For the love of coffee

During my last trip to Europe I started doing this weird thing where I would attempt to track down the oldest coffee house in each city I visited. I'm not sure how this all came about, but it probably has something to do with the sociology essay on coffee that I once had to write. Combined with my love of coffee and old architecture.

So far I've been successful with my mission mostly in Italy. In a couple of other countries I struggled either due to a lack of information or simply because I didn't have enough time. Where I haven't been able to go to the oldest cafe, I've tried to go to one of the oldest.

In Vienna, I went to Cafe Landtmann with my cousin Elisabeth. It opened in 1873 and while that may seem pretty old, it wasn't the oldest in Vienna. That title belongs to Cafe Frauenhuber which I think is about 100 years older than Landtmann.

In Budapest, the title belongs to Ruszwurm which I did manage to get to. Ruszwurm dates back to 1827 and is situated up near the Fisherman's Bastion. The cakes and pastries are so delicious that even Empress Elisabeth used to order them from here.

In Venice there is Caffe Florian, which was established in 1720. It is right on St Mark's Square, so while the prices are ridiculously expensive, the view of the square and the artwork inside are worth the price tag.

I am most definitely a coffee person, but for some reason I ordered a hot chocolate that day. It was rich, and it was like a thick soup. So decadent.

In Florence, I had a quick stop at Caffe Gilli which was founded in 1733. From memory it wasn't as fancy as  Caffe Florian or Caffe Greco (which you will see shortly), but the building still had beautiful architecture.

Caffe Greco in Rome is slightly younger, established in 1760. It is just a few metres away from the Spanish Steps. After an afternoon of shopping, I could have spent hours in here just taking in all of the art work on the walls.

And so now we come to my current trip. I tried and I tried, but I couldn't find anything remotely like a historical coffee house in either Moscow or St Petersburg :( 

I did, however, have more luck in the Nordic countries!

Cafe Ekberg was a few minutes away from our hotel in Helsinki, so an ideal place for us to have breakfast. During the week, they offer a breakfast buffet for only €10 which includes not only the staple items like coffee, rolls, cold meat, cheese, cereal, and fruit, but also a range of their delicious pastries that you can normally buy in store! It was founded in 1852 originally as a bakery and has been at this particular address for over 80 years.

Cafe Maiasmokk was our cafe of choice in Tallinn, having been in the same location in 1864. It officially takes the crown of oldest cafe in operation in Tallinn. 

After an early morning ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn, we needed sugar and caffeine. I decided on the tiramisu   which I do not regret at all.

I was this close to choosing their pavlova, but I thought hey, I'm on the other side of the world I must as well get something that I normally wouldn't make.

A self-serviced stay in Helsinki

Accommodation in Helsinki is known for being rather expensive, so we thought we'd try our hand at a relatively novel concept: a self-service hotel.

In Finland there is a chain of self-service hotels called Omena Hotels in Helsinki alone there are three. We decided to stay at the one on  Lönnrotinkatu, which ended up being less than a 5 minute walk into the middle of town.

We paid a total of NZ$357.82 for 3 nights, so just slightly less than $60 per person, per night. In Euros, two nights were €69.90 per night and one night was €79.90. We thought that was pretty good value, but note that they charge per room and you can fit up to four people in a room so if we had four people it would have been really cheap.

We booked over the internet as we did for all of our other hotels and hostels, but the only difference was that I needed to provide passport and other details of all the guests (i.e. me and Charlotte). This is because there is no formal check-in procedure later on where the hotel photocopies your passport or notes down the details.

There are no physical keys for Omena, everything is automated by a 5-digit code which they generate at random for you upon booking. There is also the opportunity to change the code to something that may be easier for you to remember, but we didn't want to mess with the system.

24 hours before your booking, they email you your room number but your code won't let you in until 4pm of the day of your booking.

Overall we felt pretty safe because after business hours you also need your code to get in through the main doors to the hotel.

Each room has what they call a double bed, but really it is two singles side by side, so it is a lot bigger than what is referred to as a double bed in New Zealand. Each room also has a fold out couch that can sleep another two people. The nifty thing here is that the decorative cushions on the couch are stuffed with extra sheets, blankets, towels, and pillows.

The rooms are large especially given the amount you are paying - plenty of space to walk around, plus they provide you with a reasonably sized table and a large flat screen tv (I'm pretty sure ours was bigger than 32").

I forgot to take a photo of the inside, but all of the rooms are essentially identical so ours looked just like the one on their website

Photo credit: omenahotels.com

The bathroom is inside the red cubicle in the middle of the room. Cubicle might be the wrong word here as there definitely was enough space in there to do bathroom related things without feeling cramped. We only had one issue with the place and that is that the drain in the shower wouldn't drain properly - not a biggie as I am a girl with copious amounts of hair so I'm used to it.

There are no checkout formalities - you simply hang a sign on your door that says that you have checked out.

It's a pretty cool concept and it worked seamlessly for us. There was a microwave in the room plus a large supply of coffee and tea, so I would definitely recommend Omena for anyone wanting to base themselves in Helsinki for a few days. It's a reasonable price, especially if you value space and privacy.

Oh look, another UNESCO world heritage site!

Suomenlinna translates to castle of Finland, but Suomenlinna is definitely not that. It is an 18th century maritime fortress that was designed by Augustin Ehrensvärd and took close to 40 years to build. AND IT IS SO FREAKIN' AWESOME.

It is built on a series of small islands just a quick ferry ride from Helsinki. The ferry costs €5 for a return ticket and it comes every 15 minutes or so. The ferry is free if you've got the Helsinki Card (along with all of the museums on Suomenlinna).

Nowadays, about 800 people live on Suomenlinna. There's even a primary school and a small grocery store. Along with a prison.

Lots of the old buildings and fortifications still remain though. We even managed to walk through some of the old tunnel networks. 

When the Russians took over the fortress in the early 19th century, they boarded up the canon holes in this particular tunnel because they believed that they faced the direction of St Petersburg.

Ehrensvärd was buried here:

There is a shipyard, which is now used to restore old boats and ships. However, when the Russians held the fortress, they used the shipyard as a swimming pool to go with the sauna in the white building you can see in the background.

Along the southern side are some massive sand dunes  - the dunes are there to protect the fortress from canon attacks as the sand would just absorb the impact of the canon balls. There are also a number of giant canons still in place.

I found it quite cool that they are still on their circular tracks. I've seen a lot of these tracks in my life, but I have never seen a canon on one. Admittedly, I never really figured out how the tracks worked until now...

They totally had Hobbit houses before Tolkien wrote about them

King's Landing Gate

My favourite part of the day was having a look around the Vesikko submarine. It was used during World War II, but after the war Finland wasn't allowed to have any submarines and so this one was docked (I think the others were destroyed).

Helsinki Day

Today, June 12, is Helsinki Day. The city gets together every year on this day to celebrate Helsinki's founding in the 16th century and has done so since 1959. Coincidentally, June 12 is also Russia Day, so we still would have been celebrating something today had we been in Russia instead.

It was great fun and we didn't have to spend much money at all, because lots of things are free on Helsinki Day.

The day always kicks off at 9am with a speech by the mayor, which we missed for two reasons:
a) we were sleeping, and
b) we wouldn't have understood a word of it anyway.

We did however manage to make it for free coffee and rhubarb pie immediately following the speech. Delicious!

They had the coffee and cake stations set up outside their city hall with a live band and lots of red balloons. The old people dancing were super cute.

We were still hungry though (we're probably a bit too used to gorging on buffets for breakfast), so we headed to Market Square for some pastries. I had a Finnish meat pie, which is essentially a doughnut but filled with a mixture of mince and rice. BEST THING EVER.

With full bellies, we headed to the Temppeliaukio Church, which, like a lot of the churches and cathedrals in Helsinki, is Lutheran. Entry was free, something I am still getting used to given that there was a fee for everything in Russia.

The awesome thing about this church though is that it is built out of rock with an entirely copper dome, so it has amazing acoustics inside.

 To celebrate Helsinki Day, the National Museum of Finland had free entry for everyone. It was an awesome museum - they have heaps of artefacts from the stone, bronze, and iron ages, plus exhibits on life in Finland during each decade of the 20th century.

I fully appreciated the bear statue that they had guarding the museum's entrance, rather than a traditional lion.

Our next stop was the Helsinki Olympic Stadium, where the 1952 Olympic Games were held. Nowadays, all sorts of events are held here including football matches and concerts.

Today, they opened up the stadium to visitors so we were able to have a wander around on the track.

They also reduced the entry price for the Stadium Tower to 2 euro, so we took this opportunity to see Helsinki from up high.

The city has also set up a free sauna in a yurt by the lake at Töölönlahti Bay. The weather hasn't been that great here, definitely a lot colder than in Russia, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to warm up.

It took us forever to find though, so we ended up going for a nice stroll by the lake.

The yurts were quite small and nestled by some trees, so they weren't exactly easy to spot but it was totally worth it. 

The sauna is set up right next to a cute little cafe, so after steaming away your troubles you can always have a coffee to get back into it.

On our way home, we came across this cute little puppy who apparently had found a baby's dummy in the park and was having some fun with it. WAY TOO CUTE.

Helsinki Day was definitely a great day.