If sauna, tar and vodka don't cure your disease, then you will die. It is an old saying in Finland and, while I wasn't particularly sick when I flew to Tampere, the theory had to be put to stringent scientific test.
Tampere is the Manchester of Finland, my masseur said, limbering me up for a daunting day of canoeing and sauna. Like Manchester, Finland's second largest city was built on the cotton industry after a Scot, James Finlayson, established the biggest cotton mill in Scandinavia on its waterways. Tampere has a pretty square, cobbled streets and carefully restored industrial buildings now turned into pubs, restaurants and museums.
And then there is the music. "What British music do you like?" asks my masseur. I'm too relaxed to answer. "Cliff Richard?" "Er, not really." "Phil Collins? Huey Lewis and the News? Hank Marvin?"
Music is not really part of the Tampere cure. The size of UK and Ireland, Finland is blessed with 188,000 lakes and a population of just over five million. That's about 27 people per lake. There is also one sauna for every three people.
So it is not hard to find a wood-fired sauna by a beautiful lake all for yourself. Ten minutes' drive from Tampere, you can rent a wooden fisherman's cottage on your own island, hire canoes and go fishing, mushroom-picking or hiking.
Finns prickle at the association that saunas enjoy with their bigger neighbours, Sweden. The sauna is Finland's playground, boardroom and place of worship rolled into one. In the old days, saunas were used to get clean instead of bathrooms; now most new homes are built with one.
On the door of one sauna was a picture of skimpy Tony Blair-style Speedos with a firm red line across them. It was not a notice put up by the fashion police but a ban on anything other than nudity. Here the Finns expose an authoritarian streak: you must remain naked at all times in the sauna. You must be at ease with your body.
According to some Finns, the Lycra in your modesty-protecting trunks emits noxious fumes in the heat of the sauna. They would say that, wouldn't they? Luckily, at the sauna I visited, the Finns were typically easygoing and could tolerate repressed British tourists entering the saunas in their Speedos. You sit there, think and sweat for 15 minutes, before running outside and flinging yourself into the clear, cold waters of the lake. And then repeat. Your heart races; your body tingles hot and cold. It is brilliant. You feel relaxed and yet alive, surrounded by sunshine, scented pine trees and silence.
Cured and ready to take in some culture, you can visit the building in Tampere where Lenin first met Stalin, which now claims to be the only operational Lenin museum left in the world. It has particular resonance with many Finns: the country was torn by civil war between the "reds" and the "whites" after gaining independence in 1917. There is also some fantastic Lenin tat for sale.
Tampere boasts a museum of the national sport, ice hockey, a spy museum and the magical Muumilaakso, the Moomin museum. It is worth the airfare alone for anyone who half remembers the cartoon series or Tove Jansson's original Moomintroll books. There is a delightfully detailed replica of the rambling Moomin house and fantastic original artwork showing Moonminland in all its slightly trippy glory. You can buy the books, Moomin pottery - newly fashionable and costing a fortune in Selfridges in London - and cuddly Moomintrolls and Moominmamas. Sadly the museum does not sell any prints of the artwork.
Scandinavia has a reputation for being expensive but, especially after a very cheap flight, prices in Tampere aren't bad. You can get an immaculate self-service hotel room that sleeps four for € 55 euros, while drinks and meals are London prices.
Fresh herring and salmon are local specialities as are wild mushrooms and mustamakkara puolukkahillo, a Tampere speciality of black sausage with lingon berries (as collected from the forests by Moominmama).
There are also excellent steaks in German restaurants and Russian restaurants, while you can feast on reindeer and wild boar at Harald, a Viking-style restaurant. The food is excellent, the descriptions on the menu funny ("If there was one thing the Vikings respected the French for, it was their toast") and there aren't many places where you can eat under the watchful - if glassy - eye of a stuffed bear.
Invigorated by the sauna, I must now, according to the saying, take some tar. Which brings me to Harald's dessert: tar ice cream. While some officials are trying to ban it, most Finns believe tar - as in macadam - has excellent healing properties. Granted, the ice cream is not black and treacly and doesn't look like it could clog up your lungs or cause a particularly painful death. After a bellyful of boar, it actually has some palate-cleansing properties. But it is foul, disgusting, horrible. It tastes just like tar.
Tarnished by tar, the only option left is to revive with vodka. Tampere is no Manchester by night, but there are some nice little bars, late licenses and plenty of spirits on offer. Mocca, one of several sleek bar-clubs in Tampere, is well populated with bright young Finns. Rather than Cliff or Phil, the DJs spin Finnish hip-hop and American R'n'B. Cafe Europa has a bohemian feel and battered sofas, while the Plevna Brewery has a German beer-hall vibe.
The locals are friendly and trendy and their apparent fondness for binge drinking does not result in the shouting, vomiting viciousness of Britain on a Saturday night but in some spectacularly calm staggering down the streets at 4am.
Finland has a split personality: swathed in snow and darkness for much of the winter and bathed in nightless days during summer. But if you are quick, you can catch it in a more subtle third stage in September, when the leaves start to turn but the sun still bounces off the lakes. The tar may not cure any end-of-summer blues, but the sauna and the vodka certainly will.
Way to go
Ryanair flies from Stansted to Tampere, starting at £3.99 one-way in September. The journey takes two-and-a-half hours.
Patrick stayed at the Omenahotel, €55 per night. Alternatively you can rent a summerhouse on Leppalansaari, your own private island near Tampere for €600 a week (sleeps six). Contact Hilkka Frigard c/o Henrik Schmidt: +358 040 300 4447.
Fishing, hiking and farmland summerhouses: Heikki Honkanen +358 400 840 901, kalastajanmaailma.com/kuhat
