In about half an hour I will be leaving for the airport, travelling Toronto-Copenhagen-Helsinki. The reason for this visit, my twelfth time in Finland, is to see the two Ultra Bra concerts at Helsinki’s Olympiastadion on Friday and Saturday night. Mark is joining me but he is leaving on Wednesday. He has summer hockey on Tuesday nights and doesn’t want to miss a game. That will give me time on my own to hit the bookstores, both retail and second-hand, as well as the music shops.
I arrive in Helsinki at 10:35 local time on Tuesday. I’ll head to the Eurohostel on Katajanokka, my favourite place to stay. I love to walk amidst the Jugendstil architecture on this peninsula in eastern Helsinki.
Mark and I have lots of visiting to do, and I am looking forward to meeting up with Marjukka Kenttälä, who was my Finnish language teacher for my first two courses when I studied Finnish in Helsinki during the summer of 2000. We also have a day trip planned to the southern town of Hanko. I was there during the summer of 2000, and would love to go back.
Our second week in Finland will be spent in Oulu and Rovaniemi. Mark hasn’t been to either city and I look forward to returning to Rovaniemi. I myself have been there three times, but my last visit was in 2004, when I took the train up, again for musical reasons: I saw a concert there at Tivoli Klubi by Scandinavian Music Group.
Tune in for reports from Finland, about the Ultra Bra concerts, and our trips up north.