Vaasa, Finland sits just above 63º N (for American reference, that’s two degrees north of Anchorage, Alaska – so it’s up there.). As a person from the American midwest, this sounded impossibly northern. But it’s not – it’s just a place that gets a little less light over the course of the year, and a bit more snow during a winter that’s a bit longer than the ones to which I’m accustomed.
Finland is at its best in July, when temperatures (as I experienced them) range from t-shirt by day to light jacket by night, and the sun shines from 4:00 AM until 11:00 PM (on average). It’s a nice contrast to the comparatively grim-sounding winter. For example: December 21st of this year, Vaasa can expect sunrise at 10:12 AM and sunset at 2:52 PM, temperatures generally ranging from -1º to -8º C (30-18º F). In January, it gets even colder.
I guess northern Europeans have to get their sunshine when they can. Accordingly, whenever the sun came out in Vaasa, the people came out with it. Each time overcast converted to contrasty, the square population multiplied. The Finnish summer sun must feel like this after a long cold spell.
Fact: geographical definitions of Scandinavia do not include Finland. It’s more accurate to reference Finland as a Nordic country.
Some photos of Vaasa to give you a feel:
Though I came lugging my backpack, I didn’t come to Vaasa on a formal backpacking trip. Backpacking is incidental of one of the following:
- Trying to cover a fair amount of ground in unfamiliar territory without spending much money
- Hiking/camping/great outdoors!
My reasons for coming to Vaasa weren’t really tourism, nor outdoor adventuring. I came to Vaasa because:
- I wanted to see Cecilia. I like her!
- I also needed to escape from a work-vortex of increasing intensity.
My work is in commercial television production, and when I work it’s intense and all consuming to the tune of 16-20 hour days and management of hundreds of thousands of dollars of other people’s money. I’ve done (and do) jobs for Budweiser, AT&T, Reebok, Ford, others. Work can be pretty stressful, so I try to schedule some required down-time after long continuous runs of work. And I’m a freelancer, so running away is allowed!
From April to late June, I had been grinding away at work for about three months with only a few days off. I was ready to run for the hills. Western Finland does not have hills in abundance, but I happily ran there anyway. Fast as you can.
pretty pastoral.
I arrived in Vaasa and found that I was the only one on extended holiday. Cecilia had work 5+ days a week, and so did her friends (I knew this going in, no surprises). It seemed like everyone I met was working two or three jobs for the summer. No problem. I wanted some quiet time and uninterrupted sleep as much as anything.
Sleep sweat-equity.
ASIDE: I’ve found that being out of the country is the best possible way to end the constant digital harassment that is life with a smartphone, laptop and widely available wifi. We’re all expected to return text messages within the hour, e-mails within the day. Like wearing headphones grants you immunity from conversations in public, or the (strangely, still) holy cigarette break can allow five minutes of uninterrupted time outside of the workplace, “out of the country” is the best excuse I’ve found for killing conversations about old work and other dead matters, and breaking away from the constant, time consuming pull of endless (often needless) communication. The second the phone goes on airplane mode for the flight, I’m free. Free to get back to you when I like, and free to punctuate all replies with a “please be patient, I’m out of the country with limited access to e-mail”. It’s amazing how much time there is in the day for good things like exercise and reading when your day isn’t constantly interrupted by alert tones.
When I woke up on July 11th, still a bit disoriented, I found myself temporarily living in Vaasa. It’s a different experience than passing through, and a chance to develop more meaningful connections.
Another place I temporarily “lived”: I spent about a month in Tulum, Mexico in 2008 and still have an attachment to the place and burned-in memories of my favorite taco stand and my daily bike ride down the sandy beach with its turquoise water, among other things (like climbing Mayan ruins, swimming in fresh water caves, fresh fish, wild monkeys in the trees). It was awful, plain awful. Never go there. (photo taken at Laguna Bacalar, south of Tulum)
Vaasa, with a smallish population of 60,000 and the majority of activity centered around the town square, was just compact and accessible enough to start to make a bit of sense to the uninitiated in three weeks. Better yet, I was able to form friendships based on repeated encounters – so I could be myself instead of just being the polite “good guest”. This wouldn’t have been likely in a large city. Some friends:
Kati & Annika.
Cessi & Mathias.
Tanja.
Me & Junnu.
(Sorry to the omitted. Maybe I just didn’t have a good picture of you! We’ll try again next time.)
Speaking of making friends.. FLASHBACK – DATELINE, CREVE COEUR, MISSOURI: I took a job as a clerk at a privately-owned bookstore at age 18 after being fired from a position as a bus boy at an Italian restaurant. Eighty percent of the stock of the store was forgotten used books, but eighty percent of the profits came from the twenty-percent share of adult magazines. The job was so painfully boring that I started paging through the moldering paperbacks. This was the first one I picked up – a 1940 print of “How To Win Friends & Influence People”. As Carnegie shared his somewhat dated methodology of benevolently increasing one’s social potency and influence, grown men sauntered to the counter with their fix of choice, quietly ashamed in front of a person not yet old enough to legally drink.
Each weekday, Cessi had to work during business hours, so I was more or less on my own for morning and afternoon. I rode her nice new FELT-brand bicycle, read my book in the park, played on the internet, messed about on an acoustic guitar, wandered quietly and took photos, or met her friends (becoming my friends) for a coffee or some beach time (yeah, there are a few beaches). It’s what I would be doing at home if I wasn’t working.
one of Vaasa’s beaches.
Every single weekday of our three weeks, Cessi and I met for lunch at Fondis, a restaurant right on the main square that features buffet lunches for under ten Euros – a good deal in Vaasa. The food is good and the staff is friendly, and the place is half a block from Cessi’s flat.
Lunch al fresco at Fondis.
My living situation with Cessi was nice and quite comfortable.
This cool flat wasn’t originally designed as a living space, so it has some layout quirks, like an electrical system that won’t support a full-size rangetop/oven, yet a massive sauna big enough to fit ten people. Priorities.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the apartment…
At 5:00 PM each day, Cessi would get off work and make her way home. I had the one set of keys, so she would call my Finnish-simcard-equipped mobile phone to announce her return home, and I’d anxiously meet her at the gate or throw the keys out the window to the street below. Then, it was time for an afternoon run or bike ride, dinner and sleep.
Though hitting the supermarket in Finland was somewhat familiar and about a thousand times easier to handle than going to market in a country like India, I still wasn’t really equipped with the faculties to do the shopping alone. For example: the dairy section featured a dizzying array of similar-looking products well beyond my simple understanding of basic yogurts and milks. For example: what I called “yogurt”, Cessi called “rahka”. What I also thought was “yogurt”, she called “kermavilli” (and there was also yogurt that actually was yogurt). I felt inept, confused, dwarfed by the selection. It was as if Finns could see extra colors of the dairy rainbow, my American dairy eyes only reading the standard Roy G. Biv. Further stratification: most dairy products are available in lactose-free varieties as well.
In summer, wild-picked berries are available all over the main square, and they’re great. I can say without hyperbole nor shame that the kilo of fresh, wild, delicious strawberries we bought for 10 Euros was one of the best things I’ve ever put up in my mouth (with some vanilla ice cream, naturally).
Berries. Buy ’em here. Main square, Vaasa.
Kilo’o’berries. Got ’em. Proud, too.
Pair ’em with that CREAM – ice cream! (“Jäätelö” in Finnish. “Glass” in Swedish. Tastes good all three languages.)
Have an ever-so-slightly life-altering experience. I did (see that stupid, satisfied smile?).
I realize that liquorice is not a flavor that appeals to everyone (at least where I’m from), but if you make it to Finland, you have to push past your aversions and try the many salmiakki-flavored goods (candy, ice cream, liquor, etc). The quickest way to explain the flavor is “salty liquorice”, which probably raises more eyebrows than it whets appetites. But salmiakki is one of those things that you can only really get in this part of the world (Finland and surrounding), so you should eat it while you can. And if you travel to Finland, bring me some, too – I can’t readily find salmiakki in St Louis, Missouri!
Berries, bicycles and liquorice – pretty tame lifestyle, I know. But Vaasa isn’t huge and overflowing with chaos for the outsider to observe and immerse one’s self in. It’s just a smallish city with a helping of friendly people living there.
On Friday nights, we’d hit the town to find what chaos could be found. As I found out, it’s very easy to get pissed in Vaasa. Coincidentally, “cheers” in Finnish is the similar-sounding “kippis”. Easy again. Here’s where we found ourselves for a drink:
I had a drink in Vaasa, and you can too! These were our most-frequented spots for imbibing, all within an easy walk of one another. More info below.
OLIVER’S INN gets going on Tuesday nights, when the Swedish-speaking Finns gather to tie one on. It’s a friendly, good vibe.
NIGHTCLUB SKY is on the top of a hotel building and overlooks the main square. It gets busy on weekends.
STRAMPEN RESTAURANT & TERRACE is the best place in town to enjoy some afternoon/evening sunshine on a nice day and have a beer on an open air terrace, which overlooks the waterfront. They serve food as well.
FONTANA CLUB is the de facto dance club in town, with multiple bars in multiple rooms. This is where you’ll find the 18 year olds mixing with variant levels of awkwardness, smoothed over later in the night by liquid courage.
EL GRINGO has the same owners as Fontana (and is in the same edifice), but contrarily is a basement dive bar with a more relaxed feel.
ROCKTAILS is a new smart-cocktail-dishing, flare-bartending joint with a dance floor downstairs. It stays open until 4:00 AM… so I’ve been told. Ahem.
If you need to buy package alcohol, visit ALKO, the government monopoly wine and spirits store.
Cessi at Strampen.
Kati arrives with supplies from Alko.
good times with buddies on the dock near Strampen.
About 15 km north of Vaasa is Replot Bridge – Finland’s longest bridge, at 1045 meters long.
The bridge isn’t a major tourist draw, but it isn’t a bad bike ride from Vaasa on a nice day. Cessi bought me a salmiac-chili-flavored soft-serve at the cafe on the western side of the bridge.
ASIDE: Comparative to the greater bridge-building world, 1045m isn’t really that long. The world’s longest bridge (as recorded by the Guiness Book in June of 2011) is the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge near Shanghai, China. It’s 157 times longer than Replot for a total length of 164.8 km, including a 9 km section over open water.
Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge
I can’t relate much about budget traveling in Vaasa, as I didn’t spend a single night in a hostel or guesthouse. I’m not even sure if there is a hostel in Vaasa currently, as the only one listed online (Hostel Vaasa) doesn’t have a functional website as of September 2012. I guess all you backpackers will just have to stay with Cecilia like I did.
Bad traveler again: I didn’t even have to take the train or public bus in Finland on this trip. Spoiled, I know! Cecilia scooped me up upon arrival in Helsinki, and thanks to good timing and even better people, Cessi and I hitched a ride down to Helsinki with her father once my three weeks in Vaasa were up. From the capital city, Cessi and I would begin a month of “proper (budget) backpacking”, to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
But first, we spent a few nights in Helsinki, where we fit in a couple of minor activities like catching the final stop of Bruce Springsteen’s 2012 world tour.
NEXT UP: HELSINKI
Would I recommend that fellow travelers visit Vaasa? Well, it’s a bit complicated to say. I don’t believe there are enough real destinations of touristic interest in Vaasa to warrant going out of one’s way to get there. Also, cost of living is high enough in all parts of Finland that I think the budget traveler get better value from their dollar/euro elsewhere. But if you have a reason to be there (like I did/do) or find Vaasa in proximity, by all means, go and enjoy.
