Scandinavia - Welfare does work

Heij Heij punters,

The next stop on our travels was Finland, being our first county within Scandinavia.

We caught the 'Tallink' Ferry from Tallin to Helsinki which took about 3.5 hours and was very smooth. The ferry itself was more like a cruise ship. It supported about 9 floors including a duty free shop, bars, restaurants and even pokie machines for the losers amongst us!!

We arrived in Helsinki at about 3 in the afternoon, walked through a fairly clean and tidy city centre to the Hostel which was located on the 6th floor of a relatively modern building.

Helsinki was my first taste of a democratic socialism. This is where the government owns and runs allot of the services and infrastructure and charges a relatively high tax rate in return for free education, free health care and high levels of welfare and good working conditions for all. And guess what...... it actually works. This was evidenced in the first few days of touring around the city where I noticed that there was a very little crime and a low police presence and only 1 or 2 bums , who didn't really look that poor anyway.

Of the 3 evenings we were there, we went to the Aussie Bar for 2 nights which was great. They only had Tooheys Extra Dry and Hahn Ice. It was nice to have an Aussie Beer again. The funny thing was that as the Finish people are quite fond of us Aussies, most of the people at the Aussie bar were Finish students which made for good nights full of chat and laughs. We sampled some of the irregular Finish drinks like Fishu which is like Fishermans Friend in a strong shot.

Anyway.... another bonus from the Finish Government was the free city bikes for all to use. There were 15 different bike stations around the city of which one could take a bike from and return it to another. I rode around the city and surrounding islands for about 4 hours one day. To be honest a lot of tourists used the bikes and I think they were coloured in such a way so the locals knew who you were.

Next stop Sweden.