hidden treasure helsinki
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Itäkeskus - the centre of East
Itäkeskus is very interesting part of Helsinki. When you hop on in out futuristic orange metro from central Helsinki, you will get probably pretty surprised when you get out from it. Itäkeskus is a multicultural centre of Helsinki: you will find lot's of authentic restaurants from shish kebab to Vietnamese - and the prices are not as high as they'd be in central Helsinki.
Atmosphere in Itäkeskus is also something to experience - you'll hear different African languages, Arabic for sure, Persian, Spanish, Estonian, Russian, Thai, Kurdish... And all these cultures along Finnish live there. It's like the world squeezed in one place.
Now that Helsinki has started to grown much near like Jätkäsaari, Kalasatama, Viikki, in the late 80's it was growing to East. Also many of rafugees were located there. Actually in the 90's East Helsinki was pretty unsafe part of Helsinki as along refugees many of Finns with problems (alcoholics, drugas) were placed in Helsinki city owned block of flats in East. Nowadays East has cleaned up and - maybe that 90's was also reflecting from Finnish economic depression
between 1990-1993.
Basically from Itäkeskus you'll find this enormous shopping mall- Itis - it's probably the biggest in Finland. Next to Itäkeskus shopping mall you'll find Puhos shopping mall which represents pretty much that 90's Finland though it was opened in 1965 and by that time it was the biggets in whole Finland. Now it seems tiny. Also it's the oldest in whole Scandinavia. Now it has this basaar feeling with second hand shops, Turkish hairdresser, Halal meat shop, Thai massage for sure and Mosque.
Itäkeskus is worth visiting!
Hot tip!
The area is not only about shopping malls: there are great second hand shops by The Salvation Army and Recycle Centre!