Tampere and London – Because They’re Worth It

If you count yourself among the unapologetic faithful of First Price, Rema, and Kiwi, then this two-part travelogue has been written – gratis , one might feel inclined to add – with you in mind.

Most students will cringe at the notable omission of Tampere (Finland) in Ryanair’s list of flights from Oslo, but history never belongs to the naysayers. Undaunted, I booked two Ryanair flights (Oslo-Stansted and Stansted-Tampere), braving a night at Stansted airport in transit.

After having been rewarded with a free shower at Stansted for my troubles, I arrived at Tampere airport, in need of a shave and eyebag-removing cream, but otherwise largely intact. Tampere airport is a nondescript two-storey affair whose design bears witness to the relative unpopularity of Tampere as a travel destination, but there are traces of the hand of Adam Smith and the free market economy of globalization if one looks hard enough: the Holiday Inn Tampere sign greeting my sleep-deprived eyes, for instance. Or, for that matter, the couple that floated into view shortly after: Emrah, a Turk who had worked at a hotel in Turkey catering to Finnish tourists, and Claudia, a native of Tampere, both of whom I had met in Singapore.

I greeted these signs of global capitalism with an embrace whose heartfelt nature duly convinced passers-by that we were not actually delegates of the United Nations, and, three old friends reunited in the freezing cold of Finland, we were soon on our way towards Claudia’s apartment, where a warm bed and a fresh towel awaited the day-old veteran of Stansted.

The Finns are so used to the biting cold of Lapland that they typically omit the word ‘minus’ from any discussions about temperature, and Tampere, despite being the third most populous region in Finland, is marked by long stretches of desolate arctic wilderness.

The Finlayson works and other fin de siècle buildings in the heart of Tampere stand as ghostly testament to Tampere’s industrial past, and one cannot but be struck by a haunting sense of absence, only to be countervailed by the effusive warmth of my chatty and newly-married friends.

Another feature of my Finnish exploits consisted in culture shock vis-à-vis the signs in Finnish (or Suomi), which immediately settled the argument for Finnish being a member of the Uralic family of languages. Nonetheless, some signs may be faintly comprehensible for Norwegian-speakers, Swedish having served as a source for word-borrowings: ‘Apteekki’ is the Finnish equivalent of ‘Apotek’ in Norwegian.

The ears of my Turkish male readers will blush with pleasure, as they read that they officially constitute the dark-browed exotic other for many nubile Finnish women – much to the chagrin of their blonde male Finnish counterparts – and my friends are merely part of the growing phenomenon of the Turko-Finnish couple, whence the plethora of ads about sun-drenched Turkey around Tampere, courtesy of a Finnish travel programme eager to corner this market.

Aside over, and for the sake of my target audience, I will more sombrely add that Golden Rax at Haatanpaanvaltatie (good luck to my editors for spell-checking that) offers an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet for 8 euros (or 65 kroners). One week and several parties later, I was on my way to London, but, as with all great story-tellers, I can only offer you three more words for the present: to be continued.