Outside Finland, there are branches at
Brussels,
Gdańsk,
Hamburg,
London,
Lübeck,
Piraeus,
Rotterdam and
Warsaw. As well as seafarers, the facilities are increasingly used by Finnish truck drivers, students and other expatriate workers.
Belgium and Luxembourg The Finnish Seamen's Mission has two branches in
Belgium – Antwerp and Brussels. There are also services held from time to time in
Luxembourg. The Antwerp mission will be closed in 2015. In Antwerp, the
Merimieskirkko is located at Italiëlei 67 (but will close in August 2015). In Brussels, it is located at Rue Jacques de Lalaing 33 and includes a
sauna. The pastor is the Revd Jussi Ollila. Communion services are, however, normally held at the
Chapel of the Resurrection in Rue Van Maerlant on the first and third Sundays of each month.
United Kingdom There is only one
Merimieskirkko building in the
UK (in London), but services are also occasionally held in other towns and cities. The church is located at 33 Albion Street,
Rotherhithe,
London (near
Rotherhithe station on the
London Overground network). A communion service is held on the first Sunday of each month at 11 a.m. (conducted mainly in Finnish). An evening service is conducted on Sundays at 6 p.m. and on Thursday at 7.30 p.m. In addition, services are held on church festival days. The first person sent abroad by the Finnish Seamen's Mission was Elis Bergroth. He was initially posted as Finnish chaplain at the English ports of
Grimsby and
Hull in 1880. Given the level of work in London, the chaplaincy was moved south in 1882. The present building was opened in 1958 and is the third Finnish Church in London. The architect of the Church, Cyrill Mardall-Sjöström, designed the new church building for a plot in Southwark Park, but this plan had to be scrapped owing to
World War II. A new site was later found in Rotherhithe, an area with a Scandinavian and Nordic connections where the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish seamen's missions also are present and where the four Nordic churches and the Church of Iceland community cooperate in their work.
Germany in the background A branch is located in
Hamburg. The mission was opened in 1901 and the current church building at Ditmar-Koel-Strasse 6 in 1966. There are two to three services at the church monthly. The church building also includes a café, a library, two saunas, and a Finnish-speaking parrot.
Poland Branches are located in
Gdańsk and
Warsaw. ==See also==