Long Trip part 4: Helsinki and Turku, Finland

The trip over to Helsinki, Finland (Suomi!) was pretty interesting. I took the Viking Ferry from Stockholm and it was a 15 hour journey. The ferry was interesting and resembled a cruise ship, only with everything costing extra and the fact that you don't need to book a cabin and can just sleep where ever (what I did). They had a bunch of , with really good food, but it was 26€ for the buffet, a casino, pub, karoke lounge, nightclub and even a small sauna area. They were playing the Canada-Finland game at the lounge so it was nice to watch. The crowd was very pro-finland, but we wasted them, I wish I had my Canada Jersey on. On the ferry, I met some other people that didn't get cabins (2 guys and a girl from Columbia, 1 guy from Germany) so we chilled for a bit (see drinking beer). Later on in the night a crazy amount of Finnish girls (on their way back from a school trip or something) stopped by to talk. It was good fun until security took away our alcohol (apparently you can't drink on the boat),but not before I tried some Finish vodka stuff that tasted like licorice (similiar to Sambouka (spelling) from Riga, but stronger and sweeter, so we decided to go to the club for a bit and stuck around till 3, but the music was horrible and I couldn't stand it anymore. I tried to stay up to watch the sunrise, but I passed out at around 5 (i think sunrise was at like 5:30). We arrived at Helsinki at 10 in the morning (and they didn't stamp my passport :( ).

Helsinki is much colder and quieter then Stockholm, so there wasn't a whole lot to do. After locating the hostel, we (the german fellow tagged along for the day) took a ferry to the island forturess Suomenlinna (Fortress of Finland or something, the swedish name is Fortress of Sweden, interesting). After that I more or less just wandered around the city looking for the tourist sights. There was the Helsinki Cathedral, Uspenski Orthodox church, and another neat church called Temppeliaukion Kirkko. This place was carved into the rock or something adn the walls are all rock, it was interesting. A quick obervation or Helsinki, it has to have the highest concentration of McDonalds in the world. walking 10 min in the center, I saw 10 different McDonalds. Helsinki is also damn expensive (Finland as a whole). We just took it easy for the night (couldn't find a club or anything) and drank a few beers by the cathedral. I learned a cool trick on how to open a beer bottle with a lighter (something we were wondering in Russia). Good stuff.

The next day I just wandered around the city until it was time to catch my train to Turku. I wanted to go to Turku mainly cuz that's where Kipper is from. Talking to the finnish girl in Riga (she lived in Turku but was out travelling at this time) she told me the city was famous for 2 things, hockey players and beautiful women. A pretty accurate statement as I came to the city because of a hockey player, and the women looked very swedish (a good thing). Turku is apparently the oldest town in Finland, and once the capital of Sweden. The train was really nice with a conference room, electrical plugs for computers and stuff, built-in radios, and seats that recline a lot. It was really comfortable. The trip too around 2 hours and I was in Turku at 4. Everything was more or less closing at this time, so I just took pictures of the sites and looked into things to do the next day. Walking around the city, I saw some weird art stuff, like a large web covering a cave, and the Fibonacci Sequence on the chiminey stack of a power facility. Along the river there were some neat things in the föri, a free ferry to send people across the river, more art stuff like the "whale tail", and a lot of old boats. There was a large 3 mast sailing ship called the Suomen Jousten (Finish Swan), another sailing ship called the Parkki Sigym, and some random military boat (Tykkivene Karjala). At opposite ends of the river are Turku Cathedral, and Turku Castle (creative naming). I caught the Canada-Slovaki game on tv so that was good, awesome 3rd period.

On the last day in Turku, I had planned to see the cathedral, castle and a museum. The cathedral was pretty plan inside. It burned down, along with the rest of the town 100-something years ago so I guess they didn't bother making it too nice. I also checked out a museum that was ruins of the old town which was pretty interesting. It also held a modern art museum which was weird. They had some mechanical art display so it had random moving stuff, like vibrating cubes and tilting bookshelves. The castle was a long walk away and I got lazy so I decided to go back to the hostel to sleep for a bit, probably due to lack of food (sweden=expensive, ferry food = expensive, finland = expensive). I figured I should at least try some traditional finnish food (we looked in helsinki, but it was crazy expensive) and looked for a place to try reindeer. I found a boat resturant called Svarte Rudolf (with a name like that, they better have reindeer....they did) and tried the braised Reindeer; it came with Lingonberries (I can say I tried something swedish also now). It was hard to define the taste of it since it wasn´t 1 large hunk of meat, but it seemed sorta like a cross of horse and veal. It was pretty good. After the meal I realized I ate dinner 2 hours earlier then I wanted to (damn hunger induced hallucinations). With a few hours left before the ferry, I went back to the hostel to see if the hockey game was on.

At 9 I went to catch the ferry to go back to Stockholm and from there, Göteborg.