Another angle, redux

Following on from my “other angle” of the Edinburgh airport tower, here is the Tampere station clock from another angle, namely the 6th floor of the Holiday Inn, where we are staying tonight. Another super bitter sweet day. A (late-running) train up from Helsinki (that’s actually rather common, especially in winter), a cold wintery day with a bit of blue sky in between, a meeting with colleagues, and then drinks (in Moro, affording the usual great views over the station) and dinner in the Lapland Hotel.

We’ve cleared out the stuff from my office, and Mr A schlepped what we want to keep back to the hotel (mainly cold weather gear…). Almost everything is ready to go, although we will stay here most of the day tomorrow, as our flight is back on Wednesday (waiting for the direct flight to Edinburgh). Hopefully the rules on self-isolation won’t have changed again by that stage…

One of the things that is ironically quite nice about revisiting Tampere this time, is that it is properly wintery cold, with -10c and quite a dusting of snow (and an epic amount of grit) on the ground. Usually, November is not much colder than the UK. It certainly wasn’t when we were in Helsinki in November 2017. November was just unremittingly grim (and so was all of December, so far as we were in Helsinki), whereas with a little bit of white on the ground in most of Finland north of Helsinki, and nice crisp coldness, it feels more like January than it does like November. It can be a bit treacherous underfoot, but otherwise it is a lot better than this, which represents a typical November 2017 day.

Anyway, it was lovely to see Tampere and my colleagues again. They were very kind and gave all of us who are leaving on 31 December a small memento, which may figure later (I already sent a picture of it to hazelh as it is a representation of one her favourite subjects). And the food was excellent (see extra). Expensive, but excellent. That’s a reindeer burger, not an ordinary burger, by the way. In sum, it’s been a really good day, and well worth the effort of getting here, and worth the hassle that getting home is undoubtedly going to involve.