Helsinki, Finland. This is part of our 2016 trip to the Baltic Countries. Adarsh Mashru is here posing next to a portrait of Bjorn Wahlroos, the chairman of Sampo Group. Wahlroos is a rather flamboyant businessman whom some have called the “Donald Trump of the Baltics”. Sampo owned pieces of several financial businesses. We met with his staff, not him. He’s probably more like the Warren Buffet of the Baltics in that he is a collector of various companies.
When we got to Finland on the plane from Stockholm, we went to the condominium that we were renting through Airbnb. I took a nap, and when I woke up Adarsh had slipped out. After a couple of hours, I got a call from him in which he sounded mildly distressed. He had ended up at a “Russian vodka bar” where he said the barmaid didn’t understand the notion of fixing a “light” drink. I knew I had better go find him quickly. With his vague directions and perhaps Google I was able to locate the place.
The decor was 1960s behind the iron curtain mod. The music was being played on a 33 rpm record player at what sounded like half speed. There was a buxom barmaid plying my boy with vodka. I knew we had to put an end to that, so it was decided to go eat. We had heard about a restaurant called Lappi. We set out and found it. It was basically a log cabin with interior walls of logs. We got seated. And we ordered reindeer.
The reindeer was excellent. The next day we went to see another company called Metso, a mining equipment company. They had an interesting business but not something we wanted to buy.
At one point we were walking along a rather crowded street when a young couple dressed in Goth like outfits were strutting down the street and an old man was yelling at them in garbled Finnish. Something about that struck Adarsh as hilarious. His laughing caused me to laugh and we were walking down this main street in Helsinki bent over with laughter as the Finns viewed us with mild interest.
Most of Helsinki is drab. My guess is that for years they lived in the shadow of the Soviet bear and they kept it that way to avoid an all out invasion. We came around a corner and saw the sign Marimekko, and inside a very drab building was one of the most amazing splashes of color we had seen. Marimekko is a Finland based interior design store known for its bright color schemes. It lived up to its billing.
Having done what we went there to do, we returned to Stockholm, then Dublin, then New York, then Lexington. It was a wonderful trip.