We arrived in Helsinki in the evening – though it definitely doesn’t look it. The sun would set around 11pm, and it’d still be moderately light out at 12:30am. We stayed at the Hilton Kalastajatorppa, which I’d booked because as far as I remembered, it was where we stayed when my grandfather took my cousin and me to Finland when we were kids.

I was, however, really confused after we sat down, because the restaurant wasn’t at all like I remembered. You know, from 35 years ago. But it made me wonder if I’d made a horrible mistake, and wasted a bunch of $ to stay at the wrong place. I had a very distinct memory for the restaurant space, and that we’d sat on the 2nd floor of a round room, looking out over the ground floor & listening to a band do a sound check every night because my grandfather liked to eat on the earlier side.

Fortunately, a.) the food was really genuinely incredible, and b.) the restaurant space I remember is now their conference space, and we were able to run in and take a few pictures.

I think I harbored a lot of fear around this trip – that we wouldn’t know what to do, or that it’d be … stressful in some way. It’s not. Almost everyone speaks perfect English, has been quite friendly, and the weather has been absolutely beautiful. Our room looks out over the bay, and it’s just a gorgeous, soothing view all the time.

The first day we were here we did a walking tour of the city that Ei-Nyung had booked, and the guide (Emek at Ataman Tours) was friendly, really interesting, very informative, and put the city into so much context that it was just a total pleasure to spend the day walking around hearing about the city’s history and landmarks. Highly, highly recommended.

The tour ended at Oodi, the Helsinki library, which I’ll write more about later, but is maybe the single most impressive thing I’ve seen in a long time – not because of the space, or the building, but because of what it means about the country’s priorities, and how brilliant it is that Finland has created a monument to its ideals.

After that, we ate lunch at the open air market by the port – had some meatballs & a reindeer hot dog, then we took a boat “canal” tour – there is apparently one canal – the rest of the tour was a ride around the archipelago around Helsinki. We got a good view of Suomenlinnen, a once-Swedish fort on the islands just off the coast of the city.

Picked up what looked like some mutant blueberries (turns out they’re “Honeyberries”, and while they look like blueberries, they have a really distinctly different (and delicious) flavor. I don’t really know how to describe it. I wouldn’t say “honey”, I’d just say they were brighter than normal blueberries.

We ended up having dinner at a place a short walk from the hotel called Drunch – the kids had a decent pizza, and I had the absolute worst döner I’ve ever had anywhere – it may be one of the single worst meals I’ve had, ever. The meat was microwaved to the point where it was crunchy and hard, and had no discernible flavor other than “meat-ish”. Genuinely, genuinely terrible. Ei-Nyung didn’t hate it as much as I did, but for me, it was shockingly awful, and barely “food”.

The next day, we walked over to Seurasaari, which is an island nearby where they’d brought a bunch of different buildings from the history of Finland, made them part of an open-air museum, and staffed them with period-dressed people who could answer questions. Sort of like in the US when they have these exhibits of “Here’s what it was like to live during the Gold Rush” and stuff like that. I also got a lemon-licorice ice cream, so there’s that. It was no Tiger Tail, but not too bad.

We ended the day at a cafe a little north of the hotel on the water, where we had some excellent food (shrimp skägen toast & a korvapusti (the traditional Finnish cardamom-cinnamon roll)), and hung out on their patio. 9pm, sun out, tons of people just hanging out talking, playing games, watching the birds. It was … I dunno – the perfect vibe? There’s something really social/communal about the way people spend time here that speaks to me in ways that don’t feel familiar.

And come on with that sunset. Ridiculous.

The next day, we went to the fort – Suomenlinna – and walked around. It was weirdly like walking around some of the old bunkers around the Bay Area that were built for WWII, but these were a LOT older. The kids have been having a lot of fun experimenting with making weird photos with the iPhone’s panorama mode.

We got food at the food hall by the port – had another bowl of salmon soup (not as good as at Meritorppa, but possibly because we got there too late and the most popular place had sold out) and some weirdly huge egg rolls (also sort of meh). But we also found some tippaleipä, which was apparently my uncle’s favorite treat. Like a funnel cake, but with the texture of Pocky. Good stuff.

The fish here is ridiculously good.

The next day, we met up with our old friend and ex-coworker Cody & his wife for a pastry and coffee at Regatta, which was this great little very distinctive cafe on the water. Walked through a park with a big sculpture honoring the composer Sibelius, tried (and failed) to get sushi, ended up getting some Syrian food and a boba, hung out, talked for hours walking through Helsinki, and ended the day at the library again. The day was gorgeous, the company was great, the food was great, and everything about it screamed “Yeah, this place is alright.”

I know Finland gets cold and dark. I know it has the same kinds of issues as a lot of monocultures. But things like the library, where stuff is built with great care for the public good, the pervasive drive for social welfare and to provide for each other, the work-life culture, politics that (at least relatively for us) works for the betterment of the people (at least strives to), general safety, extraordinary public education, pervasive public transit… I mean, it’s a compelling place.

Before this trip, I’d been here once, 35 years ago with my grandfather. I was young then, and I retained some really positive memories about the trip, but not that many about the place and the culture. I don’t know what the kids will leave Finland with, but I hope it’s with a sense that a country can have ideals like safety and education and healthcare and a love of nature and do big audacious things and not be consumed by cynicism.

I think the thing I’ve taken away from this place, and from our trip to Japan & Korea last year, is that there are some things that are possible because you believe in society, and not individuals. And I love parts of America and its individualism, and I dislike parts of Japan’s pressure to conform. But I wish America behaved more like a team working toward a unified goal, and less like a bunch of people who believe their own personal freedoms trump our betterment as a whole. I dunno what to do with that feeling. I want my kids to understand that things could be better. If I believe that they could be better, I should try to make it that way. But what do I do if I don’t? I don’t know.