I’ve managed to shake Marcus, the Crazy German. And it happened in a most convenient way that almost looks like it wasn’t my fault for losing him, though I did take advantage of the situation as soon as I realised it. So anyway, I’ve just spent the last 16 hours aboard the night ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki, an enormous car ferry, and quite a relaxing way to get from A to B. Knowing that Marcus didn’t drink, I made an obvious break for the bar as soon as we got on board, but was distracted on the way by the unbelievably cheap booze prices in the Duty Free shop.
Beers at the bar were 7€ each, but the Duty Free supermarket prices was like landing on a different planet. The tax rate on Alcohol in Sweden and Finland varies between 45-55%, so this was much better value than you might find duty free shopping in Australia. I stocked up on a dozen cans of what I thought was beer, for the grand total of about 5€ (or $9 AUD). But it turned out that though the cans looked like beer, and were sitting in the beer section (duh) they were actually something called a ‘long drink’ which was basically gin and juice. Still perfectly drinkable, almost like fizzy alcoholic schwepps lemon, lime and bitters. Marcus looks at me and asks if it’s bier and I’m like “Yeah mate, it’s gonna be a good night tonight!” and all he can do is frown and mumble something like “that’s a lot of bier”.
Anyway, Marcus goes off to have a shower and leaves me in peace for a little while. I take advantage of his absence (and the fact that he can’t follow me if he doesn’t see when I leave) and roam the boat for about 2 hours, checking out all the decks, the bars, restaurants and grabbing some sensational photos from the top deck overlooking Stockholm harbour as the huge car ferry ducks and weaves its way through the thousands of islands, many of which are still uninhabited.
Eventually I run out of booze (I could only comfortably fit four cans in my jeans, and I couldn’t parade around with it because you are technically not supposed to drink the duty free stuff on board, though everybody does) so I return to the spot where Marcus and I both left our bags. There’s no Marcus, and all our belongings are gone. Boo, what’s he bloody well gone and done now, and where’s my stuff? Serves me right for leaving my bags with him in the first place, I really should’ve known better. I have fortunately kept my booze stashed elsewhere on the boat, in a lovely corner of an unused conference room where I’d be sleeping the night. Unfortunately my sleeping arrangement was going to cause me some grief down the track, but it would also ultimately be my escape.
Before long I’ve finished most of the dozen cans, and then I finally run into Marcus. Turns out that he’d left our bags unattended on the outside deck for over an hour whilst he went down to the information desk. You see, Marcus didn’t realise that we were sleeping literally ‘on deck’, meaning general space, on the floor, whatever you are quick enough to get really. I obviously couldn’t explain it properly to him the day before, and being budget conscious, I wasn’t prepared to fork out an unnecessary 50€ extra when there was plenty of carpet on the floor, and I had a sleeping bag. (Mind you, I was half tempted to try and hang my hammock somewhere on the boat and see if that drew any interesting attention from the crew…)
So anyway, he’d had a mini panic attack when he realised there was no actual ‘bed’ reserved for us, and went down to the info desk to book himself a cabin – which he did – and came back to find the bags missing. When I ran into him the second time, he’d manage to track them down, and I had to go to the information desk myself to claim m stuff back. When I got there, I hadn’t even finished my first sentence and the guy behind the desk sighed with agonising frustration.
“Hi, excuse me, but I’m looking for two bags that a friend of mine said were down at the info desk?”
“You mean the German guy? Hmm, you really should not leave your bags in the care of somebody like him.”
And I could just imagine what he’d just been through, with Marcus spending nearly an hour at the information desk trying first to find the showers, then book a bed, then track down lost luggage. And speak of the devil, Marcus came bounding up behind me shouting ‘Matt, Matt! There you go, there you go!”
So having retrieved my bag, I bounded upstairs to secure them in the conference room, before planting myself firmly in the bar. I managed a very interesting conversation with two Swedish guys, one who had spent eight years of his life growing up in Australia, specifically the Sydney Northern Beaches. The way he spoke English was almost perfect strine, it was fascinating. Marcus soon tired of the conversation, as I suspected he would, and headed off to bed, leaving me in a blissful state of inebriation, to roam the boat and see if there was any interesting nightlife happening.
Unfortunately the nightclub was closed, it being a Monday night and all. Which was a shame. Several friends who knew about the Stockholm to Helsinki ferry had jokingly referred to it as the ‘f*cking ferry’. Apparently it is very popular with the students in Stockholm and Helsinki to basically jump on the ferry purely to stock up on duty free booze, since it’s so cheap for them. They drink it all up on the boat, hit the nightclubs and the boat turns into a raging orgy of drunkenness, fighting, and people kissing and rooting all over the boat (mostly in their cabins but sometimes on deck too!). Then when they arrive at Helsinki the next morning, they wait about 2 hours and the ferry brings them home again.
The boat wasn’t exactly like this on the Monday night however, it was relatively quiet. I couldn’t sleep because of the magnificent views of the twilight sun, never quite getting dark. I sat in the cabaret bar looking out the window, sipping a lovely red wine, until I decided I should hit the sack as it was about 3am. I double checked my watch, when I walked past the ship’s clock, which shows both Finnish and Swedish time, and realised that I’d heard an announcement earlier on about changing timezones; Finland is 1 hour ahead of Sweden. So it was actually 4am! The next morning I woke up, got my stuff together and as the boat pulled into Helsinki Harbour, headed to the car deck to load my bike. There was no Marcus… I realised that he hadn’t put his watch forward either, and was more than likely still asleep in his cabin! You beauty.
So off I cycled into Helsinki, a very small but beautiful city and the sun was out in all it’s glory, reflecting my mood and my newly regained freedom! The first thing I came across was a bunch of harbour-side markets, clearly hoping for the tourist dollar and charging (I hoped) much higher prices than what were normal in Finland. Because it was going to be a very tight day if I had to pay 14€ for a takeaway meal at a street vender! The other thing I noticed was how much more ‘soviet’ the city looked in comparison to Sweden and any of the other countries I’d been to so far. The joke going around is that Finland is the ‘misunderstood’ corner of Scandinavia. You can learn a little bit of the Swedish language and get by in most other places like Norway and Denmark. But come to Finland and the language is completely different. Infact I didn’t realise this at first, but it was soon obvious that Finland is officially a bilingual country. There are both Swedish Fins, and Slav Fins. The population of Finland is heavily made up from people who migrated from the former Yugoslavia region, and their language more resembles that of eastern Europe, as opposed to Sweden, their western neighbour.
I dicked around in the markets for a bit too long, becoming fascinated by the cool Russian KGB looking fur hats. Because when I emerged at the other end and started weaving my way through the crowd, I nearly bumped straight into Marcus again! He had stopped in the middle of Helsinki’s largest park and was asking people for directions. I assumed he was looking for a place to stay, and for me. I don’t know how he didn’t see me, because I was literally about 3 metres away, but I quickly wheeled it around and disappeared into the crowd heading in an obscure direction where it was unlikely he would follow if he was looking for the Centrum (city center).
After having a quick lunch at ‘Hesburger’ (eastern Europe’s answer to McDonalds) I bunked down in a cafe/bar which advertised free WIFI Internet. I had the most expensive milkshake I’ve ever had in my life, at 5€ (like $10 AUD). But I have to admit, it was bloody delicious. And the free Internet added value of course. With spirits up, I spent a couple of hours in the sunshine surfing the net, looking for a new laptop, because this one is shitting itself. Courtesy of Amazon.co.uk, I’ll be the proud new owner of a new Samsung R530 laptop in about one week’s time! It will be a lovely little birthday present to myself 🙂
My host in Helsinki, a Finnish guy named Johan, came by to meet me in the centre of town between shifts. He’d especially managed to cover the last two hours of his shift at the gymnasium where he worked so that he could spend some time with me. We jumped on the Metro (you can take your bicycle on the underground in Helsinki, and apparently you don’t need to buy a ticket either, for yourself or your bicycle…hmm) and headed out to his house. Luckily I was getting free accommodation, because my offer to pay for the dinner ingredients at the supermarket, along with a six pack of Finnish beer, added up to over 20€. But we did cook an awesome bacon, vegetable and olive oil pasta. Johan showed me a few tricks in the kitchen that I can’t wait to experiment with when I next get into a kitchen.
Once again, Warm Showers hospitality was at it’s best. Despite having to get up to go to work at 6am the next morning, Johan left me to sleep in his apartment, and just told me to pull the door shut when I was ready to leave. And so I slept in, showered and shaved and repacked my bags neatly in no rush to head out, with a ferry leaving to Tallinn just before lunch. I headed out to do a final lap of the city – and I mean lap. It’s so small you can cycle around Helsinki, fully loaded on my touring bike, in no hurry at all, in about 1 hour. I even went past the ‘beach’. Yes it was a beautiful 27 degrees, and the beach was packed, despite it being more like Brighton-le-sands than a proper surf beach. After that, I was supposed to head out to a lovely little park area, but somehow I ended up getting a bit lost and touring some barren, industrial wasteland area instead. I ran out of time and headed for the ferry port to catch my boat to Tallinn.
I didn’t risk going back to Viking Lines, even though it was in a more convenient location in the harbour. I chose Silja Line ferries instead, as I knew that Marcus wouldn’t have gone for the ferry port that was a little further out of town. I knew he was heading to Tallinn and there was still the odd chance that I could run into him again, and stranger coincidences had already happened.
And so I sit here typing away on the ‘Star’ ferry to Tallinn. It takes about 3 hours to cross, then I’ll be very happy to be back on the mainland and heading south, having reached the northern most point of my travels through Europe. I’ll be crossing down to the Mediterranean via Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and then finally the south of France, from which point I will finally be heading in the right direction towards Egypt. Everything’s worked out pretty well so far, so fingers crossed it stays that way! Though there has been one small exception. I left my toiletries bag at Johan’s house, and I only realised as I was lining up to board the ferry. I could have gone back and retrieved it, but then I would have wasted money on a new ferry ticket, and it would have set me behind half a day on schedule. Here’s hoping that toothpaste and sunscreen is fairly cheap in eastern Europe, as it looks like I’ll be making a short stop at the Estonian equivalent of Priceline to restock. I guess if I was going to lose anything, that’s not a bad choice to lose, since there’s nothing that can’t be replaced. Except the bag itself. It used to belong to my pop, Max. He died back in 1993 and my Nannie gave it to me a little while after. I’ve used it on every trip I’ve been on since. Fair dinkum, I can’t believe I left it sitting on top of the fridge in Helsinki! Grrr.
Anyway, the travel mojo is back, and I’m on a roll. Eastern Europe is shaping up to be quite an experience and I can’t wait to get to Estonia. Next stop, Tallinn!
