I have seen the White City, long ago

Aragorn may have seen the white city a long time ago, but I went sightseeing it today. A biting -10 degrees, the Helsinki cathedral was the perfect place to warm up after walking around the railway station and city center.

Up, up, up the stairs we go until we come to... the tunnel!

Technically you can only come to the tunnel by going down, down, down the stairs, but that doesn't have the same ring to it. This is the Biomedicum building of the University of Helsinki, home of the lab I work in.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time given us

Or at least I wish. But cells don't stop growing on weekends and the microscope is always booked during the week, so I went up to the lab on this gloriously chilly Sunday to replenish the growth media and take some pictures of human tissue samples on the confocal microscope. 

Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer

Today was the first sunny day since I landed in Helsinki so I decided to go outside and absorb some Vitamin D. I came across this monument designed to look like organ pipes, which is dedicated to the famous Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (12.1.19) 

May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out

Locally known as the urban northern lights, Lux Helsinki is an annual art festival that lights up the long dark days of early January when there's only around 5 hours of sunlight each day (5.1.19)

It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door...there's no knowing where you might be swept off to

I smell something fishy...

The sunrise as we descended into Helsinki on January 2, 2019. (Apparently the fishy smell came from a crate of fish that leaked onto my suitcase in the cargo hold. As Gollum once said, I really "don't want fish," but such is life)