Talsinki

Viking XPRS motor ship en route from Helsinki to Tallinn

Talsinki (sometimes also Hellin ) is the colloquial name for traveling between Helsinki ( Finland ) and Tallinn ( Estonia ) with the goal of cheap shopping. The term was first used in 1992 by an Estonian writer Jaan Kaplinsky , apparently putting it together from the names of both cities. Divides the capital distance of only 80 km.

Every summer, thousands of tourists from Helsinki travel to Tallinn for one day, spending all this time in a variety of supermarkets and markets where product prices are lower than in their homeland. Tallinn also arranges similar trips, albeit on a much smaller scale. They are attracted not so much by “cheap” shopping, but by the opportunity to purchase some special goods that are not available in Estonia. In addition, the prices of some food and clothing in Helsinki are even lower than in Tallinn.

The expansion of this phenomenon was facilitated by the accession of Estonia to the Schengen zone in 2004, the abolition of border controls in 2007 and, finally, the transition of Estonia to the euro in 2011.

In the future, Estonian experts propose connecting Tallinn and Helsinki with a railway along the bottom of the Gulf of Finland instead of the current ferry crossing. As a similar project, an example is given of the metropolitan territory of Copenhagen and Malmo (Oresund region). In addition, halfway between Tallinn and Helsinki, it was proposed to build an artificial island called Talsinki, the material for which can be taken from the remains of granite stone from the construction of an underwater tunnel ^[1] . However, this idea has not yet received widespread support.