Lahti & Tampere

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

So we’re just back from a week in Finland. Most of it we spent at Nina’s homeplace, or at her grandmother’s house, but we were in the towns (cities?) of Lahti and Tampere for a few hours each. I’ve not been in Tampere before, and I had a completely different impression of Lahti this time round, so I wanted to write a bit about each of them.

Lahti is more of an infrastructure hub than anything else, so there’s no university there (although there’s a college), nor any port or notable natural features. So it’s generally regarded as being a bit grey and dull. I’ve only been there in summer once (possibly twice) before, so my impressions of it have usually been in the depths of winter, and haven’t been all that positive. This time, though - and I’m waiting for the Finns reading this to give me some funny looks - I was very impressed.

Partly with the shops, which had an impressively wide range of magazines and books in English, and a hell of a lot of music I like, at more than reasonable prices. The Free Records shop had a pile of melodic metal at under ten euros an album, and pretty much everything Iron Maiden ever released. There was also a branch of a craft-and-small-furnishings chain, Tiimari, which had a stunning range of papercrafting goods, paint, picture frames, boxes, and stationery - such that I had to pull myself out before I bought the whole shop.

And then there were the non-mainstream kids. Any other time I’ve been in Lahti, it’s seemed to be a very mainstream city, with most of the kids (or people in their twenties, Finns all look young to me) wearing fairly ordinary clothes - or in the case of the usually rather grouchy looking eighteen-year-olds, military service fatigues. This time, the first thing I saw getting out of the car was a bunch of skater types on a corner, and I saw a wider variety of goths and punk types than I’ve seen in one place in years. I know that goth, rock and metal music are closer to the mainstream in Finland than in Ireland and the UK, but I’ve not seen anything quite like this before. Even in the department stores, there were people wandering around in clothes that I’d have considered killing for ten years ago, and one girl in a bookshop was wearing thigh-high boots with more buckles than I could count. The one guy I saw in military kit was carrying about six huge shopping bags for his girlfriend, and was putting on a brave smile every time she looked at him. So I got a much more positive impression of Lahti than I ever have before.

Tampere got itself off to a good start when we flew into it, since the airport there is a small regional one. It’s small, pleasant, and has no messing around or extra procedures. The town itself is a university town, and that’s evident in the range of shops as well as the bars and cafes. There was one cafe - Café Europa - which was done out in an antique style, with old furniture, pictures and books, and a pile of boardgames behind the counter, which made me want to take the whole place home. And the local games shop - a branch of Fantasiapelit, which I’m familiar with in Helsinki, had friendly staff, a gaming table in full swing, and a range of goods I’ve only seen exceeded by, well, the Helsinki branch. They even had a copy of Burning Wheel on the shelf, though they don’t any more, since it’s here beside me. For future investigation, there’s a Viking restaurant, and a decent-looking sushi place as well.

So, yeah, rather impressed with both towns, and inclined to wonder again why Irish regional towns are such awful places in comparison.