Like the rest of the world, the big question Finnish newspapers are mulling over on Monday morning is how the financial crisis in Greece will play out and whether it will be able to remain in the eurozone. But more immediately, it is summer holiday travel time and many papers, including Helsingin Sanomat and Hufvudstadsbladet report on how travellers to Greece should prepare for a visit to the financially troubled popular tourist destination.

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland issued a recommendation that people heading to Greece should bring enough cash due to the unknown duration of bank closures and fears of an eventual shortage of cash in the country.

HBL spoke with a Greek hotel owner who said things were still functioning properly and that the hotel had not yet seen any cancellations. The hotel owner said that one of their guests voluntarily paid for the entire stay when they arrived, the paper wrote. The hotel owner said the guest wanted to pay in advance so that the hotel owner would have money in case “everything falls apart.”

Green water treatment method

About five years ago the Ministry of the Environment was directed by the government to fulfil a pledge to make Finland a pioneer in the recycling of nutrients like phosphorous and nitrogen. Last month the ministry issued 2.1 million euros to 21 new projects that are trying to do just that.

More than 57 percent of the phosphorous found in the Baltic comes directly from the agricultural industry. Phosphorous is said to be the main culprit for the now-annual blue green algae blooms on the Baltic.

One of the small companies that are trying to find new ways of using old technologies is the engineering company Saloy who have built a miniature water treatment plant that doesn’t require electricity. The company’s filtration system has undergone testing the past two summers on the Saimaa Lake. The company says it wants to get small farms interested in recycling the nitrogen and phosphorous.

An environment ministry representative told the paper it was hesitant to give the company’s methods a full thumbs-up because of its cost effectiveness and would prefer to promote the use of artificial fertilisers.

HBL interviewed Mathias Bergman of the Baltic Sea Action Group, an independent, Finnish-based foundation that works on issues of the Baltic. He told the paper that the next step in water treatment should be to recycle the nitrogen and phosphorous, creating a “circular economy.”

Emergency landing on Oulu road

On Saturday, amateur pilot Erkki Niiranen was flying a small plane with two passengers, some 400 metres in the skies above Oulu, according to Ilta-Sanomat. Twelve minutes in to the flight however, the plane lost all power and Niiranen found himself in the position of having to make an emergency landing.

“We took off from Oulunsalo airport and flew for about 12 minutes, when the motor shut down suddenly,” Niiranen told the paper. “I tried everything we learned in flight school to try to get the motor running again but it just wouldn’t start.”

Having few other options Niiranen landed the craft on highway 22 in Oulu without further incident.

Yle’s news in Finnish reported this story on Saturday.