I visited the oldest Finnish Rotary club, founded in 1927, on August 7, 2006 at the Palace Hotel on the harbor in downtown Helsinki.

This club has 120 members, all men, but had only about 40 in attendance for a very austere meeting... no singing, no happiness, no split, no announcements... just the introduction of me and then a very timely program.

The speaker was a government official speaking about the Israeli-Hezbollah war, complete with charts and maps. Several members are also current or former government officials (I sat next to an Ambassador) and they asked a lot of questions. It was a lively dialog.

Unfortunately, I understood nothing, as the entire program was conducted in Finnish.

The meeting started at 11:45 AM and concluded punctually at 1:00 PM. The food was terrible. Cost of lunch = €22