ToDo: Invent Brilliant Title

We escaped to the West via train from St Petersburg.  Helsinki, while not the most exciting of that unexceptional genre of Nordic cities, certainly did awfully well from the comparison.  It was nice to be able to drink the water and flush the toilet paper

We just sort of strolled about for a few days.  They have a chuch in a rock.  Their chain of liquor stores is called "Alko".  I had a birthday.  We shopped a lot, as I searched out tourist wares referencing Finns (for one small nephew who was fascinated with the idea of a land of hims).  We caught the ferry out to Suomenlinna and wandered around in the rain; Yammy laughed at my rain hat until he got rain in his ear.

It was all rather lovely, and not at all grim despite my mother’s research and subsequent predictions.  But we couldn’t leave fast enough, because although I’d never heard the real version, due to somebody‘s continual repetition of it, I had Monty Python’s damn "Finland" song stuck in my head and worried it would become permanent.