The Great Scandinavian Adventure

Well, I am back in Utrecht from my great adventure. Though I have been back for a few days already, I have been struggling with writing about it, mostly because it was so great that words don't really do it justice. Kind of like the pictures I took. I spent a glorious six days traveling around the capitals of Sweden, Finland and Estonia, most of my time in Helsinki. I started my journey early in the morning, catching a flight from Amsterdam to Stockholm. The flight it self was not so bad, if you discount the wasted Dutch women who were sitting next to me. Mind you, the flight was at 10:30 in the morning. And they were drunk.

Getting to the ferry was reasonable, there was a shuttle from the airport to the Central station, and then from the station to the harbor. I didn't take any time to wander around because I was so nervous about missing my ferry. By the time I actually got on the boat, my head was pounding and my eyes were drooping but it was far too early to think about sleeping. So I took advantage of the upper deck, found myself a nice place to sit with a view and turned in my mp3 player, reading and occasionally looking up to watch the archipelago go by. I couldn't have asked for better weather - sunny and warm enough that the breeze off of the water was cool and refreshing. I spent hours just sitting and looking out at the water. I took some notes to myself so I wouldn't forget, but looking back on them, I can't imagine how I could have ever forgotten that sky. In my Dutch culture course last block, my professor said that what she loves so much about her home country is the enormity of the sky. But seriously, it has nothing on the Scandinavian sun.

The air was crisp and made my lungs sing out in joy. Living with a smoker who doesn't close the door to her room has affected me more than I thought it would, as mostly I notice when I go somewhere where the air is fresh and it feels like my chest is opening up, taking in as much as I can in anticipation for going back. The sunset lasted almost an hour and the sky turned so many different colors. It never got truly dark (two weeks away from the solstice and all), just kind of dusky. I wrote to myself that I would be content to spent days just riding back and forth between Stockholm and Helsinki, listening to music and watching the sky.

After finally going to bed around midnight, I slept in my tiny little cabin which smelled kind of funny and thought about how I am not a discount traveler. I wish I had sprung for a slightly more expensive but also nicer cabin and hoped that I was in a better one on the way back (which I will talk about later, heh). I got into Helsinki in the morning and decided that, though I was pretty sure my room wasn't going to ready yet, I wanted to find my hostel and hopefully drop off my luggage. I was happily surprised with how easy it was to find it, how easy it was to maneuver around the trams in general. As I had suspected, my room wasn't ready yet, so I just dropped off my luggage and ventured back to the city. There, I went to the central station, bought a tourist card and decided to try to find something to eat while waiting for the guided tour of the city to begin.

I really like organized tours of cities, especially when I don't have a whole lot of time in any given place. They help me figure out what there is to see, relatively how far away things are. So the tour was great. And they offered it in Latin, which I thought was pretty hilarious because honestly, who is going to take a tour of a city in a dead language? But anyway, the picture above is the Sibelius monument, one of the cooler things that was on the tour. I also had the fortune of finding myself in downtown Helsinki during the Samba Carnaval, a big festival with people in costumes, a parade and lots of parties.

I spent the third day of my trip journeying around Helsinki, experiencing the Old Market Square and taking a boat tour of the archipelago. So beautiful. My favorite part was probably looking at all of the saunas at the water's edge on so many of the little islands. After the boat tour, I ventured out to the Suomenlinna, the sea fortress. Gorgeous and steeped in history. I went on a tour (of course) that gave some interesting history around the construction of the fortress, the naming and the history of control. I also had the chance to see the prince of Sweden, who happened to be on the island because of this 18th century boat that was doing something (I am a little fuzzy on the details).

Day four was my trip to Tallinn with my friend Josefin from Utrecht (well, she is Swedish, but I know her from Utrecht). It was better than I was expecting (not to say that I expected it to be bad, but I hadn't really ever thought about Estonia before as anything other than a place for music festivals.) We toured the city on our own, ate some delicious food, took pictures from the sites and wrote postcards. Tons of fun and it was nice to be back with someone else.

My last day in Helsinki was spent with Josefin, eating (my favorite thing ever), buying gifts for people, wandering about and getting on the ferry to go back to Stockholm. On the boat back, we sat and watched the Sweden-Greece game with a whole bunch of people, watched as we traveled parallel to a giant thunderstorm (so cool, you could see the storm, the rain coming down, but without actually experiencing it first hand). My cabin on this boat was so nice. Rather than being in the bottom of the boat, it was on the entrance floor. The bed was even more comfortable, and there was no lingering funny smell. Glorious. It was then that my desire to go back and do this kind of trip again (but next time, bring Ben with me) was cemented. I fell in love with Helsinki and I can't wait until I can go back and explore other Finnish cities.

The last day of my trip was fairly uneventful. I left my stuff at the train station, went on a city tour before getting to the airport. The flight was when the scary stuff happened. The flight itself was about 25 minutes late starting (and mind you, I had a 50 minute layover in Copenhagen). While the flight itself was in the air, I noticed that we started flying around in circles over Copenhagen. And then the captain came on the loudspeaker to let us all know that they were having some difficulties with the navigation system, which is why we had an aborted landing. So, while we were circling the city, he calmly informed us to consult our emergency cards, find the closest emergency exit, while they restarted the plane's computer.

By this point, I had decided that I was going to miss my connection and closed my eyes, waiting for us to be on the ground either by landing or crash. Luckily, everything managed to work itself out and I got off of the plane, going to my gate to find an agent to rebook. But alas, they had held the flight for me! So I thought, everything is looking up, I am not going to die, I am going to get home sometime tonight. Unfortunately, though, while they held the plane for me, they didn't hold the plane for my luggage. So I got to Amsterdam and had no luggage, so I waited the hour and a half for my luggage to get put on the next flight and finally made it home again.

All in all, it was the best vacation ever. I had the most wonderful time and it gave me the distance that I needed. I am sure that there is more to say about it, but who wants to read about all of the boring details that I have in my head. Wonderful. I am happy.

-B