Further enquiries or if you prefer an inquiry into the park bench/bed scenario previously mentioned has revealed a basic flaw, Finland is the ONLY country in Europe where the number of homeless people has declined in recent years. Apparently the Finns don’t like people being homeless so if you are caught napping in the park you are likely to be scooped up and given a nice place to live. While this may be fine for people wishing to stay in Finland it may put pressure on your holiday schedule. I’m thinking the high tax on alcohol serves three purposes:

1. No drunks.
2. No drunks sleeping in the park.
3. No drunks from other countries sleeping in the park.

The side effect to this is that there are now more drunks from other countries, sleeping on park benches in nearby countries like Estonia where alcohol is much cheaper and they don’t mind the odd Hobo or two.  Speaking of Hobos the term which technically means a travelling worker could come from the description of a farm hand or hoe boy or maybe homeward bound or even homeless boy. Bill Bryson suggested the railway greeting “Ho, beau!”. Fascinating just fascinating.

So to the pictures.

We started with the Harbour Cruise.

Helsinki from the bay.

Below, we checked out the 30 tonne stainless steel workshop scrap bin sculpture.

Steel pipes and the odd head.

Then to the Finnish museum which “traces Finnland’s history from the stone age”. The museum is housed in a re-purposed church, and seeing as the museum is more scientific than religious in it’s explanation of life the universe and so on, this is a bold move. As the following painting in the Christianity exhibition points out, “judgement day” is pending. I suspect that the curators and yours truly are in the lower half of the painting.

That’s probably me, forth from the left.

Barbie scores a mention with a special display, yet another reason for the curators to be in the lower part of the painting.

“Grown Up” Ken and Barbie going to re-live their youth.

No museum is complete without a few skeletons.

Returning to town we considered dining here, but not for long. The prices looked a bit elevated.

To conclude, three more bronze castings.

“Seal spitting at nude”

“A realy bad hair day”

“early submariner”

We are off to Copenhagen tomorrow so I’ll just pop up to the ninth floor for a  quick sauna. I hope you enjoyed the pictures because, “That’s the Finnish”. I just had to say that.

FIN!