Embassy Of Finland

I have visited this Finnish Embassy when accompanying my wife about 2 times now.
Not much has changed in the 5 years of the first visit.
It is located in ‘foreign embassy land’ — left, right & centre you’ll find either an embassy or consulate of nearly every country that has friendly (or not so friendly) connections with the United Kingdom.
The Finnish Embassy is easy to find and not too far from city centre. The building is historic and has impressive doors. However in contrast with the other embassies I found it a bit understated. Oh well that my be the Fins for you: o)
Their passport services on Friday’s is from 14:00 — 15:00 only — you ‘intercom’ & ‘camera check’ to get through the security entrance and into a brown and green coloured waiting room. Comfortable sofas, a water cooler and some plants, Finland posters and a painting. Notably no Finland president picture, not that I could see.
You draw a ‘number’ and on your turn you get to the counter (bullet proof) and conduct the passport exchange motions — everyone needs to do the same for the new biometric passport; pictures, fingerprints and signatures — then pay and kittos, you’re done
On this occasion, we arrived at 14:00 sharp we were 5 in line and left around 14:30 After a underground trip, we were well on to Piccadilly Circus when the embassy called us if we could get back ASAP as they forgot to take my wife’s fingerprints– with only 10 min left before they close we abandoned our city visit touristy plans at that point and flagged a black cab to bring us to the Embassy, pronto. we arrived with 2 min spare and all was sorted.
In their defence though, they tried calling before we surfaced at Piccadilly Circus, but as you know the underground system doesn’t carry any mobile phone service.
Oh well it was all sorted in the end.