Here's a new panorama gallery for Helsinki in Finland/Suomi with a few extra shots in a link off the end.

As I noted, I went to Finland to talk to the members of Alternative Party, a Demoscene gathering, but I always seek new photographs. The weather gods were not with me, however, so I only got a few usable periods of sun in the short days. And it involved some more playing with Autopano Pro. The regular photographs will come much later.

The Finns, not unlike the Dutch, all spoke to me in very good English. It was rather embarrassing, really, and indeed they conducted their conference entirely in English and tolerated my fast speaking style. As such I learned hardly any words of Finnish. It's not hard to see why this has taken place, however. There are only about 6 million people who speak it, and while it is weakly related to Hungarian, it's not really understood by anybody else. In the global village, the Finns see which way the wind is blowing and teach their children English.

I did learn however, that I've been saying the Finnish word "Sauna" wrong all my life. It's "Sow-na" not "Saw-na." And there was a sauna after the conference, of course!

Here's a shot of the Helsinki harbour taken from an approaching ferry boat in a glorious moment of sun. It's not pefect because the boat was moving but it shows the central landmarks.

More about Helsinki is yet to come.

Update: Silly me, there were two other panos of Helsinki I forgot to include, one of Senate Square on the main page, and The Cable Factory area on the secondary page.