Gooo, Tech! Had you arrived here a few years ago, you would have had your arms in the air, cheering on the students of an Helsinki University of Technology[applied university] who were locked in competition to fabricate a lookout tower. These days, you're probably wondering just what inspired the first-place project that rises before you: an egg, an egg basket? Well, no. It's called View image[The Bubble]. Clearly this moniker didn't come from the structure's wickerish frame—we're guessing from its loftiness. (You'll be happy to know that, upon graduation, the Ville Hara[architect] founded his own dynamic firm in this land of design giants known for having drafted everything from free-form
vases to Eero Saarinen's TWA Terminal[futuristic terminals].)

This timber tower was commissioned by the Helsinki Zoo[capital city's zoo], which occupies most
of the Korkeasaari[fifty-acre harbor island] you are visiting. You have made the ferry jaunt in high summer; with luck it is one of the select nights when the zoo stays open and allows guests a peek at the big cats on their nocturnal prowls. Hopefully, the strictness of the zoo's rules—e.g., don't gather hair and feathers—won't dampen the thrill of sighting your first View site[Przewalski's horse]. The gathering part definitely won't tempt you (how do you say yuck in the local language?), but the thrill of seeing these nearly extinct equines is unforgettable.

The three-story tower is thirty-three feet high. That height plus the sixty-foot altitude of the hill it's built upon adds up to a splendid view across the water. You can't miss the
View site[huge white neoclassical cathedral] in the city center, and perhaps you'll even be able to make out some of the details on the many fine Art Nouveau buildings. Next month a
Helinski Festival[music festival] will be held in town, with dozens of international artists performing—from classical to klezmer, fado to flamenco. (Speaking of music, a Jean Sibelius[famed composer] grew up, and led a bilingual life, not far from the city.) As you ride the town's green trams and orange metro trains, don't worry about Nokia[cell phone coverage]; hitting dead zones here would be most ironic.

You are in a squeaky-clean land, one that ranks highest in the world for good governance (could it be due to all the View site[women leaders]? And it's a country full of clean curvilinear wood structures, many—like this tower—created using both CAD and steaming methods practiced by shipbuilders. If you know anybody in the ad biz, you might recommend this site as a place to shoot one of those bombastic commercials touting amazing water-sealants. These seventy-odd battens
would Lapland[lap up the products], you can be sure.

Where are you, anyhow?