Icons and Punks, two days in Tampere.

From September 2000

To judge by the purple haired spotty youths lounging by the river and urinating under the trees there's obviously not much to do in Tampere on a Saturday evening. I mean, once you've done the Chain and Handcuffs exhibition, "The most extensive of its sort in Europe", The Coffee Cup Museum "more than 1200 cups made by the Arabia company", you just have to relieve yourself and save the "Finnish Refrigeration Museum” for the last day.

A check of the Tampere guidebook will tell you that none of the above is a flight of literary or humorous fantasy. These are some of the suggested activities from the guidebook. The refrigeration museum boasts "an extensive collection of refrigeration machinery" and a cafe and guided tours. I'll resist the temptation to say that its a cool experience (OK so I couldn't) but if your idea of fun is finding out how the Carnot cycle contributed to the culture of a country who's average winter temperature is well below zero, its for you.

This small Finnish city with such fascinating distractions is about 200 km North of Helsinki. It is dominated by a beautiful Finnish Orthodox Church, a mini St Basil’s, with domes and spires that look as if they should overlook Red Square. It dominates the town, standing, as it does, on a low hill overlooking the centre. Inside, the green and gold - robed priest was uttering the incantations and genuflecting, while the choir sang in beautiful Orthodox style. Down the left hand side stand the women, a mix of the modern and ancient, some in casuals and Nikes, and others in head scarves, praying intently like something out of a novel by Pasternak.

I confess to little or no knowledge of the Finns and their culture, my only contact being via a very unrepresentative and well travelled salesman, and the music of Sibelius. Jouni, the salesman was loud brash and humorous. He took great pleasure in greeting you with an enthusiastic "MOI!" and shaking you firmly by the hand. Moi by the way means "Hi" in his native (and by the way completely incomprehensible) tongue and was always carefully mispronounced to amuse other Scandinavians especially the Danes, to whom it means "Shit". I am reliably informed that Finnish shares absolutely no connection with any other World language apart from five words in common with Hungarian.

I digress, the separation of the genders in Tampere cathedral, women to the left and men to the right came as a bit of a surprise. I'm not sure its compulsory like in the Synagogue, as no one gave me a second look when I gravitated to the wrong side, but clearly that segregation said something about how ancient this religion is. The Finnish Orthodox Church lacks the heavy incense and beards of their Greek and Russian cousins. They are more akin to the Roman school, but the choral work has the same spine-tingling Eastern feel with the deep profound, almost inhuman, bass lines that are heard in St Petersburg or Thessaloniki.

The Mass seemed over-long, each section embellished and extended, as if to prepare the congregation for the experience to come. I watched a tiny child, a miniature version of her mother, in a red dress and the same head scarf being taken round, candle snuffer in hand, carefully extinguishing candles, while the calming music washed over the whole event like fog on a Baltic morning. My mind wandered from the mass as I thought what she must have made of all this, a child raised in a country with the largest penetration of mobile phones in the world, a country of early adopters of technology, and home to Nokia, the former pulp mill that now leads the high-tech, wireless connected world. What did she think to this quiet almost mediaeval ritual of bell, book and candle? Were these same people, at Mass on this Sunday morning, during the week pushing the frontiers of Information Technology, and if so how do they reconcile the two? Was I just seeing before the altar, those who preferred not to know the how, but just used the technology to talk, meet and carry out their Christian witness? Or were these the members of the "Information poor", those members of the emerging "underclass" to whom its just too much, and have opted for a simpler life where the faith that Jesus died for them is all the information they need.

My mind snapped back to the Mass, as the congregation rose again for the highlight, and moved forward, this time without segregation, to take the communion. Being a Protestant (can you be a lapsed Protestant?) I stayed back and watched, wondering if these people really believed in the literal transubstantiation or whether they crossed their fingers surreptitiously and went for the symbolic way out we Protestants (lapsed and otherwise) practice.

I felt strangely spiritually uplifted when I finally left the Mass, maybe it was God, or maybe it was just the fact that I passed an hour in beautiful peaceful surroundings and had spent it thinking about something other than work. I wonder if I'd chosen the Refrigeration Museum or Chain and Handcuffs exhibition that I would have been similarly uplifted? I very much doubt it.