Helsinki Is In Love With the Letter K!

Ever notice just how many letter K’s are used in many Finnish words? LOTS. And let’s not even count the umlauts and other circly things over Finnish letters.

It’s mainly because they’ve replaced some the sounds that letters ck, qu, and x make with double k’s or even k’s modified by å, ä, and ö.

It doesn’t make it any less impenetrable but it does help to understand it.

We got right to work at seeing what was on our list, starting with the Uspenski Cathedral.

A beautiful old church in central Helsinki opened in 1868. It was built using 700,000 bricks from an old Finnish fortress that was destroyed during a battle in the Crimean War in 1854. The original upcycling!

We had three cathedrals to see in Helsinki and second was the Helsinki Cathedral, also known as St.Nicholas’ Church (or Nikolainkirkko in Finnish. That’s four in one word!).

This is a Lutheran country. There are not many churches we’ve walked into and seen a statue of this guy.

For such a striking building on the outside, the inside was plain. Austere even.

Let’s just say you aren’t coming here to see the inside. But wow is the outside of the building magnificent!

The last cathedral to see was the Church of the Rock, called Temppeliaukiokirkko in Finnish. It is another Lutheran churcb.

Planning for the church began in the 1930s but the church wasn’t completed until 1969.

The interior was excavated and built directly out of solid rock and is bathed in natural light which enters through the skylight surrounding the center copper 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.

Next we headed off to the University of Helsinki Botanic Gardens.

A garden has been here since Helsinki was named Finland’s capital in 1812. Things were definitely past their prime but there were a couple of noteworthy plants to see.

The giant lilly pads were beautiful! Many of the flowers were to bloom tonight, you could see the buds budding.

The other was this cool cacao tree.

Might just be me, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen cacao pods growing on a tree before.

We were able to cram all this in thanks to a day pass on the fantastic Helsinki Transport system.

The Metro was super fast, clean, and frequent but it was the streetcars that stole our hearts!

Most incredible was that while you could (and probably should) pay, there really were no turnstiles or other means to prevent access if you didn’t. Over 300,000 people ride the Metro each day.

They are about to go to entirely contactless for payments and tickets. A single ticket gets you access to all trains, trams, busses, and ferries inside Helsinki. Meanwhile American transit systems are failing.