The Finland Trip

I returned from Finland a few days ago. I attended a workshop for young scientists in my field, which was held at University of Helsinki's forestry field station. The field station, called Hyytiälä (pronounced hoo'-tee-ah-la) was about 2.5 hours by bus North of Helsinki.

Signpost to Hyytiälä.

The field station was build in the early 1910s for the university forestry students' summer courses. The oldest part of campus reminds me of an US Midwestern farm. The forestry students, in fact, have an agriculture component to their studies, and keep sheep during the summer and harvest them in the fall.

The barn and the old bell tower.

The field station is located next to Lake Kuivajärvi, which is one of 187,888 glacial lakes in Finland.

The forest is 90% pine and spruce, with a few birch and poplars thrown in. Since wood is abundant, the signs at the stations are wood relief carvings, really beautiful.

A map of the station as a wood carving.

Finland is the most North I've ever been (about 61 degrees latitude at Hyytiälä), and because the season was summer, the sun is visible for all but a few hours every day. The sun set around 11 PM and rose around 3 AM. Even the night wasn't very dark, only twilight. Most of these photos were taken mid-evening (9 PM-ish), so you can see for yourself.

In the 1990s, the forest field station was expanded and a SMEAR research station was build (SMEAR = Station for Measuring Forest Ecosystem-Atmosphere Relations). It is a unique site in that it is comprehensive, and able to measure many of the inputs and outputs of the forest ecosystem and in as many measureable parameters as possible. It is located in a boreal forest a short hike from the forestry field station.

One of the central features is the main cabin, show below. It was made from two log cabin kits put together. There is little insulation in this design. In fact, the wood is thick enough and the instruments produce enough heat that electrical heating is used only on the coldest winter days. There are bars on the roof of the cabin, which prevent snow from falling sliding off the roof when it melts and damaging the inlet ports. Most houses that I saw in Finland also have a ladder attached to their roofs, so that homeowners can shovel the snow.

Main Cabin

Another main feature is the 72 meter tower, shown below. The tower is tall enough to rise high above the forest canopy, which enables measurements at the atmosphere/canopy interface. Each crossbar on the tower has at least one instrument on the end. Instrument maintenance has an added excitement--to maintain the instruments, someone scales the tower, pulls the crossbar back, and then has to decide whether to fix the instrument on the spot or bring it down.

72-m sampling tower

One of the goals of the station is to measure the energy fluxes (carbon, nutrient, water) in and out of the forest. For this reason, it is important to not disturb the ecosystem, and these walkways were built. Each sideboard leads to a sampling device, often the rainwater or leaf litter collectors. It was like a maze to me.

Forest Floor Walkway

Sauna. As far as I can tell, sauna is a daily activity for many Finns. I was told that most homes have a sauna, and there are four saunas at Hyytiälä. They are separated by gender, although families usually take sauna together. The Finnish researchers prefer saunas heated by woodburning stoved to electric or gas. I did try sauna, and it was nice, although I think I enjoyed it more for the swim in Lake Kuivajärvi afterwards.

The food. Since I ate at a cafeteria-style dining hall most of the time I was there, I don't really know if I had typical Finnish food. I presume it would be a version of what Finns would eat at home. If that's the case, I've learned that boiled potatoes are very important in a Finnish diet. Most meals (lunches and dinners) included some chicken or beef dish with a creamy sauce, and it was served with potatoes. Fish was not as common as a I'd hoped, although a couple of fish dishes were served. Lettuce salads were served at all lunches and dinners, too, although only one kind of salad dressing: thousand island. I don't know whether it's the national favorite, or if salad dressing is not eaten by Finns and it was a concession to the Americans. Puddings are common desserts, although they are flavored differently than I'm used to. They are less sweet (although sugar is offered with them). Usually, a fruit preserve was served with them, too, sometimes whipped cream. The flavor of the puddings were different, too. They tended to be flavored less and differently. I had one that sort of tasted like prunes, and another that I'm told was flavored with rose hips.

I did eat reindeer, in a wild mushroom and cream soup. The soup was very good, and although I didn't get a good sense of what the reindeer tasted like, it reminded me of prosciutto. I was told that eating reindeer is reserved for special occasion dinners.

I also ate Karjalanpiirakka for breakfast a couple of times. I didn't quite figure out what was in them, but I think Karjalanpiirakka must be Finnish for "tasty gooey buttery pastry pie."

The meal structure and timing was different, too. There are 4-5 meals per day. Breakfast at 7 AM, lunch at 11 AM, coffee and a pastry or dessert at 1 PM, and dinner at 5 PM. At the field station, a fifth meal, a late-night snack was served at 10 PM, although it was mainly for the hard-working forestry students.

At literally every meal, there was what looked like to me to be a sandwich spread: cheeses, cold cuts, bread, plus cucumbers and peppers and breads. Even at breakfast. At first I thought it was an option for people who didn't like the main dish being served, so that they could make a sandwich, but I saw the people from the Nordic countries taking a few slices of the "sandwich" platters at each meal, and eating them more like hors d'ouvres, and I was told it was common in Finland to do this. I came to rather like this, and by the end of the week, I'd have a slice of cheese wrapped in cucumbers for breakfast.

The flights. Oh my, the flights. I have a new least-favorite airport in the world. Before this trip, it was O'Hare; now it is Heathrow.

Heathrow is a beast. There is no short layover at Heathrow, especially if you have to change terminals. To change planes, it goes something like this: exit the plane (and this is the last point where it stopped being like any other airport I've seen before). Take a series of ramps and escalators, stairs and lifts to arrive at the gate. (Note this is just the gate; this is not the main part of the terminal where you'd go to transport the next terminal). Walk to the terminal, which can take 10-15 minutes. Finally, you're at the arrival terminal, and you hit a long line at a security checkpoint. Wait, wait, wait, and finally go through the security procedure (which was on par to a US security checkpoint for terminal entry). After security there is another walk and escalator to the terminal transfer point. At this point, you have at least a ten-minute wait and a ten-minute bus ride to transfer to your departure terminal, more if there's a long line. After exiting the bus, there are more ramps and escalators, reminiscent of the exit gate, and finally you're at your terminal. Heathrow does not set gate numbers for flights until 30-40 minutes before boarding, so it is here that you find your gate number. Once you have your gate number, you have a walk between a 5 and 15 minutes long to your gate to board your plane, and this is with moving walkways. At the gate, there is an additional security checkpoint (instituted only after recent events), which is the open your carry-on, turn on all electronics to prove they're not bombs, take of your shoes and pat-down type security checkpoint. After that, you're finally ready to board the plane. Whew.

In the future, I don't think I'll choose a flight through Heathrow if I have an option, and if I don't, I wouldn't choose one without at least a two-hour layover if I could afford to miss my flight, and no less than a three-hour layover if I couldn't afford to miss my flight. I had a 90 minute layover at Heathrow on my return, and I made it only because I ran the whole thing, because my departing flight was running late, and because I probably lucked out a couple a places. My checked luggage, however, was not so lucky, and of this writing (home for about 60 hours), I haven't received it yet. (Edited to add: luggage was returned after a short sidetrip through Memphis almost five days late.)

Other than Heathrow, my flights were fine. Everything ran a little late, but I think a little late is the new on-time for airline travel. A couple of other random notes about the flights:
-A two-hour layover in O'Hare is pushing your luck if you have to go through customs with checked baggage. I actually think I made it to my connecting flight on time because I lost my luggage. Without checked luggage, I had nothing to declare at customs and I didn't have to recheck my bag, which meant I was able to glide through passport control instead of waiting.
-Filed under coincidences in a small world, during the London flight, I sat next to a gentlemen who has the same career as me (though in a different sector) and lives in the same town as my undergrad university. We didn't know that many people in common though.
-Heathrow has a snippiest-sounding public announcement system: "Passenger So-in-so, please proceed immediately to your gate. You are delaying your flight departure and your fellow passengers." Imagine that with a prim British accent and simmering disapproval. It makes you feel guilty even if you're not the person who is misbehaving.
-My travel experience was bracketed by encounters with obnoxious drunk people. At Heathrow security queue, there was college-aged man a few people in front of me who had purchased duty-free vodka on his London fight, and did not know that you can't bring liquids of that size with you if you have a connecting flight. Rather than waste his vodka, he'd decided to drink it while waiting in line for the security check. He loudly let everyone know the injustice of the situation, and that he ought to be trusted since he was an American and from the Bronx and not to be messed with. I think he's lucky that made it through security without being subjected to a body cavity search.

And for my last flight home, I sat in front of drunk Shiners (which, I'm told, is an oxymoron), who provided entertainment by singing barbershop quartets while we waited for a ground hold to clear. I thought it was the most fitting ending to my trip. And this blog entry.