Well, where to start… as always with a little introduction of what am gonna talk about… this party named Back to Reality was given much of an hype about what was going to happen on this cool Friday evening Feb 29. It is more about 3 parts of the program for the evening Part 1: in the office pantry; Part 2: A bar at a place called Mantsala around 20 kms from the city center; Part 3: Disco in one of the most acclaimed hotel Vantaa near the airport.
Part 1 – Helsinki Office
To start with the evening started at around 6.00pm in the office pantry. Arrangements were made for some food before we start. A pizza which costs abt. 2 Euros, as my colleagues called it, the cheapest pizza you can ever have and worst as well. The exclaimed that it is more like rubber than a pizza. I was lucky that I didn’t have to test that since there was no veggie version of them available. Hurrah!!! But I was feeling really hungry so stuffed myself with a couple of croissants. The drinking started from the office with couple of crates of beer to start with and some bottles of finest Finnish vodka. There was this Koff – this brand has a bar-tram which keeps going around the city’s tram track – and Lapin Kulta beers, the Koskenkorva the vodka, and another kind of non-alcoholic fruit drink.
After a kind of mood-setting for a great evening we headed out to board the bus that’s gonna take us to the bar and the hotel. Here is what they meant by back to reality… the bus was at least 25+ years old… not just its age but everything… the looks, the seating, even all those upholstery inside it was VERY old… but that was a great experience and fun to travel by this not so fast bus. We loaded all the beer and vodka into the bus and we started towards our first stop the Mantsala bar.
The ride took us around 40 mins and the entire group loved the journey. It was really great to see that every group enjoys travelling together in a bus – more like VGI’s team outings – the theme was fun and fun only. People singing, dancing, pulling legs, teasing, and one different thing is here they drink as well… so it was real fun to be on the bus to this bar.
Part 2 – Mantsala bar
We reached the bar after a couple of enquiries on the side of the road as the driver was not really sure about the location of this bar. Now I will have to tell you about the image that people were projecting about this place… this is supposed to be one of very low-level kind of bar… with “gangs” of people and this probably is one of the “not-so-good” kind of place and many things like that… but on the contrary when I reached there it looked a far better kind of place than all that was told to me. Only then I realized what is low-level here in Finland. With the little experience that I have had going to bars with friends this place is comparatively far better than our B6 in Trivandrum. I was really thinking these people should visit our KTDC beer parlors in TVM or the Tasmac bars in Chennai.
Nevertheless, we had a great time there with lots of music and lots of pictures of everyone. As always the drinking continued for another hour or so in the bar, and I had a chance to have some “open” talk with some of the css. It was really a good feeling to be accepted as one of them and they were kind enough that way. There was lot of fun and when we learnt that it was the bar girl’s birthday we had more celebration and one of us actually carried her to the front and every one of us wished her a great day. It was really a touching moment for me as well as that girl and everyone in the bar was really applauding and joined in the celebrations.
Part 3 – Hotel Vantaa
After about 9o minutes we finally left for our next and last stop for the evening the Hotel Vantaa. This is one big place to go in Helsinki on reaching there we all got the “ticket” to go inside and you have a choice of 3 different dance floors. The one which most of us wanted to go was full… so we chose the one on the first floor. It was really unbelievable to see at least 1000 people in that area… that really a big crowd. It was difficult to find out where others are when in a few minutes… the dark ambience and little lighting doesn’t help much either. It was really a normal dance floor until…
A group of 3 people from the hotel who came up on the stage and said a lot of things in “Finnish” and the entire crowd will reply in unison once every minute or so… unfortunately there was no one to translate everything. After a few minutes the prize distribution came… a t-shirt of the hotel given away to the crowd… you know thrown from the stage on to the crowd and you have to choose to get it… a couple of people in our group managed to get it though.
After sometime there came a group of people who were to give live performance for the dance floor… I must admit they were really good. They were interactive with each other – all in the songs – and also made the crowd really interactive with making us sing a few lines. Well, I did not understand a word of what they were singing but I really enjoyed the energy they brought to the dance floor. It was a great performance which lasted for an hour. Once again, the same normal dance floor music with a DJ. By this time we decided to hit the other floor and headed there… the dance floor was not as big as the first one but looked more prominent… it was around a feet below the normal floor level with separate lighting that it looked more like a stage.
I enjoyed the evening thoroughly until tiredness took over at around 2.00am so around 8 of us left together and we had a long wait for the taxi outside the hotel once we got one, we left with a lot of great memories… and reached home at around 3.30am and hit the bed….
Part 1 – Helsinki Office
To start with the evening started at around 6.00pm in the office pantry. Arrangements were made for some food before we start. A pizza which costs abt. 2 Euros, as my colleagues called it, the cheapest pizza you can ever have and worst as well. The exclaimed that it is more like rubber than a pizza. I was lucky that I didn’t have to test that since there was no veggie version of them available. Hurrah!!! But I was feeling really hungry so stuffed myself with a couple of croissants. The drinking started from the office with couple of crates of beer to start with and some bottles of finest Finnish vodka. There was this Koff – this brand has a bar-tram which keeps going around the city’s tram track – and Lapin Kulta beers, the Koskenkorva the vodka, and another kind of non-alcoholic fruit drink.
After a kind of mood-setting for a great evening we headed out to board the bus that’s gonna take us to the bar and the hotel. Here is what they meant by back to reality… the bus was at least 25+ years old… not just its age but everything… the looks, the seating, even all those upholstery inside it was VERY old… but that was a great experience and fun to travel by this not so fast bus. We loaded all the beer and vodka into the bus and we started towards our first stop the Mantsala bar.
The ride took us around 40 mins and the entire group loved the journey. It was really great to see that every group enjoys travelling together in a bus – more like VGI’s team outings – the theme was fun and fun only. People singing, dancing, pulling legs, teasing, and one different thing is here they drink as well… so it was real fun to be on the bus to this bar.
Part 2 – Mantsala bar
We reached the bar after a couple of enquiries on the side of the road as the driver was not really sure about the location of this bar. Now I will have to tell you about the image that people were projecting about this place… this is supposed to be one of very low-level kind of bar… with “gangs” of people and this probably is one of the “not-so-good” kind of place and many things like that… but on the contrary when I reached there it looked a far better kind of place than all that was told to me. Only then I realized what is low-level here in Finland. With the little experience that I have had going to bars with friends this place is comparatively far better than our B6 in Trivandrum. I was really thinking these people should visit our KTDC beer parlors in TVM or the Tasmac bars in Chennai.
Nevertheless, we had a great time there with lots of music and lots of pictures of everyone. As always the drinking continued for another hour or so in the bar, and I had a chance to have some “open” talk with some of the css. It was really a good feeling to be accepted as one of them and they were kind enough that way. There was lot of fun and when we learnt that it was the bar girl’s birthday we had more celebration and one of us actually carried her to the front and every one of us wished her a great day. It was really a touching moment for me as well as that girl and everyone in the bar was really applauding and joined in the celebrations.
Part 3 – Hotel Vantaa
After about 9o minutes we finally left for our next and last stop for the evening the Hotel Vantaa. This is one big place to go in Helsinki on reaching there we all got the “ticket” to go inside and you have a choice of 3 different dance floors. The one which most of us wanted to go was full… so we chose the one on the first floor. It was really unbelievable to see at least 1000 people in that area… that really a big crowd. It was difficult to find out where others are when in a few minutes… the dark ambience and little lighting doesn’t help much either. It was really a normal dance floor until…
A group of 3 people from the hotel who came up on the stage and said a lot of things in “Finnish” and the entire crowd will reply in unison once every minute or so… unfortunately there was no one to translate everything. After a few minutes the prize distribution came… a t-shirt of the hotel given away to the crowd… you know thrown from the stage on to the crowd and you have to choose to get it… a couple of people in our group managed to get it though.
After sometime there came a group of people who were to give live performance for the dance floor… I must admit they were really good. They were interactive with each other – all in the songs – and also made the crowd really interactive with making us sing a few lines. Well, I did not understand a word of what they were singing but I really enjoyed the energy they brought to the dance floor. It was a great performance which lasted for an hour. Once again, the same normal dance floor music with a DJ. By this time we decided to hit the other floor and headed there… the dance floor was not as big as the first one but looked more prominent… it was around a feet below the normal floor level with separate lighting that it looked more like a stage.
I enjoyed the evening thoroughly until tiredness took over at around 2.00am so around 8 of us left together and we had a long wait for the taxi outside the hotel once we got one, we left with a lot of great memories… and reached home at around 3.30am and hit the bed….
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