sunday morning in helsinki (two weeks ago) - part 2

So just after I wrote the preceding post, I went out for a coffee, and spoiler I got one and it wasn't at all bad, but anyway, I realised that Hotel Anna has a conference room, with an actual fax machine, isn't that glorious? Portrait of the author in the reflection in the glass. 

 

There is another non-ironic telephone (what they call locally an ei-ironinen* puhelin) on the shelf there. 

Above; view into the courtyard; below, the gloriously empty streets of Iso Roobertinkatu.

The sparrows (?) of Espresso House. (If they're sparrows as we English-speakers understand them, they're varpuset, but I am only sparrowising them for convenience). 

They left after they realised I had no pulli for them. 

I love this shop, and I have loved it previously in posts on this blog (go looking).** I will love it again after midday today I suspect (when it opens for Sunday trading). 

* The existence of the word 'ei-ironinen' suggests that there was no word for 'ironic' in Finnish before the word was appropriate/adapted from, I assume, English although wiktionary tells me it has Latin, Greek and French derivations. I can't believe there was no concept of irony in Finnish language/culture/society before this time though! Can't believe, so won't believe. 

** For instance, here, but go looking first please. 

sunday morning in helsinki (two weeks ago) - part one

Greetings to you from the Hotel Anna. I think I have actually stayed here twice before, or perhaps only once. Definitely I stayed a few days here on my first ever trip to Finland, which I believe was in 2011. It is old school, I suppose I hate that term as much as I hate any term which has kind of detached from its original wry or hip meaning, so that really people who use it actually just mean 'old' (ok well I guess they mean 'old but valid'?). For instance, my room has this phone in it, and I am pretty sure it's not even ironic:

I don't have a clue about the story of this hotel but when I see the other people staying here, in the breakfast room, I suspect they have been guided here by their valuing of proximity to the city and an eschewing of costly (faux-) luxury. I had a quick look at Tripadvisor expecting a swathe of 'never since I had my wallet stolen in Phoenix in 1981 and had to slum it in a run-down...' reviews - not a reflection on the place as I see it but on its resilient rejection of frippery - but there were none, which I can't interpret. 

I'm on the fifth floor, this is what I see out the window this morning (just before 9 am). Not bad. 

I had to have the window open as the room was quite warm when I got here, it wasn't uncomfortable. I was zonked, as they say, so although there were drunken gronks going past having super loud conversations (the last one just some young men bellowing, I know they were young because I looked out the window to see who was doing this, they had the faces of 80 year olds though) I wasn't that bothered. 

The big dumb thing about today is that whereas I was originally scheduled to get in on Saturday morning, in fact I didn't make it till Saturday evening - whole waste of a day - and things don't get started in a hurry in Finland on Sundays. You guessed it - this is depressing and embarrassing but just true - I can't handle the day without coffee. I had some coffee in the breakfast room but it was the coffee of non-coffee drinkers i.e. insufferably bland, I just had some the way junkies put water in their old needles hoping to get a little of the residue. So my next step is to go out and find an outlet for one of the cafe chains - Espresso House - which apparently is due to open in 8 minutes. Not 7, not 9 but 8. 

More anon.