I was last in Helsinki eight and a half years ago – and then only for a single evening – and things have changed a little since then. First, there’s now a nice easy train between the airport and the city centre. Second, there’s a floating geothermal pool in the harbour. Did I hear the words “geothermal” and “pool” and immediately put it on my to-do list? Of course I did! It’s called Allas Sea Pool and it’s actually three pools. There’s the geothermal one, there’s a shallow play pool for kids and there’s an actual sea pool, filled with Baltic seawater.
It looks amazing. Next to it is a kind of wooden ziggurat which is layer after layer of cafe, restaurant and roof terrace so you can go up and look at the pool and take the photos you’re not allowed to take in the water. Round the back of the ziggurat is the shop, where you buy your ticket and then you go round the other side and walk down a wooden gangway. Scan your wristband at the turnstile and you’re in.
Now, wristbands are valid for three hours. They control the turnstile and they also control your locker. Pick a bottom locker. These are the kind that are long and thin with a square bit either at the top or bottom so they interlace and at 5’5″, I found it very difficult to hold the back of my wrist up against the lock at the top. I know my mum wouldn’t be able to reach and neither would she be able to bend down to get at the lower ones, which are six inches off the ground. And it’s a bracelet with a one-way slider fitted to you by the staff so you can’t take it off and hand it to a taller, shorter or more flexible bathing-mate to open your locker for you. When you leave, there’s a pair of scissors hanging from the turnstile by a chain so you can cut the wristband off but I kept it and agonisingly slid it off when I got back to the apartment.
During the week, a three-hour bracelet is currently 18 euros – I’m on my tablet keyboard and can I convince it to display the Euro symbol that I can see on the 4 key? Nope! I’ll correct it when I get home. Anyway, €18 during the week. After 2pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, that rises to €22 which I guess is peak time. I thought I’d go along for a nice relaxing evening swim after a really long day which began at 2am only to be told at 7pm that it’s full and they can only offer tickets for 7:45. Pool closes at 9pm, by which they mean that they lock the gate at 9pm on the dot. Pool actually closes at 8:40 so they can do that. I’d deliberately taken the tram all the way down to the waterfront so I handed over €22 for an hour in the water but it’s definitely better value when it’s not a weekend evening shortly before closing.
Having 45 minutes to kill, I went up to the roof terrace to admire the pool under the low evening sun, only to find… that’s not what I would call full. No one in the sea pool. No one in the kids’ pool. I can make out eight or ten people in the geothermal pool, which is part-hidden behind the lifeguard building. I’ve had baths in my own house which are more crowded than this! I went back to the shop at 7:40 to swap my receipt for a wristband only to get the ultra-Finnish “it’s still a couple more minutes'”. Dude, I’ve just paid 22 euros for an hour in the water. Give me those couple of extra minutes! I’ve got to get the wristband, walk round the building and get changed! No? No, we’re going to stand there and wait until the absolute letter of the law has passed.
So that wasn’t a great introduction to the pool. Expensive, very short session and extreme pettiness over the clock.
The trouble is, really, that there isn’t enough changing space by half. The lockers are incredibly narrow and everyone getting changed before and after were standing on each other and having to politely, Finnishly, push each other out of the way to get at lockers and clothes. Besides, some of the people must have been in the saunas, which are hiding away in the wooden changing huts. I don’t blame them. I had grand ambitions to at least put my feet in the sea pool but it was evening, it was chilly and I realised my body and mind were screaming at the mere thought of it. I scurried to the kids’ pool.
It was cold. Well, it was lukewarm. It certainly wasn’t warm enough for someone who’s just scurried across a floating deck in the Baltic of an evening. Nope. Nope. Kids’ pools are usually warm. What on Earth was the geothermal pool going to be like?
Actually, that one was tolerable. Iceland can teach Finland a lot about geothermal hot water, including a more accurate definition of “hot” but it was tolerable and I did quite enjoy drifting back and forth under a bright low evening sun for a while. If it was just a couple of degrees warmer! It feels like a hot bath after you’ve scurried from the disappointingly-cold kids’ pool but it’s certainly no geothermal spa.
It’s also at the far end of the deck so when you realise you’re cold and you’re going to get even colder climbing out of the warmish water, you’ve got a long run back to the changing rooms and saunas to warm up. The sauna, at least, didn’t disappoint. Ok, it only seats 8 but it warmed me up very quickly and very effectively and it has views across the harbour. I’m beginning to develop a tolerance for saunas. I used to find them suffocatingly hot very quickly but I enjoyed feeling my frozen outsides and insides thawing out, warming up and then getting a bit too hot as my enthusiastic sauna-mates kept ladling water over the stones. There’s my feet, I can feel them again. Oh, the inside of my mouth is really cold but my lungs aren’t anymore.
As I began to feel hot rather than merely re-warmed, I began to feel a bit like I was moving. I was pretty sure that wasn’t just me. It’s not just too-hot, too-dehydrated, too-tired dizziness. Anyway, it wasn’t spinning. It felt a bit odd and then I realised. This is all set on a floating dock. It’s floating. It’s not anchored to the seabed. I felt like I was moving because I was moving. The entire structure was moving. Not enough to knock anyone off their feet, just enough that if you’re sitting still staring at a barrel of steaming rocks, you begin to feel the motion. Upright, in a cool shower, and then a hot one, and when I was getting changed, I couldn’t feel it again. Forgot it was moving at all.
So, overall, a bit of a disappointment. As I write, it’s 10pm on Saturday night, eight or so hours after I touched down in Finland so I might go again on a weekday, during the day, and see if it’s any warmer and if it feels more like value for money. But one thing I did feel as I walked back to the tram stop – I did feel kind of good. Kind of refreshed, soft skin, cleaner inside (and that was needed, because for the second time in two trips, I brought back some kind of hell-bug as a souvenir of Paris). My plan for tomorrow is the big fancy tourist sauna so in 24 hours I’ll be lying on this bed writing that and deciding whether or not I feel like I’m having the “holistic, healing” break of my dreams.