Viking in the Viking

The Last Day of Helsinki.

From Tallinn to Helsinki, I took a ferry to get to here. It cost about 25 euro including bicycle fee and wonderful breakfast!!! In the first 30 minutes, I kept eating even if I felt like thrown up. The dishes were law fish, meat, and bread as usual!!! Unfortunately, there were no rice. But it was very good for starving stomach. In Japan, the meal which we can choose and eat as much as you want calls viking in stead of smorgasbord, even if it is not a real viking meal. And interestingly the name of the ferry which I took was Viking. It was large ferry and a lot of cars as well as passengers.

To get to the ferry port in Tallinn, I passed the old town in the morning. It was very beautiful and quiet, different from evening or daytime in there. Quite a few people walking and normanlly tourist in Tallinn is sleeping in the early morning. Atmosphere in the old town arouse me that I am in the museum in the middle ages!! That was my first time to visit old town around 7 am. I really recommend visiting early morning in the old town for those people who want to put yourself in it!

Helsinki was a nice city, it is not too big and busy, economic level is quite similar to Japan or a little bit higher that that. The first impression in Finland looks like Bucurest in Romania form that archtecture. You can easily understand the reason if you know about the history in here. I haven't know much about the history in Finland. But what I have found everything in these three days was that Finland have a lot of influence on Russia and Germany in recent history as well as Sweden. In the middle ages, Finland was a colony of Sweden. That is one of the reason why Swedish was one of an official language in Finland. We can see two signs on the road, Finnish and Swedish, when you go around somewhere in the city.

And another something new as that a lot of Black people living in here. I haven't met those people through this trip by here. Mainly, those Black people are from African countries to be able to get a better living standard. It was semilar to Chinese and Kolean people living in Japan. But amount of those people are quite a lot compared to Japan. I guess there is a difference between Finland and Japan of the immigration policy. The number of people who immigrate to Japan from China and Korea as well as other south east Asian country are not a lot because of strict immigration policy of Japanese government. I haven't noticed the reason but those closed policy is one of a feature in Japan.

Anyway, from now on I will leave Helsinki to Turku, the old capital in Finland

Yuji@ Helsinki, Finland