paired with the calm, soulful hum of Sami (Lapp) spirit and myth, this gives an edge to this city unlike any other. History and ethnic culture are linked to the now...past and present dancing elegantly, like Ginger and Fred.

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