home about photos phd v1.0

I awoke this morning to the sounds of scuffles and muted goings ons. Apparently Finland is 1 hour ahead of Sweden, so despite my early alarm, I was still 15mins late for my check-out from the ferry, which had arrived in Turku.

It was cold, and still very black outside at 8am. I rugged up and headed straight for a cab. With no Finnish currency, and the only ATM at the ferry terminal inaccesible due to deep pools of ice water, I managed to find a cab willing to take Swedish currency. Arriving at Hostel Turku and surveying its sparse interior, I began to have a sinking feeling about Finnish hostels (this feeling would turn out to be misplaced at my next stop). In 2006 this establishment had been voted Finnish hostel of the year.

I put my bags down and quickly set off walking to see the city sights. My first day of unrestricted sight-seeing, I walked from 8am till around 6pm, clocking up around 30km (including the night activities later on). I saw almost everythig Turku had to offer, from its breathtaking cathedral , to the Sibelius museum, and later the amazing Aboa Vetus/Ars Nova museum; along with many other things.

I was somewhat disheartened by the personal manner of many residents in Turku; while all were polite most did not sound as though they were smiling when speaking to me. It was as though I had unnecessarily burdened them with the task of speaking English. As I would later find out, there is a joke here in the country that Turku is the asshole of Finland. In later days, this would turn out to be an eerily accurate assessment, both in regards to the blandness of the general city and of many of its residents. Of course there were some wonderful people that I met while in Turku, so it was not all bad.

The contrast between Stockholm and Turku was intense, the first a lavish place of modern wealth, the latter a stark, cold, grey place with a distinctly poor Russian flavour. Still my time there was enjoyable, the night half of which I will recount tomorrow.

Turku's Tuomiokirkko (Finnish word for cathedral)