Category — Finland

Three hours later I woke up and made my ferry reservation to Estonia. Tiina had sent me an email telling me which was the cheapest company, so I booked that for roughly 20€. Then I went back to sleep a little bit more. I got up at quarter past seven and tooka shower and packed my bags. I had said goodbye to Serkan the previous night, so I quietly left the house when I was ready around 8:15.

I made my way to the ferry terminal and arrived there at 8:50, right in time for checkin which started at 9:00.I got my ticket and proceeded to the boarding area where I had to wait until I could board. I fell asleep of course, but that was just convenient as there was absolutely nothing to do in the boarding area (I didn’t have any euro’s left besides the few I was going to use for breakfast). When I woke up, boarding had just opened and I proceeded to board the ferry.

The boat ride was going to take 3,5 hours, so I proceeded to the panorama deck on one of the top floors thinking that there would be a nice and quiet place to sit and work on the laptop. I was wrong! This panorama lounge had a stage where some awful folk music was performed that was only watched by a bunch of old people. To make matters worse, after that they started playing bingo. I ignored my way through all this and watched some desperate housewives (yes, I am gay ) with my headphones on.

After I was out of stuff to watch, I fled the place looking for a cheap café on board the ship to spend my last few euro’s on a breakfast. I bought a nice shrimp salad sandwich and a coke. After eating it, I went back to my backpack I had left in the lounge. I sat next to it and just slept through the rest of the journey as I had only slept 3 hours the previous night.

I woke up 20 minutes before arriving in Tallinn, just enough to see the city from a distance. It looked very beautiful, with a beautiful old part on a hill and a more modern part a bit further away. I got off the boat when it docked and walked into the city. I was very nicely surprised by the beauty of Tallinn!

I love coming to a new country: new money, new simple words and phrases to learn, a whole new culture to learn with all it’s customs. I arrived in Estonia with an empty wallet (I had to get rid of my last euro’s) and an empty mind. Since Helsinki had been one of my goals and my next goal, being Thailand, was gone I now felt completely free to do whatever I wanted. An awesome feeling!

Since I didn’t have a map, the tourist information was closed and I had to drag around my backpack, I chose to spend the rest of the afternoon in a coffee place where there was wireless internet. I catched up on stuff (I am doing that a lot these days, constantly being behind on everything) and around 19.00 I left for my host’s place.

I took a bus from the spot where they had advised me to take it from and listened very carefully to the names of the stops the driver was announcing. In cases like this, when I am traveling in public transport in the dark, I never sit down because that means the risk that I fall asleep is high. I could feel that I was at high alert: paying a lot of attention to everyone around me and everything that happened. I find that for some reason, traveling in the dark alone makes everybody become a potential robber or criminal. It is a very unpleasant feeling and a little bit scary. Then something happened that unfortunately did not make this feeling get any less in the future…

I got off the bus, followed the directions my hosts had given me but felt a little lost. I (thought I) had learned that asking never hurts. Boy was I wrong! I asked some guy that was knocking on a window of one of the apartment buildings, figuring that he probably lived there and would know where to go. He only spoke Russian and since my Russian is pretty basic (all I can say is “excuse me, do you speak english” and “I don’t understand Russian”) he was obviously not of much help. I tried to thank him and make it clear that I would ask someone else, but he wouldn’t listen and kept speaking Russian to me.

I walked away because I saw some younger kids who would probably speak English. They did and they told me I was very close. I walked in the direction they said it was (I was basically standing 20 meters from the street. Now all I needed was to find the right building. The Russian guy however kept following me and treid top convince me that the street I was looking for was in another direction. Luckily the young kids saw that and pointed in another direction. I started to be suspicious about the Russian guy and walked away from him. He however kept following me and kept talking to me.

I asked a taxi driver that happened to pass by for the right building (again, I was standing right in front of it but it was dark so I couldn’t see.). I walked to the door now clearly feeling that the Russian guy was up to no good. I tried ringing the bell, but the calling mechanism was not very obvious plus I was getting nervo… BAM! He punched me in my face and went into battle stance. Since I was carrying a backpack and my daypack with my laptop in it, I was in no position to fight back (also, my last fight was in primary school :)) so I chose the other obvious course of action: attract attention. I started shouting and that made the guy so nervous that he walked away when a lady with a dog came in my direction.

My nose was bleeding heavily and the lady obviously did not really know what to do. I convinced her that I needed to be at number 39 and she rang the door bell for me. Covering my bleeding nose with two hands I headed inside. The door opened: “Hi, I’m walter. I just got punched in the face by some crazy guy”. Johnny looked at me a little flabbergasted. He pointed me towards the bathroom and gave me some cotton balls to stop the bleeding. I looked in the mirror and assessed the damage: a nose that hurts like hell (nothing broken) and two busted lips. Great! I cleaned up and then explained the whole story to Johnny. He told me that this was not the best neighbourhood but that this has never happened. Guess I was just unlucky to ask the wrong guy

I guess this was one of those things I knew would happen eventually. Still, they always come unexpected. I tried to not let it get to me and tell myself that this was not really a big problem as nothing got stolen. It was kind of hard, but I guess that is one of the lesser sides of traveling.

After I had calmed down from the shock a little bit, Johnny made me dinner. He had been at home the whole day because he was feeling sick. Lena was still at her mom’s place. I talked with Johnny for a while and it turned out that he was also a computer programmer, albeit more oriented towards web programming. Him and Lena have started a company (http://rural.travelage.eu) not long ago for promoting rural tourism in Europe, quite interesting.

After a while Lena got home and she was equally surprised about what happened. She told me that previous guest had been offered the use of a mobile phone when they were lost and asked someone for directions.

We all worked for a while and talked in between about all kinds of things. I noticed that their internet connection was very fast and they told me that Estonia is actually one of the most wired countries in the world (to my surprise). After a while I decided to go to bed early since I was very tired. Lena and Johnny both had to get up early the next day, so we all went to bed.

When I woke up, Duke and Serkan were still sound asleep so I decided to watch the newest Prison Break episode until they woke up. We wanted to make breakfast, but we were out of fire to light the stove so we were forced to go out shopping for fire. We were supposed to go out for fire and some beers for the evening, but of course as everybody knows when you go shopping on an empty stomache you come back with all sorts of crap you don’t really need. Duke also took me up on my offer to borrow him some money to make it through the next couple of months.

When we got back home we made a nice breakfast (we had plenty of breakfast stuff now ). After breakfast Duke had to rush to an appointment with his first ever girlfriend from Mexico that happened to be in Helsinki during her travels. (For anyone reading his blog: he was 18 when he first kissed ). Of course he was going to be well over an hour late, but since it was mexicans meeting I figured it would be no more than expected. 20 minutes after he left she called me though (duke has no mobile), so I guess he was even late for Mexican standards

We also decided to organize a small party at Serkan’s place that night and rallied up as many people as we knew. That turned out to not be too many people by the way I called Tiina and initially she said no. I blackmailed her into coming anyway, since it was going to be my last night in Helsinki and thus the last chance for the three of us to be together.

I stayed at home, longing for a bit of rest. I fell asleep on the couch and slept for about an hour or so. When I woke up, Serkan was gone. He had told me that he had plans to go bicycling for the afternoon, so I presumed that was where he was. That meant I had the house to myself for a few hours, yay! I was really lazy, so I spent the whole afternoon watching tv shows and doing nothing. It felt great!

After a few hours Serkan came back and he made dinner for the two of us. We had no idea where Duke was and when he was going to be back, so we didn’t wait for him. After a few hours he came back and brought his ex girlfriend ana and her friend lilly, a Chinese girl with him for the party. One of Serkan’s colleagues and Tiina also showed up and we had a nice time talking about all kinds of things.

Tiina had the bright idea that we should take some photo’s with the “eat shit”-postcard, so we did. After midnight we decided to go out and meet some of Tiina’s friends at a bar. Serkan came with us and Duke, Ana and Lilly went to Ana and Lilly’s host to sleep (Duke went there because he had left his laptop there earlier). I did not realize at the time that would be the last time I was gonna see Duke (he was supposed to come back the same night and drop me off at the ferry the next morning). Maybe it was better this way.

We got into Tiina’s moms car and I realized this was the first time I saw Tiina drive a car, strangely enough. We went to the city center and parked the car. Then we went to a metal pub (they are really quite common here ). Tiina coerced her friends into more “eat shit”-card pictures and we had some good fun with it.

This country is so used to drunk people that when two girls on the dance floor fell over because they were too drunk, nobody cared. They didn’t get up and their friends even made a meat pile out of them. A minute later we saw two people dancing (well, dancing…) on the dancefloor and we couldn’t quite make up which one was holding the other one up. It looked quite funny actually

After a while we decided to go home since Tiina still wasn’t feeling too good and shouldn’t have left her house in the first place. We said goodbye and it felt a little sad. Tiina is a wonderful girl and I have grown to really like her in the past 10 months or so. Serkan and me took a bus home and when we got home we ate a little snack and then went to bed (it was 3:15 and I needed to get up early next morning)

I slept in the next morning. Of course I woke up a bit to say goodbye to Saara, but I went back to sleep right after (I love my narcolepsy sometimes). Grant went to go to work, and I used my time to sleep, watch some shows, use the internet to do some planning and to pack my bags.

A few days before I had put my tent on the balcony to dry and freshen up, since it had been wet in my backpack since Norway. It was all clean and dry the day before, but since there was snow and rain this morning, the tent was all wet again. I decided to put it to dry in the bathroom. I finished packing my bag exactly the moment I heard Grant’s key turn in the lock of the front door. What a coincidence!

Grant was going to Helsinki today, and we had decided to travel by train together. He was going to an Australian football thing where one of the world’s best players at the moment from Australia was visiting. His club had organized a whole weekend around the guy, starting off with a friendly match. Grant asked me to come to the match and I said yes. We talked about a lot of stuff on the train trip and that made it all go by really fast.

We arrived in Helsinki and went to drop Grant’s gear off at a friend’s place. Then the friend came with us to the football stadium. The match was played outside while it was near freezing. It must have been hell for the players (I know I was freezing to death ). The match was quite interesting as I don’t know the first thing about football or sports in general. I had called Tiina to ask her if she wanted to come too and she did. She told me casually that she had found a temporary apartment and moved into it last Wednesday. We had quite some fun at the sidelines and I shot quite a few pictures of Grant in action.

After the match I said goodbye to Grant and traveled with Tiina across the city to where I needed to get off to go to Serkan’s (remember the Turkish guy from the cruise?). Duke was staying there and Serkan offered me to stay there too.

Duke had already told me that Serkan had a really nice apartment and that turned out to be nothing short of the truth. Serkan is a software engineer from Turkey that had just moved to Helsinki a month ago. He found an apartment that was not in use for the next 9 months that he could rent very cheap because it is hard to rent out an apartment for 9 months. For Serkan this however was a good opportunity to get used to Helsinki and look for a more definitive place to stay.

When I got there Duke and Serkan were jamming and I just listened in. I love people being so creative! We had a simple dinner. As Duke said: “this guy has nothing that cannot be prepared in 2 minutes!”. That did not mean however that dinner was not very nice

After dinner we decided to watch a Jack Black movie, the pick of destiny. I fell asleep halfway through (wow, really?) and after the movie I went to bed after a long day.

Right next to Turku is an island (that can be reached by bus) that is a national park. It is however completely located inside the city. Since I still had a 24 hour bus ticket that had started the day before at 9am, I decided to go to this national park on that same ticket. Because that ticket ended at 9am however, I needed to get up early so I could take a bus from Saara and Grant’s place at 8 am.

I had to switch busses in the city center and arrived just before 9am in the national park. Of course I had fallen asleep and woke up somewhere when the bus was standing still. I thought it was the end of the line so I got out. It turned out not to be the end of the line, but I was close enough and at least I was on the right island

I looked around for a map and then decided to take one of the longer hiking paths. That was still not really far, since the island was not that big. The good thing was that it was about 7Km through the forest and after that the hiking path kept crossing the main road every 2 or 3 Km, so I could make it as long or short as I wanted. I started walking and it felt very good to be outdoors again. I walked in a slow pace since I had all day. I took several naps along the way in places where it was possible.

I took a break at the waterside on the property of an empty summerhouse, crossed a golf course (kind of strange in a national park, but okay ) and climbed a lookout tower. Around noon I reached a nice little restaurant. At first I thought I would not have enough money with me to eat anything (unless I would walk back to the city). I didn’t have breakfast at all however and soon I realized that I had some money tucked away in my belt for emergency situations like this.

I entered the restaurant and ordered a nice sandwich and a drink. I ate my brunch and then decided to get out the laptop to write some blog posts (I was now at October 5^th). I took a nap somewhere in between (over the years I have become an expert in looking like I am doing something but secretly be sleeping). Overall, I sat there for around 1,5 hours.

Then I continued walking for a while. I wanted to walk all the way to the entrance of the island, but the combination of beginning rain and me bumping into a bus stop with a bus that was going to be there in the next few minutes (busses only come once an hour) made me end my hike prematurely. All in all I hiked about 15 Km I would say, which is not too bad.

I took the bus back to the city center and decided to go back to the same café I was in the day before to catch up on email. I sat there for a few hours and then headed back to Saara and Grant’s.

Grant cooked dinner again, this time it was traditional finnish army food: apparently they get pancakes and pea soup every Tuesday. It was a very good combination (not one that I would ever have thought of, though ) During dinner we had some interesting conversations about the finnish language. Apparently, at some point they were trying to get away from the Russian language and were looking for their own identity. They needed a word for electricity and actually organized a contest to find a word for it. The word they use today for electricity is still the word that won that contest :). Another interesting one: the guy that made up the words for history and science (he was not a scientist!) is now known as the father of science and history. Not a bad name for inventing two words

After this exciting day, I was very tired. Grant was tired too, as this was his first week working since he came to Finland. Saara had to study for an examn, so she went to bed too and got up at 4 am to start studying. I watched some tv and then went to bed.

After having a lazy day yesterday, I decided to have a more productive day today. I woke up early so I could leave to the city with Saara. She was going to a big sale for some big department store. This department store has these sales once every year and supposedly people stand in line before opening hours to be the first to get in. Normally I would have said no, but since I’m experiencing different cultures I decided to tag along.

It was indeed absurdly busy for a Wednesday morning at 9 am! Saara wanted to go there with a specific target: buying a birthday gift for Grant since next Sunday would be his birthday. We went in and straight to where we needed to be. We got what we wanted and found a cash register that didn’t have a mile long queue in front of it (as opposed to the other cash registers ).

After getting out, Saara had to go to uni and I was going to walk around the city. There was a castle that I wanted to visit. Before going there however, I needed to get some breakfast. Saara had suggested me to go to a place called Kauppahalla, which is basically an indoor market. You find a lot of these places here, simply because it gets too cold in the winter. I went there and bought some salmon salad which I eat in a mall just down the street somewhere (it’s warmer inside than outside where it was almost freezing).

I decided to finally print out the pictures for benny that I had promised him. I passed by some photo shop and printed them out there. After doing that, I went into the mall nextdoor to take a nap. Then I went to the post office to mail the pictures to Benny. After doing that, I was finally ready to start walking around.

I walked to a hill that I saw on the map. I walked around some park, saw a swimming pool, a football stadium and an athletics track but no castle. Afetr wondering around I decided to walk down on the other side of the hill and make my way back to the city. Since I didn’t exactly know where I was, I decided to go to a bus stop to figure that out (tip: in most countries, bus stops have good detailed city maps in them!).

When I got there, I felt very stupid: I saw on the map that I was in the wrong part of the city! What happened was that I only took a brief look at the city map that morning, and thought I had seen the castle being located on this side of the river. In combination with that, Saara had told me to walk along the river until I saw the castle. I did walk along the river and although I didn’t see the castle itself, I did see a big rocky hill that if it would’ve been my choice, I would have built the castle on

Anyway, big fuckup but luckily it turned out that I was quite close to the real location of the castle so I decided to go take a look after all. I found it quite easily (now that I was looking in the right place ), but it turned out to be closed. Well, there was a man there but he would reply no to any question I would ask him and the gate that separated me and the castle and security guard was closed so I figured that was a good sign the castle was closed.

I took the bus back to the city and sat down at a random café in a shopping mall. And of course there was an open network there, so I could catch up on mail and other stuff. This country has a very high internet coverage, there is internet literally everywhere, even on busses (!). Sidenote: that can lead to some serious trouble though: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-09/ff_estonia

Anyway, I sat there until six and then headed back to Grant and Saara’s place. When I arrived, we made homemade pizza (delicious!) and had some nice conversations. After dinner we watched a british comedy show called extra which was pretty funny. Even though it was funny, I fell asleep halfway through (surprise, surprise!).

When I woke up a bit later, Grant and Saara had gone to bed. This kind of thing makes you really feel at home, which is very nice from time to time when you’re traveling for a longer time. I watched some tv and updated my list of blog bullet points (that way I still know what I did whenever I finally get to writing the blog entries themselves ). After watching some shows on my laptop I went to bed around 1:30.

I woke up when Grant got up to go to his work. The school he teaches at is located quite close to the place they live in, so he can walk there. Saara also had to get up early to go to school fro a long day of classes.

I decided to have a lazy day and stayed in bed for a couple of more hours. After a while I decided to drag myself out of bed, get a shower and get dressed. I didn’t feel like going to the city center, so I decided to go to the shopping mall closeby to find some breakfast. Grant and Saara had offered me a bike to ride the 6 km to the city center. I decided to try it out on my way to the mall. I’m glad I did, because it didn’t really feel solid enough to carry my weight for a longer bike ride.

I walked around the whole mall (it’s reasonably small) to see what kind of shops they had. Since it was already 2pm I decided to eat at a kebab place. I had one of those rullakebabs Duke had introduced me to back in Tampere and it was pretty good (and it was a _lot_ of food for very little money.

While I was sitting in the kebab place I noticed the library right across the street. Since I remembered someone told me that internet at libraries is free, so I decided to take my chances and go and ask if they happened to have any wireless there (since Grant and Saara’s place didn’t). Before I knew it, the librarian was making me a library card for all libraries in the city of Turku . After he made it it turned out that he hadn’t quite understood what I was asking, since he pointed me at 4 wired computers downstairs. Since I was there and I had the card anyway, I decided to sit there and do some stuff (this place was the same as Grant and Saara’s if I couldn’t use my laptop anyway).

After a while I decided to head back to the apartment and see if Grant was back yet (it is quite common to give your host some time for him/herself after coming home, that way they will feel better about your presence). He was there and we decided that I would cook chilli. It turned out that all the ingredients were there and we only needed to buy some small things. Grant and I went to the supermarket and got what we needed (including some beers). I offered to pay but was a bit surprised when the bill turned out to be 35€, which is even more than my budget for a day. Even so, I decided not to say anything and just pay the bill (I don’t like coming back to my decisions )

We went back to the apartment and I cooked Chilli. This was gonna be a good one, as Grant and Saara had a fridge full of vegetables! It all worked out perfectly and just when it was done Saara came home from her day at school. Perfect!

We had some dinner, talked a bit and watched tv a bit. Grant and Saara went to bed early again because Grant was tired from work and Saara had to read a book for her studies. I was up late watching tv shows, programming and sleeping on and off. A nice and relaxing day!