Helsinki is roughly the size of Baltimore, in terms of population and it is also a major seaport, but it may as well be another planet. I arrived from London in the afternoon and breezed through passport control. The young woman who checked my passport asked me the normal questions then asked me where I was staying. I could not remember the name of the place, so I said it was the former prison. She laughed and said, “That’s Katajanokka!” I was sent on through and headed down to baggage claim.

The Finns must have the best run airport on earth. I’ve been in a lot of airports and the wait for luggage is a minimum of thirty minutes in most of them. By the time I got to the carousel, my bag was there waiting for me. I collected it and went outside to see a taxi stand right by the door. The trip from the plane to the taxi was maybe ten minutes. Of course, the taxi was a Mercedes Benz, which always makes me laugh. In America, the Mercedes is the symbol of suburban affluence. In Europe, it is the most common taxi.

Of course, you soon understand why Helsinki is a clean, efficient city, as the taxi driver is a white guy, who speaks good English in addition to Finnish. Most everywhere now, the taxi business is run by Muslims from the Middle East or North Africa. In Finland, you just don’t see many non-Finns, other than some Chinese tourists and white Europeans here on business. I asked my taxi driver where I could find a ghetto to visit. He laughed and said there are no ghettos in Helsinki. Everywhere was safe.

After I told him where I was from, he then understood my question better. He had been to the Imperial Capital in the 1980’s and still remembered the squalor. He asked how it was now and I gave him the truth about our multicultural experience. He figured out my politics, because he then told me how important it was for Finns to keep the Muslims and blacks out of the country. He also said their rulers were trying to change Finland by importing diversity, but he was confident the Finns would not lose their country…

The sun was close to setting, so after I checked into the hotel I took a quick stroll around the area where I was staying. Katajanokka prison, which is now a hotel, is actually on an island named Katajanokka. It’s just over a short footbridge from the mainland, but it is still technically an island. There’s a utilitarian vibe here. The Finns must think form follows function, as the building style is not intended to impress anyone. There’s a humbleness about it that can be mistaken for plain, but it quite beautiful.

Katajanokka is a very nice neighborhood, where local big shots live, so its lack of gaudiness is not due to a lack of wealth. It’s just that Finns are never garish. There is a park named after Tove Jansson, the famous creator of the Moomin books. These are a collection of somewhat disturbing children’s books, popular in Finland since the middle of the last century. There is the Uspenski Cathedral, which is an old largest Orthodox cathedral. The waterfront is full of shops, food stands and tourist stuff…

The next day, after my early morning walk, I found a nice little place, in the side of an old building, selling coffee and baked goods. The proprietor was Italian, an older man, who somehow ended up in Finland. In his youth he had a spirit for adventure and enjoyed drug taking, so one thing led to another and he wound up in Finland. He now has a pleasant life playing music, when not selling coffee and biscuits to people in his shop. I get the sense that many of the foreigners living here have a similar story. They just ended up here…

I sought out where the Finnish rulers hold court and asked for an audience with their ruler, but I was told that it was not possible. I presented a letter of introduction, passed on to me by John Derbyshire, from the honorable Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, exulted leader of Turkmenistan. Unknown to me, Sauli Niinistö, the ruler of Finland, is in a quarrel with Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. After some very tense moments, in which flogging was discussed as an option, I was released and told to report back before my departure…

The women of Finland come in two main types. There are the somewhat cherubic type, with a hint of north Asia to them. They do not have an eye fold, but they have the facial structure of Asians. These are robust women, who get more robust as they hit their middle years. It’s not hard to imagine them hauling firewood or a reindeer carcass into the cabin during the dead of winter. All of the old women in my family have this build. Facially, they really do all look the same, which suggests a narrowness to their family tree.

The other type is at the other end of the morphological scale for females. Unlike the more robust variety, these women usually have blonde hair and they are athletic. Their faces are round, but lack the cherubic quality of the former type. As they age, they maintain the athletic build, but their faces show wrinkles along the jaw line, which is actually quite attractive. It make them look wizened, at least to me. Finnish women of all types seem to view men with good humor, as if we are clowns sent here for their amusement…

You know you are in a different land the first time you use the toilet. I realized this for the first time while in Mexico. The public toilet was a hole in the floor and it was very public, in that there was now stall. In nicer facilities, a man would be in the toilet handing out squares of paper and offering to wash your hands. In a rich country like America, solving the bathroom problem is not something we have faced for a very long time, so we take this stuff for granted. We don’t think about toilets and showers very much. At least I don’t.

Something I’ve noticed in Europe is the lack of water pressure in the shower. I’m in a nice place in Helsinki and the water pressure is not much above a trickle, relative to what I’m used to in America. My shower at home can remove paint if you get aggressive with the settings. I’ve never experienced anything like that in Europe. It’s always the opposite, which is probably due to a need to conserve. America has plenty of water and it is cheap, relative to most things, so we use as much as we like. That’s not true in Europe.

That’s something we Americans don’t appreciate. In North America, we have plenty of every natural resource. We could be energy independent if we simply stopped selling oil and gas to foreigners. We have plenty of water, plenty of places to throw away trash and so on. Buy gas for the car in Europe and you quickly appreciate why we love our trucks and SUV’s. Gasoline here is a little under $6 per gallon. The rental car I will be driving to Turku this week is the size of one of the tires on my truck….

Waste and water are two things that have popped into my head several times during my short time in Helsinki. Everywhere here offers water, even the coffee shop. I bought a couple of beers at the front desk and they offered me a glass of water. On the other hand, the Finns seem obsessed with wasting anything, especially water. In a few places, I’ve seen signs that describe how much was wasted the previous day. I’m a thrifty guy, so this appeals to me for obvious reasons, but it is a strange thing nonetheless…

The Finns also obsess about energy usage. In the hotel, you have to insert your key card into a slot near the door to turn on the electric. Even the sockets power off when you remove the card. The point is to prevent guests from leaving the lights on when they leave. A local told me the Finns are very energy conscious. As someone who hates it when people leave lights on in an empty room, I’m thinking this will be a good policy to institute at my office. Maybe I’ll install thermal sensors in every room…

Helsinki is one of the least diverse places you can visit, so those who enjoy vibrancy, as much as I do, will be disappointed to find zero vibrancy here. I mean zero. I walked about for most of the day and saw zero familiar faces. The closest thing to vibrant, other than the Chinese tourists, were some Indonesian businessmen. That said, you do manage to get used to the sameness. I know, it seems impossible, as diversity is our strength, but being in a place where everyone looks sort of like you is relaxing after a while…

There is a Chabad outpost in Helsinki. I wandered past it on my walk. For those unfamiliar, Chabad is a Jewish cult that started in Russia, moved to Poland and then moved to America before the war. They have “centers” in every country. President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is in the cult. One thing they believe is that this is a messianic era and that Jews must prepare for the end times. That means their movement must bring Jews back into the faith, similar to some Evangelical Christian movements.

One big difference is they think Jews should revolt against secular governments. They are a little vague about this, but the main point is that Jews should have no loyalty to any secular government. Funny how no one thinks this is a problem. If some white guys get together to talk about white identity politics, the full force of the custodial state swings into action. A worldwide cult preaching the end times, with recruiting centers in every capital of the West, including a man inside the White House, is no big deal…

Finland is a country of roughly five million people. According the most recent crime reports I can find on-line, they had 63 homicides in 2017. Half of those involved men of marginalized groups where heavy drinking was involved. That’s a nice way of saying losers who got drunk and took their disagreement to the next level. Baltimore, a city with ten percent of the population of Finland, had 342 murders in 2017. Roughly 95% of those murders were committed by marginalized men, by which we mean blacks…

Before going to bed, I turned on the television. I speak no Finnish, so the local shows are a mystery of white people speaking what sounds like Klingon. The local shows have zero non-whites on them. Even in Copenhagen, I saw they decorated their shows with some diversity. The Finns have not done this, as far as I can tell. I watched something that looked like a game show. The only thing diverse about it is one guy had neck tattoos and ear gauges. Otherwise, Finnish TV is what our ruling classes hate the most.

The exceptions are the American and British channels. The BBC is a carnival of cloud people diversity. Imagine CNN with British accents and British condescension. That’s the Beeb. The American station is a Fox affiliate, playing the Simpsons and Family Guy. They also have National Geographic for some reason. The commercials on these channels are full of vibrancy and diversity. I saw an ad for razors featuring a black guy. There was an ad for something featuring race mixers. We are ruled by monsters…