What happens when two great capitals emerge from the long Scandinavian winter?
A feverish dispatch by Gordon F: Sander
I awoke to bedlam. It was 10 P.M., May Day's Eve, and from where I stood in the lobby of the Hotel Marski on Mannerheimintie, Helsinki's main street, the city seemed to have lost its collective mind. On any given evening, Helsinki is probably one of the safest capitals in the world- as well as one of the quietest but for three celebrations, May Day's Eve, Midsummer's Eve, and New Year's Eve, it turns into one of the craziest.
I had been warned that this year's blowout, marking the end of the dark, long, wet Finnish winter, would be particularly insane. "I'm afraid my students will drink too much this evening," my friend Risto Ihamuotila, the tall, sad-looking rector of the University of Helsinki, had said that afternoon over lampaan kyliyksid valkosipulin ja herkkusienten kera (lamb chops with garlic and mushrooms) at the Alexander Nevski, a Russian restaurant near the Market Square.
Still, I hadn't been prepared for the hurricane of debauchery that greeted me when I ventured out onto Mannerheimintie. Directly in front of me, thousands of hysterical, mostly young, Finnish men and women were careening past.
"BAH-DAH! BAH-DAH!" An ambulance whizzed by, speeding off to tend to victims of the roaring crowd. Several police cars followed close behind.
Even the hotel lobby offered no refuge from the passing storm. Suddenly, an ember of craziness landed in the hotel lobby, sparking a catfight between two otherwise attractive, peaceable-looking women, who started yanking each other's hair. One, breaking away, pushed me roughly aside and rushed out the door; the other, shrieking, ran after her. A little shaken, I decided to retire to my room. It is a little strange to see an entire city overshoot the mark.
The breakfast table at the Marski the next morning was expectedly lavish--breakfast is my favorite meal in Finland, especially following a restorative sauna. I reveled in it, priming myself with a stout mixture of herring, reindeer meat, and crisp bread, washing it down with several kinds of fruit juice and a pot of high-octane Finnish kahvi. It was eight o'clock, but already the klieg light-like northern sun was glinting off the trolley tracks below. A seagull swooped by my window.
Upstairs after breakfast, there was a loud knock on my door. My friend Don D., a tall 30-year-old architect from Los Angeles who was joining me for this particular rake's-cum-inquiring reporter's progress through Scandinavia, had arrived, fresh off the ferry from Germany, where he had been vacationing. He was rarin' to go.
After a brief reunion, we strode off in the direction of Kaivo Park, site of the day's main event, the traditional May Day be- in. I couldn't help but notice how clean the streets already were.
Something else: People were smiling. It's rare to see the repressed Finns smile in public, but nearly everyone we saw as we walked past the colorful Market Square toward Embassy Row was positively beaming.
A beatific scene awaited us. There must have been 25,000 people hanging out in the park that afternoon, lying on blankets, strumming guitars, making out, munching on lihapirakka, taking nips from Champagne bottles. There wasn't a policeman in sight, nor were any needed.
Helsinki had purged itself of its demons, at least for a day. "It's like a Finnish Woodstock," Don declared amiably. Nearby, a survivor from the previous night, painted up like Emmett Kelly, quietly walked into the crevice of a tree and stayed there, murmuring sweet nothings to himself.
Don's head swiveled as one white-blonde beauty after another ambled by. Most of the women, I noticed, were wearing pink lipstick. After a while of this, I returned to my hotel. Don, as was to become his wont, decided to stay behind.
On the way I walked through Senate Square, where a festive crowd of 2,000 or so had gathered to hear a group of Finnish students belt out "Internationale," the Socialist Party anthem.
Ten years ago - even five - such a gathering would have had a much more subdued feeling about it. After all, this is the country that had, until recently, one of the largest Communist parties this side of the Iron Curtain.
Don was anxious to sample Helsinki's curious architectural stew, so that evening we took a lazy stroll up Mannerheimintie. Virtually every style of the past 200 years is showcased here, from neo-Gothic to Social Realist to supermodern. Somehow it all hangs together.
On we sauntered, past the yellow neo-modern post office, past the oxidized statue of Marshal Carl Mannerheim, the great hero of the 1939-40 Winter War with the Soviet Union, in which the absurdly outnumbered Finnish Army skied rings around Stalin's invading legions, an event still celebrated as the country's finest hour; past the glowering Eduskunta, or parliament house, a Reichstag-looking relic of the interwar period, when Finland was under strong Germanic influence; past the Gothic birthday cake that is the National Museum.
We came to Alvar Aalto's masterpiece, Finlandia Hall, site of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, as well as of the quixotic Bush-Gorbachev summit of 1990. Memories. I remembered the synchronized, theatrical entrances of the two foreign ministers, Baker and Shevardnadze, stepping in from the wings of the cavernous conference hall to the loud, formal applause of the 2,200 journalists gathered there. Another era. Don walked twice around the pterodactyl-like building, admiring its soaring lines.
Afterward, we sauntered through linden-lined Töolö Park. There were swans in the ponds. Some old men played chess with life-size pieces.
Something was missing: I didn't see any homeless people. Finland's unemployment rate is 19.5 percent; however, thus far it has managed to keep practically everyone housed and fed. You will not be solicited in Helsinki.
That's not to say that some besotted female berserker will not grab your crotch. That's what happened to Don that evening at Fennia, a new nightclub that had been recommended by the Marski desk clerk.
May Day fever prevailed. The huge club, located in an Art Deco building in the city center, was packed with young buttoned-down types, most of whom were quite blotto and swaying in the aisles.
A well-coiffed brunette in a pantsuit developed a sudden hankering for my strapping, Nordic-looking friend. "What kind of bullet do you carry?" the woman slurred as she grabbed my friend's member.
Strangely, Don, who is usually unflappable, was at a loss for words. Above us, artificial smoke poured down from the ceiling of the four-story, futuristic club. Nearby, a Gypsy girl, incongruously dressed in black, walked by, selling roses.
Eventually, the woman unloosed her grip on Don, allowing us to continue on our way. Soon we were staggering out of the club, with two Finnish women mysteriously in tow-a sultry waitress from the Intercontinental (Don's) and a furniture manager from Lahti (mine).
From there we repaired, against the better instincts of our newfound distaff companies, to Nylon, a new club clubs are always opening in Helsinki--that Don had heard about. We went across the street from the city railroad station, then down an alley, up a narrow neon-lit staircase, and we were there a small, dark room about forty feet by sixty feet; a bar, manned by a uniformed vaguely sinister bartender straight out of The Shining, along one side, a small dance floor on the other.
Five or six people were frenetically dancing to the sound of their own drummer; a few of them looked as if they were on the designer drug Ecstasy. Our dates immediately looked bored and began scrutinizing their watches.
Denim was the uniform here, although a few of the men wore suits. I recognized one of them: Christian Moustgaard, the hip, poker-faced managing director of Radio City, Helsinki's biggest pop station. He turned out to be a part-owner of Nylon.
Moustgaard, one of the leaders of the fertile and wacky Finnish pop scene, was anxious to tell me about one of his newest productions: an upcoming Radio City-sponsored performance in Senate Square featuring the Leningrad Cowboys the celebrated Finnish country-rock band whom Finnish filmic bad boy Aki Kaurismäki made famous in the cracked road epic Leningrad Cowboys Go America- -and, Moustgaard said, smiling,
"the former Red Army Chorus."
"Oh. Cool." And would they be singing "Internationale"?
The joint was still jumping at four, when I left.
Don, as usual, stayed behind.
"You can't imagine how difficult the winters are here." Leena Lander, novelist and rising star of letters, was saying over paistettua sikaa, korvasienimuhennosta (fried whitefish with creamy morel sauce) at the Elite, the cozy, Jugendstil-styled watering hole in the Töölö District favored by the intellectual set.
We were talking about the suicide this past winter of Lander's colleague Arto Kytohonka, the odd, brilliant pioneer of computer-created literature and the creator of the newfangled postal art. He hanged himself last February.
Lander agreed that the weather is definitely a factor in Finland's high suicide rate.
"Every winter I say to myself This will be my last winter,'" the delicate-featured writer, who bears a resemblance to Colette, said with a shiver. "Every summer I sit with my friends in our cottage and we say 'This will be our last summer.'"
Lander herself has much to live for. Her most recent novel, Home of the Dark Butterflies, a literary murder-mystery set at a home for juvenile delinquents, was recently optioned by Hollywood.
The country may be going through a recession, but its arts scene is more fertile than ever. Today, Finns are pushing back the envelope in literature, film, and design. Increasingly, their work is being discovered and championed elsewhere.
"I want to do everything," design sensation Stefan Lindfors said quite matter-of-factly the next day at the Kosmos, the Finnish Elaine's.
The 31-year-old artist was wearing a Red Army cap; on his chest, he sported a three-inch gold lizard, a piece from his renowned collection of jewelry inspired by insects and small reptiles. Lindfors, whom. The Times of London has likened to a "one-man creative hurricane," has brought his feral, Da Vinci-like genius to bear on restaurant and store interiors (he designed the new, otherworldly Helsinki headquarters for the Marimelko corporation), lamps, chairs, posters, album covers, you name it. He is in demand all over town: He has even been hired to redesign the hallway of the Kosmos.
When I left him, after a hurried lunch, he was gesticulating wildly to the befuddled doot-man (who should receive a markka when you leave if you expect to get back in on another occasion- a quaint Finnish custom still enforced at several bars).
Lindfors is also in demand in the United States: The Kansas City Art Institute recently hired the whirling dervish to galvanize its design department.
Matti Pellonpää, though, is staying put. In fact, the walrus-like thespian, who most recently starred in Kaurismäki's La Vie de Bohème, was stationed at the same table in the front of Elite, a popular restaurant, at which I had left him last year- and the year before that. For me, no trip to Helsinki is complete until I've had a few woozy words with the bearded flower child of Finnish cinema, who holds court nightly with a revolving set of amused and deferential friends and fans.
"I am a Communist because I am not a Communist," the actor boomed. He was drinking near beer--his doctor and his girlfriend no longer allowed him his standard daily quart of vodka- but he made no sense nevertheless.
"There are no small roles! There are only small actors!"
Pellonpää was moving up in the world.
Finland's most famous actor and best-known face had finally started earning enough to afford his own apartment. However, he still didn't have an agent; there aren't any agents in Finland--yet. And Pellonpää wished to keep it that way.
"To be, that is the question," he insisted. I didn't understand. "To BE, THAT is the question."
Altogether, I had spent a week in Helsinki.
I had drunk my fill of its strange brew. It was time for the chaser: Stockholm.
So, you ask, which city do I prefer, Helsinki or Stockholm?
That's not a fair question, really, or a germane one, since the sophisticated traveler familiar with the two Scandinavian capitals comes to each expecting a very different experience.
Helsinki and Stockholm are related, in a manner of speaking: They share the same latitude, roughly, and therefore the same weather--which, in this case, continued to be superb. Both cities embody Scandinavian social-democratic values: Both run smoothly; both are relatively free of crime. They are, indeed, cousins, but distant ones.
Stockholmers grow up amid the legacy of empire. There are two royal palaces in their city; there are no royal palaces in Helsinki (although there is a super-tech presidential palace being built that is the subject of some controversy because of its insane expense).
Then there is the matter of topography.
Helsinki fronts on the Baltic Sea; Stockholm is tucked into its own archipelago.
Helsinki feels plebeian and democratic, and a little insecure. Stockholm feels royal.
Helsinki feels exotic. Stockholm feels comfortable. You come to Helsinki expecting to be challenged. You arrive in Stockholm expecting to be spoiled.
To be sure, it is possible to have a crazy time in Stockholm. In fact, the memory of my first evening in the city, after Don and I came by cruise ship from Finland, is something of a blur.
I do recall arriving at the Grand Hôtel, of course. How could I not? For me, this was the consummation of a longtime fantasy. I had always wanted to stay there. There are other five-star hotels in Stockholm, including several smaller but luxurious hostelries across the way in Gamla Stan, the island heart of the city. But there is only one place to stay in Stockholm if you are anybody, and if you can afford it (doubles start at $300; some suites cost upwards of several thousand a night), and that is the Grand. Henry Kissinger stays at the Grand when he is in town. "There was a period in 1973 when Kissinger lived here," said Peter Wallenberg, the current general manager-whose family owns the hotel- over drinks several days later. Bruce Springsteen stays at the Grand, as does Liza Minnelli. And so do all Nobel Prize winners, who are housed, feted, and serenaded every December.
I looked out my window. The management had decided to spoil me: I had the best view in the house. I was on the harbor side three floors up, facing the Old Town. Several hundred yards away, the late-setting sun glinted in the windows of the Royal Palace. Directly beneath me, in the moat-like Mälaren Lake, the small white boats that tour the Stockholm archipelago lay at anchorage. Several fishermen were casting lines: The water here is clean enough to fish in (as well as to swim in).
I didn't have much time to linger over the view, however. There was an electronic message on my TV screen: Per Unger, the manager of the Café Opera, was expecting Don and me for dinner. We were the scheduled guests of honor.
The Café Opera, of course- or simply the Café, as habitués call it- is the place to hang in Stockholm. I didn't have far to walk. The glamorous multipurpose restaurant-café-nightclub is the largest of five eateries housed in the turn-of-the-century Royal Opera House, just down the quay from the hotel.
Leaning out of my hotel window, I could see its huge beveled windows; at midnight they would be lit by strobes as the outer café turned into a discotheque. It was ten o'clock Friday evening, the first true weekend of spring. Already, a line of hopeful Café-ites was forming outside the pleasure palace. I ambled off.
Per really outdid himself that night. After drinks and filet mignon-and not a few goragonized glances at the parade of beautiful women passing by our table- our Swedish emcee ushered Don and me off on a guided tour of the rest of Stockholm's burgeoning nightlife. First we had drinks at Yellow Press, the new gay club in the Swedish World Trade Center; then we moved on to the Bistro Jarl, Stockholm's best outdoor terrace, on Birger Jarlsgartan. Anders Gunnarsson, the balding, bespectacled founder of the Café Opera and the godfather of Stockholm's club scene, was waiting for us there. More drinks; more bilateral toasts. Gunnarsson wanted to take us to another haunt, but I begged off, stumbling back to the Grand.
Don, of course, stayed behind.
Stockholm definitely spoiled me this time around.
I loved staying at the Grand; as expected, the service was exquisite, as was the food, especially that served at the fine new restaurant on the ground floor, facing the palace (I recommend the lamb). Nights, after supper, I would wander over to the café. Later, after hanging out at my table (No. 82), watching the nocturnal hullabaloo, I would saunter, or weave, back to the hotel, beneath the royal starry night. It became something of a routine.
I did leave my compound to meet with several special guests. I had lunch one sunny afternoon with Eva Dahlgren, the mysterious Swedish pop singer whose most recent album, Confessions of a Bleached Blonde ("En Blekt Blondins Hiärta," in the original), has sold just less than a half million copies, a phenomenal number for a country with a population of 8 million. She picked the restaurant, the Ulla Winbladh, on Djurgärden. I had the smörstekt piggvarsfilé med pilgrimsmusslor, tiger räkor och kräftsas. Superb. Eva had the bräckt laxfaril med krassesds ach sauterad ostronskivling. People obviously recognized her, but no one disturbed us, and no one gawked. Everything was very cool, very Swedish.
There is definitely a little Garbo in Dahlgren. Very moody. Goes off to Thailand a lot to be alone. After thirteen years in the music business, Eva, who is in her mid-thirties, is writing a book. "Oh, I can hardly listen to my albums anymore," she said, pouting.
I liked her, though, and I suppose she liked me. At least enough to drive me to my next appointment, a reunion with the writer Stig Larsson, an old friend (and one of the stars of this month's Nordic Poetry Festival in New York City), at Prinsen, a literary hangout off Birger Jarl.
There was a delicious moment in Eva's Corvair, as we stopped for a light, when I finally got her to laugh. Was she a spontaneous person, I asked?
There was a long pause as she considered this question. "No," she finally said, and we both giggled.
Lisa Nilsson, the other reigning diva of Swedish pop, is all business. She met me for breakfast at the Grand. This was more complicated than I expected, mostly because the main dining room was closed for meals at the time -11 A.M. she had requested.
For a moment I was in a dither as I sat in the vast marble lobby contemplating the situation. Then I saw Giesela Wallenberg, the woman who runs the Grand. Mrs. Wallen-berg, who has been at the hotel for thirty years and can recall what Lyndon Johnson had for dinner when he stayed there (as well as other things she is too discreet to tell), knew what to do. Why not order room service in the upstairs foyer? she suggested.
Excellent idea. The meeting with Nilsson and her manager went off without a hitch. I even got her phone number.
As I said, Stockholm spoiled me.
And what about Don? I didn't see much of my friend during the last leg of our rakehells' progress through Scandinavia. You see, one afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art, he struck up a conversation with an attractive nurse.
Of course, she was blonde. The last time I saw him, he was standing with his fetching new companion on the quay beneath my window at the Grand, waving up to me, showing off.
And when it came time for me to leave Stockholm, Don, as usual, stayed behind.