I have been a grumpy bloke today! I took the last flight out from London to Helsinki last night in order to maximise time with the family. The flight was very late so I barely made the connecting flight to Tampere. Surprise, surprise... my baggage missed the connection. By the time I filled out the baggage claims forms, all the taxis were gone so had to call one out from the city....checked in to my hotel at 02:00 this morning.

I went to the office today without the benefit of my sponge bag or clean clothes...yuck! It was a long day in the office....hope I did not smell too bad.

I am staying (now reunited with my bag :-) )a few blocks away from Salud restaurant which is where colleagues have taken me several times. There is a very good salad bar (quite typical for Finland since their healthy eating campaign a few decades back) and pretty decent steaks. This was founded by a Finn who loved Spanish food and the story is recorded here. While a good place to eat, the "Spanish" theme is a little loose extending into Texmex and some exotic things like 'Rocky mountain oysters'. Well... I fancied a decent pepper steak tonight and trudged out into the snow only to find out that Bodega Salud was shut.

I couldn't be bothered trudging a kilometre to a really good restaurant on the north side of the river so retreated to the boring but warm choice of the Scandic City hotel restaurant. The setting seemed odd. It was in an atrium, with a pergola with mock vines, yet I could see the door to the street and snow beyond. Sitting on your own in a strange city makes you observe and want to blog the observations...no matter how inane.

For a Finnish hotel, the menu was predictably a combination of steaks, salads & texmex with a little Thai. This seems to be a pretty successful combination as you find it everywhere regardless of whether you are in a Sokos, Scandic or other hotel chain. Finnish home cooking is very N. European and fairly bland. I wonder if Finns need something more exotic and spicy if they want to feel good about eating out. Dunno if it is true but they seem to go for Spanish or Texmex rather than say Indian spicy food. However a fair number of Finns (like Brits and Germans) go to Spain for the Sun.

There are one or two quite classy Finnish restaurants in Tampere but I do not recall the names - and they were on the other side of the river - if I find them again on a future trip I will post the details. There is also junk food - Hesburger is the local burger business that has kept McDonalds at bay and various kebab houses.