Thursday, April 23

 

 

At 9:00  was in the lobby of the Radisson Blu Plaza, in Mikonkatu, where I had met Steve last Autumn. This time I was meeting Mary Caulfield from ITT in Dublin. It was eleven years since she was last in Helsinki.

The sun was bright so we walked round the centre for a while, ending up at the old market hall in the harbour. We then caught the metro from what used to be Kaisaniemi, and the tram to Arabia.

At Arcada I handed Mary over to Nathalie for a long discussion about how to further develop our long partnership.

At 13:00 Jutta, Mary and I headed for the centre for an afternoon of open-ended discussion. Jutta wanted to start at Torni and then go to eat, but Torni didn’t open until 16:00. We decided to come back later.

Neither of them wanted to walk down to Kappeli and back, so Jutta suggested eating in Zetor. This turned out to be a very good suggestion. Zetor does cleaned-up traditional Finnish food, and Mary loved it. Actually, Jutta and I did too.

I had pittupanni and it was excellent. The meat was small cubes of steak and chicken, not the sausage I was expecting, and the fried egg was cooked perfectly.

Now we are back at Torni. We arrived at 16:05 and the bar was already almost full. There must have been a very long queue for the lift at 15:55.

I will arrive home at 20:00, having shown Mary how to get to Athenum, where she is meeting Jutta tomorrow. I will pack, watch the news with Irma and Naa, and then go to bed.