Finally made it home. The pictures of Helsinki are up on my picture pages .

Now I'm off to send a few days in the desert at the Oregon Star Party . I'll see the close Mars through a good telescope tonight. Back Sunday.

Most of the day proper was spent inside a building. But, at the end of the day, we all set off for our "social gathering" which was dinner in the old customs house.

I took the tram (electric trolly) down to the market area and walked through downtown Helsinki to our dinner. The street musicians were just setting up. The three I ran across were a pan-pipe musician, a pair of ladies with a cello and violin and a tall fellow who was an operatic tenor. Beats a guitar or saxaphone.

Our dinner started at 8pm and included what was essentially a drinking game that had external facilitators organizing the activity. We broke up into teams and we each had to identify several containers of liquids (alcoholic, fruit juices and pop) and then make a punch out of them. We then had to make up a story around the punch and then present the skit/song/poem/... to the rest of the group. My rap performance took first prize. LOL.

Well, I didn't get out of the party until midnight. I didn't know it was that late and it took me a while to realize that my tram wasn't running any more that night. So I walked back to the hotel across Helsinki. It's not like I was alone either. The bars and pubs were still hopping and people were walking on the streets. I didn't get into bed until 2am.

Tomorrow I'll do some sight seeing and take pictures. Blog you then.

My meetings are done so I spent today on a walking tour of the town of Helsinki. The Tourist Bureau has a brochure of paths around the city and descriptions of what you'll see along the way. Being and engineer, I, of course, came up with a better route that combined two of their paths. :-)

Most of the streets and sidewalks are made from granite cobblestones. This is none of that bricks on sand stuff they do in the States. There must be granite under the granite because the cobbles stand up to trucks, busses and cars on the busyist streets. Granite is everywhere here. It sticks up out of the ground between building. It is used for street curbs, building fronts and garden accents.

Everyone has a cell phone. Walking down the street you bump into business men, housewives, kids all answering, talking, texting or playing on their cell phones.

This is a very civilized and safe city. Women are walking home late at night and the city bus drivers carry money and make change. There are bad guys somewhere (people live here, after all) but much of the protections from criminal activity that I see in the States, isn't done here.

My walk took me through the embassy district (on a hill overlooking the bay). The American Embassy is a compound even here in far off Helsinki. Cut granite blocks toped with tastefully green painted iron fence does not take one's eye off the large security center or the local plice van parked outside. The French, British, Estonian, etc embassies are not similarily protected.

The sidewalks are wide throughout the city with a line down the middle making a lane for walkers and a lane for bicycles.

Well, time to start packing -- I'm off to the airport early in the morning.

Helsinki is externally a drab town, in my estimation. But I think that's because it enjoys such cold weather most of the year. The outsides tend to be simple concrete but time and detail is given to the insides of the buildings. My hotel room has 4 pane windows which gives you some idea of how the weather must be the rest of the year.

The temperature is just right by my measure -- 60's with overcast -- but it's a little humid which makes it seem warm. That, matched with the fact that the hotel room does not have air conditioning and the bedding is designed for frigid weather, makes it seem warm and unconfortable for this west coaster.

The people of Helsinki are very friendly but reserved. I first noticed the latter when I entered the airport from the plane -- despite there being many people, the airport seemed hushed. If you ask a question, they will help you with a smile but they don't meet your eye on the street and they don't greet strangers walking by with a smile. These must be relatives to the reserved Norwegians Garrison Keeler is always talking about.

The northern Europeans know how to do bathrooms and bathroom fixtures. The hotel room is small by American standards, but the bathroom and fixtures are well ahead of even some of the upscale hotels I've been in. Marble and functional fixtures.

The Luftanza flight to Helsinki was long. Or at least it seems that way since I haven't had much sleep the last 24 hours. We were served a light meal of cheese, pasta and meat. Very good. But the most interesting points (as least to an American) is that they actually served the meal with metal utensils - yes, an actual metal fork and knife. You'll not find that anywhere in America.

Helsinki is the place to go for conferences. Well, all of Europe seems to be -- I even met someone I knew who was going to SIGCOMM . The lady I sat next to on the flight to Helsinki was going to a geophysics conference and there is the look of amny of the people on this plane -- there are a lot of English as first language people on this plane.