Hi, this is Sandy Van Soy for Trekking the Planet.
Today we're in the country of Finland just outside the capital city of Helsinki.
We arrived here yesterday after taking a two and a half hour ferry trip from Tallinn, Estonia.
We'll be in Finland a couple more days and then be moving on to Sweden where we'll be
taking our next trek.
Let's take a look at what we've been doing.
Helsinki was named the World Design Capital for 2012.
This award is given to cities that have used design as a tool to reinvent themselves and
improve social, cultural and economic life.
Helsinki was named the most livable city by another organization.
We have to agree.
After seeing the downtown area, we hopped on a train to meet Alma Rickiden.
Okay, hello, my name is Alma.
I'm working here at the Seora Saari Open Air Museum.
It's a museum with a lot of buildings brought from all over Finland to the same island to
show how people used to live in Finland in the 18th and 19th and 20th centuries.
The most striking building on the island is also the oldest.
The Karuna Church was built by Arvid Horn between 1685 and 1686.
The interior of the church is anything but conventional.
We could have spent all day here, but we had an appointment back in town.
Today we're in Dere Vistro in Helsinki and we've got special guests here we're going
to talk to about Finnish cuisine and food, so I'll then ask him to introduce himself.
Hi, my name is Kvethikal Leona and in English it's Peter and this is Kvethikal Leona.
Okay, I'm going to go with Peter.
Okay, great.
So Peter, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your chef here.
Can you just give us a little bit of background about how long you've been a chef, maybe
some training you had, that type of thing?
Yeah, actually I started being a chef from 2002 and after that I've been working in several
places in Helsinki and decided four or five years ago I decided to go have a look over
this one, so I went to Thailand, travelled in Asia, about six months I was travelling
there and then I decided to go to Australia and have a look, take my resume in there,
drop in those few places, got a job and then worked for a few years almost.
So from there I came back here and I would work in the food bistro or Pura Vistro.
How I like to say it, Pura Vistro means bite, bite bistro.
So if I came here to eat, what kind of food does this bistro feature, what kind of food
do you have here?
To go with the entree what we have, we have like Oxtail, Oxtail with the most ready
food and that's served with a slice of ham and khao sang.
And that's pretty traditional types of food than the oxenotan?
Yeah, with a little twist.
Yeah, with a little twist as well.
But in the old times in Finland we used to do like cooking long time, same like in
France as well, like cook long time because the project for me wasn't so amazing and
tender, so we used to cook it really long time to get nice tender meat.
And I've heard about reindeer, eating reindeer in Finland, is that something that is true?
Yeah, we have that too.
We have reindeer tartar, so it's a nice meat.
The whole animal is like, it's really like, it's all part of the animal.
That's a good thing, a really good flavour of the meat.
But not the strong one like deer.
Oh wow, that sounds great, you're pretty hungry.
Okay, well thank you very much for your really appreciate the time and I know everyone here
will be interested to hear about this and thank you so much.
Always.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Well that's all for now, check back later for more updates.
Thanks.
