Alef Arendsen

Last week I was in Helsinki for a Core Spring course. The course was fun and so were the evenings. Normally I plan to have one relaxed evening in the hotel, but that didn’t happen this time.

On Thursday we went to Tavastia. A greek guy I met a few weeks ago (in Amsterdam) suggested I go to Tavastia to see some rock bands. So I checked out the agenda and yesterday night, Mustach was on, a Swedish metal band. Some of the training attendees went along and we had a fun night out. Funny was that as of late, the Finnish clubs have their gigs quite early in the evening, to accommodate for people that need to get up early the next day. So the gig started at 9.30pm already, which was quite convenient.

Motoriser was first and then Mustach and both were quite good. Tavastia is the self-proclaimed no. 1 rock venue in Finland and has hosted several famous names such as Guns N’ Roses, AC/DC and Black Sabbath.

At work things were pretty hectic too, so in addition to the occasional beers, I also had to work quite a bit in the evenings… Oh well, the weekend promises to be good, there’s wind and all, so that should be fun.

I’ve been to Helsinki three or four times. Only once I had kind of nice weather. That was in the middle of winter and it was freezing like crazy back then. I’m heading out there tomorrow afternoon again and it seems it’s going to be one grey week…

When it comes to weather, three sites are important to me. weather.com for checking out the weather for the (foreign) places I need to go for business. Then there is actuelewaterdata.nl which give you a perfect overview of the current (intra-day) wind conditions for various spots on the North Sea coast (only in Holland). Last but not least there’s windfinder.com for checking out the wind forecast for the coming days.

Well, the weather in Helsinki is going to be crap. But that doesn’t really matter because the weather is Holland is going to be just as crap (only the temperature will differ a bit). That’s a lot different than last weekend. We had two days of (almost) 20 degrees and blue skies this weekend. Great, because yesterday we had the closing party @ Timboektoe (the beach pavilion I usually go to near Wijk aan Zee).

Windfinder by the way says there’s going to be some awesome conditions next weekend. But well, that’s still a pretty long way from now, so we’ll see what happens when I get back on Friday.

Last June I visited a client of ours in Helsinki, Finland. I stayed in Helsinki for a week and had quite a good time. Earlier that year, I also visited Helsinki for a while with several sort of colleagues of mine but this time was definitely a different experience with temperatures 25 to 30 degrees hotter than in February .

I stayed in the Radission Sas Seaside hotel next to the harbor. There are two Radisson Sas hotels in Helsinki as far I know and this one is a little further out of town than the other. But that’s not a big deal, as even from this one to the Kampii shopping mall (right in the heart of the city) is only a 5-minute walk.

The hotel is okay. The italian restaurant next to it is quite good too. As far as I can remember, Internet in the hotel is free of charge, which is a rather rare experience (and I think that’s stupid, but well, that’s just me I guess).

Update: hey, I just saw this one doesn’t have pictures yet. I guess I’ll have to do that a little later… can’t find them right now.

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.