I’m drawn to the crypt.
Subterranean cafe, where red brick arches blend with stone.
Pieces of art hang from the walls.
The artist is Uuno Palosaari, a young man with hopefully many more years left than his disease normally allows.
It was his dream to have an art showing, just like the great artists.
And his dream has come true.
I avoid the dining tables and take my coffee on a bench, leaning my back against a brick pillar.
The pastor tells me the crypt is the ‘garage’ of the Helsinki Cathedral.
She says that during the war, many presidents parked their cars down here in the darkness.
After the war, it was just a place where junk collected.
Now, the pastor tells me, the crypt is said to be more peaceful than the cathedral itself.
I look around at the stone, placed here probably in the 1830s, the cathedral itself a tribute to Emperor Nicolas I of Russia, run my hand along it, then finish my coffee and leave.
