Hanko

The southernmost tip of continental Finland, a town of about 8,000 on a sandy moraine peninsula grown over with pine and heather. Its coastline runs some 130 kilometres, thirty of it sandy beach, with over ninety islands and islets inside the town limits. The Baltic keeps the climate milder than the latitude suggests, more oceanic than Helsinki, gentler in winter and cooler in summer. The church and the water tower dominate the skyline and both took their present form after the war, their predecessors having been damaged or destroyed by Soviet forces.