Helsinki: Coffee, baseball and now a summit
Trump and Putin plan to meet in Finnish capital, but here, joe is king
Helsinki, Finland’s capital, where President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin plan a July 16 summit, is well acquainted with and known for hosting superpower summits.
Less known in the caffeine-slurping city of jangled nerves are the orange coffee tents that occupy Market Square along the harbor, and one in particular known for serving a number of U.S. presidents.
When I visited for a week on a cold and breezy April day in 2016, someone told me to seek out the tents, which also serve food and thankfully have heaters. I had arrived the day before, crossing the Gulf of Finland by ship from Tallinn, Estonia.
People here say the Finns drink more coffee than anyone else in the world, and jangled nerves be damned, they’re going to prove it. Some say the locals consume over 26 pounds per person per year, and while there seems to be no particular reason for this phenomenon, two local ladies told me over coffee, of course, that in the Nordic noir TV programs and crime book culture endemic to these wintertime, sun-deprived places, everything is done over a cup of java.
I grabbed a cup with a delicious butter bun at a Rkioski convenience store a block from where I was staying, and the cashier gave me a coupon for a free coffee. She told me the chain was engaged in competition with its Swedish counterparts to see which country could drink more in a month. Sufficiently caffeinated, I headed for Market Square.
The coffee tents, which number a few in winter and spring, can increase to 15 or so in the summer, I’m told.
I sought out Mika (Mike) Purhonen’s Toripojat tent and introduced myself. Mike has owned the coffee tent for 16 years, but it has been there for 60.
He proudly counted up, from a wall photo display, when I asked how many U.S. presidents had gotten buzzed there. They ranged from LBJ to a perplexed-looking George W. Bush. Purhonen guesstimated 15 presidents.
“Do you want me to include vice presidents? … What about kings, what about queens?” Past patrons also included “Billy Graham, some prime ministers and one Nobel Prize winner,” Purhonen said.
A previous Finnish president used to come for morning coffee and eat meat pies and doughnuts, and that’s how the place got its heads-of-state cachet. “Actually he [the prime minister] owes me one coffee and doughnut, but he died about 20 years ago and we are waiting [for payment],” Purhonen said. It doesn’t hurt that the coffee brand he serves is named President.
Why do Finns love their java so much? “I don’t know,” Purhonen said. “Because during World War II there was a lack of coffee and we drank some type of substitution.” Now, with the real deal, the coffee floodgates are open.
Finland, a Nordic country of 5.5 million people, has an 830-mile border with Russia and a tangled history of trying to coexist with its giant neighbor, which includes several wars, including two separate conflicts fought during World War II. It has a lengthy tradition of hosting U.S.-Russian summits, including in 1975 when President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Helsinki Accords, an agreement on human rights and security.
Helsinki is a welcoming place in this large, forested country, which has 315 islands that comprise the Helsinki archipelago. I visited the island of Suomenlinna, which contains a curious vestige of a past Finnish-Russian conflict. The 20-man submarine Vesikko is now a museum, but it prowled the waters of the Gulf of Finland during World War II and sunk a Soviet merchant ship. The Paris Peace Treaty banned Finland from having subs, and the vessel became a museum in 1973.
There’s a lot to see outside the city. Armed with a map, I took the No. 4 Tram until it stopped, intent on finding a renown landmark, but the tram operator told me I had gone too far. She said wait six minutes and she would be going back. She nicely called me to the front as she operated the tram and gave me directions when we stopped.
It started raining as I headed south through woodland paths to find a little cafe called Regatta, recommended for cinnamon buns. The narrow path opened up onto, of all things, a playing field where young kids were being coached in the finer points of America’s pastime.
Players were taking infield practice. Their coach, when asked by a woman hitting grounders to the infield who I was, said “Yankee.” No, “I’m a Giants fan,” I protested.
I continued, emerging along a bay. A building in the distance next to a marina said Regatta. The restaurant was in a little red hut so small you have to go outside to change your mind. But it was packed with coffee drinkers, of course, snacking on the signature buns. Outside a fire roared as patrons sat on wooden benches warming their buns on reindeer skins. Drink as much coffee as you like, the server told me, but one cup was enough. I think, based on my consumption alone, Finland had taken the lead over Sweden.
So if Putin and Trump wish to collude over coffee and discuss the 2018 midterms, they might go see Mike Purhonen at his tent on the waterfront and maybe add their photos to the wall of fame.