Hämeenlinna aka Texas

Hämeenlinna translates as “the Castle of Häme”, and Hämeenlinna houses Hämeen linna (“the castle of Häme”), yes with a space because in the latter the first word is the genitive of the place name (the region), whereas in the former it is a place name in its own right (the town). #lovefinnish innit

So one pretty Saturday in late August Fabio and I decided to make the most of the last summer sun rays and hopped onto a train to this unspaced town.

As per is my habit, I knew little about the town itself, bar the fact that it houses the aforementioned castle. Fabio was excited to see castles, I was perhaps a bit too morose with my comment of “well I like real castles, aka the British ones, #corfecastle4eva”. But once you don’t compare Hämeen linna to British castles, but enjoy it in its own right, it’s pretty alright. (In the same way that if you eat veggie sausages as a substitute for real sausages, you’re bound to be disappointed. But if you take veggie sausages as a new dish in its own right, they’re actually decent enough.)

Anyways, the plan was to get there on time so as to have plenty of time to wander the castle and the prison which was recommended by some of our friends too.

As always, we started off with a café. I’d googled two options, and we settled on Café Hoffi. It was spacious and a bit impersonal at first glance, but that was before I discovered the plate of quark buns advertising to be THE BEST IN THE WORLD (yes yes “quark bun” may not fully titillate your taste buds to climax oh non-Finns, but RAHKAPULLAS are worth a try if you make it here). Fabio, as a true trooper next to small-appetited yours truly, filled three plates and four cups with various edibles from the brunch, and we had a highly enjoyable long lunch disturbed only by our third wheel pal, a wasp (which turned out to be many wasps, which we luckily found out only once we’d moved a dirty plate onto a further away table and they all joined together all pally and such).

The quark bun was the quarkiest I’ve ever had (and no spellcheck, do not autocorrect it to ‘quirkiest’), definitely divine, and the sneaky bites I had of Fabio’s brunch were top-notch too.

Time was a-ticking and so we decided to make a move on to the castle. At a leisurely space we walked through the market square and watched a rock band putting together their stuff, wandering if we’d chance a musical sample later on.

Near the castle we saw a cute picture of a teapot on a side street, and were lured in to check it out. It was a café, an adorable one at that, mostly a handicraft shop. We went in and admired, and in a bit were having coffees in the adorable outdoor area after Fabio’d had a long chat about the process of making art with the current exhibition’s artist while I discussed St Petersburg (amongst other things, but good sneaky advertising innit) with the older Finnish man also working there.

It was approaching 5pm, the castle closing time, and we figured that Hämeenlinna is pretty close anyways, the castle could be easily done another day.

We decided to go and look at it from the outside anyways. And as mentioned above – a beautifully exquisite veggie sausage. It was very picturesque, and got even more exciting as we discovered the area on the other side of the military museum – there were cannons and Valmet tractors and all sorts of wonderful wheeled creatures.

Here we also decided to have a picnic of Organic Chocolate Stout (YUM YUM), which we enjoyed with the canons smiling behind us, the sun peeking out from the clouds, the green trains whizzing smoothly past on the opposite side of the waters (river? lake? er), and neon kayaks floating by (never have I heard the phrase “wow those kayaks are bright” before, but indeedos never have I seen kayaks that have shone at me so).

After a highly enjoyable late afternoon picnic we decided to wander back into the centre. And lo and behold, remember the rock band of earlier? They were in full buzz with a decent audience of assumedly rather stodgily drunk but well-behaved Finnish rockers, sitting on benches in band T-shirts, clutching Karhu beers and lonkeros, swaying to the melodious twangs of this real-life rock band from Hämeenlinna, going by the name of Roctum. Roctum’s visiting star was one Kari Aalto (famous from the 2015 Finnish Eurovision candidate Pertti Kurikan nimipäivät, for Finnish fans), who seemed quite drunk yet also having quite a lot of fun. We bopped around to some songs and Kari’s drum solo, and left when Kari disappeared and the language changed to English and everything became a whole lot more down-to-earth.

Finnish towns like to compare themselves to famous cities from abroad. For example Tampere is “the Manchester of Finland” while Lahti is “the Chicago of Finland”. Hämeenlinna however does not content itself with comparing itself to an American town, or even an American state. Oh no, Hämeenlinna’s slogan is, at least according to Roctum: “TEXAS IS THE HÄMEENLINNA OF AMERICA.”

Whatever that means in theory, one knows not. But sounds pretty cool innit, Texas seems to be a cool place to attend a Saturday night rock concert at.

We had dinner at a nearby restaurant called Popino which we’d noted in the afternoon for its nice-looking balconyesque terrace. I was forever grateful for its immediate salad bar (with DIVINE Oregano bread) as I was rather starving, and we had a surreal yet extremely satisfactory experience of sharing an “Archipelago” pizza (toppings: salmon, red onion and pickle) while being phoned about whatsapp hacks. The terrace was dark and we were the only ones there (the inside of the restaurant was buzzing and warm and all, but we opted for the peace and freshish air of the “terrace”) and the figure of a winking Italian chef behind me was quite disconcerting.

Despite all previous plans or early departure, we ended up on the last train back to Helsinki, where I was blotto and woke up at the final station to, trust me, MONSOON RAIN.

We had entered an alternate reality.

BOOM.

x