Part business, part leisure, I visited Helsinki last February. The trip was organized by my friends from Higherlevel, an online community for entrepreneurs. Back in 2002 and 2003 I did a lot of work for them as a volunteer to build up the community and to help entrepreneurs that were starting up a business with the most trivial, but also more complex questions.

Anyway, as an incentive, we visited places every other year and this year they guys and girls invited me again even though I’m not involved that much anymore.

We visited a few companies, had some interesting conversations with innovation officers from various funds and institutions and were guided around town by the Dutch technical and science attache of the embassy in Helsinki.

I liked Helsinki, although it was terribly cold (-20 celcius) at the time. The city has a good vibe. A bit like Oslo, but with a little twist. There are some good bars and pubs and the clubs are also good. Architectue and outdoor scenery is also great. Definitely a place to visit again (in summer then of course). The people are a bit weird (this is also the prejudice we have of Finnish people in other parts of Europe). They seem a bit closed to outsiders somehow.

After some days of visits to company, we also went for a day of snow scootering on one of the many lakes in Finland. This was unbelievably cool! I didn’t know normal snowmobiles had up to 800cc engines. This makes them go up to 150 km/h. There’s a lot less friction of course, so you can easily compare the power with that of a motor cycle. Fortunately nobody got injured (this happens a lot I was told) and we safely returned home.

All-in-all, a trip worth making and I will definitely be back some day.