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At the market square |
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There is really only one way to approach Helsinki for the first time and that is from the sea.
Of course, if you prefer, you can make your landfall at Helsinki-Vantaa airport, regularly ranked
as one of the most efficient and most agreeable airports in the world. But then you will not see
what the seaborne traveller sees as the ship glides closer to the daughter of the Baltic.
The Finnish poet, V.A. Koskenniemi, so loved Helsinki that he likened the place to a favourite child...'born of the sea, |
like an island, scattered granite skerries framing her future face... What native of the town does not feel fondness and pride as she appears on the horizon... On a crystal autumn morning, up on deck, returning from a journey, see, closer, on the skyline, floats Helsinki's white familiar figure, girdled by evergreen forest, roofs glistening in the first frost; a sight matching in beauty any in the world...The homecomer calls it Athens in the north, a city where Apollo, god of light, might himself reside'... |
