Helsinki

Categories: phd, places

Date: 15 December 2008 18:39:57

As well as the conference I got the chance to have a look round central Helsinki (including during a conference session which I must confess to skiving). I got there on Tuesday and it wasn't without incident - my luggage decided to stay in Amsterdam rather than join the rest of us on the connecting flight, although they were really efficient about informing me what had happened, when it was going to arrive and delivering it to the hotel, so although I could have done with getting changed when I got there it wasn't the end of the world and I was reunited with it later that evening.

The conference was Wednesday to Friday, and generally I thought it was really good. Some of the talks (both plenary lectures and panel sessions) were excellent and really interesting, though some were better than others and after one session I was at least reassured that I wouldn't be awarded the "Most Boring in Conference" award. It gave me plenty to think about, anyway. My own panel was a bit disappointing - I thought my talk went OK, but because they'd squeezed an extra paper into my panel it meant there was virtually no time for questions, which is usually the most helpful/interesting bit. Also despite being an English-language conference, two of the other presenters chose to speak in Russian (one of them did at least provide a written paper in English so I could follow - there were only a couple of us who didn't speak Russian), so I spent half of it not really knowing what was going on. I also felt a bit of a spare part in that the vast majority - probably 80% if not more - of the participants do research in Russia, so those of us looking at other countries were a bit on the fringe of things. There was supposed to be someone else in my panel looking at Poland with a really interesting sounding paper, but she withdrew so I was really disappointed about that. All in all though I'm glad I went, and it was a good way of thinking about my research and presenting it, so it was a good experience.

One thing I do have to say though is that Helsinki is SO expensive! Eating out was OK, but the prices of stuff in the shops were so high I had to keep doing double takes! I had hoped to do a bit of Christmas shopping, but much as I love my family and friends I wasn't prepared to take out a second mortgage, so will probably be shopping in Ikea and Matalan as usual. As an example, one of the very few things I did buy was a snowman to hang on our Christmas tree. It can't even be an inch high, it's tiny, and it was nearly 8 euros! (the exchange rate is so horrendous at the moment that it's nearly 1:1 £/Euro).

I did take plenty of pictures though around the centre (I'm sure that will come as a great surprise). I didn't explore more widely as the hotel and conference were both in the city centre so I just wandered round the centre. Here's a selection of my pictures, featuring amongst other things the Lutheran Cathedral (wedding cake - didn't go inside as a concert was about to start when I tried), Orthodox Cathedral (didn't get close enough to look inside sadly), Christmas market, shopping streets, various statues, and a Moomin at the airport (I couldn't go to Finland and not take a picture of a Moomin, now could I?!).