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major_clangerWe got back last week from twelve days in Finland, comprising a week of touring followed by five days in Helsinki for Worldcon 75. I thought I'd start my write-up by a review of the nuts and bolts of the trip - how we got there and how we got around.
Getting to Finland was a combination of train, tube, bus and plane. Our flight from Heathrow to Helsinki was early enough that a rail trip from Birmingham would have been very awkward, so we took the train down the previous evening and stayed at one of the Heathrow Strip hotels (the Hyatt – OK, but nothing special.) Booking well in advance got us first class seats down to Euston, but from there it was the Underground, and standing room only until Acton. Helpfully there was a free local bus from the T123 station to the hotel and back again the following morning.
Heathrow is, well, Heathrow. S was pulled for enhanced security and told to go through the pornoscanner. She demurred, and was told that she could instead have a full search including a full baggage search. (I’d already gone through without trouble and overheard various security minions expressing alarm and surprise that a passenger was asking for a manual search.) Not wanting to risk undue delay, she relented. A later complaint elicited the information that the scanners use ‘sound waves’, which as a former radar engineer is a novel way to me of describing terahertz imaging.
Our flight was on one of Finnair's shiny new Airbus A350s. This is a full-size widebody airliner, with – in a novelty for me – adequate legroom even in economy. The cabin is very light and spacious, and all the seats had good-sized seatback screens. My not-so-inner plane geek was delighted that two of the channels were camera views looking down and forward, which made take-off and landing more interesting.
Helsinki airport is a bit of an odd design by modern standards, in that it doesn’t separate inbound and departing passengers until quite near the gates, so the main part of it felt a bit like getting through Oxford Street. Picking up our rental car was complicated by two issues: a dodgy satnav (quickly swapped out) and having to get a quick update on how to operate a hybrid.
Our car was a Lexus CT200h, pretty much a Prius equivalent. It was a comfortable size, pleasant and easy to drive once I got the hang of it, and with some nice features such as a reversing camera that I definitely want next time we change our car. Finnish roads are well-maintained (with separated cycle routes everywhere!) and Finnish drivers are so far as I could tell a lot politer and frankly better at driving than British ones. The only problem I had was with our second satnav, which evidently hadn’t been connected for an update in the last few years. This became particularly problematic later when trying to get out of Tampere via the main bypass on the north of the town, which was very, very blocked off (as in there was grass growing on the earthen bank isolating it.) Indeed, our vantage point in a rotating restaurant later the same day let us see that the road past it was in fact now gone and being rebuilt, hence the diversion. The satnav then proved to have an equally outdated idea of which roads in downtown Tampere were one-way or had turning restrictions; in the end S got us out by reference to her iPhone map!
The next transport highlight was getting too and from the Åland Islands, achieved by Viking Line car ferry.
[Our ride out, the MS Amorella, as we were waiting to drive aboard at Turku docks.]
This proved fairly straightforward, although the lesson we learned was that on any ferry trip of more than about two hours, book a cabin. Playing hunt-the-spare-sofa on a ship full of booze tourists and small children was not the highlight of the trip. However, Viking Line do an excellent breakfast buffet, and the view on the way out was fascinating, as the route is through a dense archipelago so rather than being in open sea we were skirting small islands the whole way. And by ‘skirting’ I mean that a 150-metre, 35000-tonne ferry was proceeding at a fair clip past islands perhaps 10 to 20 metres off to the side. I checked later and sure enough there is a deep dredged channel through the islands, but even so it could be a little disconcerting so see actual land zipping past so close.
[What should be an animated GIF time-lapse video of us going past small islands.]
For the trip back, we did have an overnight cabin (small, but comfy and with en-suite facilities.) The only alarming part was the parking arrangements, which had us nose-to-nose with a huge articulated lorry. I wondered how we were going to get out without having to reverse off the ferry, and it turned out that this was exactly how we were expected to depart. Again, I was grateful for the rear camera, not to mention the numerous marshalling crew.
Once back at the airport and having dropped off the car, we had our first experience of Finnish trains. Even the local commuter trains were clean, spacious and had useful animated displays showing arrival times for the next few stations. Commuting from our hotel to the convention centre was via tram and the free transit pass that Worldcon 75 had arranged; the Helsinki tram network is dense and interconnected and it was easy to use it to get around the city whilst seeing something of Helsinki at the same time.
Our flight home was via Edinburgh to see S's parents for her dad's 80th birthday. This meant a rather smaller and more cramped A320, although at least Ediburgh airport was very quick to get through. Finally, we'd again got advance first tickets to get us home, so the last leg back was reasonably relaxing (and featured snacks and endless coffee.)
Next writeups: Tampere, Turku, the Åland Islands and then Worldcon itself and Helsinki.
Getting to Finland was a combination of train, tube, bus and plane. Our flight from Heathrow to Helsinki was early enough that a rail trip from Birmingham would have been very awkward, so we took the train down the previous evening and stayed at one of the Heathrow Strip hotels (the Hyatt – OK, but nothing special.) Booking well in advance got us first class seats down to Euston, but from there it was the Underground, and standing room only until Acton. Helpfully there was a free local bus from the T123 station to the hotel and back again the following morning.
Heathrow is, well, Heathrow. S was pulled for enhanced security and told to go through the pornoscanner. She demurred, and was told that she could instead have a full search including a full baggage search. (I’d already gone through without trouble and overheard various security minions expressing alarm and surprise that a passenger was asking for a manual search.) Not wanting to risk undue delay, she relented. A later complaint elicited the information that the scanners use ‘sound waves’, which as a former radar engineer is a novel way to me of describing terahertz imaging.
Our flight was on one of Finnair's shiny new Airbus A350s. This is a full-size widebody airliner, with – in a novelty for me – adequate legroom even in economy. The cabin is very light and spacious, and all the seats had good-sized seatback screens. My not-so-inner plane geek was delighted that two of the channels were camera views looking down and forward, which made take-off and landing more interesting.
Helsinki airport is a bit of an odd design by modern standards, in that it doesn’t separate inbound and departing passengers until quite near the gates, so the main part of it felt a bit like getting through Oxford Street. Picking up our rental car was complicated by two issues: a dodgy satnav (quickly swapped out) and having to get a quick update on how to operate a hybrid.
Our car was a Lexus CT200h, pretty much a Prius equivalent. It was a comfortable size, pleasant and easy to drive once I got the hang of it, and with some nice features such as a reversing camera that I definitely want next time we change our car. Finnish roads are well-maintained (with separated cycle routes everywhere!) and Finnish drivers are so far as I could tell a lot politer and frankly better at driving than British ones. The only problem I had was with our second satnav, which evidently hadn’t been connected for an update in the last few years. This became particularly problematic later when trying to get out of Tampere via the main bypass on the north of the town, which was very, very blocked off (as in there was grass growing on the earthen bank isolating it.) Indeed, our vantage point in a rotating restaurant later the same day let us see that the road past it was in fact now gone and being rebuilt, hence the diversion. The satnav then proved to have an equally outdated idea of which roads in downtown Tampere were one-way or had turning restrictions; in the end S got us out by reference to her iPhone map!
The next transport highlight was getting too and from the Åland Islands, achieved by Viking Line car ferry.
[Our ride out, the MS Amorella, as we were waiting to drive aboard at Turku docks.]
This proved fairly straightforward, although the lesson we learned was that on any ferry trip of more than about two hours, book a cabin. Playing hunt-the-spare-sofa on a ship full of booze tourists and small children was not the highlight of the trip. However, Viking Line do an excellent breakfast buffet, and the view on the way out was fascinating, as the route is through a dense archipelago so rather than being in open sea we were skirting small islands the whole way. And by ‘skirting’ I mean that a 150-metre, 35000-tonne ferry was proceeding at a fair clip past islands perhaps 10 to 20 metres off to the side. I checked later and sure enough there is a deep dredged channel through the islands, but even so it could be a little disconcerting so see actual land zipping past so close.
[What should be an animated GIF time-lapse video of us going past small islands.]
For the trip back, we did have an overnight cabin (small, but comfy and with en-suite facilities.) The only alarming part was the parking arrangements, which had us nose-to-nose with a huge articulated lorry. I wondered how we were going to get out without having to reverse off the ferry, and it turned out that this was exactly how we were expected to depart. Again, I was grateful for the rear camera, not to mention the numerous marshalling crew.
Once back at the airport and having dropped off the car, we had our first experience of Finnish trains. Even the local commuter trains were clean, spacious and had useful animated displays showing arrival times for the next few stations. Commuting from our hotel to the convention centre was via tram and the free transit pass that Worldcon 75 had arranged; the Helsinki tram network is dense and interconnected and it was easy to use it to get around the city whilst seeing something of Helsinki at the same time.
Our flight home was via Edinburgh to see S's parents for her dad's 80th birthday. This meant a rather smaller and more cramped A320, although at least Ediburgh airport was very quick to get through. Finally, we'd again got advance first tickets to get us home, so the last leg back was reasonably relaxing (and featured snacks and endless coffee.)
Next writeups: Tampere, Turku, the Åland Islands and then Worldcon itself and Helsinki.
