Posts from — September 2007

The next morning Bruno left early as he was moving on. We said goodbye and I went back to bed. When I woke up, I finished reinstalling Susso’s computer. She had to leave to clean her mom’s place so I stayed behind to finish the computer. When I was almost finished fixing the computer she came back with her mom and her sister.

Marianne told me that her computer was also broken, so I decided to stay in the computer fixing mood and head over to her place to fix her computer. They gave me a ride to her place and after we waited a bit in the car because Marianne wanted to clean up before letting me in I went inside and fixed her computer. While waiting in the car I decided that it would probably be a good idea to spend the night at Samuli’s instead of Marianne’s since I missed out on meeting Samuli the day before and Marianne was really tired from the previous two nights.

I fixed Marianne’s computer and then used it for a while to see if it would keep working. After an hour or so I decided to leave and go and meet Samuli in the city center. I realized that I had no clue where I was in the city so I just walked outside and started asking people. It turned out to be a good 45 minute walk, which was quite nice. Walking around a city is the best way to see it: you actually have the time to see stuff

I met Samuloi and we went to his place. We had nice spaghetti for dinner and had some very nice conversations. Later on we watched a finnish movie that was pretty nice to see (apparently that doesn’t happen too much with Finnish movies). After that we watched one of the dutch movies that I carry around with me on my laptop. I have a feeling that I will be seeing these movies a lot over the course of my trip

After the movies we decided to sleep as Samuli had to work the next day and I wanted to take the 9 o’clock train to be in Tampere at noon to meet my old roomie Duke (yay!). 

The next morning I woke up and I needed some time to figure out where I was. I only now realized that we were sleeping over

Marianne had gone to work, so the rest of us had a nice breakfast and had some nice discussions. Susso decided to take me and Bruno for a walk through the city center. We dropped our bags off at Marianna’s place first so we didn’t have to drag them around all the time.

Bruno is doing a project called Us Europeans (head over to http://www.useuropeans.com to check it out) and for this project he wanted to find finnish couples in love to take a picture of them and ask them some questions. That proved to be quite difficult as it is not normal in Finnish culture to openly show that you are in love. After some searching we found a couple and Bruno took some pictures and asked some questions.

We sat down somewhere in a mall at a coffee place and while Susso and me got some tea and talked a bit, Bruno went on a hunt for more couples in love. We met up a little later to see some fashion show that was taking place in the mall. This turned out to be rather stupid as there was some hot Finnish chick (she grew up in Vaasa and later took part in the miss Finland elections apparently) talking for 10 minutes, after which three girls performed some dances and that was it.

We picked up our bags and walked back to Susso’s place. We picked up some groceries along the way as Bruno was going to cook us chilli. Back at Susso’s place I concentrated on cuddling the cats and trying to fix Susso’s computer. The best option for that computer was reinstalling windows, so I first had to get a hold of an installation cd. My dear friend and useless comment-writer Ruud helped me out on this.

I was going to spend the night at Samuli’s place. I met Samuli a couple of days ago during the meeting in Vaasa, so I called him up to invite him over for the dinner at Susso’s place. Marianne also came around so there were five of us. Bruno had cooked some very good chilli and we all enjoyed dinner a lot.

After dinner we started singing and soon found out that Bruno knew all the lyrics to almost any song from the last 15 years that we could think of (even very disturbing things like parts of the raps of 2 Unlimited and Two brothers on the fourth floor). We had a lot of fun and so we were way too late for the party at Marianna’s place we were supposed to go to. We packed up and walked from Susso’s to Marianna’s. Along the way we were drinking some of the beers we were taking to the party. When I finished a bottle I thought I would behave and put it back in the bag with the full botlles instead if littering. It turns out that I was supposed to put it on the street, so “the old people” could come and pick it up to make some money. Later in the evening I would indeed see some elderly people walking around collecting bottles. It is always very interesting to learn about these small peculiarities that each country has!

We arrived at the party and started playing the same drinking game we had been playing the previous night. There were about 5 other people there, including Marianna’s boyfriend Arie who was acting really weird towards me. I was happy that I could talk with Bruno about that in dutch so no one else could understand as it felt very uncomfortable. We had some good fun with the rest of the people playing the drinking game though

After a while we decided to go out into the city, mainly because one of the active surfers of Vaasa would be leaving. We made a nice card fro her and then dragged ourselves into the city. We needed to go into some club and half of the people that were with us decided to go home instead of paying for the club. Samuli also went home, but the sisters told me that they would drop me off at Samuli’s when we went home. I decided to go inside, partly because I wanted to see finnish nightlife and partly because I know it is very nice when people come to say goodbye to you.

We went into the club and I immediately found out why the rest went home. It was just like any club in Holland, so basically not for me On top of that we couldn’t find the girl we were supposed to say goodbye to. I went for a midnight snack with the sisters and then Marianne took a taxi to work. I didn’t wanna let Susso wlak home alone, so I escorted her to her place.

When we got there, Bruno was already there and I decided to spend the night there after sending Samuli a message as I didn’t feel like walking all the way back. This was the second night I was not spending where I was supposed to. I felt a little bad about it but it was just the most convenient for all involved. I find that one of the interesting things of traveling: you become a bit more egoistic. What I mean is that 90% of the people you meet are people you will most probably never meet again and somehow you care a little less when you do something you feel a little bad about. It is probably one of those things that no one talks about, but everyone feels more or less the same way about it.

In this particular case there really was nothing to feel bad about as I had met Samuli before so it was not like I was going to not show up. On top of that it seemed to not make a lot of sense to walk across the city to wake him up and then jump into bed. I decided to meet him the next day for some coffee.

The following morning we woke up around 9:00. I didn’t have a hangover, but Kaisa and Marianna apparently did. I checked some email and we decided to go for a drive around Vaasa. The girls kept insisting that there was not much to do around Vaasa, but I refused to believe that.

First we drove to a bridge that is the longest bridge in Finland. We parked the car and had some coffee at the base of the bridge in some lunchroom. The weather was good and I enjoyed it very much. After that, we went to see the lowest lookout tower I have ever seen. It was located on a small parking ground close to the bridge on the lake-shores. It was approximately three stories high, which seemed even more ridiculous when you see that all the trees surrounding it are larger than the whole tower

Next, we went to the old town of Vaasa. A bunch of ruins that were left from the old town that burned down over 150 years ago. There were some remains of a church and a priest school all beautifully located in a nice park.

The last stop was the ice stadium where we inquired for the possibility of hiring ice skates so we could go ice skating that night (Marianna was an ice hockey player). Unfortunately they didn’t, so we returned home.

I started the hunt for my lost glasses up in Hammerfest and did some other stuff. We watched a very disturbing movie about the wife of a murdering rapist that slowly gets sucked into the same life. After that, while the girls were cooking dinner (they refused to let me help ) I wrote some more emails.

Somewhere during the day Marianna called her boyfriend and mentioned that I was staying at her place. He completely didn’t like that so within the hour he was there to check me out. It was all kind of awkward, but as long as it was no problem for Marianna it wasn’t for me. Later they got in a huge fight over me staying there. Sorry!

After dinner we went to visit Marianna’s mother which was quite fun. She served us some nice tea and cookies and kept apologizing for not cleaning the house and not wearing appropriate clothes (both of which were absolutely not of a disturbing level for me ). She spoke good English so it was easy to have a conversation with her. It is always nice to meet parents of Cs’ers as they usually enjoy meeting their children’s guests.

After that we were going to Leena, a friend of Susanne and Marianne to watch some karaoke show on tv. I met Bruno, a dutch guy that had gotten me a couch two days ago at Phillippe’s place (well, he didn’t actively do anything, but Philippe called me back initially because he thought it was Bruno who was in trouble in the woods around Sodankylä). We sang songs (well, I tried but I suck at music or lyrics ;)) and I watched if I could match the lyrics printed on screen to the sounds of the Finnish songs.

Marianna and Kaisa went home early because Kaisa wasn’t feeling too good (and I’m guessing it also had something to do with Marianna and Arie (the boyfriend) fighting. I decided to stay behind and go back to Marianna’s later. We played a drinking game I had learned in Tromso a few days before and had a lot of fun! Slowly we got a little drunk, which improved us having fun at the game Somewhere in between we played a game that is known in Holland by the name of ‘spijkerpoepen’, which also proves to be quite difficult when under the influence

At the end of the night I fell asleep in a chair (surprise, surprise ) and because it was hard to wake me up, Bruno and the sisters decided to sleep over. A fun night!

The next morning I woke up at 6:30 and silently got up to start packing, I wanted to be on the road as soon as possible to try to make the 10:30 train, or the 13:00 train (latest possibility to attend the meeting). Philippe got up a little later and decided that he wanted to give me a ride to Rovaniemi to drop me on the train and drop some battery off at a friend’s place. I politely accepted. This gave us a little more time, so we had a cup of tea to properly wake up.

We left in time to catch the train. At least, that’s what we thought. When we got to the train station at 10:25 or so, it turned out the train was leaving 10:15 and not at 10:30 as we thought. All the rushing for nothing The next train wasn’t leaving until 13:00.

I decided to treat Philippe to breakfast since we now had some time to kill. Since Philippe wasn’t very familiar with Rovaniemi and having breakfast out the door is not very common we decided to go to a lunchroom connected to a gas station. We had some breakfast and then decided to go drop off the battery at Philippe’s friend’s place. While driving there, Philippe got a business call and he needed to use the internet for a while. I played with the cats (Doerak, I miss you!) for a while and after 15 minutes we left to put me back on the train.

Halfway to the train station I noticed my phone was missing. Fuck! We went back to the lunchroom as that was the last place we had seen it, but it wasn’t there. Philippe called his friend to ask her to look around and luckily she found it. We drove back there (me being ashamed ) and picked up the phone. Then we made our third attempt at reaching the train station and catching the train. This time we made it and I got on the train with all my stuff actually with me

The 8 hour train ride to Vaasa was quite boring unfortunately. Finland is quite flat like Holland and full of forests. I guess I was just spoiled with Norway for the last three weeks

On the train I updated my blog, watched a movie, read my mail and of course slept a considerable amount of time.

Around 21.00 I arrived in Vaasa, just in time for the meeting. I contacted Marianne, my CS contact, to ask her where to go. Luckily the pub was literally a 5 minute walk from the train station. When I got there, there was only one group that was bigger than two people, so I just walked up to them and asked if they were the couchsurfers. They looked at me like I was speaking Chinese to them, so I guessed they were not

I got myself a beer and sat down in a strategically good position so I could see who entered the pub. There was some sports playing on a large screen, so I had some distraction from just staring. After a while Marianne found me and I met her, her sister Susanne and fellow CS’er Samuli. We sat down and started the meeting. About 5 more people showed up during the night and we had some good fun. This was my first non-Tiina (sorry Tiina ) encounter with the Finnish stereotype that people start talking way more after a couple of drinks. I would get to see a lot more of that in the coming days

One of the guys that showed up was known as ‘the swinger guy’. Apparently, at a meeting a couple of weeks ago, there were these guys that were interested in this rather large group of English speaking people that seemed to have fun. When they asked, the surfers told them they were swingers and one thing led to the other. Apparently no one ever told them that this was not true (CS is _not_ a dating site ) so he still believed it. Over the course of the evening I think he slowly figured out the truth as he signed up for couchsurfing the next day

After a few hours in the irish pub, we decided it would be fun to go to a karaoke bar. Unfortunately the bar was closed, so we went to the shabby bar next door. We played a couple of games of pool and then decided to call it a night.

I also met my host for the night, Marianna (not to be confused with Marianne) and her friend Kaisa who also stayed the night at her place. She happened to live close by, so we were home rather quickly. I put down my stuff, lay down on the couch and I think I was sleeping before my head even hit the couch.

The next morning I got up at 6:30, packed my bag, had breakfast with the last of Odd’s salmon and got on my way. I had to walk back into town and cross it, to start hitchhiking on the other side. Luckily it didn’t take long to get picked up. The guy picking me up spoke only Sami, but he was apparently going in my direction. He dropped me off in Karigasniemi, Lappi-laani, Finland. Yay, country number three! I looked around (this was obviously a very small bordertown). I found a shop, bought some supplies (in euro’s and not so f****ng expensive, yay!) and then got back to the crossroads to find a completely empty road

The map I found was not a map of the roads, rather a map of the snowmobile tracks. Luckily in light grey the roads were also on it, so I decided my next aiming point was going to be Ivalo. The road was completely empty though, with one car every 20 minutes or so, mostly packed. I decided to start walking, since I had seen shelters on the map every 20Km or so (the next town being about 60Km away). Worst case scenario, I would hike all the way there and make it in three days (yes, I was seriously considering this might happen). I hiked about 12 Km I guess, when finally someone picked me up (I don’t remember which car, I should really start writing the blog posts sooner ).

They brought me all the way to Ivalo, where I looked for some internet to look for a couch for the night. I found internet (free!) in the library and found Philippe’s profile. He had his phone number on it and also seemed quite active. I gave him a call, but he didn’t pick up the phone. I decided to start making my way to Sodankylä anyway (that’s where he lived) and find some other solution if he still didn’t pick up by the time I got there (or couldn’t host me for whatever reason of course ).

I got a ride from a guy that I thought said that he was going to Sodankyla. His english was very fast and badly articulated, so it turned out he was only going 25Km or so. I got out along a 100Km/h road, thinking I would never be picked up again.

I looked at my phone to find a missed call from a Finnish number. It must be Philippe! I called back and this time he picked up (It turned out later he thought I was another dutch guy he dropped off in the forest the day before and thought that guy was in trouble ;)). He said he could host me, but was at work until 22.00. By that time it was 19.00 or something and I was still 130Km out. I told him I would try to make it and call him around 22.00 to update him on my status. He explained where to wait for him should I make it all the way before 22.00. I was very happy, hoping I would make it to Sodankylä and not having to spend the night outside!

Luckily that was not the case, so I got a ride again. The guy was speaking only very little English and he was saying something about “only 20 km”. I didn’t understand what he was saying, so I got a little nervous as he started saying it more and more when we got closer to Sodankylä. By now it was pitch dark and cars were driving fast here. I knew that if he was going to drop me off here, I could forget about getting to Sodankylä today. Nervously I watched the 60Km sign passing by. I got more and more nervous watching 50, 40,30 and 20 pass by. By then I realized that he was probably going to take me at least within walking distance of Sodankylä, although I was very tired from the whole day and prayed that I would be taken all the way.

It turned out that he dropped me off just at the border of Sodankylä, so to the day of today I have no clue what he meant by only 20Km I was tired and my legs were hurting, so I made my way to the pub Philippe had pointed out to me. Off course it was hard to find, as I could use that right now I even asked a guy in a place that later turned out to be 15 meters from the entrance and he didn’t know (he was living in Sodankylä!)

In the end I found it and rewarded myself with a big glass of beer (only 4€ for a pint, woohoo!) that disappeared in me like it was just one sip. I ordered another one and asked for the pool table. I tipped the bar tender with my last Norwegian change (worth about 3€) and he gave me the pool balls.

I started out playing pool alone (killing time as it was 21:15 when I got to the bar) and was challenged by a guy that didn’t speak a single word of English. Luckily pool is quite an international game, so we could still play together.

Philippe called me to tell me he was going to be late, so I waited around a little longer. He showed up around 22.30 and we left for his house. He told me he was actually living 30Km out of Sodankylä but was registered there to attract a little bit more guests. We got into his Toyota Landcruiser and drove to his house in a small village.

As stated in his profile his house was a ‘work in progress’. It was cosy, but there was definitely some ‘room for improvement’ We talked about a lot of interesting things though, so I didn’t really mind.

He was an outdoor guy as he had been living in the Finnish forest for years before moving into this place. He was mathematician working on programs to invert large scale matrices, used in real time 3d rendering of X-ray scans. Very interesting material (for a nerd like me, at least ). One of his ideas for a couchsurfing meeting was to build a swamp hut on his property as he had some knowledge of the construction of such a building and had a lot of swamp on his land. That would be an awesome meeting!

Philippe recommended me to go to Vaasa, which was about 8 hours by train away on Finland’s coast. There was going to be a cs meeting the next night, so I decided that was going to be my next destination. Philippe contacted some people he knew there to get me a couch. Looking at the distance, I decided to take the train from Rovaniemi (about 100Km away from where I was now) as it was a little far to hitchhike in one day. Around 1:00 we went to bed, a little late as we needed to get up early the next day (I needed to hitchhike to Rovaniemi before catching the train).

The next morning I got up around 9.00 and when I got to the kitchen, Odd served me a nice breakfast: big fat pieces of salmon (on my own bread that I had anyway )! Apparently I was enjoying it so much that he cut the rest of the salmon up and put it in a box to give it to me for lunch. This was one of the salmons that he had catched this summer. He brings them to a woman in one of the fisherman’s villages close by and she salts and smokes them.

After breakfast he called the tourist information to figure out what the opening hours for Nordkapp were. It turned out that if I got there before 11.00 we wouldn’t have to pay. I asked Odd if he would drive me there for the fee that I would normally pay for the bus and he agreed.

We got into the car and made our way to Nordkapp. On the road there (it’s about 30Km from Honningsvag) we saw almost no other cars, so I was really glad that Odd was driving me there! We got to the Cape and it rained. We got out, I walked over to the northern most tip of land and we made a picture. All in all I think I was there for about 5 minutes. There is basically nothing to see, it’s just the awesome feeling of reaching Nordkapp. I said to Odd: “North is done, now all I need is south, west and east and maybe high and low”. Once again I felt like I could scream!

He drove me back to Honningsvag and even a little further to the Nordkapp tunnel. When I wanted to pay him for all he had done, he refused to accept the money and told me to have some good beers on the CS cruise next week (read more about that later ). What an awesome guy!

I got out of the car and it was raining pretty badly, with almost no cars on the road. I decided that waiting around here was not gonna do me any good and thought it was a good idea to walk through Nordkapp tunnel (close to 7 Km). This turned out to not be the best idea I’ve ever had, for several reasons. First, I didn’t think about the fact that the damn thing is not only 7km long, but also has a 10% descent and ascend as well. Not having any point of reference as to how steep you are climbing, you have to rely on your balance to figure out how fast you should be walking. As a result, especially climbing was very exhausting Second, since usually only people with cars pass through this tunnel it makes some loud and downright frightening noises. Third, I didn’t realize (and this is a big d’oh!) that no one is going to stop in a tunnel to pick someone up. Last, it was a little frightening to see water sipping through all the cracks in the walls. This is a very well maintained tunnel that runs under the sea, but you just don’t see this normally. So all in all, I was glad to emerge on the other side (where it was also raining ).

I took some rest, drank some water and then started walking further since there were still no cars. It started raining a little more and as I have experienced before, this makes people feel more compassionate and so I was picked up by a guy that probably wouldn’t have picked me up was the sun shining He took me all the way to the first split in the road, exactly where I needed to be!

I took another break, ate a nice sandwich with fresh salmon I had left over from Odd’s place and got back on the road. I was a little indecisive as to whether I should go back to Alta and head into Finland from there, or take the road directly to finland from where I was standing with the risk of taking a low-traffic route. Since it felt so pointless to go all the way back to crappy Alta, I decided to take my chances on the route leading into Finland directly. Maybe I would even make it to Finland today if I was lucky!

I looked at the crappy map I had and decided the next city to aim for was Karasjok at the Norwegian/Finnish border. I was picked up by two Sami guys (fat chance as I was at the northern part of Sami territory. They were very friendly and spoke fluent English, Sami, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish. They dropped me off in a good spot telling me that they needed to go some place but they would look for me when they got back to see if I was still there. They were going to some place in northern Finland, so I really got the feeling I would see some Suomi soil today.

Next I was picked up by a truck taking me to Karasjok. The driver was a Russian heading to Moermansk. Suddenly I realized that I was getting pretty close to Russian territory Since my Russian is still limited to telling someone that I don’t understand it (and ask them if they understand English) there was not much to talk about. We stopped in some crappy restaurant (the only one ) along the way to have some food and he dropped me off in Karasjok at about 18:00. I decided to spend some of my last Norwegian money (Karasjok is about 20km from the finnish border) on a decent meal. The meal turned out to be not that decent but on the upside I still had some money left.

I got back on the road, convinced that I was going to reach Finland today (on the other side of the border there is a town called Karigasniemi, only 20Km from where I was). I decided to walk as far as I could while traffic was pretty scarce. I passed a campsite on my way, but decided to keep moving. About 2Km later, I realized that if no one was going to pick me up, I would be stuck in an enormous forest that had warning signs for reindeer husbandry around it. Not the smartest idea in the world. The traffic was getting less and less, so I decided to turn around and head back to the campsite entrance, stay there for a bit and then go to the campsite should I not have been picked up before darkness.

When I was close to the entrance again, a car stopped, but they told me they were going to Alta. I found it strange, and after thinking about it for a minute I took out the only crappy map I had, realizing that I had been walking in the wrong direction This was the road leading west and then south instead of directly south into Finland! I realized that my chances of getting to Finland today were now close to zero, so I decided to spend the night on the camping and continue into Finland the next day. This was my first day of paying for lodging in almost a month of traveling. I guess it had to happen sooner or later