Helsinki

Helsinki looks so much like a Russian city that during the Cold War, Hollywood used it to fake the Soviet Union. Film crews couldn't shoot in Moscow or Leningrad, so movies like Gorky Park and Reds filmed their "Russia" scenes here instead.

One Finnish official grumbled that the city was tired of always playing "little Moscow."

There's a reason it works so well. After Russia took Finland from Sweden in 1809, the tsar made Helsinki the capital and had its center rebuilt to echo grand St. Petersburg, all wide squares, columns, and pale neoclassical buildings.

But Helsinki started out as nothing so grand. A Swedish king founded it in 1550 as a trading post to challenge Tallinn across the water, and for 200 years it stayed a small, struggling town.

Everything changed under the Russians. The capital moved here from Turku in 1812, a university followed, and the place swelled into a real European capital.

Then in 1917, as revolution tore through Russia, Finland seized its moment and declared independence. Helsinki was bombed in World War II but never captured, one of the few wartime capitals in Europe to escape occupation.

Today the country is famous for something gentler. Finland has been named the world's happiest country nine years running.

Start in Senate Square, beneath the dazzling white Helsinki Cathedral. Then hop a short ferry to Suomenlinna, an 18th-century sea fortress spread across a cluster of islands.

Don't miss Temppeliaukio, the "Rock Church," blasted straight into solid granite and capped with a copper dome. Wander the harborside market, then warm up in a sauna, which here is a way of life, not a luxury.

Eat Karelian pies, little rye boats filled with rice porridge, and a bowl of creamy salmon soup. Finish with a cinnamon bun and a coffee, which Finns drink more of, per person, than anyone on Earth.