Oulu, an introduction

What do you know of Oulu?

The extent of my knowledge before going there:

1. There is a special monument there of a fat policeman called the Toripolliisi.
2. The Finnish Eurovision band Blind Channel are from there.
3. It’s in the north of Finland.
4. It has a beautiful famous island called Hailuoto nearby which must be visited.

Further knowledge I gained about the abovementioned during our trip:

1. The Toripolliisi is indeed magnificent.
2. Blind Channel is indeed a reason to go there, even though Joel didn’t reply to my Instagram message about what he recommend we do in Oulu.    
3. Well it actually ISN’T in the north of Finland, it’s exactly in the middle innit. As a #southerner it’s so easy to forget the vast distances between ‘northern’ places like Oulu, Rovaniemi and Inari. Essentially Oulu is the waist of Finland, though maybe there is a reason this phrase has not found its way into the Oulu tourism marketing leaflets.
4. I’m sure Hailuoto is indeed beautiful but because we failed to take into account that there may only be one bus on a Sunday and that one leaves Oulu after 4pm (meaning if we wanted to come back to Oulu on the same day, we’d have a grand total of fifteen minutes on the island), we didn’t go after all. (The logic behind this still baffles me, if anyone has any theories about this, do share.)

So, hereby I shall tell you about the Oulu trip my friend Fabio and I embarked on earlier this month, in three parts.

We left on Friday on the 5.05am train. A tad early yes, but the sunrise and train were pretty pretty. We arrived in Oulu at 11.44, so it was a journey of continuous confused checking the time and realising it was only 6am/7am/8am/ etc.

We’d booked an Airbnb. It was a last minute debate between decent flat and privacy, or an adventure with an eccentric-seeming older man, L, in a house that seemed covered in Marilyn Monroes. The reviews on Airbnb were all positive, claiming a ‘unique experience’.

L said he’d pick us up from the station. It was a nice tho sort-of-unnecessary politeness, as he lived RIGHT in the centre – it wasn’t as if his place or the station were out of town. We accepted happily though, expecting a nice walk home getting to know him.

It was nice and we went home and got to know our new host, but indeedos it wasn’t a walk, but a ride in his very cool CONVERTIBLE. We took the long way home, as he showed us some of the sights of Oulu, both in the centre and a bit further away. I didn’t take many pictures as I was trying to make polite, exhausted and intellectual chit-chat, but here you get the vibe. Definitely a memorable, pretty epic way to start our sejour.

L was very talkative, as we had assumed from his long, detailed bio on Air bnb, stating still probably only a fraction of his life experiences. Brief resume: After school, he’s played the drums with various famous (and less famous) bands for decades, concerts and events and cruises around West Africa. He’s worked on radio and reported some very dramatic events. He’s worked in the Finnish parliament and is active in local politics – during the last election he covered his entire lounge window, facing the market square, with an election ad. There is a man in Oulu who has his face tattooed on his thigh (this one we found out not from him, but through google after our trip, maybe he’s less proud of this one).

And his place looked like it did in the pictures – plastered in Marilyns (we decided to bet on how many there were – I said 45, Fabio said 23, on the final count it was 113, so I got a free dinner), with a few Elvises and other musicians on the side. An utterly unique place in many ways. And perfect location, as this is the view of the central square you see from his balcony.

The first afternoon was pretty, a tad comatose from an early start – and hot. Finland is experiencing a record-breakingly hot summer, which has its pros but yes its cons as well, especially in a town where the sun basically never disappears.

We had lunch at one of the food stalls at the market square – here is one of the MOST PERFECT quiches I have eaten in my life.

Then we wandered around nearby areas, mostly at Fabio’s lead as I was quite dazed by the sunshine. The famed Toripolliisi was nearly literally at our front door, and we wandered the stalls, stopping for a while at the place called ‘Elba’, a little island with a laituri and a cute green new friend.

The sunshine was SIZZLING, and I think this picture shows it pretty well.

It was a chill day (describing our activity levels, not the weather, just to be clear), and possibly the highlight of it for me was eating at one of the restaurants at the market square, a Bangladeshi place called Fuchka. Sure, I didn’t come to Oulu with the intention of eating Bangladeshi food but because

a. it looked good

b. the earlier waiter girl was very friendly when she explained options to us

c. we have a good friend from Bangladesh who studied in Oulu,

we went in.

We enjoyed the mango lassi (perfection, a sort of legit mango milkshake) and a selection of fuchka – mine were veggie and Fabio’s were beef. We weren’t quite sure how to eat them, but since they were served with pitiful plastic teaspoons, I figured to eat with my hands, dipping the fuchka in the two dips we had. YUM.

After dinner, we wandered about our area in the glorious eternal #goldenmoment, half-heartedly tried to see if there was room in any of the terraces (naahp), and then went back home to enjoy the non-existent breeze and glasses of cold water on our beautiful balcony.

Early start, early night.