INDIVUE – travel & art

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  • Travel videos inspired by Helsinki

    Travel videos inspired by Helsinki

    As a passionate travel blogger, content creator and visual artist, there’s nothing quite like the excitement of capturing and sharing the unseen wonders of a city. Over the past decade, I have been extensively exploring, filming, and photographing one of Northern Europe’s most captivating cities, Helsinki, the capital of Finland. And now you can watch my videos inspired by Helsinki here –

    The sprawling archipelago city of Helsinki is a mesmerizing blend of idyllic nature and urban modernity, brimming with charming street-side cafes, exquisite restaurants, and an array of cultural and touristic attractions. Through my travel videos I strive to bring this Finnish charm alive, right on your screens.

    In this collection of travel videos, you’ll have a chance to virtually stroll through the cobblestone streets of Helsinki, passing by cozy cafes with warm, inviting interiors and the heavenly aroma of fresh Finnish cakes. Mostly gluten-free. Picture yourself sipping a steaming cup of tea or kahvi (coffee) at a local haunt, watching the world go by.

    Videos inspired by Helsinki, Finland

    Unveiling Helsinki: A Treasure Trove of Travel Videos

    As food is a crucial part of any travel experience, the videos also showcase an exciting range of Helsinki’s top restaurants. From traditional Finnish cuisine at the long-standing establishments to innovative fusion dishes at trendy eateries, these restaurants offer a culinary journey through Helsinki’s rich and diverse food culture. The opportunity to relish the delicious Karjalanpiirakka (Karelian pie), rare vegetarian foods in Finland or Finnish Indian foods is just a click away!

    Helsinki, with its unique blend of old and new, offers an abundance of touristic sights. I’ve captured everything from the Suomenlinna island standing majestically on the sea next to Helsinki, to the high Vuosaarenhuippu which offers a high view point over Helsinki.

    What makes this collection special is that every photo and video have been captured by me, offering an authentic, first-hand perspective of Helsinki. I have walked through the city’s alleys, breathed in the crisp Finnish air, listened to the local stories, tasted the regional flavors, and tried to encapsulate all those experiences in these videos.

    Creating this video collection has been an exhilarating journey, an endeavor to celebrate the spirit of Helsinki, and an attempt to share its enchanting allure with the world. But the adventure doesn’t stop here. As Helsinki continues to surprise me, I promise to add more exciting videos, showcasing the evolving dynamics of the city, and immersing you deeper into the Helsinki lifestyle.

    So, let the journey unfold. Click, play, and let’s explore Helsinki together, one video at a time!

    Note, these videos are part of my soon to be released INDIVUE – Trip to Helsinki – Visual travel guide with videos!

    Useful links:

    This post belongs to my
    → Trip to Helsinki – Visual Travel Guide.

    Explore all my Helsinki travel videos
    → here    .

    If you want to dive deeper into Helsinki, see my guide to
    → cafés    .

  • Here’s how American president Joe Biden travelled in Helsinki, Finland

    Here’s how American president Joe Biden travelled in Helsinki, Finland

    It was a summer Wednesday evening on July 12, 2023, in Helsinki when, after a restaurant dinner, I walked downtown and happened upon a scene where the Radisson Blu hotel, located next to the Kamppi metro station, was being cordoned off by metal barriers, with several police officers patrolling in front of the hotel. People gathered behind the iron fences as if waiting for something, and there really was something exceptional in the air. US President Joe Biden was coming to Finland and he was going to stay at the Radisson Blu hotel in Helsinki’s Kamppi. Check out my video –

    The hotel and the road passing by it were isolated from other people for several tens of meters, as you can see from the video. You can also see how Joe Biden’s bodyguards were using binoculars from the hotel’s rooftop terrace balcony to watch us curious passers-by. Biden’s arrival time had not been announced to the public, so I didn’t linger around the hotel, but continued on my way.

    I got on the metro from Kamppi as usual, when suddenly, after leaving the Central Railway metro station, the driver announced that we wouldn’t be stopping at the Hakaniemi metro station. The metro driver didn’t give any explanation for this. I hastily decided to get off at the Helsinki University station in Kaisaniemi, which comes before Hakaniemi.

    As I was leaving the Helsinki University metro tunnel, a security guard yelled after me, that I couldn’t go where I was heading. Apparently, the police would have stopped me. I wondered for a moment what to do and then rose to the surface from the university tunnel exit.

    The road to the Helsinki city center through Kaisaniemenkatu street was fenced off with similar iron fences as in Kamppi, and there were several police officers and security guards standing by the roadside. I asked one of the police officers why the Hakaniemi metro station was closed and when it would open, but the police officer didn’t know to tell. Fortunately, the pedestrian walkway was free, so I continued my journey on foot towards Hakaniemi. And then suddenly all car traffic and trams were prevented from passing through Hakaniemi via Unioninkatu and Kaisaniemenkatu to the city center. Everywhere became eerily quiet – you can see and hear this silence from the attached video.

    American president Joe Biden in Helsinki, Finland

    It was a way past 10 pm in the evening and the sun was setting. The views from the Unioninkatu roundabout towards Pitkäsilta, Hakaniemi and Kallio Church looked beautiful with an orange-colored sky in the background, so I stayed near the roundabout with my camera, waiting for what was to come. It was a bit reckless in retrospect.

    First came a helicopter, buzzing loudly on top of us. By “us” I mean the other spectators gathered by the road, as well as security guards and police officers. Unioninkatu and Hakaniemi gaped empty for a long time before the arrival of the president’s motorcade. Finally, after a long wait, blue lights began to flash on the horizon and approach Pitkäsilta bridge and the Unioninkatu roundabout.

    President Biden’s motorcade consisted of motorcycles, police cars, and various other vehicles such as vans, ambulances, and in the middle of all this, the two limousines adorned with Finnish and American flags. Joe Biden was sitting in one of the limousines. You can see and hear the entire Joe Biden motorcade in the attached video.

    After the procession passed me, I walked back to the Helsinki University metro station. Traffic returned to normal, and the next metro stopped again at Hakaniemi metro station.

    I’ve never been to America myself, but what I saw did remind me a lot of American movies. And it made me reflect on how easy traveling is for an ordinary citizen.

    Useful links:

    This post belongs to my
    → Trip to Helsinki – Visual Travel Guide.

    Explore all my Helsinki travel videos
    → here    .

    If you want to dive deeper into Helsinki, see my guide to
    → cafés    .

  • Coldplay in Helsinki and how I got the concert ticket

    Coldplay in Helsinki and how I got the concert ticket

    My friend visited a Coldplay concert in Gothenburg this month, and during the concert, the lead singer of Coldplay asked if there were anyone from Finland in the audience. There were indeed many. As the newspapers later wrote, during Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour in Sweden, Coldplay had hinted that they might be coming to Finland as well. Read on to find out how I got a ticket to their concert –

    A few days after the Gothenburg concert, we read in the newspapers that Coldplay was indeed coming to Finland, with the date set for July 28, 2024. What a great piece of news, I thought – it might be time to go celebrate the best Coldplay songs live. I still had fresh memories of Ed Sheeran’s jam-packed and visually stunning concert at the Olympic Stadium, which turned me into a genuine fan of Ed Sheeran.

    Tickets for the Coldplay concert went on presale on Tuesday of this week, and you had to register on Coldplay’s fan page for this. I don’t know if I was late or what was wrong, but I was only able to subscribe to the Coldplay newsletter on Sunday. How others got the code for presale tickets remained a mystery to me.

    On Tuesday, July 25, presale tickets for the Coldplay concert sold out in a flash. A friend of mine managed to get a ticket after a 40-minute wait, but due to various ambiguities, the ticket purchase process took her about four hours in total. Surprisingly, Coldplay announced two additional shows for Helsinki during the presale, on the 30th and 31st on July 2024. However, to my horror, I later read in the press that up to 80% of concert tickets had been sold to fans in advance. Fans were considered those who had been able to register as fans on Coldplay’s own website.

    On Wednesday, July 26, at 9 a.m., the second presale for the Coldplay concert began, this time among those registered on the LiveNation website. That site warned that there weren’t a large number of tickets available. However, at 9 a.m., I managed to click myself into the ticket shop via LiveNation. I got into the queue for the ticket shop and around 10 minutes past 9, I got to select tickets. I tried to buy three tickets, but only one or two tickets at a time could be purchased. Once I was even able to put a ticket in the shopping cart, but after waiting for a minute, about ⅓ of the queue time, the program kicked me out to the previous point, and no tickets were available anymore.

    I spent a full four hours trying to get a ticket in advance, but to no avail. I refreshed the pages, and every few minutes the ticket service showed that one random ticket had been put on sale, but I never managed to buy them. Tickets were never available again. I was disappointed in how difficult it was to get tickets for myself and a friend. Coldplay seemed to favor only solo travelers, not group fans. My first experience of buying a presale ticket was therefore a very frustrating experience.

    Even though the presale for the Coldplay concert was a frustrating experience, I didn’t get completely discouraged, as the official ticket sale was only starting today, Friday, July 28, at 10 a.m. I was used to the fact that before I started travel blogging 18 years ago, I used to be on hold on the phone just on the day when ticket sales began, and only then, to get tickets for concerts of my favorite artists at the time, such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Prince. Buying a ticket online could be more enjoyable than hanging on the phone lines, and even though I was wondering how few tickets were left for the actual ticket sale day, I still believed that it might be possible to get a ticket on Friday as well. After all, my friend had also managed to get a ticket from the presale.

    A fourth concert in Helsinki for Coldplay!

    And then, on the eve of the actual ticket sale day, Thursday, July 27, Coldplay announces the fantastic news that they will be doing a fourth concert in Helsinki. That day would be Saturday, July 27, 2024, and it would be Coldplay’s very first concert in Finland. So there would be a total of four concerts: 27th, 28th, 30th, and 31st of July 2024, and all tickets would be on sale from 10 a.m. on Friday.

    So, I woke up early today, Friday, and logged into the Ticket Service. I clicked on the upcoming Coldplay concerts, but nothing happened before 10 o’clock. I may have refreshed the pages, I don’t remember, but refreshing may have been a mistake because at 9:59, when ticket sales started, I clicked on the sale button and ended up in a queue to get to the ticket shop. And that queue lasted a long time, much longer than it had lasted the day before yesterday. It wasn’t until about 20 minutes of waiting that I was finally able to access the ticket shop and there were hardly any tickets available. At this point, my friend’s friend had managed to buy herself three tickets, already at 9:05.

    In the pre-sale, the day before yesterday, I had been desperate enough to click on random special tickets that were about to go on sale, the price of which ranged between 260-390 euros, and these would have included a concert ticket in addition to a Coldplay wristband and some other fan product. I didn’t care about fan merchandise, as I just wanted a ticket or two, but it seemed impossible. With a special ticket for about 990 euros, I would have gotten access to a lounge, a Coldplay concert photo exhibition, and even the opportunity to photograph the band itself, but that was beyond my pain threshold. That was also the current price of a plane ticket to India, or a one month’s rent in Helsinki.

    I was refreshing the Ticket Service page and wondering how the concert tickets that had just gone on sale simply evaporated in fractions of a second. Several times the tickets I wanted were already in my shopping cart, and I queued to pay for them, but in vain, as the program just spat me out and claimed that there were no tickets available. And finally, when the only options left were dynamic concert tickets, I started clicking on them out of frustration, even though the price at worst was up to around 390 euros.

    And then – ouch! I got a dynamic ticket in my shopping bag. And eventually from the purchase queue I also got to swipe my credit card. The Ticket Service gave me about 18 minutes time to complete the credit card transaction. It was chilling to pay 400 euros for one single Coldplay concert ticket, which wasn’t even in a particularly good location and didn’t include any fan products or wristbands, like the special tickets did. I would be just getting a seat, the original price of which would have been around 171 euros. Also I know that the seats in Olympic stadium are not comfortable to sit on for long as your buttocks numb in them, and anyways I would have to stand over there to see something behind the dancing fans in front of me. But because my other friend, who started ticket hunting at the same time as me, hadn’t even gotten into the ticket shop from the queue, I made the bold choice and bought a Coldplay dynamic concert ticket with several hundred euros.

    After this I tried to get a concert ticket for my friend as well, but in vain. I couldn’t get any ticket to the shopping cart anymore, and finally, after I had refreshed the page for a while, the program threw me out and I had to queue again to get inside the ticket shop. When I finally got back into the ticket shop after a long time queuing, the program threw me out again and a new queue began.

    Three hours passed and I was still in the queue for to the Ticket Shop. The queue has progressed one third of the full time. And my friend, who started the Coldplay concert ticket purchase same time as me, at 10 o’clock, got inside the Ticket Service shop only after queuing for 3h 40 minutes, but in vain, as all tickets were gone.

    Coldplay testing friendships

    So, despite my initial difficulties, I was able to secure a ticket for the first ever Coldplay concert in Helsinki, Finland. My emotions ran high; it was like I’d just scored a victory in a tough battle. And in some ways, it was a battle — one against time, technology, and the thousands of other eager fans all chasing for a ticket.

    Looking back at this experience, it was a mix of emotions. On one hand, I felt disheartened by the ticketing system’s complexities and the seemingly impossible task of securing a ticket. On the other hand, the triumph of finally getting a ticket made it all worthwhile. But at what price – over double the price! In addition, I’m sad that I have to go alone to a concert to listen to Coldplay and Music of the Spheres.

    Something should be done to renew the digital ticket selling system – How about one queue for one ticket loners and another queue for two or more tickets purchase with friends, for example.

    Useful links: