From Helsinki you can easily take a boat to visit Saint Petersburg or one of the Baltic countries. I visited Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.
Tallinn is located only 80 kilometre south of Helsinki, at the other side of the Gulf of Finland. Its old town is in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The first traces of human settlement found in Tallinn's city centre by archeologists are about 5000 years old. In 1050 the first fortress was built, and in 1285 the city became the northernmost member of the Hanseatic League – a mercantile and military alliance of German-dominated cities in Northern Europe.
Tallinn's harbor
After a 2.5 hours cruise through the frozen sea, I arrived in the All-linn, the lower part of the historic town. After lunch, I visited St. Olaf’s Church. At the time the church was built, it was the tallest building in Europe. A legend about its builder makes the church even more compelling: a mysterious stranger promised to build the church for free if the town’s citizens could guess his name before the church was completed; if they failed, they would pay him 10.000 units of gold for his work. Unfortunately for the man, a town spy overheard his wife calming their baby with a promise of their father Olaf’s return. When it was revealed that the citizens knew Olaf’s name, just as Olaf was putting the finishing touches on the church steeple, he immediately fell to his death.
The ancient city wall.
Then I visited Town Hall Square. This is the heart of the Lower Town. Besides the Town Hall, the square is home to Gothic buildings. During summer, this is a venue for festivals or concerts like Tallinn Old Town Days, but when I visited it was freezing cold over there. Fortunately there were several nice bars on the square.
Town Hall Square.
After a drink, I walked to Toompea (or Cathedral Hill) which crowns Tallinn’s old town with a castle, churches, palaces, and government buildings. This area was once a separate town (Dom zu Reval), the residence of the Chivalry of Estonia, Roman Catholic bishops of Tallinn (until 1561) and Lutheran superintendents of Estonia, occupying an easily defensible site overlooking the surrounding districts. Many buildings are newer than in the Lower Town due to a fire that consumed the medieval buildings. There are many viewing platforms on the ancient city wall.
A nice view on the Lower Town and the modern city.
Helsinki (or Helsingfors in Swedish) is the capital and largest city of Finland. It has about 600.000 inhabitants (which is comparable with e.g. Antwerp in Belgium).
It was founded by the Swedish king Gustav I in 1550. King Gustav I wanted to have a competitor to Reval (now Tallinn), a nearby Hanseatic League city which dominated local trade at the time. Later Sweden took over Reval, so they lost their interest in Helsingfors.
A map of the Hanseatic League in the 15th century. (source: Wikipedia)
Russian money and the talent of the German architect Carl Ludwig Engel were used to build several government buildings and a cathedral. From 1850 most wooden worker houses were replaced by stone houses. In 1900 the city looked totally different. In half a century, it transformed from a small harbor to a real capital.
Four huge statues stand guard at the entrance of the railway station.
The central railway station (Rautatieasema) is the most central location of the city. It's a striking building of rose granite with a 48 meter high green bell tower. From there, it is only a few hundred meters to Kiasma, the museum of contemporary art. There was an impressive exhibitions of the work of Jouko Lehtola (a Finnish photographer) and the Romanian visual artist Dan Perjovschi.
From there I walked through the Esplanadi, the shopping street with a nice park in the middle. At the end of Esplanadi, I had a nice view on the cathedral.
Helsinki cathedral was originally built from 1830-1852 as a tribute to the Grand Duke of Finland, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.
On the square in front of the cathedral, you can see the statue of Tsar Alexander II. At his feet there are four sculptures that tell the story of this square: Lex (Law) looks towards the government building, Lux (Light) looks to the Sun, Labor looks at the university and Pax (Peace) looks at the cathedral.
Then I took the tram to Sibelius park. This park contains the Sibelius monument, which is dedicated to the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957).
Sibelius monument in the snow.
Another touristic attraction of the city is the Temppeliaukio Church, also known as the Church of the Rock. The interior is excavated and built directly out of solid rock and is bathed in natural light which enters through the glazed dome. The church is used frequently as a concert venue due to its excellent acoustics. The acoustic quality is created by the rough, virtually unworked rock surfaces.
On March 16, Ivan, Dharma and I flew back to Helsinki. There we met Kate again. We ate together and enjoyed the nice weather. My first day in Finland with positive temperatures!
It was time to say goodbye to most people of our group.
Alain and I stayed one extra day, so we walked through the city of Rovaniemi and visited Arktikum for the second time, much slower and extensive this time. We got some good ideas for the exhibition space at public observatory Urania! ;-) We visited also the Pilke Science Centre, an exhibition about the northern forests, but it was not really worth the visit...
I'm moving the auroras in the Pilke Science Centre (courtesy of Alain).
The Solar Influence Data Analysis Centre in Brussels announced that a C2.0 CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) would reach the Earth on March 15 in the evening. Unfortunately the CME was faster than initially predicted, so it impacted the Earth's magnetosphere already in the morning. Apart from that it was also cloudy. So we decided to wait until 11 PM, but conditions were still bad. Alain called me later that night to tell me that the sky cleared out, but I stayed in my bed. Bad decision!
The full-day ESA programme started at 9 o'clock with a guided tour of Arktikum, a museum dedicated to the arctic scientific research, e.g. climate change and the history and culture of the Sami people in Lapland. After the tour, we listened to a series of interesting talks about the ESA's Space Situational Awareness programme for Space Weather (to which I contribute as a IT specialist at the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy), the Gaia spacecraft that will do accurate parallax (distance) measurements of millions of stars, ... But the most impressive talk came from NASA astronaut Don Pettit. He stayed last year for six months in the International Space Station (ISS) together with the Dutch astronaut André Kuipers. They made more than 500.000 pictures! One of the nicest is "Walking on Air". Young readers of this blog will also remember the video in which Don Pettit announces "Angry Birds in Space".
By noon a bus brought us to a theme park dedicated to Santa Claus. Alain (a friend that I know from public observatory Urania who was also invited) and I visited the friendly man who even spoke some Dutch. After a visit to the souvenir shop and a hearty meal (this time no reindeer, because they were flown away ...) we drove to the Arctic Research Centre in Sodankylä, about 150 kilometers to the north.
Here again we followed some explanations, this time about the field of research at the Arctic Research Centre. We also had an interesting presentation on another ESA programme, namely the monitoring of space debris. It is a big problem in space, especially after a anti-satellite missile test conducted by China in 2007. A Fengyun weather satellite was destroyed, resulting in a cloud of 150.000 debris particles. Now there is a debate going on between specialists if the so-called Kessler point is already passed or not. If so, then by the number of collisions among debris will continue to grow, even if we would no longer launch new satellites. Anyway, space agencies such as ESA will have to find methods to reduce the amount of space debris drastically.
Then we visited one of the EISCAT radars. These radars are used for the study of the magnetosphere and the ionosphere, to unravel the interaction between the Sun and our planet. The movable dish in Sodankylä has a diameter of 32 meters. Very impressive!
After a typical Lappish buffet, we prepared ourselves for the big moment. First we got an explanation about the northern lights in the Aurora House, and then we went outside. It was really cold (about -30°C!) and the observation site was not ideal (the only light, from Sodankylä, was exactly in the north). But nevertheless we saw some (weak) aurora and an incredible starry sky. A nice ending of a great day!
