Thursday, April 19, 2018

When Small is Not Good.

Our hotel is right in the heart of Helsinki and is clearly well used by business people who are working in the city.  It is beside the public transport system and close to shops and eateries.  My room is 724, and there are 10 floors, so you can work out that it is huge.
To access the floors, there are 3 lifts.  These lifts are the size of an average NZ guest bedroom wardrobe.  I kid you not.  At a squeeze you can fit 4 people in.  Hopefully those 4 people know each other before getting in, because you have no room to move and it is so tight that I wouldn’t be surprised if you could be pregnant by the ground floor, such is the togetherness!!!  

To make the space look larger, they have taken a tip from every home show in the world and added mirrors on all the walls, so you can be both squished and reflected at the same time.  Fancy!

The floor area would be lucky to be 1.5 sqm and I am looking down at my feet, leaning on the wall in this pic.


This morning I waited to try and take a photo of the tiniest lifts in the world, but mostly because it is really awkward standing so close to someone and not speaking or making eye contact (them, not me!). I am the idiot that stepped into the lift and cheerily said ‘hello’ to which there is dead Finnish silence, no eye contact and a really difficult ride down or up.  I have learned.  Now I just wait.

Choosing not to get in the lift this morning, l out waited 4 different people, pretending to check my phone etc.  Then the door opened and 3 of our group, none of them tiny were squished into the lift.  When the door opened the man that was waiting to board, walked toward the lift with his head down, then almost staggered back in shock at the amount of human flesh within the tiny cube.


One of our group saw me and said ‘come on Susannah’ and moved into non existent space, so I raced over and ooozzzzed into the lift and down we went.  I don’t stand that close to people in my own family, but there you go!  I still believe that togetherness such as that is overrated and I am pretty sure I am not going to be pregnant BUT believe me, I would be taking the stairs if the doors to the stairwells were not locked!

You can tell by the pic that it is very lucky I am the size of a will-o-whisp, because clearly there is not much room in that lift for me too!!!!!!

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