My Escapes Finland Helsinki Cold Helsinki Business Trip First Night-time Exploration in the Kamppi Area

First Night-time Exploration in the Kamppi Area

Having arrived late in the afternoon and having waited for a long rain to end, I could only get prepared for an evening exit. It was dark and Finnish-cold...

My first feeling about Helsinki was that, in a way it felt like London (damp grey weather), people seemed quite introverted (more so than in Southern Europe), but the old streets had a slight resemblance to Budapest's and Vienna's streets.

On my first late-evening out, I started out by walking from my Radisson SAS Hotel to the Ruoholahti metro station... Quite a long walk. I'd approximate it took about 30 minutes.

At the station, when I was trying to buy a ticket, a bystander borracho helped me out.
The drunk guy was fluent in English and very helpful. But his alcohol odor disgusted me.

The Ruoholahti metro station

The metro station has quite an unusual design.
Please note that my photos don't reflect the real colours (under those lighting conditions with an EOS 400D it wasn't possible to immortalize the place vividly).

The ceiling was medium-blue, quite beautiful, but the Canon camera I was using at the time wasn't ideal for "indoor" shots under strong and uneven artificial light.

I explored the station a bit, it seemed too interesting to miss the details. There was more than "just a metro station".
Art exhibition added more to the attractiveness... so, while exploring, I kind-of "purposely missed" the first metro.

The Kamppi Area at Night

Kamppi is Helsinki's central shopping and business district.
Quite abundant in metal & glass structures. Just about everything is hypermodern, flat, square and cold. Straight walls, straight streets, people in suite and tie rushing... The latter was a wee bit like in Central London.

The complex entrances and multiple exits of the Kamppi metro station first got me confused - one of the entrances is actually inside a shopping mall! So, when I got out I found myself inside that mall...

So, I strolled on the streets, entered and exited shopping malls (both willingly and unwillingly, as the road led me), I finally got to feel how inner Helsinki is.

I wandered along the streets to reach the Finnish Parliament (I had the map in my head, as usually and it proved right!). It wasn't that hard to find.

Massive, unguarded of power symbol. It looked as if I could have walked right inside, didn't see a single guard anywhere. (By the way, Finland is much safer than most countries on Earth!).

The building was constructed between 1926 - 1931 and it's one of Helsinki's most prominent symbols. Although many guidebooks and websites won't show it off as a main attraction, I consider it one. It pretty much stands out from other structures...

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