At Santahamina

Santahamina is an island and neighborhood of Eastern Helsinki, Finland. At present it is a military base housing the Guard Jaeger Regiment, making access restricted. The Finnish National Defence University (NDU) is also located on the island.

We don’t usually have an access to Santahamina since it is restricted military area, but today was “meet the relatives and friends”-day for some of the rookies who started their service last Monday, we got the visit our son for few hours.

As you can imagine taking photographs in a military base is not recommended, there weren’t that many photo ops. This photo was taken when the big jefe was speaking. After that we met Niklas, got to see the “hut” he lives in. Then we went to the military cafe. At 14:15 was our turn to have lunch, we did that. (Check the lunch content from the extra.) After that we got to visit an army museum.

Niklas seems to be doing okay. He’s in good spirits. Army is mandatory for boys in Finland. For girls it’s optional. There was quite a lo of girls serving too. In my opinion it should be mandatory or optional for both sexes. We have high level of equality in Finland, but regarding army service it’s not equal - yet. Hopefully it will be soon.

There was kind of a mall scandal the other week when a member of army had marched in Pride parade in service uniform. First there was statement from the army that that is not recommended. Then after some words and opinions it was said that it is okay to do that. So there is progress even in the army :-)