Forget what I wrote one month ago. Summer's in town and I've rarely been as content as now with my surroundings. I think I'm developing some kind of a crush with Helsinki. Suddenly, the city is green and people are filling the terraces and the streets (recorded during the past 48 hours: parks full of picnics, guys playing football / baseball / pétanque / frisbee, people swing dancing outside, summer collection 2012, Finnish ice cream not that bad after all, me in 100 tourist photos while sitting in Senaatintori for a lunch). Have all the cute Finns spend their winter in Thailand and only now have returned to the city? I don't understand, but this city has a double identity and I'm as bipolar as this place. I'm already missing the future past summer...
This kind of swing dancing (at least from far away it looked pretty great) was taking place in front of the National Opera today.
Actually, of all the places I've lived in or the other twenty or so capitals I've visited, I think I really prefer Helsinki (well, after Paris of course). There's so many cool things going on here, in two weeks time there has been a huge eco-design or Recycle Factory event, a flee market of the size of the whole city (called "the cleaning day") and the restaurant day when anybody can set up a pop-up restaurant in their home or elsewhere (I ate North African food in an art gallery, served by a Finnish ex-top model, and got my dessert from some Hungarian immigrants in the main esplanade of the city).
The cleaning day flee market in Fredan tori. I got a flower pot for one Euro.
P.S. This song and video is just great! I think I have to do some bachata classes in addition to my salsa classes to get those moves as well... Summer song definitely!
