Finland: From Russian Empire To The World’s Happiest Country | Bicycles, Housing, Renewable Energy

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Finland – a country that has everything you can think of! From modern cycling lanes to a great public transport system. From newly-constructed apartments to beautiful historic buildings. From rain to snow (all in the same day, of course). What’s more? A comprehensive welfare system that makes everyone super happy! Doesn’t that sound amazing? But will it all stay the same or will the global warming turn the sparkly snow drifts into dirt? Watch my new video to find out!

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#finland #winter #snow

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Hello! My name is Ilya, I am a Russian journalist and founder of various urban beautification projects in Moscow and around Russia. There is nothing in the world that I love more than traveling. On this channel, I will do my best to give you an objective overview of life in different parts of the globe. Subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss my new videos!

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Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to Finland!
01:56 How does Helsinki cope with snow?
05:24 The magic doors
07:36 Icicle hunt: why is it so clean?
11:21 The Russian trail
16:58 Immigrants in Espoo: bomb shelters, cost of living and more
20:53 Room tour: sauna in a flat?!
21:39 Why are Finns so happy?
24:26 Public transport: an underground maze
34:35 Safety first!
36:05 How to live without a car?
37:03 We all need this!
41:45 How does global warming affect winter?
46:07 Reconstruction of the ports and new apartments
52:43 Recycling wonder and renewable energy
1:00:00 Cycling in the snow
1:04:29 Is this Finland’s Grand Central Station?
1:07:29 The post office: infrastructure we all dream of
1:09:43 Is this an entrance hall or a historical spot?
1:17:50 The perfect place away from the cold
1:27:15 Oulu: cycling lanes paradise
1:29:41 Sci-tech capital and its future

– You walk around St. Petersburg looking at all these icicles, then you see these constantly shaking tiles in Moscow, everything’s covered in dirt and mud. But then you come to Finland an realise: the standard of living can be much better. Finland is Russia’s northern neighbour. It’s only a few kilometres away from

Murmansk and Leningrad Regions and Republic of Karelia. But it seems that in terms of development these two countries aren’t just separated by border crossing checkpoints but a huge decades-long gap. – He pats me on the shoulder, saying “Russians are great but Putin is terrible!”

– Finnish government aims for economic equality of its citizens and preserves landmarks. This building is probably 30-40 years old but it looks as if it’s only just been built. You can use it as a set for a movie about those time without changing anything,

In the winter, people ride their bicycles along the cleared streets and the powder-white snow. Look at this, it’s amazing! It’s a cold winter morning and there’s a busy bicycle traffic on the way to a Finnish school. And ice blocks don’t fall on people from the roofs.

There aren’t any icicle on any of the roofs but you can see the heating wires everywhere. I came to Finland to show you what a proper winter looks like and tell you about how Russia’s ex-region became the happiest country in the world.

I want to find out how they managed to lay tiles so straight in such a climate. But before we begin, I’d like to make a disclaimer: the video was shot before the Ukrainian crisis. The video may seem too carefree and positive right now,

But I hope it helps you take your mind off the problems in these hard times. Please like this video and subscribe to my channel! And don’t forget to share this video on Reddit and send it to your friends via WhatsApp. – Hi everyone! We’re in Finland! I didn’t just come here for nothing!

Each year Russia faces dozens of problems due to the cold season: icicles, ice build-up on roads, dirt. People struggle to walk across the pavements as they’re not getting cleaned properly or, on the contrary, they’re being covered with road salt that ruins your shoes. I haven’t even started talking about

The poor pets who are getting hurt. People are slipping and breaking their legs. It sounds like a horror story but it’s true. When we talk about the Russian winter, officials usually explain that nothing can be done, it’s winter, you just have to be patient.

And so I wondered, how do the Finns deal with winter? I’m currently in Helsinki that is some 300 kilometers away from St. Petersburg. The two cities are similar. They’re both on the shore of the Baltic Sea. The climate is almost the same. In Helsinki there’s even more precipitation.

It’s quite funny actually. In Russia they blame everything on winter. Whatever suggestion you make, the response is always, “no, this isn’t possible, we have winter for 9 months. We can’t build proper public spaces, we can’t build cycle lanes. we can’t do anything because the winter is long and cold.”

So, we’ll explore Finland and will try to find out how the Finns deal with the winter. Is it really a factor that’s not possible to overcome? Finland’s capital treats snowfall and ice build-up much more responsibly than Russia’s St. Petersburg. And the authorities do not claim

That poor janitorial services are criticised only by people who got paid for it. Helsinki’s authorities prefer to take action instead of talking. I’m going to show you how the city functions during the winter. Note that I’m walking down a completely clean street. It’s some kind of magic.

There’s no snow, no icicles, no ice build-up, no drifts, no salt and granite chips, which are usually sprinkled on the streets. What is the secret? The thing is that several central streets of Helsinki are heated from underneath. The snow falls down on the streets, it immediately melts and goes into the rain drain.

And these central streets are always, in any weather, in any winter, in any frost, absolutely clean. It’s pleasant and comfortable to walk along them. It seems like a simple solution, but for some reason it’s almost never used in Russia.

In Moscow we have a small heated area near the Manege, where the entrance to the Kremlin is. But apart from that there don’t seem to be any other heated streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg. At least I haven’t seen any of them. By the way, the heating system here is regulated by computers.

The temperature, depending on the weather, is set to make this magic heating as cheap as possible. And, in fact, it doesn’t cost that much. In general, when we talk about the proper streets management, we have to take into account that

The injuries people suffer, for example, by slipping on icy sidewalks are also a cost. It’s comes as an expense for the healthcare system. Not to mention the damage to health, people simply stop working if they’re injured. In Russia, these costs and expenses are usually not taken into account,

So they don’t spend as much on cleaning. And you simply cannot do it. Look how clean the street is. Here’s the border with the street, which isn’t heated. Now let me show you my favourite architectural feature in Finland. Finns keep all the original doors. Here, you can’t just break down doors,

Break down shop windows, and put in some plastic, metal garbage in instead. Especially when it comes to historic buildings, architectural monuments. There’s a cool art nouveau building behind me. I think it’s about 100 years old. Let’s see what the doors look like. There are different shops here.

Traditionally, the tenants rent the ground floor. That said, none of the tenants have changed the front door. Here’s a store, called Lindroos selling some jewellery. As we can see, they kept the original door. Next we have another jewellery shop. Here, even though they don’t need the door, it’s still there.

They just use it as a shopfront window in that door and put watches on display. But they kept the locks, the little enamel plaque, the door handle. So the whole door is preserved in its original form. Moving forwards and again the door

And everything else is in place. Next we have the Polo shop. They covered the window with their advertising banners, but the door and handle are all in place. The doors on the front are of a different design, but again, they’re all original doors. There’s even a “Helsinki” sign hanging here.

It’s probably the manufacturer of this handle and grille. Here’s an amazing example! It’s a wonderful door. Look at this beauty! All the shops, no matter how fancy they are, but the doors and handles are all authentic. Of course, I’m not even talking about the front doors.

Obviously, everything’s in perfect condition. You just walk around and admire it. I walk around, looking at the centre of Helsinki and trying to find a single icicle. So far I haven’t been able to. The roofs here are completely clean. Not a single icicle.

And you can also notice that the rainwater downpipes go underground. It’s heated from above, heated from below there are no icicles and no problems. When you walk in St. Petersburg or Moscow, you constantly look up so that you don’t get killed by an icicle.

When you walk in Helsinki you quickly relax, as you don’t need to look up all of the time. I spent half a day walking around the Finnish capital and I haven’t seen a single icicle, not even a small one. How they do it is a big, big secret.

In fact, there’s no secret – they just use heating. It’s simple, guys. You heat up the downpipes, you heat up the roof and that’s it, the icicles just don’t form. If it snows, everything just melts and goes down the drain. Nothing falls on people’s heads. And again, it’s a relatively cheap solution.

Russian authorities usually say that it costs millions. That there’s no money for it. All of the money is spent on rockets that will destroy the whole world sooner or later. Actually, it’s not that expensive. Once again, these methods are quite old,

It’s not some sort of a new innovation, it’s just basic cheap heating, that allows to get rid of icicles and solve the problem associated with then. And I think the fundamental difference between the Finnish and Russian approach to winter is the cost of human life. Finns believe that human life is priceless

And no one in the city should get hurt, die from falling icicles or experience any discomfort. In Russia, as we know, human life is worthless and if an icicle falls on your head, if you slip and break your leg, you will certainly not receive any compensation.

At most the authorities will say, well, it’s just bad luck.” But in Finland everybody is lucky. There aren’t many heated streets in Finland. Most of them are just sprinkled with granite chips when it gets icy. The first thing that catches my eye is that I am walking on a pavement

That is completely icy, but I can walk on it without being afraid. Why? Because it’s all covered in these granite chips. In Finland they don’t use those chemicals that are dangerous for the soil, animals and shoes; instead, the environmentally friendly, recyclable material is used.

When the snowy season is over, the chips are removed from the pavement with a special machine similar to a lawnmower, washed and stored until the next winter, and if they’re no longer suitable for reuse, the granite chips are sent to other industries, such as construction materials or to build roads.

In Finland, the city authorities are only responsible for cleaning the main streets; the rest of the roads, pavements and courtyards are the responsibility of the residents and owners of the nearby buildings. People either clean everything themselves or hire private companies to do so.

The companies may also work differently, which is why there are some striking contrasts in the way they clean everything on one street, while the neighboring one is a snowy and icy mess. The snow is usually removed at night, so the machines don’t disturb people and cars.

They probably don’t clean the streets as precisely as, for example, in the centre of Moscow when they remove all the snow. You can see that they don’t clean the car parks very well, and this is most likely due to the fact that as you can see, here,

There are some cars that have been parked here for quite a long time. I was walking through the main streets of Helsinki and came to the largest Orthodox cathedral in Scandinavia – the Greek Orthodox Church is the second most popular religion in Finland, after Lutheranism, which is practiced by more than 3,700,000 Finns.

According to figures from Statistics Finland more than 60 000 of Finnish citizens consider themselves Christian Orthodox. The Uspenski Cathedral was built in Helsinki in the second half of the 19th century, when Finland was already a part of Russian Empire. The former Swedish duchy was annexed to Russia after the Russian-Swedish war in 1809.

Finland’s status in the Empire was relatively loyal. There was no forced russification, Swedish and Finnish were considered the official languages. Russia didn’t meddle in Finland’s affairs, so Finland had its own governing bodies, which included just Finns themselves, as well as an army and a customs office.

The Russian Emperor had retained the Finnish constitution after Russia annexed the new territory. That’s even though in Russia itself the constitution didn’t even exist at that time. 3 years after Russia’s accession, Alexander I decided that the capital city of Finland would be moved to Helsingfors,

One of the largest cities of the autonomy, that we all know today as Helsinki. Since then, the Russian authorities have undertaken massive construction in the modest, rather rural town. One of the things they wanted to do was to please

The Orthodox commune that had formed here, which became too large for the old, small church that was here. The church was erected in the impoverished area where poor people and criminals lived. The Uspenski Cathedral stood out among the other buildings in the area so much

That the authorities decided to urgently rebuild everything around the church, so that the surroundings would also look appropriate. Until the 15th century there was no unified state administration in Finland, there were just tribal villages of 3 peoples: Suomi, Karelians and Tavastas.

They had little interaction with each other and were influenced by the Swedes. – In Swedish times, Finland was a kind of a bear’s corner – it was sparsely populated. As part of the Russian Empire, Finland was a so-called Grand Duchy.

Finland’s autonomous rights, in particular, were expressed in the fact that it had its own “valtiopäivät” which is the translation from Swedish “riksdag”. it’s a kind of parliament, a kind of local legislative assembly. – During the Russian revolution, the Finnish self-government seized

The opportunity and declared its independence. A civil war broke out in the new state, the Reds were supported by Soviet Russia and the Whites by Germany and Sweden. The Whites eventually won, so that Finland was no longer dependent on Russia. – After gaining independence, Finland, of course, was able to take advantage of

Those foundations, those achievements, which it had accumulated during the period of autonomy, meaning that state institutions already existed. The relations within the Soviet Union were, understandably, as we know, quite cold. But they were still present nevertheless. Finland was used as a transit territory

In the Soviet Union’s trade with the countries of western Europe, but it is also clear that it had something to gain from that transit. – In 1939 a war broke out between the USSR and Finland over border territories. The Soviets wanted to push the border away from Leningrad and Murmansk

To protect them from invasion from a neighbouring country. Eventually the Soviet Union succeeded. Thereafter, Finland fought against the Soviet Union in World War II and sided with Germany, for which it paid reparations to its neighbours. – Finland, as a neutral country, after the so-called Cold War had already started,

Was able to invest less in its armed forces. There’s also a certain influence of the so-called reparations. Yes, of course, it was burdensome for Finland. But there is another side to it, because the Soviet side was ready to accept part of the reparation not in money,

But in some sort of goods, some industrial produce. This is precisely what contributed to the development of these Finnish industries. Reminders of complicated Finnish-Russian relations can be traced not only in the architecture and historical textbooks, but also in Finnish speech. The Finns sometimes refer to Russian-speaking newcomers in a derogatory manner as “Ryssä”.

In the first half of the 19th century this word was neutral and referred to all of the people from the Russian Empire. However, since Finland gained independence in the 20th century, the civil and the Soviet-Finnish wars, the word “Ryssä” is considered offensive.

Before the war with Ukraine, relations between the two countries had improved. Russians could travel here and vice versa without any strict restrictions. Since 30 September 2022, entry to Finland by Russians with tourist visas has been banned. According to the Finnish Statistics Office, during 2020 there were more than 28,000 Russians living in Finland.

However, in everyday life Russian speakers can still hear the insulting “Ryssä”. During the 2021 World Junior Ice Hockey Championship match between Russia and Finland, a Finnish fan held up a banner with an offensive slogan ‘Ryssä have been overthrown’; the picture was quickly taken down, but the Russophobic incidents were still

Hotly debated on social media. I talked about Helsinki and life in Finland with my Russian immigrant friends who moved here a few years ago. What is this? – This is actually a common thing for Senate Square, because they collect the snow from all around here, pile it up and then take it out.

– St. Petersburg and Helsinki they are very similar in terms of climate. They’re not far away from each other, the temperature is almost the same, they’re both on the shore of the Baltic Sea. – Yes, definitely.

– … in general, they’re quite similar. The question is, where do they clear the snow off the streets better? where is it more comfortable in terms of life during winter? – My friends in St. Petersburg, where I lived for 17 years will be offended but… – It’s more comfortable living here.

– Yes, it’s more comfortable living here. We’ve been living in Finland for 3 years now. I have no complaints about how snow is removed in any of the Finnish cities. When it snows a lot, the first task is to clear the main roads: both driveways and pavements.

Then, when they clear it all, they start to clear pavements, pedestrian crossings and they stack it in these huge piles. They don’t care much about it, they pile up huge mountains of snow, because they’ll have to clean it all up anyway.

– After the walk, we drove to the town of Espoo, where Lev and Angelika have a flat. Espoo is only 20 kilometeres away from Helsinki – it’s the second-largest city in Finland with a population of over 290 thousand people, whereas in Helsinki it’s 656 thousand.

– There are several types of housing – there’s housing provided by the city – that’s the cheapest option. There is state-subsidised housing which is called ARA, which means that the state pays extra money to the compa-nies. Not to us, the tenants, but to these companies, which is why this housing is cheaper

Than the market average. And then there are companies which own houses – for profit, they rent them out and this is the most expensive housing. To rent a flat like this, there’s a wealth limit based on your income.

If you own real estate, if you have a big salary then most likely you won’t be able to rent a flat in this kind of housing. There’s a limit to how much you can earn. – How much do you pay rent for here? – Our flat costs $1050. – $1050?

– A flat like this that isn’t subsidised will cost about $200-300 more. – We’ve seen the courtyard, now let’s have a look at the common room for all tenants. There’s quite a lot of them in Finnish houses by the way and the cost of maintenance

Of such spaces is all included in the rental price. – A lot of children, grannies and so on, hardly anyone rides a bike in the winter, you can see that only a few have studded tyres. – Talking about today’s hot topic, let me just remind you that I shot this video

In February before the hostilities in Ukraine. – So this is also a bomb shelter. Finland is always ready if someone attacks it and all houses always have a bomb shelter. Let’s go and see what it looks like. If something happens, everyone will go here, there’s water, a ventilation system.

Everything that’s stored here will be quickly taken out and people can wait for the attack to end here. You can’t store things on balconies, so there’s a storage space here instead. This is our home. Traditionally, all of the walls are always painted white.

Tis is the children’s room. Standard bathroom. There are no baths, in Finland it will always be a shower. Another important nuance in every flat is the sauna. – How often do you use it? – At least once a week. And if I come home from shooting a video outside

And I’m cold, I can warm up in the sauna. Here’s our bedroom, it’s a little bit bigger. The flats in Finland have these built-in wardrobes. This is the living room and the kitchen. – After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Finland fully supported the anti-Russian sanctions

And said that it was ready to tighten them. In addition, President Sauli Niinistö said that the country could cooperate more closely with the United States on defence issues. There is even speculation that Finland may join NATO in the near future. The country has also frozen Finnish-Russian cooperation between universities and research centres.

However, the local Ministry of Education and Culture noted that anyone can still apply to study or research in Finland, regardless of citizenship. – What about the speeding fines, how tough is it here? – It’s harsh because the fines are progressive, depending on your income.

The more you earn, the more you get fined. – Wow, so the fines for the same offense are different for different people? – Yes. – The biggest fine for speeding in Finland was imposed on the son of a rich businessman in 2004 when he exceeded the speed limit twice and was fined $180,000.

Before that the biggest fine for breaking traffic rules in the country belonged to Nokia’s chief executive – in 2002 he exceeded the speed limit by 25 km and paid $125,000 for it. Since Finland gained its independence, it has successfully coped with all crises

And difficulties and is now considered one of the richest and most developed nations in the world. In 2019, the country was ranked as the 3rd safest country by Global Finance magazine. Finland is ranked 11th in the UN’s 2020 Human Development Report in terms of its standard of living and life expectancy.

And the happiness of its people depends, among other things, on financial equality. In Finland, it is created through strong social support and a narrow income gap between the rich and the poor. It’s the taxes that help to achieve this. they are divided into council and state taxes.

Council taxes depend on the region of residence and are paid in any case, but the state tax rate is set according to the person’s income, i.e. the more a person earns, the more tax they have to pay. If income of a person is less than $20,000 per annum,

They do not have to pay anything into the state budget. It’s the same in kindergartens – if a family is low-income then the child goes to kindergarten for free or for a small fee. In this way, all citizens have the possibility to send their child to a good pre-school.

Let me tell you about the public transport system in Helsinki, too. The most convenient way to get around Helsinki is on the tram. A single ticket costs $2.60, and to save some money there are daily passes that cost $8, a 2-day ticket for $12.50, and a weekly one for $33.50.

The tram here is the main form of public transport, they say their routes run through the most picturesque places in Helsinki, and they themselves are very comfortable, it’s rarely very crowded and they go strictly on schedule. All of the trams are painted in nice green and yellow.

This tram has adverts all over it, don’t take it into account. By the way, they didn’t always look like that. Until the mid-eighties, all of the trams in Helsinki were painted grey-orange. In addition to the current routes, there’s a separate museum line

And a section of road where you can see the tram-pub. The tram system in Helsinki is still growing, with new lines planned up to 2035. Here’s the classic colour palette of the Helsinki tram, a noble green with beige and orange colours. The trams are very beautiful here.

I decided to take the tram to the next point on my route, so here we go. I got to the Kamppi Centre – it’s a large complex in the heart of the Finnish capital, and the place is an example of good space planning.

I’m currently outside and behind me is just a shopping centre with offices and apartment buildings around it. In reality, there are two transfer hubs for buses and coaches, a metro station and a warehouse. What’s more, everything’s underground, so buses line up right here

Under these trees, and people set off for different cities in Finland. In general, when we are talking about combining retail and transportation functions, you have to be very careful, because when you do a shopping complex and give it to businesses,

For example, to build you a free transport hub, businesses will always be tempted to prioritise trade and the hub will be inconvenient for people. Well, let’s see how the Finns have done it. We’re currently on the lower ground level, where people are awaiting boarding. They’re standing here like in an airport,

Near their gates, and you can see that the aisle is quite wide and when passengers are here with their suitcases and stuff, the shops on the left don’t get in their way. Here’s the diagram on which you can see that we’re on the lower ground level,

There’s also the underground level for the metro and there’s another level for buses, so you can imagine how deep down this goes. And the most important thing is that they managed to get rid of a huge transportation hub and it doesn’t ruin

The streets, it doesn’t take up space, so it’s all hidden underground. On the left we have comfortable moving sidewalks, and on the right there’s this absolutely disgusting advertising. Of course, in terms of aesthetics the Finns haven’t done enough, maybe because it’s many years old

And they would have done something nicer now, but there is quite a lot of advertising. And one more disadvantage is that, the shop signs are way too bright. Here, for example, the Subway sign is huge and the metro sign is so tiny that it’s hard to notice.

So, speaking about the priority of navigation, it seems like the transport function should be primary, but here, it is barely visible, and the adverts are everywhere. This is, of course, confusing. Of course, a modern transportation hub can’t exist without shops, without cafes,

Because people need to buy something to eat on the go, but the primary function is still the transportation, and we shouldn’t forget that. Look, I was just following the signs for the underground and I got thrown out onto the street, into cold Finnish wind. It’s a nightmare.

And now I have to enter the underground separately. That is, I had to go outside to find a separate entrance. Everything about the navigation is pretty bad here, as well. There’s this display board that looks rather old. They could’ve gotten round to changing it.

In general it all looks pretty sad. I try to find the underground map, but I don’t see it. I can see an advertisement here, another one there, and a third one here as well. I see a very complicated transport scheme that shows where I am, a map of the area,

But, I don’t see the underground map. That’s what the ticket vending machines look like, by the way. They’re a little bit outdated too, I guess they could be upgraded somehow. For example, they don’t accept contactless payment you have to stick a card in here.

In terms of design, Helsinki’s underground doesn’t have anything to show off. It’s not Moscow, St. Petersburg, or even Stockholm, because in latter, although the underground is new, there are stations that look like wonderful caves. Great we got down to the station and come on, Ilya, figure out where you’re going.

It would be cool if there was a map here. But there isn’t one. There’s a lot of advertising. It’s really weird that there’s no map with a city reference. Oh, finally! I just said that there’s no map and there it is!

Look, I finally found a map of the city and I can see where I’m going. For those of you who thought there aren’t enough ads, they’ve put up a projector to show commercials. Note that almost all the stations have 3D diagrams. I’m not sure if ordinary people understand it,

But since I have an architectural background, I’m comfortable with it. The question is, if you don’t have that experience, would you know how to read these 3D diagrams? Would you understand where you need to go? Let me know in the comments!

In addition to the standard escalators, there’s also this inclined lift that allows you to go down to the station on your own if you have a wheelchair or if you have a pram. Since Finland is full of bicycles, there are special cars in every underground train,

Special places where you can bring your bicycle. This is what the lift looks like. Interestingly, there are no turnstiles at the entrance to the underground. So you just have to tap your ticket against the validator. But there’s a warning that if you don’t buy a ticket,

There’s an $85 fine. And there are people who monitor it on the underground here. I haven’t seen them, but I’m sure they’re there. This is what the busiest transport terminal in Scandinavia looks like. You can’t even tell from the looks of it that there are hundreds of people waiting

For their buses under the mall. In fact, the city plans to develop the entire central district of Helsinki underground in the near future along the same lines of this project. The city administration is hoping to move most of the transportation system,

Warehouses and car parks underground, as this will help reduce the load on the roads and streets and will also help preserve the character of the city centre, so that the transport infrastructure doesn’t interfere with the enjoyment of the city.

But even today it’s possible to drive throughout Helsinki underground with car parks and tunnels. For example, there’s a tunnel that connects the Ruoholahti and Kluuvi districts. The shopping malls take deliveries and take their rubbish out using this tunnel. So here’s the question of priorities, take a look. Tramway is priority number one,

The tram’s coming so the road got to be cleaned up. There’s a terrific tram coming along the super-clean tram tracks. Beautiful! The pavement’s also been cleaned, too, so it’s comfortable for people to walk. It’s been sprinkled with fresh granite chips. It is clean, it’s not slippery and people

Don’t have to worry that they’ll slip. But what about the parking? Nobody cares about it! Parking is not a priority. It costs $4.20 an hour to park in the centre. Of course you can’t say that the streets in Helsinki are perfectly clean,

Because some of the small roads aren’t the city’s but the council’s responsibility, and so, they aren’t all shining clean. There is quite a lot of ice and the cars are struggling to drive through here. I like to use Helsinki as an example of a city with safe traffic. In 2019, only 3 people

Were victims of traffic accidents here: 1 motorist and 2 motorcyclists. At the same time, there are still quite a few accidents: a total of 400 people were injured in traffic accidents in 2019, including 80 pedestrians.

I don’t want to speculate what the statistics would be if the city administration and private companies didn’t keep an eye on the city’s roads in the winter. The snow and icy roads are monitored by a network of web cameras that transmit real-time images of the condition of roads across Finland.

Finnish motoring authorities monitor the cameras, compare them with weather forecasts and quickly call in a cleaning crew to clean a particular section of the road. For motorists’ convenience, some road sections are equipped with electronic speed limit signs that change the maximum speed depending on the weather.

In addition, every motorist in Finland is required by law to drive only with winter tyres from 1st November to 31st March, otherwise they can receive a big fine. Studded tyres may only be used during the prescribed winter period as they damage the road surface, which most Finnish motorists criticise.

In 2021 the country’s largest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat published an in-depth piece on the state of roads across the country and found that over 13% of motorways were in an unusable condition. So, as you can see, guys, the Finns complain about the state of their roads too.

I decided to talk to blogger Ivan Prokopchik about traffic and winter in Finland. He moved to Finland from Karelia, a region on the Finnish-Russian border. When would you need a car in Finland? – In fact, you can manage without a car in small provincial towns.

You need a car for travelling back to Russia and to go to another Finnish city, like Helsinki. – Is it possible to survive without a car in winter? – Yes, of course you can. I think you can do that in Helsinki, too, because in my opinion

There is a good public transport system in Helsinki. – But then my question is: how are you going to take the kids to school without a car? – You know, we have a kindergarten nearby and a lot of mothers ride bicycles. – In winter?

– Yes, in winter. In Finland they sell such prams, I don’t know if they have them in Russia, but they probably do. You put your kid in it, close it on all sides so it doesn’t get blown

Away by the wind and strap it to the back wheel. And that’s it, off you go! – Guys, look, it’s the “no feeding the birds” sign. I’ve said many times that you shouldn’t feed the birds and every time I face a backlash from some strange people

Who start telling me that you should feed the birds, that pigeons have been sent to us by God, angels and somebody’s flying souls. Friends, I don’t want to upset you but pigeons are flying rats. If you feed pigeons, you just breed more of them,

Because pigeons exist in such a way that they breed in exactly the right amount of food. If you want your whole city to be full of dirt, for it to be unsanitary, smelly and filthy,

You can feed them, you can pour tons of bird food on the streets, and then live in these conditions. But it’s better not to feed pigeons. The pavilion is closed and is not used, so everything around is covered with ice.

I must be careful not to fall in the water! That would be unpleasant. Why did I come here? You can fall here. It’s something beautiful. Let’s see some pictures of what it’s supposed to look like. I see public toilets!

In Russia, if you see public toilets, 99% of the time they will be closed. They only work if there’s a person, an old granny there, who sits and collects money. It’s very rare. Well, maybe, in Moscow there are still a couple of public toilets that work.

Let’s see how it works here. I haven’t gone in yet. I’ll show them to you now, so let’s go test the public toilets in winter in Helsinki. This is what a block of toilets looks like. You have to press here to open the door.

Oh, wow, this is what it looks like! Look, a clean, perfectly clean toilet! There’s toilet paper, there’s showers, faucets, everything you need and it doesn’t smell. There’s even a special bin for syringes. That’s awesome, there’s even one big toilet

For people with special needs. Let’s have a look at it. The door here opens automatically. Wow! It’s like a little toilet palace. But because it’s a big toilet, people must have come in here to do something naughty, someone’s been burning something, maybe some matches, I don’t know. A little bit of vandalism.

But still, it’s pretty clean, it doesn’t smell. I can’t say that it’s a mess. You can press this button to call a cleaner. Aha! Look, I pressed “close” and there’s water under the floor. That’s how it cleans itself. It’s a miracle of technology!

It’s clean and it doesn’t smell. It must be a bit dirty because someone came in here to roll some cigarettes or burned something in here. I don’t get it what it is. There’s no smell. It is not disgusting. There’s metal everywhere, everything’s clean

And you can use it comfortably. Well, some will say that it’s just a toilet, but in fact, it is one of the most important things, because it is a need that every person has. And people who, for example, have the opportunity, they can go to a restaurant or something,

But when you’re a tourist in the city or just walking with your child and you want to go to the toilet, or you need to change the baby’s nappies, or the baby wants to go to the toilet, then there is a problem.

And the kind of public toilets that there is in a city affects how comfortable people feel. That’s a problem in Russia. You’re always in pain and humiliation. It’s insulting the way some of our public toilets look. They either don’t have them or you have to go

To some cafe or restaurant, and order something. It’s uncomfortable to say the least. Bad weather didn’t stop me from meeting with local urbanist Timo Hämäläinen. He’s been working with the Helsinki city administration on urban projects for a few years. What are these?

– How they do it is they clean the snow and then they push it into big piles and then the next cycle they come with trucks and – When? Next year? Or they wait for the summer maybe? – Maybe, I don’t know. It’s a very random schedule.

– And then they what do they do with the snow? Then they put a few of these big mountains somewhere and they make these giant mountains of snow. – Oh, look, a person cannot walk over it! – Ah, you see? – There’s a hero struggling through the snow! Okay, that’s it, he’s done.

How is public transport managing this winter? And if it would depend on you, what would you have changed first of all in Helsinki public transport system? Well, here, in Helsinki, when the streets are cleaned after the snow, there’s a priority system where they start with the main transport corridors,

So I think if it’s snowing it’s all getting quickly so that trams and buses can go safely, so precipitation doesn’t really play a big role in public transport . Everything’s okay with it. I haven’t faced any issues with it. But I know that sometimes, especially during the winter, the cleaning isn’t that efficient.

And I know, I just saw a friend of mine, who was on a tram and she posted on social media how the passengers needed to get out to clear the snow off the rails because for some reason there was snow left there and the tram couldn’t go.

So, our presidents could do something about it or just help out a little bit in the matter. – In your blog you mentioned that winter in Finland has changed with the global warming. How has the climate change affected Helsinki and its people?

– Well, it’s gotten warmer quite a lot. This winter right now it’s very snowy and there’s a lot of ice but there’s been many winters where there’s been practically no snow at all. How it affects me personally or how I see it is that I like to play ice hockey outside,

But now, here in Helsinki you can’t really do that. It’s rare that you have natural ice or it’s for a very short period and you only have to have artificial ice. And then, of course, for children…

Children want to use the snow for sledding down hills. You can’t really go skiing in the city that well today. – What can you do in Helsinki during the winter? – First of all, I’m going to tell you about the swimming pool.

Usually it’s open everyday of the year but there was an accident. You know that during the Christmas we have Christmas markets, right? And it’s always a big event in all of our cities. So, I think that one key is to create these public spaces depending on the event.

So during the Christmas you can organise a market and then have another event. Usually we have an ice rink near the railway station. where some can skate and others just watch them. That’s one of the thing you could do. Participate in winter sports.

It depends on what will be available considering on the climate change. Also there’s a light-show in Helsinki called Lux Helsinki, we always have it during the darkest period of the year. There are art installations. You can walk along a certain route to see them all.

– After my conversation with Timo, I’ve decided to have a look how do the residential areas look in Helsinki. Here are our favourite prefabricated flat blocks. I think this building is from the 80s. And what’s interesting here is that even here, even the 80s architecture is still in its original form.

This is what the entrance looks like: the original glass door, the original handles. No one has changed the them. These are the authentic two beautiful handles. It just looks amazing. By the way, there are these brushes in front of the entrance.

You need it to sweep out the stones and granite chips from the treads of your boots. Another thing that caught my eye is that in each entrance, there is a shovel to clean snow off front of the entrance, there is a broom to sweep a granite crumb out of the house,

And a dustpan. A bench… It all looks great. Well here in Finland, of course, the cleanliness of the buildings is striking. Clean entrances, authentic entrances everywhere. Nobody broke anything, didn’t vandalise it, didn’t put metal doors in, didn’t turn it into an ugly box with some housing and utilities art,

Everything is clean and beautiful in spite of the fact that this building is about 30-40 years old, but it looks like it has just been built. It is from some kind of advertisement leaflet. You could even use it as a set for a movie about those times without changing anything.

It’s very cool! This is how Finns respect their architecture, their cities. Not just buildings that are monuments or historical sites, but relatively new buildings that aren’t even considered architecture in Russia. By the way, here is a map of the residential complex.

These are the towers that are standing right here. Nothing exciting from an urban planning point of view, of course. But it is just interesting in what order and how close to each other these buildings are located. No one has put up the air conditioning, no one has replaced the doors.

Here’s a different house but we see the same brass door handles again. A man is riding a bicycle, but also with studded tyres. By the way, when I was cycling around Moscow, I used studded tyres.

I’ve given up that idea now. Not in terms of tyres, but in terms of using bicycles in winter, because it’s very dirty. People in Helsinki tend to live closer to the city centre, not outside the city. It is clear that there isn’t enough space, so the authorities decided

To use the former port areas for development plots. They only left one port in the centre, and the other ones, including the industrial zones are being actively renovated. And I’ve actually come to one of these very new areas in Helsinki.

It’s called Kalasatama. And now we’re going to see how the Finns are building new housing. I’ve been to this area before and filmed it, but as you can see, construction is still going on here. There are cranes and new houses are still being built. So, every time I come here,

There is something new to show. Let us not praise Finns for cleaning up too much, because for example here is a lot of ice in a residential area. Of course there are some granite chips, but you can see the places where the ice is bare and you can slip and fall.

It’s very strange that a car is here, because it is prohibited to drive here. And if we look this way, we’ll see an interesting case, because here we have bicycle parking and someone has left their bikes for winter, but if you look closely, we see that they aren’t locked.

So it’s just the back wheel that’s locked and they’re not chained to the front. It’s obvious that there aren’t many cases of stealing. Nobody wants these bikes. But someone else ditched their motorcycle. It’s a shame because it looks great

But as far as I’m aware, it’s not very good for the bike to be abandoned like this for the winter without shelter. Right, come on, let’s go into the courtyard. The steps are more or less cleaned up here, there are granite chips. There’s parking in the courtyard, obviously.

That is an area for residents, you can let the children go here and play and as you can see there are quite a lot of children’s toys, so the children play here, leave their toys, and no one takes them away. By the way, you have to be careful with Finnish courtyards

Because I have already had negative experiences with police. I was in Helsinki a few years ago and I wanted to show how everything’s organised here. But the vigilant residents called the police, who came and checked my papers and asked what I was doing there, because they thought I was a bike thief.

They thought I was taking photos of bicycles to steal them later. There’s already a lot of ice and not many chips so walking straight like that isn’t exactly easy. There are several types of winter shoes here. There are studded soles, there are

These special overlays that flip over and become studded. There are also simple overlays that you can put on over ordinary boots. They also come with studs, to make it more comfortable to walk in on ice. If, for example, when I walked in the centre of Helsinki

And was absolutely sure that I wouldn’t slip, I wouldn’t be so sure about it here. The architecture is very, very simple. There are no masterpieces. It’s nice that the buildings as a whole aren’t too tall. In the new areas, the waste sorting system is quite interesting.

They have an underground rubbish disposal unit here. It’s a rubbish disposal unit for the whole neighbourhood. It’s pneumatic and it works like a pneumatic mailbox. You put your bag in there and it goes underground to the sorting station, which is located at the end of this street.

But in addition to the underground trash chute, there are local trash bins that you can use for recycling. What kind of rubbish can you put in here? Large cardboard, for example, large boxes that cannot fit into the rubbish sorting unit. You have to put in glass and metal into separate bins.

So, if you have rubbish like this, you place it in underground vaults, where special machines come and pick it up. And if you have general rubbish: food waste, bags, paper, newspapers and everything else, you put it in the pneumatic waste units.

It is a combined system that makes it possible to sort everything and handle waste responsibly. By the way, what is interesting, is that you can’t just open these compartments, because you need a special card, that only the residents have, because you have to pay for this service.

Ok you ask “Ilya, but why do you not show anything bad? Is there nothing bad in Finland?” There is a pedestrian crossing that goes into a snowdrift. That’s it. If it makes anyone feel better now, congratulations. When we talk about building new neighbourhoods, energy efficiency cannot be overlooked.

In Russia, no one really thinks about it, because our utilities are relatively affordable. Well, yes, some Russians may disagree with me, saying that the costs are high and they barely make ends meet. But compared with what they pay in Europe, utilities like electricity, water, and everything else is subsidised,

So people aren’t interested in investing in the energy efficiency of their homes, to do any renovations, because any renovation will be too expensive and will never pay off. In Finland, prices for everything are much higher, so houses are built energy efficient.

Here in Finland, as in many other European countries, the utility prices are extremely high, the resources are very expensive, electricity, water, heating, all of it is costly. So at the construction stage it is easier to spend more money to get an energy-efficient house,

But then save on utility bills. But it has gone further and some houses are built in such a way that they are fully self-sufficient in energy. How do they do that? Through wind turbines, solar panels, and so on. And then there are modern technologies that make

The most efficient use of your building’s energy. Well, a we can explore ventilation as a simple example. How does a standard ventilation system work? The used air simply flows outdoors, and the clean air from the street enters the building.

And if we talk about winter, it heats up, so a lot of energy is wasted. How does this happen in Finland? The warm, exhaust air from the building is not immediately discharged outside, but is used to heat the cold air that comes from outdoors.

Consequently, less energy is needed for heating the room. This is just one example. There are a lot of modern materials and technologies, we will not dwell on it, because the topic of this video is a bit different. What is interesting, is that there are

Buildings in Finland, where people do not pay utility bills, because the building itself gives out energy. What’s more, there are some buildings that produce more energy than the occupants need, and they can even sell it and earn some cash. It doesn’t just work with electricity.

For example the same thing applies to water, where rainwater is collected and later used for irrigation or as service water for the house. The same applies to old buildings from 60-70s with typical panel block, of which there are a lot here in Finland. Almost all of them

Have already been reconstructed, because it is more profitable for tenants to take a loan from a bank and reconstruct their house: to insulate it, make it more energy efficient, and then save on utility bills. There’s a similar programme in the Baltics: in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. People are also renovating their houses…

Tenants take out loans from banks, renovate their Soviet-era apartment buildings, and after 5-10 years, it’s getting paid-off thanks to lower utility bills. While walking around Kalasatama I met a subscriber. She offered to show me how the communal areas inside the houses are arranged.

Let’s take a look inside the new housing. Oh wow, it’s so clean here! It’s so nice! – That’s not very clean to be honest. Every tenant or owner has a key to everything. Here, come in, please. This is a laundry. My clothes are currently in there. We have a dryer too.

On the wall to your right there’s a calendar from the first to the last day of the month and time and we put our keys in, for example, my key opens like this and I moved it and changed the time when I’m planning to do my laundry.

This is where prams and bicycles and so on are kept. All sorts of things that are purely for children. There are certain rules that specifically in this room we can only store children’s stuff, not adults’. – Thank you very much! Goodbye! – Good luck and all the best!

I remember what my entryway in the centre of Moscow looks like in winter and everything’s leaking there, there is all this dirt and sodium chloride from the shoes. It’s just terrible there. And here you walk in and it’s sterile.

There is a a very big difference. It turns out that it can be clean in winterQ Here’s a small kindergarten. A simple, two-storey kindergarten, with playgrounds. And there’s a shopping centre, with a metro station. Under the ground here there is a rubbish sorting unit with pneumatic rubbish pipes.

There are no icicles anywhere on any of the buildings. You can see the heating wires everywhere. And again, you see all the downpipes, they go straight into the drain, water gurgles through them, they are heated, the water goes into the drain and no icicles or extra ice on the pavement are formed.

For example, here’s a house that has a pipe that doesn’t go all the way into the ground, but it is heated. The water flows through this pipe absolutely calmly and nothing is frozen, everything works. I talked to Finnish beautification officials about how the city administration works in winter.

Do you use bicycles during the winter? – Personally, I do, and we’re trying to make it easy for everyone to use them all year round. So that more people use the bikes during the winter as currently, the bicycle traffic decreases by 10%

Compared to the data we see during the warmer seasons: spring and summer. – What is the reason for the decrease in traffic in winter? – Yeah, so the main reason is that it’s not very comfortable and safe

To get round by bicycle in a lot of places. So, for example, if the pavement is cleared like it is here, it feels just like in summer, there’s no difference. But if you go out of the so-called prioritised routes, then it becomes more dangerous.

– After Helsinki I will be travelling to Oulu and there are a lot more people using a bicycle during the winter. – Yes, it’s just that in Helsinki we developed a good public transport network and the service inside it. That’s why people can easily switch from a bicycle to public transport.

This is different in Oulu. – Also, there was more emphasis on making the use of bicycles during the winter as comfortable as possible in Oulu. – I worked for several hours downtown and I’ve seen no icicles. Where are they? – Of course, firstly snow is often removed from the roofs.

And also ice generally forms when the houses let off heat from inside and the Finnish buildings are generally very well insulated. That’s why there’s not as much snow that’s being left on the roofs. And the drainage is mostly done so that the melting water gets away better.

But in certain times it can be a problem and then then we have to close certain sidewalks so we can drop the ice. There’s a maintenance tram for the lanes. – Have you ever been to St. Petersburg? – Yes. – What about you? – I haven’t but I’ve heard about it.

– Ah, got it. Did you like it there? – Well, Nevsky prospect was quite… oriented let’s say, and the whole environment was quite wide but, of course, it has beautiful art history, beautiful architecture and everything. But yes that the one thing that I do remember was that there were cars all around.

Helsinki currently invests around $25 million per year for cycling infrastructure. So in the past 10 years, they’ve made quite a big jump in this sense. Currently we’re working on separate one-way cycling lanes, like the ones in Copenhagen. – This is the railway station. It’s a gorgeous, amazing station. And near the station,

Look, they haven’t removed the snow yet. There are some pretty big snow piles. And now, friends, let’s take a look at how Helsinki Central Station is set up. This is the lobby where the kiosks are located and they all have pretty much the same decorations.

They sell sandwiches, magazines, newspapers… It’s the typical European food for when you’re on the go. There’s lots of advertising and I can’t say that there’s a strict adherence to the design code. It could have been done in a more formal way. And there’s the door and the exit to the platforms.

The station is relatively old, but there’s nothing so super interesting that you have to say “Wow, look at that!” It’s a nice little Scandinavian train station. It’s the architecture of it all that’s interesting. The architecture of the station is simply gorgeous.

The building is historical and not in a bad condition. Not all the entrances are open 24 hours a day and this one, for example, is open from 5am to 2am. And the central hall of Helsinki train station looks very cool.

And of course you can’t ignore the fact that there’s no security check, no guards. I spend my time at the station absolutely unnoticed and no one comes near me and doesn’t make any trouble. Using the station is easy and pleasant, unlike what they have arranged in Russia

With this theatre of security, with these endless screenings and locked entrances creating a lot of problems for passengers. Here you can go straight to the underground station. But we don’t need to go to the metro. Just look at the amazing doors! These are beautiful wooden doors.

Everything is kept in its original form. Very cool! The Helsinki Central Station was built in 1918, and this particular building is an architectural monument. Not a bad example of art nouveau. There’s a tram right here. You get off the train station and there’s a tram stop.

But now, friends, let’s see what the Finnish Post looks like. I know what Russian Post looks like very well, let’s see what the Finns have done. Here is the central post office. It’s very stylish. There’s a self-service table where you can arrange a parcel and there are mailboxes here.

This is the cash desk. This is where you get your line ticket and there’s a big shop. Contrary to Russian post shops, they sell the things you need. Like boxes, postcards, envelopes. Everything you need for packing. Also, there are boxes – post boxes for those

Who rent them here. And then there are the stamps. These are the current stamps in use now. There are different churches on them. There’s all kinds of envelopes for sale, wrapping paper, boxes, whatever you need for mailing. One thing I don’t understand is why we don’t have that?

Hoe come Russian post office turned into some kind of mall, stall, underground? I don’t know, anything but the post office. They sell canned goods, biscuits, pads, but if you try to buy stamps there, try to buy a normal postcard or something and it won’t be that easy. In short, it’s a complete disaster.

It’s incomprehensible what they’ve turned the Russian post office into. The most disgusting weather we have is this snow-rain-storm that is impossible to hide from. And then there’s the wind. If any of you have visited St. Petersburg you will understand what I mean.

And here is how the pavements look like in this weather: puddles, ice, but nevertheless it’s possible to pass, there are no insurmountable obstacles. The granite chips help from slipping. I was soon joined on my journey through Finland by my urbanist Andrei Elbaev.

Guys, I’ll show you what a typical Finnish entrance hall and courtyard look like. You have to understand that in Finland, almost all houses, no matter if they’re old or new look pretty much the same and a number of principles are followed.

All of the doors are exactly the same, you cannot change a door. That said, these doors are quite old. It’s an old wooden door and no one has put up a metal one instead. Then, on each door, there’s the name of the tenant who lives there

And the flat number. The doorbell is down here somewhere, it’s usually a mechanical bell. It’s an old retro escalator with chairs. Let’s have a look… What’s interesting is the bench. The bench is ergonomically shaped like this. There are even some holes drilled in it,

Apparently, so your bottom doesn’t sweat while you’re sitting down. It’s super convenient. It’s got the flat numbers, who lives where and what floor they’re on. So you know right away where you’re going. Another cool thing is that there are glass doors.

What’s so good about it? Transparent doors in an escalator are a safety measure, because many people are worried about some kind of chaos in the stairwell, that someone will sleep there or use some sort of substances. And people who are constantly going up and down the elevator become observers,

Witnesses of everything that happens, and, so, having a wee somewhere on the stairwell is no longer cool. In other words, you have witnesses, observers, who go up and down all the time and watch what is going on. – Yes, it’s called passive social control.

That is you go up and control the second, third floor, even though you live on the fifth. – It is quite convenient and I wonder why they do not do it Russia. Making a small glass window in the standard metal sheet is easy.

– The elevator is also very interesting because it is turned away from the stairs and you see a wall, but nothing else. That’s a special way the staircase is constructed. – They still have the old lift call buttons everywhere, on all the floors. – And the manual is old, too.

– Yes, that’s right. The next thing that’s very interesting is the entryway. It’s just perfectly clean, although there are no concierges, there’s no permanent cleaner, but nevertheless – it’s perfectly clean even at the entrance. It is as if we are in someone’s home.

The secret of perfect cleanliness. The entrance, the original door, everything is very beautiful. And even here, it’s all nice and clean, because Finns don’t use the toxic chemicals, sand and all sorts of rubbish on their roads. Beautiful! And this is so that when you open the door,

You put it on this pin to keep it open. And by the way, concerning keys in Finland, and in other Scandinavian countries, I met this universal key. This key can be used for the gate to the entrance door and from your front door to the flat.

It has quite a complex shape, but it’s universal key for all doors, so you don’t have to carry many different ones in your pocket. It is super convenient! The bicycle parking spot is full, of course. When you look at these bicycle parking spots

It’s always sad how people leave their bikes unroofed for the winter. Poor little bicycles. – This yard is divided with fences inside because they are different houses, different plots of land and therefore each one has its own story. The one next to it, for example, has a a garden-house and some swings.

All of them have the minimum done and all live perfectly well. – The territory is divided due to the fact that they pay for each square meter here, so of course, you have a fence and everything. In Russia, people really like to put some kind of fence,

A barrier and so on, but they do not like to pay for their land. So they want the city to clean up their yard and got everything done, but at the same time they would not let strangers in. “Watch out for possible snow drifts.” But you see, not icicles, just snow.

Oh, we’re witnessing how they clean the streets from snow! Oh, come on! Wow! This little tractor is shoveling snow with all the crumbs. Look how cute it is! You can see it’s made up of snow and granite crumbs, but it’s very clean.

You can safely take it in your hand. Here we have this car going. It’s got a container of granite grit on the back and it’s shoveling the melted snow. Do you see how many sweepers there are? Let’s go and have a look. Here’s another tractor.

They’re breaking up the ice. It’s as if a snowcat drove along the ski track, left these small cuts, and it thus breaks the ice and you can safely walk on such pavement. – Note that here the cuts are triangular, but when we’ll go to Oulu, they’ll be circular there.

We’ll be able to compare them. – They’ve opened a tech shop here, but all these old counters that used to be here are still part of the interior design. – The only thing is that they’re not really using them in any way. They just stand there without serving any functional purpose.

– Yeah, but here’s the tiles and everything. It’s the old post office building, but the interior has been preserved and the new tenants weren’t allowed to spoil it. There are the mailboxes at the end, which have all been kept in their original design.

I have already explained that doors, windows, signs, signposts are all part of the architecture of the city, the architecture of the building. It’s very important, because when we normally walk along a street, we don’t look at the architecture of the building, we only see the first couple of meters up the wall,

So we’re only in contact with those 2 meters of the façade. By the way, there’s an interesting experiment! Look up and you’ll be shocked, because you probably didn’t even know what the buildings along your favourite route looks like.

And we come into contact with just the façade, and that includes the doors. Look at this beauty! There are some old handrails here, very interesting. It’s all in its original state, it’s these nice details that make the city more appealing. Here, for example, there’s a “28” sign.

It’s so beautiful, so old, so original. Here’s the gate. It’s also and old one, that was hidden here by a unique design. Again, here’s another unique neighbouring door. Actually, it’s all these details that we encounter that make the city pleasant to walk around. It’s interesting to walk here even among

The residential blocks. You can say ‘Ilya, all you show us is snow-covered streets and overcast skies. But what about those who don’t like to go out in the winter and sit in expensive cafes?” And I’ll tell you, “go to the Helsinki library!” Speaking of winter activities, this is where people spend their time.

They spend their time in the library. There’s so many people here! That said, people aren’t just doing nothing here, but they’re all working on something. There are 3D printers over there, you can print something. And there are printers and some metal cutters and machines… just about anything you want.

A person just went in to read into that room, because it’s a quiet space with no food policy, so people actually read there. It’s the 3rd floor where the most beautiful space is, because we’re right under the roof. Well, it’s probably even better during the day, of course, but even in the evening

They have these skylights and there’s extra illumination. So during the day it works as a skylight but at night it turns into a lantern. Just so you understand, Andrei and I just walked in, they didn’t check our bags or our documents, there is no guard, there is no janitor,

We just walked in here, walked up and we can sit, read, relax and no one will say a word to us. There’s PS5, PS4, XBOX, Nintendo and you can pick it up like a video cassette from a special store

A few decades ago, but here you can pick up a game or a DVD. And there’s this DNA-shaped staircase that we climbed that leads up here. There’s a pram parking area with a panoramic view. This is probably the most beautiful pram parking area.

The space here is so cozy that it makes you want to spend time here. There are girls sitting in the corner, having a picnic like they are in the park, they have food there, some crisps, water, someone there is watching them through a webcam and they are just chatting.

There’s a railing for adults and a railing for children. The ones for children are smaller. But speaking of ergonomics, unfortunately, modern architects think about making their design look good in photos, but they don’t think about making it comfortable for people to hold on to. In this respect, the old St. Petersburg entryways,

Certainly teach us how it should be done properly. This is absolutely uncomfortable. Oops, that’s what all these libraries lead to. LGBTQIA+. That’s it friends, a whole section of books for which in Russia, I don’t know, they’d probably burn the library down. It’s a good thing we don’t have that.

In fact, this is a very cool example of what happens when a city invests in human capital, when on valuable land, right in the city centre, where the central station is and there was a temptation to build an office building or a shopping centre, where they’d make tons of cash,

But they’ve decided to build a public library instead. They didn’t just build some ugly shed that often happens today when they try to create a public space, but here, they invited an architect and designed an incredible building, made it comfortable

For everybody and when I come here at any time, it is always full of people. People come here with their children, to study and do homework, and there are a lot of workshops. Everything you need to feel like a civilised person.

– And the interesting thing is that there are kids and homeless people here that some people don’t really want to see maybe. But, it’s just like a public space. The people you see on the city square, are the same ones you see here.

That is, there are no barriers, whoever you may be, you may come in. – Nobody checked our documents, nobody asked what we were doing here. We are not Finnish citizens, we have almost all the services available to us here, nobody has turned us away. In general, everything is very friendly.

And I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s not a single security guard, that’s what trust in people means. Somehow this whole community self-regulates. I mean, there’s only one granny sitting up there in the information centre. There’s no warden on every floor, no guards. – Yeah, there’s not a single guard.

– There’s not even a guard at the entrance. Well, it’s like a public space. It’s totally free, there’s another information centre here, a granny, but she’s not here to harass anyone, she’s here to answer your questions. Maybe we can ask her if we as foreigners can play Dandy, for example.

– We just want to find out how it works here. – You just need to follow these instruction here. – Ah, so to book it, we need to register on this site? – Yes, you need to create an account via Facebook or Google. – Got it!

– Or a Yle ID – it’s a Finnish tele-radio company. Once you have that, you can create an account. – Andrei, notice that the lady at the library reception speaks English and explained everything really well. It’s nice and it’s unbelievable. So, we found out how things work in order to book stuff.

You have to register on this website and you can book meeting rooms, studios and games rooms, but you can’t take books out. – You can’t borrow books or book some studios because you need a library card. To get a card from the library, you need a Finnish address.

– If you study here, for example, it’s easy to get around. How’s this for a toilet? Look, there’s a bottle filling station. It looks like a faucet show. But actually it’s not, there’s a special bottle filler tap.

This is a sink for adults. And this is for children. Someone might see some gender stereotypes here in the form of the colour scheme, but no, it’s just a design. In order not to offend anyone in terms of inclusivity, there’s just a huge number of stalls

And you can choose any that you like. Last year, in Russia there was a lifehack that if you wanted your snowdrift to be cleared away, you had to write “Navalny” on it with paint. Then the council workers would immediately come running and plow over the snowdrift, or, more likely, just clean it up.

It’s the same in Helsinki! Only it looks like they wrote “Varlamov”. It’s the same here! There’s a giant snowdrift right in front of the library and there’s something written on it. – For snow clearing, there’s no point in keeping a large number of special machines,

To deal with the worst snowfalls. So, as a rule, they just work out some temporary measures for the time of these snowfalls, using first the parking spaces and secondly the public spaces for storage of the snow until a certain time,

When the priority streets will be dealt with. It seems to me that they do that all over the world. -They also have the occasional snowfall where they don’t clean anything at all. – That’s interesting. – If the weather forecast says that tomorrow the snow will melt anyway,

They just wait for it and don’t waste resources. – Tomorrow it will melt on its own anyway! – Yes, and in fact some of our politicians are adopting this practice, but they are taking it a little way too far. If Finns are ready to wait for half a day maximum,

For example if it snows at night but the snow is expected to melt in the morning they probably won’t touch it at night. But our official wait till the spring sometimes. For example in Novosibirsk. Listen, I can’t remember in what city I’ve seen such huge snow drifts!

That’s how it is, friends. “Bicycle lane in the centre of Helsinki!” Yes, yes, yes, use bicycles, there’s always an alternative to a car! If only it was true. After Helsinki, we went to Oulu, a city in northern Finland. The distance between it and the capital is just over 600 kilometers.

Well friends, we are in Oulu. More precisely, we are in Russia’s Arkhangelsk, because Oulu is a Finnish town which lies at the same latitude as Arkhangelsk, and the climate here is very similar, same snowy and cold winter. The average temperature in winter and in summer differs by plus or minus 1-2 degrees.

Precipitation is very similar, they have a similar nature, similar climate, generally similar in everything and even in terms of population they’re close, because Arkhangelsk population is 350,000, and in Oulu? – 200,000. – Around 200 thousand. So it’s not a village or something.

We’ll see if it’s possible to live in such winter. We are now standing in the very centre and the first thing that shocks me is the number of people using bicycles, and the second thing is how clean it is – they have perfectly white pavements.

We were driving from the airport and there were perfectly white curbs everywhere. – Well, they’re not absolutely perfect, but they aren’t dirty. – But unquestionably clean. Look at the bike park and it’s not even the city centre. There are all the bikes, even those with a child seat, that have regular summer tyres.

They’re all relatively new bikes, and you can see they’re not even chained up. It’s unbelievable! You wouldn’t see something like that in Arkhangelsk even in 10 years, even if some dramatic reforms will start right now. Bicycle is one of the main modes of transport here.

Oulu’s official website shows that over 20% of all trips in the city happen by bicycle, while the national average is barely 11%. Oulu has developed a good infrastructure for cycling. There are over 860 kilometers of paths and lanes, and 200 cycle tunnels.

The pioneer of cycling in Oulu is Mauri Myllylä, is the local government’s official who has been urging cycling and pedestrian access since the 1960s. and pedestrian access since the 1960s. In the early 70s a new city plan was drawn up,

Which included a cycle path network in the outlying areas. In the last century Oulu became Finland’s centre of innovation. In the 1980s it became home to the Nokia development centre, the city’s main enterprise. In the early 2000s almost 40% of all mobile phones sold worldwide were Nokia.

Thanks to the company’s success, there were no problems with work and money in Oulu. According to Venture Beat publisher, back then Nokia had more than 4800 employees and subcontractors working here. But Nokia soon began to lag behind in technological innovation and was losing global influence. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone

And then Google created the Android operating system. The Finnish company could not keep up with the new technology. Sales were falling and a major crisis and downsizing began. In 2013, Nokia’s mobile business was bought by Microsoft, which soon announced new layoffs. All the specialists were left out of work.

After the collapse of the city’s main enterprise, businessmen, the regional government of Oulu and former Nokia employees created a new development model, which the city still follows. First, the authorities introduced support for health care start-ups. This programme is run together with local research centres

And the hospital. So far 600 companies have participated in it. Next the city of Oulu started attracting local and foreign capital to the city. About 10 new companies start operating here every year.