Helsinki; Wednesday, 25 July, 2007

Some point around 6 or 7 am I woke up, turned over and promptly went back to sleep again. The next time I woke up was just after 8, and by now I was so awake and fully charged that I virtually sprung out of bed. I looked back at the bed and realised that I hadn’t just slept I had SLEPT. Normally I must be quite a restless sleeper as whenever I wake up the duvet is always in a twisted mess, and I can usually untuck the sheets of even the most well made bed. This morning apart from a few hairs on the pillow, and a head shaped indentation, you would think the bed hadn’t been slept in. And I felt normal again (or as normal as I ever am). It’s quite scary to think just how easy it is to get a bit out of it without proper sleep, and that’s in a relaxed environment. I thought back to some of the places I had been to recently, especially the KGB cells in Vilnius. At the time I hadn’t really given the idea of sleep deprivation as a form of torture much thought. Yes, I understood that it is unpleasant not to get sleep, but to be deprived of sleep for a long time is seriously destabalising, add in a stress-full or terrifying situation and I could suddenly realise quite how an unpleasant form of torture it would be.

I took the lift down to breakfast, for some reason that I could never get an answer to the hotel had decided not to have internal staircases between floors, except behind alarmed fire doors, so all guests had to use the lifts, even if it was to go the one floor down to breakfast! I discovered that whilst I knew the hotel was a large hotel, I hadn’t realised quite how large, how full, or that everyone would want breakfast at the same time! I managed to get a table, but more by having sharper elbows, better eyesight, and slightly less rickety hips and knees that the majority of my fellow guests.

After breakfast I headed out to the station to catch the train to Lappeeranta. The town is situated less that 25 miles from the border with Russia, and it’s quite bizarre to wander around a town where the road signs point to St Petersburg. I had a long wander around the centre of town and the harbourside area. Above the harbour is an old fortress which has been turned into a collection of museums and offices.

Walking up through the fortress and back down the other side on the far side of the harbour I came across the annual Lappeenranta sand sculpture display. There were about 5 big sculptures, and lots of small ones, mostly on a space theme (think Neil Armstrong next to ET, Darth Vader and the Martians from Mars Attacks!) I had a good look around before walking back to the station to catch the train back to Helsinki.

I stopped off for dinner in a very nice Greek restaurant that I had discovered two years previously, and then headed back out to the fish market and the boat out to the Suomenlinna sea fortress. I arrived at a little after 10pm, and the sun was just starting to head for the horizon. I walked across the islands to the far side of the fortress, looking out West over the Baltic towards Sweden, and watched the sunset into the sea. The sun setting is something that you take so much for granted living in London that unless the sun is particularly large, or the sky goes a particularly stunning colour you don’t give it a second thought. There was nothing stunning about the sunset at Suomenlinna, the cloud cover was quite heavy, there were no oranges or purples, just the light of the day disappearing, but it is one of the most impressive sun sets I think I have ever watched.

Feeling strangely elated, I walked back across the islands to the harbour and caught the boat back to Helsinki, arriving just after midnight, to discover that the last tram back to near the hotel had already left, so I walked back.

Weather

Sunny Sunny
AM PM
Hot (20-30C, 68-86F)
21ºC/70ºF