Despite the national holiday falling midweek this year, mostly sunny skies brought more partiers than expected for the annual May Day festivities in Helsinki's Kaivopuisto Park. Tens of thousands of people crowded into the hilly seaside greenspace.

Known as Vappu in Finland, 1 May is celebrated variously in honour of workers, university students and spring, typically with political speeches, picnics, balloons for the kids and generous alcohol consumption by their elders, beginning on May Day Eve.

City officials admit that they were not prepared for the size of the Kaivopuisto crowd, and that for instance there should have been half again as many portajohns.

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"We have primarily received feedback about the number of toilets," says Helsinki parks official Sampo Sainio.

There were queues of up to 100 metres for public facilities on Wednesday.

"We installed the same number of portajohns in Kaivopuisto as in previous years. But apparently because of the good weather, so many people gathered in the park that we would have needed half again as many," he tells Yle.

The first of May was mostly sunny but relatively chilly along the south coast, while areas further north saw May roll in with snow and sleet. The rain held off in central Finland until Thursday evening.

100,000-euro bill

The Vappu cleanup began in the wee hours of Thursday in Esplanade Park in the city centre before moving on to Kaivopuisto.

"The aim is to get the cleanup finished by the end of Thursday," says Sainio.

Nearly 100 city and NGO officials have been involved in organising and cleaning up after Tuesday's and Wednesday's events in the city centre. They included Red Cross and other staffers who were on hand to help those worse for wear due to excessive partying or otherwise in need of help.

"By Thursday morning we had collected 21,000 empty sparkling wine bottles in Kaivopuisto," Sainio says.

The city tried to encourage those in Kaivopuisto to bring empty bottles to collection points, offering a free cinema ticket to anyone dropping off 20 bottles.

"Bottle collectors have been a great help, but there are film tickets left over. We had reserved enough to cover 30,000 bottles," he explains.

Overall the city had reserved the same budget for the two-day festivities as last year.

"Vappu-related work will cost the city around 100,000 euros, the same as in previous years," says Sainio.