Eyes wide open

You already know Finland, though you may not know you know. There&rsquos so much above the surface, rather than hidden below, that you can miss it altogether.

Take my story, for instance. I was to cover Helsinki as a holiday destination, but as a designer, determined to look below the surface, and uncover it instead. As the World Design Capital 2012, perhaps, or as a pilgrimage to intelligence and beauty. I needn&rsquot have, and you shouldn&rsquot either. Just stay on the surface and the deep design at its core will search you out instead.

Finnair (best way to go) deposits us at Helsinki airport one crisp blue morning. The immediate impression typical European capital, superbly functional and pretty, with heritage buildings still in use, the streets host to an outstandingly usable tram/bus system, not overrun by cars yet highly walkable and, as a bonus, English spoken everywhere

The airport bus drops us off at the railway terminus and, right away, Helsinki starts to leave its stamp.

One, this isn&rsquot just any terminus. Put your bags down and look. It&rsquos a landmark, both for the city, and in modern Helsinki&rsquos architectural history. It is classical, but more modern than its 1909 date suggests, reassuring and stimulating at once. Its synthesis of styles recalls, not the gothic excesses of Mumbai&rsquos VT, but the 1920s New Delhi of Lutyens and Baker. It&rsquos small, as the rail hub for all of Finland&rsquos five million people, perhaps as many as VT

Then, I notice the area is named Eliel, and smile. For Eliel Saarinen is no president or general, no bronze figure on a horse, but the building&rsquos architect, and clearly a Finnish icon.

Once in our rooms, we find the itineraries that the tourist board has left for us. Call it coincidence or conspiracy, but I doubt if in another country our first stop would be a design museum rather than one that houses its art treasures.

The museum is a revelation, but not for the usual reasons. For one, not many cities have a museum devoted to design. London&rsquos is a mere token in comparison, while Z&uumlrich&rsquos is stellar, and some few biggies have worthwhile sections on design (New York&rsquos MOMA, London&rsquos V&ampA, notably). But while these present design as a sub-plot in the story of civilisation, Helsinki&rsquos turns out to be an exercise in national identity building.

Housed in a nineteenth-century building, the permanent exhibit tells the story of Finnish design in a way that makes it clear where the national ego is invested. You are present at the birth of modern Finland, as it drew on its craft traditions and moved to its industrial present. You see that many of the world&rsquos iconic objects are part of everyday life for Finns. Fabric, chairs, many of them signposts in design history the development of Finland&rsquos internationally known firms, spanning three centuries the clothing label made famous by a pregnant Jacqueline Kennedy on the cover of Time lamps, telephones, electronics. The permanent exhibit lights up Finland for us, but it&rsquos the current exhibit, featuring the glass pieces of Oiva Toikka, the doyen of a long line of Finnish masters in glass, that&rsquos truly incandescent. &lsquoEveryday&rsquo art, like his birds, which can be bought from outlets, sits alongside his pure sculpture. The inventiveness and panache pierce the eye, mind and heart. There&rsquos almost always one like it on, so this is one museum that is definitely worth your time.

It&rsquos 10.30pm at Casa Largo, one of the city&rsquos many tapas bars, and we&rsquore putting away chorizos and beer (the local wheat beer, quite good). Helsinki&rsquos restaurants are competent, low-key and a tad friendlier than elsewhere on the continent, so it&rsquos easy to relax and reflect. We talk into the endless evening. Soon the sun will set, and the short night will fill with a luminous blue&mdashbright enough to read a newspaper headline by&mdashfor in peak summer, the northern latitudes never black out. Like the genius of Finland&rsquos designers, I think, as the beer does its work, and allows fancies to foam to the top. Let&rsquos see Toikka&rsquos glass wonders will never lose their colours, this is a physical fact. And those design classics from forty years ago will be permanently modern and beautiful, evading age like the Helsinki evening resists the dark night. Last chorizo.

It&rsquos an early start the next morning, following a tough day twenty-two hours between airports, museums and streets and dinner. The trick is to fly far into the north, and gain three-and-half hours going west at the same time.

I stumble out of bed at 4.30am for a drink of water, and discover an eight-foot tall, impossibly thin lamp standing in our room, marvellously vertical and dazzling. A gift from the design museum folk, surely that&rsquos excessive, and how will it travel back with us In the first seconds of waking, I walk towards it, part the crack in the curtains where the lamp stood it&rsquos day outside. As magical as the gift that wasn&rsquot.

The early start is for a sponsor shoot, of the airport&rsquos spa and business lounge. Superb as they are, an obligation is never pure pleasure, but there&rsquos a gem here, too. It&rsquos set into a three-milimetre hole in a table top in the frequent-flyer lounge. Just leave your mobile on the table, and it&rsquoll charge the battery, without wires, via a little adapter (future phones won&rsquot need one). We have no photograph. All you see is a blue glow.

Our lunch date is on the Esplanadi. It runs east-west, like a little equator, and is a good way to mentally map this very compact city. It&rsquos two one-way lanes with 200 feet of shaded garden in between, where you&rsquod expect the trams to be. Walk among the picnicking families and the gulls, and past the patinaed statue of Runenberg, Finland&rsquos national poet. The boutiques, caf&eacutes and stores on either side and on the streets running off it are among the city&rsquos most stylish. And important, for the design icons are there Iittala, the glassware icon, is also selling Toikka&rsquos glass birds Marimekko (textiles, ceramics, clothing) is always worth a look, as are many others. Gawk, shop, eat the Esplanadi is great shorthand for what Helsinki offers the lazy traveller.

The Esplanadi&rsquos east end has the market square, and the sea. For the reader who, despite my pleading, finds Helsinki grey, orderly and cool to the touch &mdash here is relief. Fabulous veggies, flowers sell briskly beneath the red plastic tarps that make up the shops, packed close together cr&ecircpes fly off the pan, porcelain jewellery (some of it excellent) and curios (rubbish, at last) do well here. Bargaining is expected, several tongues heard &mdash Estonian from just across the sea &mdash and a little of New Delhi&rsquos Janpath provided by a Tibetan family. There is casualness here, though disorder there is not, a gentle bustle, never quite a crowd just evidence of a beating haat.

You already know Finnish design, of course, just that you don&rsquot know you know. Its influence is all around you, in the furniture of the chic house at home, though you must travel here to realise this. Or try this perhaps you use a Nokia phone, but never thought of the work that&rsquos gone into it as design Or years ago, discovered Fiskars, the scissors that showed how a superb technical tool could be a joy to look at and use. Or perhaps your company&rsquos website runs on a Linux server, written &mdash designed for free public use &mdash by a Finnish genius.

I&rsquom thinking these thoughts on a tram to the whimsically named Arabia (a-rah-bia), Finland&rsquos 130-year-old ceramics giant. It&rsquos a long ride by local standards, about thirty minutes. Fiskars, they of the jolly orange scissors, owns Arabia and the glassware brand Iittala. It&rsquos a vast complex, and is open for public viewing.

Arabia is what Hitkari Potteries could have been, but isn&rsquot, for reasons that become clear soon. Its premises host some of Finland&rsquos best ceramic artist-designers, not as employees, but as artists-in-residence. It is symbiotic artists are free to pursue their own art, without obligation to Arabia, which provides studios and technical support. Arabia gains from its association with art and, when the artists agree, from their design services, employed to co-develop commercial products. There&rsquos a guided Arabia tour, and you can buy all the Fiskars group stuff from the factory store at a discount. It&rsquos everyday ware, and those who see meaning in the proportion, form and detail of a tea cup or a dish will find a quiet joy in these, a subtle glow rather than dazzle. These aren&rsquot heirlooms they&rsquore yours to use, today. As an Iittala ad says, &ldquoit&rsquos what&rsquos inside that makes it yours&rdquo.

The Arabia visit &mdash was it the heat from the kilns &mdash has baked the thoughts of these past days into a manifesto for Finland. Museum and store are one. Artist and designer are one the craftsman is both. Design is for everyone, to be bought and loved you are a real artist if your work is for me to love and use. The self-given tag, &lsquodesign society&rsquo, is no idle boast. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the posthumous presence of Finland&rsquos great modernist architect Alvar Aalto (1898&ndash1976). Worshipped &mdash I choose this word carefully &mdash for placing the country, via design, on the world map, his career mirrors Finland&rsquos decades of growth and industrialisation.

Aalto&rsquos visage has been on Finnish currency notes and postage stamps he has arguably the world&rsquos most important architecture award named for him, and a university. His studio home is preserved as a virtual shrine, which you must enter unshod, and soft-foot around with reverential Japanese architects for company. But unless you are paying homage, give it a miss. You may also see several of his buildings in Helsinki if Nordic modernism is your thing &mdash or you may not. But do not, on any account, miss the Artek store, started by Aalto, on the Esplanadi&rsquos north side. Aalto-designed furniture, lamps and vases, as well as work by others add up to one of the most thrilling displays of modernist furniture and design you&rsquoll see anywhere in the world. And yes, they&rsquoll ship. What else is money, and a lot of it, for

Yes, shopping is a great way to connect with the city&rsquos treasures, if you are not weak of wallet. Else, pretend. One way to do this is to explore the Helsinki Design District, a collection of 190 stores and boutiques, and galleries. It isn&rsquot a geographic district but a &lsquostate of mind&rsquo, as it calls itself &mdash a recognition conferred upon noteworthy initiatives in design, fashion and art, selected by a local association. You&rsquoll see the logo on the storefront of the anointed places.

The city isn&rsquot all art and technology. Eventually, Helsinki reveals itself best through aimless wandering and inward reflection. Walking about is rewarding. There&rsquos a quirkiness to the heritage architecture, Russian touches here, Greek Orthodox there or figures from Finnish myths, a menagerie of goblins, good and evil. And it&rsquos easy to forget that a respect for nature and the quiet of the countryside are at the root of Finland&rsquos deep design. Late one afternoon I find all of these in one place, albeit via guided tour, in a church.

In the 1960s, the city decided to locate a neighbourhood church on this massive granite outcrop. The architects carved a circular space out of the rock, adopting the hill&rsquos contours, and leaving the walls bare. A circular roof was mounted above the cave, atop a finned clerestory that bathes the church in filtered light. They finished the ceiling with miles of copper wire, creating a vast, gleaming disc, like a copper lid on a crude stone dish. None of this is revealed by its modest outside. But once inside, the effect is as dramatic as any ancient cathedral and as modern as any building will ever be. Come back next century and see.

I sit on the wooden pews, my mind silenced by the scene. A choir from nearby Estonia is visiting. They spread out among the crowd and spontaneously begin practising their scales. Their power and harmony, in the church&rsquos perfect acoustics, seem to make the roof gleam and sing. And for a long moment, I, atheist, find God in design, the true faith of Finland.

The information

The signs on the streets (and often elsewhere) are in Swedish and Finnish. Be sure to stick with one or the other language when asking around or looking up a map so as to avoid confusion. It may be helpful to remember that street names end with &lsquokatu&rsquo in Finnish and &lsquogatan&rsquo in Swedish. By law, all streets have signs on the building corners and the Finnish name goes on top.

Getting there
Finnair flies six days a week directly from Delhi to Helsinki (7hr25min, Rs 39,000 www.finnair.com. All other flights (hopping) take about five or six hours more than the Finnair flight and are rather more expensive (from Rs 44,000). But if you&rsquore travelling from other Indian cities &mdash say, Mumbai &mdash other airlines serve just as well. A Finnair flight from Mumbai (in conjunction with a domestic carrier) might cost Rs 63,000 and takes 18 hours to reach Helsinki and 15 hours to return. But Turkish Airlines could fly you for Rs 33,000 in a little over 10 hours, and Virgin Atlantic and Jet for about Rs 44,000.

Getting around
The tourist bus tour (&euro23) is a good idea. You get to know the sights quickly and can mark promising stuff for later, more leisurely viewing. Trams are an inexpensive way of getting around, and routes 3B and 3T are great for sightseeing tours. They take about an hour-and-a-half each and are free with the Helsinki Card (&euro34 for one day), which is similar to how it works in other cities, covering local transport (buses, trams, metro and the municipal ferry) and a few outside trips and discounts on yet others.

Where to stay
Because Helsinki appears to be short on true budget hotels, it seems like an expensive place to stay. But the hotels here are of a better standard, euro for euro, than those in Paris or London. The Sokos chain (from &euro138 www.sokoshotels.fi) are all well located, and there are several in Helsinki. Note &euro1= approx. Rs 61.

More affordable is the Best Western Premier Hotel Katajanokka (from &euro89 www.bwkatajanokka.fi), which was once a prison, or the Hotel Finn (from &euro65 www.hotellifinn.fi), located on the top floors of what its website calls a &ldquodignified city building&rdquo. If you&rsquore willing to rough it out a little, though, there&rsquos always Hostel Stadion (from &euro32 for single rooms, dormitory beds from &euro20 www.stadionhostel.fi), which has the glamour of being housed in the Olympic stadium.

But if price is no issue, Helsinki has many, many options for you, among them two Hilton hotels (www.hilton.com) Helsinki Strand (from &euro124) and Hotel Kalastajatorppa (from &euro125). Or live it up at the elegant and centrally located Hotel K&aumlmp (from &euro409 www.hotelkamp.com).

What to see & do
A visit to the Design District (www.designdistrict.fi) &mdash a collection of design and antique shops, art galleries, museums and showrooms &mdash is a must. You could probably start at the Design Forum Store (www.designforum.fi), which is a good place to pick up a map to help you navigate the stores. Of course, Design District isn&rsquot strictly an &lsquoarea&rsquo, but Helsinki is small enough that this distinction doesn&rsquot matter very much. Hop, gawp, stop and shop. But don&rsquot restrict yourself to shops with the Design District logo. Many furniture and home d&eacutecor stores you walk into will impress the eye and mind. The Esplanadi area is a good base, and the two streets constituting it on both sides have some of Helsinki&rsquos toniest shops, boutiques and caf&eacutes.

The Suomenlina Fortress (free with your Helsinki Card) is a ferry-ride away from the Esplanadi. It&rsquos pretty enough, but the fortress will not impress Indians, who should have seen far better. Good place to go if you have three hours to kill.

The Senate Square, Finland&rsquos parliament and a magnificent church, on the other hand, is a sight to be seen &mdash note the total absence of security here, another marker of a society that&rsquos flatter than even most of Europe. Also well worth a visit is the Sibelius Memorial, which is a park and a sculpture in memory of the great Finnish composer. Its abstract treatment disappointed the locals when it was unveiled because they were expecting something realistic and classical. Don&rsquot let that deter you though it&rsquos worth a pleasant half hour of wandering and you can hop across to the nearby Olympic Stadium right after.

The Design Museum (entry &euro8 www.design museum.fi) is, of course, a must-visit check out the events calendar for seminars and lectures. If a mere study of design is not what you&rsquore looking for, you can consume it at the Artek Store (www.artek.fi), a furniture design store co-founded by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. The Arabia Factory Shop (www.arabia.fi) is just the place for more consumption &mdash here, it's ceramics.

Make up for all that greed with a visit to the serene and beautiful Temppeliaukio Church, or Rock Church, which is perched on a massive granite outcrop in Lutherinkatu.

Where to eat

Helsinki is an easy place to eat in, even if the really budget, carry-a-sandwich joints you&rsquoll see in larger European cities seem less available and restaurants are on the expensive side. The good news is that there&rsquos good value at the upper-middle end. For, say, &euro30 per head, you can eat better food in better ambience than in the big capitals of Europe. Kappeli (www.kappeli.fi) is a greenhouse that&rsquos been turned into a restaurant and has been around since the 1830s. You have great views of the Esplanadi and the sea, and the menu (French and Finnish) and bar are excellent if a little pricey. There&rsquos a bar and live performances next door. If you&rsquore looking for that one good dining experience on your trip, this could be it. Or it could be Savotta (www.asrestaurants.com), a traditional Finn eatery that contrives, with some success, to reveal Finland&rsquos rural heart. It&rsquos in a basement, crowded and cutely dingy, with low ceilings and all tavern-like. The waiters are not the blandly polite sort, and will entertain you with jibes and treat you with warmth rather than deference. It's all a part of the service concept. Touristy, but who cares We had reindeer, elk, bear in different forms, and drank clear spirits and chasers. Arrive hungry, though.