Fortunately, Jen and I have similar tastes in music. Actually, we seem to have similar tastes in lots of things. One slight difference though is Duran Duran. They were one of Jen’s childhood bands whereas I’ve always seen them as talentless tossers. However, Jen accompanies me to plenty of events where her focus is on knitting rather than whatever I’m interested in and so when I saw that Duran Duran were touring Europe, I booked us tickets for Tampere and Copenhagen.
First stop on the way to Tampere was two nights in Helsinki. It’s somewhere that I visited back in 2009 with Paul for a Hanoi Rocks gig on their farewell tour. In the battle of the bands, I’d say the Finns beat the Brummies hands-down.
Our apartment was only a few minute’s walk from where I’d stayed the previous time, but I remembered nothing of the area. On that first trip Paul and I did some salmon fishing, popped into a castle and drank in what I recall as being old bloke pubs.
This time Jen and I wandered along to the harbour. There were plenty of food stalls, most of which sold reindeer meatballs or salmon soup. It’s probably like every restaurant in Teesside sticking a parmo on the menu. We had neither, as we ended up eating in a Georgian establishment, so it was mince dumplings and some fried potatoes. That’s a win.
As you might have expected, I scheduled in some football. Finland is somewhere that I’d yet to see a game, so the visit would take the total countries where I’d watched a match to sixty-four.
We caught a train from Helsinki station that took us four stops and twenty minutes north to the suburbs. Everyone was very helpful, something that I now associate with Finns, and we arrived at the Mustapekka Arena with around twenty minutes in hand. It’s a ground with just a 2,600 capacity, which struck me as being on the small side for a top-tier fixture.
I’d bought tickets in advance that morning at twenty-two euros a pop. It was as well I did as there were very few empty seats. We were in what appeared to be a temporary stand made of scaffolding, whilst there was a more permanent structure on the other side of the pitch. A few people stood behind each goal and watched through netting.
There were beer and burgers for sale and an old bloke manning a barbecue. I got a hot dog at half time which came without a bun. That’s ok on the basis that the hot dog is the best bit. I’d have been less impressed if it had just been a dogless bun.
And the match? Well, not very much happened at all, at least for the first eighty-seven minutes. Visitors Ilves had most of the territorial advantage with the Gnistan goalie keeping his side in the game by making some decent stops. The home side couldn’t hold out though and to a collective FFS from the crowd, Ilves nicked a goal three minutes from the end. They sealed the win with a second goal in added time.
Tags: Duran Duran, Helsinki, Reindeer Soup, Talentless tossers
Trail of the Lion King 
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