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Helsinki: a city of happiness and comfort



Finland is Nokia, saunas, hockey, skiing, heavy metal, Angry Birds. And the happiest people on the planet for 2018 on WHR (these are, rather, economic indicators than the desire to joyfully watch the carpet all the time).

A brief history: at first there was just land with local peoples, then the territory became part of Sweden for a long time, in 1809 it became part of the Russian Empire (but gained a strong independence, even its own brand went), and immediately after the Bolsheviks came to power, it became a separate country with permission of Lenin. That is, the inhabitants of the once part of the Empire missed the whole plot from the nineties and from the USSR. More precisely, they saw part of it in the crosshairs of a sniper scope during the wars of 39-44.

We have Friday urbanism again, and I want to talk about the city of Helsinki. The main sensation of the city is a surge of oxytocin. This is a hormone that, among other things, is responsible for the long-term love of a man for a woman, a parent for a child and a man for a dog. It is expressed in the physical sensation of happiness in the form of calm and security. Helsinki has enough of both.

To begin with, it is the safest city in the world in the event of a nuclear war. Because about 60 years ago, here they began to dig tunnels with excitement and dug up almost a second underground city in the rock.




Rocky City


Helsinki stands on a rather complex rock formation. It was difficult in the sense that building a big city here somehow did not occur to anyone until a wide assortment of Russians appeared. The Russian Empire really wanted to reduce Swedish influence, and therefore moved the capital to, in fact, a fishing village. And closer to St. Petersburg, and away from the existing pro-Swedish capital. As a result, the city is very young, and was planned immediately and very correctly. That is, from scratch there was a master plan for the development of Yu.A. Erenström and, to a large extent, K.L. Engel. I must say that the master plan for the city from the very very zero, in fact, is quite a rare occurrence. This sometimes happens after a large bombing (Rotterdam), earthquakes or large-scale renovation, or during a quick arrangement of the capital: for example,it was so from the most beautiful engineering point of view of Yerevan. But I’ll better tell about his thoughtfulness separately.


Ehrenström is a Swede, so he used the Swedish quarter system. In the center, they were marked by animals so that even the illiterate could orient themselves. A unicorn, by the way, then seemed more realistic than a platypus.

Under Helsinki incredibly dofiga granite. The usual picture is plus or minus 30 centimeters of soil, and then the plate begins. To make you understand the depth of the problem, I note that trees are planted with explosions. They laid the engineering charge, then bang, bang, it turns out a hole under the tree. You can fill the soil and grow. The first city park with 900 trees was planted in circumstances when all the free explosives were needed for another, so they used drilling and pouring water in the summer, and then waited until the winter to pull out the ice several times.



In the 60s, the development of the underground part of the city began. On the one hand, there was a policy of urban architecture limiting the height of buildings (that is how the first underground floors appeared under the main historical shopping center - Stockmann). The military was digging bunkers and bomb shelters, plus communications were needed between all this - and somehow it turned out that by the time of the panic over the nuclear war, there was a rather extensive network of tunnels under the city. Naturally, they began to use it.



In order for you to understand what “quite branched” is, just evaluate the composition of one of the areas:

  1. Above ground: Kamppi's huge mall
  2. Ground level and below: city bus station with 900 bus departures per day in the city
  3. 6 meters deep: international bus station with 700 departures per day (very busy by European standards)
  4. 30 —
  5. — .



But more often the layers are a little smaller. This is usually about a pedestrian tunnel and metro station, or about an underground store and parking under it, or something else. Then water and energy. Underground there is an underground power station, a thermal station, a reservoir, a swimming pool, an ice rink, a sports complex with handball and soccer fields (futsal, true), a family amusement park, cafes, museum halls, a book depository, a lot of parking lots and other objects. Almost each of them has a dual purpose: there are food supplies, water, PPE, generators and everything else in case of a threat. The reservoir, by the way, is used quite originally, like a temperature accumulator - the water from it is driven into the urban climate system, and then it is again exchanged heat with the surrounding granite. Some of the tunnels are used as highways for trucks: for example,A lot of supplies for shops in the center are made through the system of tracks under the city, so there are almost no trucks in the center.



The Finns continue to dig enthusiastically. And they do it in accordance with the general plan: as for the city at the top there is a development plan, so for the dungeons there is a plan for long-term development.

With underground objects they caught a couple of interesting bugs, almost impossible in other cities. For example, the network of car tunnels and parking lots under the city center is very developed, and there you can drive several blocks underground just like that, for example, under the shopping district:



The first 15 minutes of parking were free for drivers. The taxi drivers understood this and began to go around traffic jams. From the point of view of the system, everything is fine: drove in, stayed in the parking lot for less than 15 minutes, drove out. When the traffic became higher, they began to sort it out and corrected it - now the parking is immediately paid, and they make a pass for pass-through.


Underground trading hall and subway passage

Locale


Two official languages: Finnish and Swedish.



Since Finland is not the largest country in the world, almost no dubbing is done here, and films are in the original language (most often English) with subtitles. Therefore, English is learned here not so much from schoolwork as from the environment. And there are quite a lot of foreigners, especially in Helsinki. In IT, for example, you can work without knowledge of Finnish.



Our sockets are typical, drinking tap water (a terrible payback for this is a mandatory legislative replacement of pipes every 50 years, and with them often change the wiring). Progressive fines, starting with the minimum wage, increase as a percentage of the citizen’s income (here a hot Finnish guy was finedfor speeding up to about 11 million rubles), medicine is free and partially paid (civil servants with their own insurance can pay 25% of the bill), kindergarten - 4 hours a day on the street if it is -20 warmer (therefore, in winter, indigenous people often cut through the city without jackets), the casino keeps track of players and does not allow them to spend more than 10% of their salary per month. Religious citizens pay church tax, which is taken directly from the personal income tax from the salary and opens access to ritual services. You can unsubscribe from it.


"Bunker of anti-diabolical defense", Temppeliaukio church in the rock.


Mass is held here for hard rock once a year, tickets are snatched in 10 minutes. You can catch them here .

Infrastructure


In the city there are saunas almost everywhere. Private houses simply have one such, multi-unit old are being built with a common for all, new - with separate for each family inside the apartments. Sauna can be found in the hotel, in Burger King, even on the Ferris wheel there is one cabin with a sauna (rented for an hour). Naturally, at the airport in the business lounge and at the flight personnel training center, too.

Corporate parties usually take place also in the sauna. The combination of Finnish love to swell and the bath is normal: inside they drink low alcohol, but then they come off. By the way, about a swell - this is a state monopoly that provides very expensive alcohol from Monday to Saturday, on Sunday it just doesn’t sell anything stronger than 5 degrees in stores (but in restaurants). Therefore, the ferry to Tallinn is very popular not at all because of the charms of the city's architecture. By the way, the story of 54321 is one of the best in terms of memoriality. They say that adult thirst here began after the introduction of Prohibition, and on April 5, 32nd at 10:00 it was canceled. Before that, “very strong tea” was served here in a cafe in the center, pregnant grandmothers with canisters under the dress walked around the city,and at a jazz concert in one of the hotels they distributed cognac instead of tea after certain compositions. Alcohol was hidden between the barrels of resin, carried behind the ships on a leash (to unhook during the test) and generally did everything to sabotage the dry law.


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Very beautiful and long tram. In the middle you can drop in with a stroller or wheelchair.


Pay attention to the tables and the map of movement on the upholstery of the back of the chair. The

kitchen is very original. You are waiting for licorice (a lot of licorice), fish, deer and other delicacies, determined by the nature of the lake region.


In the candy store in the city center, one can find the localization of our sweets (Fatzer studied cooking in St. Petersburg under the tsar).


Even in winter, there are a lot of berries in the kitchen. There is


always a lot of fish.


These pies are not really an independent dish, but the basis for a sandwich.


Canned bear - for tourists

. Helsinki is also the capital of design.


This is not a vertebra!

There are a lot of strange structures in the city. For example, the “barrel of silence", it is the universal church of all religions. Inside silence: The



library in the form of a ship:



Inside, by the way, it is very interesting.





There is a retro games club (starts to work at the end of school hours on schedule), a large computer unit with free access to wine desktops and the Internet, a cluster of sewing machines and plotters (a logical continuation of the library’s idea, IMHO), a 3D printing lab. The library also has a rehearsal base for musical groups, wine, tables and a whole bunch of common sense. Well and yes, they almost do not hesitate to write obscenities in official advertising:



Penrose quasicrystalline non-periodic mosaic right on the street:



The Design Museum is proud of Angry Birds, Scorpio's logging control panel, Marimecco and Nokia:



There is such a wonderful hotel:



As you can guess, it was remade from prison and you can live right in the cell. The slogan corresponds to: "Escape the ordinary."



In the countryside


As usual in Finland - forest and lakes. Here is the forest:



Marshes here were remade under cultivated lands historically as in Holland, but still a lot of water remained. Here are the lakes:



But this is something more interesting. This is a municipal house with firewood. And the firewood in it is updated from time to time. Near organized campfire site.



This damn smart solution to prevent forest fires. It is clear that the people will still fry their barbecue or boil the ear. It is clear that if you do not make the site, this will happen uncontrollably. And here there is a place where everything is safe, and so that everyone abides by the rules - it is provided with a toilet, firewood, benches, a canopy-gazebo and other things. So cheaper than stew.

Animals roam right outside the city. In the fall, you can bring down an elk, rabbit-covered rabbits roam the city (there is even a special official for them, something like a deputy minister for rabbits issues in Helsinki), rare birds, including an owl lost in childhood, lived in the park.

Total


We have an economically happy population with a salary of a couple of thousand euros after taxes, a very quiet and calm city with almost no people and cars in the streets, a pleasant climate with polar day and night, very sunny and spacious buildings with huge windows and often transparent ceilings, a sea of ​​all thoughtful pieces and nishtyakov in design and a very good attitude of people to each other.

If you think that it is dark, cold and scary, then a month or two in the year are right. But even here they turn it into a pleasant fairy tale, because they sit warm in Finnish comfort and look at the weather outside the window, pupating in a rug. The presence of the word “kalsarikyannit” in the language (the feeling when you are going to sit at home in the same underpants and get drunk without the intention of going somewhere) suggests that you can sometimes do nothing.

To come and see the city is definitely worth it, especially since there are Allegro trains from St. Petersburg and Leo Tolstoy from Moscow, and a beautiful Finnair with almost 4 flights a day from both cities . More photos of the inside of the library we have telegrams channel, and in the hub "Urbanism", you can read about other cities and their infrastructure.

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