Helsinki

The original name is Helsingfors, which is Swedish -- when Gustaf Vasa (Gustavus I) founded the city, Finland was part of Sweden.

Helsinki has two universities (one of which is known nowadays for who studied there and what he created), lots of theatres and concert halls, a recently built Opera, and all the other modern stuff cosmopolitan capitals are supposed to have.

Dunno about Oslo, but Helsinki sure beats Stockholm.

Helsinki was found 1550. At 1809 Finland was lost to Russians and Helsinki became capital of new autonomic district at 1812. When Finland got it's independence 1917 Helsinki became naturally capital of new nation.

Land area of Helsinki is 185 km2. Average temperature of year is +5,4 C and it varies appr. from -25 C to +25 c. Population is about 550 000 (2000 appr.)

Helsinki is located in small cape in southern coast of Finland. It is a beautiful town with colorful center with parks, boulevards and big old churches (most well known is the Lutheran Cathedral which is seen i.e. in Euronews' weather forecast).

Public transport works pretty well and isn't too expesive even for a tourist to use. With buses, trains, trams, subway and ferries (for traveling to Suomenlinna) it's easy and quite fast to get to almost everywhere inside Helsinki and also three neighbouring cities, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen.

Helsinki is often shorten in spoken language to "Hesa" but original Helsinki dweller knows then that sayer is from countryside :) Original guy uses term "stadi" (which is ripped from swedish word stad meaning city)