There is a particular quality to the last full day in a place you have just started to understand. The city knows, I think, in a way that feels almost conspiratorial. This morning, the light over Punavuori was that soft silver-grey again, and the streets were nearly empty, and I found myself walking slowly, trying to memorise the feel of the cobblestones under my boots, the way the design shops on Iso Roobertinkatu were just beginning to stir, rolling up their metal shutters one by one.
I had no real plan for the day, which felt like a luxury after a week of DVV appointments and bank forms and figuring out which tram line actually goes where. I had a coffee at a small place on the corner, about four euros seventy for a cappuccino, which is roughly what you pay everywhere here, and I sat by the window and watched the street wake up. A man with a bicycle and a basket of flowers. A woman in a bright yellow raincoat, even though the drizzle had stopped. It was one of those moments where you realise you are not just visiting anymore, you are beginning to live somewhere, even if you are about to leave.
I spent the morning in Punavuori, which is the heart of the Design District, about two hundred shops and studios spread over some twenty-five streets. I am not a shopper by nature, but there is something about the clarity of Finnish design, the way a mug or a chair or a piece of fabric can feel so inevitable, so right, that I find myself slowing down, looking at things I would normally walk past. I stopped in front of a window display, a simple wooden stool, and I thought about how the word for that feeling, the stubborn persistence of making something good, is sisu, and how it applies to objects as much as to people.
For lunch, I found myself heading back towards the harbour, to Tawook Lab, which is a casual place near the Market Square that does excellent Middle Eastern food, a good reminder that Helsinki is not just salmon and rye bread, although it does those brilliantly too. I had a bowl with grilled chicken and hummus and pickles, and it was about fifteen euros for a meal that filled me up properly, which I have learned is a fair price for an inexpensive lunch here. The square outside was busy, the ferries coming and going from Suomenlinna, the Old Market Hall doing its steady trade in salmon soup and korvapuusti.
Afterwards, I walked east along the water, past the red-brick mass of the Uspenski Cathedral, which always feels like it belongs to another city entirely, something from Istanbul or Moscow, sitting there on its hill above the wooden houses of Katajanokka. I did not go inside this time. I have seen it, and I wanted to keep moving. There is a particular pleasure in walking a city you have started to know, not as a tourist following a map, but as a resident following a feeling.
I ended up at the Natural History Museum, which is something I had been meaning to do all week. It is not far from the centre, a five-minute walk from the Rock Church in Töölö, and the entrance fee is around twelve to fifteen euros, I believe, worth checking. The museum has this famous display of the Finnish wilderness, these dioramas of elk and bears and lynx, in their habitats, and for a moment you forget you are in the middle of a capital city. There is a blue whale skeleton, and halls of taxidermy from around the world, but it was the Finnish animals that held me, the ones I might actually see in the forests around Saimaa, if I am lucky and patient and very quiet.
I stood there for a long time in front of the elk, this enormous creature, so much bigger than you expect, and I thought about the journey ahead, the move east to the lakeland, and how the forests around Lake Saimaa are full of these animals, and how in a few weeks the leaves will begin to turn, the ruska, that brief and blazing autumn colour that the whole country seems to pause to watch. The word kept coming back to me all day, ruska, like a promise.
The museum was quiet, most visitors apparently elsewhere, and I took my time. I have always found natural history museums strangely soothing, the way they impose order on the chaos of the living world, even if that order is an illusion. There was a school group, a class of maybe eight-year-olds, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a glass case, and their teacher was pointing at a stuffed fox, and one of the children was asking a question I could not quite hear, but the teacher laughed, and the whole group laughed with her, and the sound echoed around the high ceiling of the hall. I do not know why, but that moment felt like a goodbye to something, to the idea of Helsinki as a place of monuments and checklists, and a hello to it as a place where children laugh in museums.
When I came out, the sky had cleared in that abrupt way it does in August, and the light was sharp and golden. I took the tram back towards the centre, just for the sake of riding it, and I sat by the window and watched the streets slide past, the familiar names, Töölö, then the edge of Kallio, then Hakaniemi with its market hall built in a sturdy brick style that always makes me think of the early twentieth century. A single tram fare here is about three euros ten, or you get a monthly pass for about seventy to seventy-five, which is what any resident would do, and I have been thinking about that, how the monthly pass is not just a ticket, it is a declaration of intent.
For the late afternoon, I went back to Eira, the quiet residential district on the coast, with its nineteenth-century apartment buildings and its wide, leafy streets, and I walked down towards the water. That is where you will find Löyly, that iconic timber sauna and restaurant on the shore, built of thousands of slats of wood that ripple like the surface of the sea. It has become the name locals give newcomers when they ask about sauna, and it is easy to see why. The building itself is a piece of architecture, but the experience is what matters.
I had saved this for the last day, a final proper sauna before I leave, and I am glad I did. There is a rhythm to the Finnish sauna that I am only beginning to learn. You sit in the heat, which here is gentle compared to some of the public saunas in Kallio, where the old men will tell you it is not a sauna unless it hurts a little. You breathe. You let the sweat come. And then you walk out onto the terrace, or down to the sea, and you take the cold plunge, and the shock of it is so complete that for a moment you are nothing but your own heartbeat, and then you feel it, the deep, spreading warmth that follows, like the whole world has been reset.
It is a singular experience, and it is at the centre of how Finnish people understand their own well-being. I sat on the terrace afterwards, wrapped in a towel, watching the sun begin its slow descent towards the islands, the light turning amber on the water. There were a few people swimming, a couple of boats out in the harbour, the faint sound of laughter and splashing. The wind had dropped to a gentle breeze. I thought about the costs of this life, the rent on a modest one-bedroom flat in the city centre, which runs to about a thousand, one-thousand-fifty euros a month, and the lounas lunches that keep you fed for twelve to seventeen euros, and the beer that will cost you eight. It is not a cheap country. But sitting there, with the heat still radiating from my skin and the sea moving in front of me, I understood why people make it work. Some things cannot be priced.
I had a simple dinner at Ravintola Nokka, which is near the harbour, a place that prides itself on Finnish ingredients and a relaxed, elegant atmosphere, and I had a piece of pike-perch with new potatoes and a beurre blanc, and a single glass of white wine. The bill came to around fifty euros, which is what you would pay for a sit-down dinner for one in a mid-range restaurant, and I sat for a long time over my coffee, watching the room slowly empty, feeling the gentle weight of the day.
As I walked back towards my hotel, the evening was still light, as it will be until late in this season. The streets of the centre were full of people enjoying the last of the summer, and there was a hum of conversation, and the clink of glasses from the outdoor terraces. I passed the cafe, Fazer Café Kluuvikatu, which still had a queue even at this hour, and I thought about how some things are so perfectly themselves they do not need to change.
Back in my room, which costs about a hundred and forty euros a night for this mid-range hotel, I sat on the bed and looked at my open suitcase. The new SIM card in my phone. The bank card in my wallet. The pieces of a new life, laid out and waiting. Tomorrow I leave Helsinki, and that feels strange to say, because I have only just arrived. But I know I will be back. There is the ruska to see in the lakeland, and the first snow, and the long, white nights of midsummer. This is not a goodbye, I think, or perhaps it is the kind of goodbye that is also a beginning.
I turned off the light and lay in the dark, listening to the low murmur of the city through the window. A tram passed, its bell ringing once, a sound I have come to know this week, and which I will miss. Tomorrow, a new road, east towards the lakes and the forests, towards whatever the ruska will bring. But tonight, Helsinki hums its quiet song around me, and I am learning to hear it.
Hyvää yötä, Helsinki. Kiitos for the first week. I will be back before the leaves fall.