Scandanavian (and Estonian) Adventures!

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April 21st 2009

Published: April 22nd 2009

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AlexRoosenburg

Stockholm at Night

View from our Bostel, heading back to the Old Town for dinner and drinks.

So, school let out on a Friday afternoon and by Friday evening I was at the airport for my overnight flight to Europe! My friend Cassie and her cousin were on my flight to Amsterdam, so I had some company while waiting for the flight, and then upon boarding the plane I almost got stuck into a middle seat (the HORROR!) until the air hostesses intervened on my behalf and I got my original window seat back. That was a close one!

It being a Friday and high time for a holiday, I passed out upon sitting down and slept pretty much the entire flight to Amsterdam. I had about 2 hours in Amsterdam where I window shopped, had some delicious coffee, and found my next gate to… Stockholm!

Upon reaching Stockholm and collecting my bag (not lost, track record is looking up!), I hopped on an environmentally friendly fast train from the airport to the city. I killed about 5 hours in central Stockholm, both in and around the train station, while waiting for Sara to arrive on her train. And thus begins the story of our karma-cally challenged trip…

I waited at the arrival gate

Sara and Me in Stockholm!

In a cavern bar, with live music!

for Sara to come off her train, and people kept walking by, but no Sara. I gave her 10 minutes after the last passengers wandered out, and then I gave up hope, found her number in my bag, dug out some change, and called. Turns out Sara was on a later train, a later train which would arrive 5 minutes AFTER our ferry cruise was scheduled to be en route to Estonia. Umm? So, I hopped on the metro, headed to the ferry dock and canceled our reservation. Upon finally meeting up with Sara in the train station, we wandered around Stockholm for a good hour and a half until we finally found ourselves a place to stay for the night! We were staying on a boat hostel - a bostel! Despite the treacherous little stairway leading down to our room, we had simple but great accommodation and a fun experience.

We headed out to eat something and ended up hearing that some of Sara’s friends from her Masters’ program down south were also in town, so we met up with them for some live music and drinks. The following morning we headed down to a different ferry port

Me on the Stairs

Very steep and treacherous, I don't know how I didn't fall down them at all!

(we couldn’t show our faces at the first one again!) and booked ourselves on the next ferry to Estonia, via Helsinki, leaving that afternoon. We toured around Stockholm for a few hours, looking at boats and the old town, and then headed to, and made it on, our ferry cruise! I wasn’t too sad to only have a few hours to look around Stockholm, because I knew we’d be back.

The Viking Line ferries are pretty infamous around Scandinavia for their “party” personalities. Well, this one lived up to that for sure! We dropped our bags in our cab, spent some time wandering around the boat and familiarizing ourselves with the possibilities and then promptly hit up the duty free store to stock up on drinks for the evening. We then, in true Nordic fashion, hit up the Sauna on the boat and sweated out all previous impurities. Following this, and showers of course, we headed out to dinner and… Karaoke! We watched for a while and then were approached by a group of guys who ended up not only providing some great lyrical entertainment, but also became our friends for the evening. With a group of DJs and

Red Boat Hostel

Our BOSTEL for the night!

movie producers, how can you go wrong? They also managed to convince us to change our already amended trip plans and come visit Helsinki on our way back from Estonia.

After a fun but late night, we were rudely awakened in the morning by a loudspeaker announcing that we’d arrived in Helsinki and had to debark. Ugh. We somehow managed to pull ourselves together long enough to exit the boat and then board our next boat to Tallinn, Estonia. We arrived in Estonia and caught a bus into the city center, where we amused ourselves for an hour or so before our wonderful host, wait for it….. Sven (!!) picked us up. We spent 2 nights and 3 days at Sven’s house, couch surfing. It’s an online program you can sign up to and then people can come stay at your place, crashing on your couch, and you can do the same at other people’s houses around the world! Super cheap and fun way to travel the world, and meet locals while doing it!

Estonia is a very interesting country- well, I can only really speak for Tallinn, but I really enjoyed my time there. It has old,

Boats of Sweden

Lining the coasts of Stockholm

cobblestone streets (in the Old City sector) but also very new looking roads and buildings. It seems to be trying very hard to advance and keep up with Western Europe. Some interesting things that I learned about Estonia were that Skype was invented by an Estonian, and that Tallinn in its efforts to be modern and competitive amongst other European countries, is wireless almost everywhere! We tested this out a few times, pulling out Sara’s laptop in various restaurants, parks, and run down building areas… each time finding wireless access! You can also see evidence of the hard times that Estonia is facing, with all of the beggars and scavengers around town, coming up and asking for food, or just digging through the trash cans. Apparently they can also become very aggressive in asking for cigarettes- in Russian, but we didn’t have to deal with this as it’s usually towards men. I thought Tallinn was a very cute city, especially the older parts. It also has several parks, full of benches and equipment for children to play on. A nice outdoorsy city for the sunny days. Although we did not have the spending power to afford it, there was also

Our Cozy Cabin

On the cruise ship... the beds folded down when it was time for our 3 hours of sleep.

the option to go and eat traditional reindeer, bear, or various other meats, and let’s not forget the quail eggs!

At the end of our third day in Tallinn, we headed for the ferry terminal to catch a ship to Helsinki for the night (we’d used the wireless internet to Skype call our new Finish friends and ask for a couch to crash on that night! Bless you, E-stonia!). We were, of course, running a little late when leaving Sven’s apartment, so we asked some of the other couch surfers (Sven had 6 of us staying on his floor! What a guy!) if they wanted to drive us in their newly purchased, 2 hours previous, car. They agreed. Well… what was supposed to be a 10-minute drive for some reason took over an hour (strange map reading skills?) Needless to say, we missed our ferry. Seriously? On to trip plan # 4.

We found out that there was another cruise line with a ferry to Finland at 9 pm, from a different terminal. It was 6pm. We went straight there. We made it in time! We boarded the SUPERSTAR boat, ready for a good 2 hours in the

Out for the Night

Watching Karaoke on the ship!

karaoke bar. Sadly, apparently this was not so much of a party line as Viking was, and there was no Karaoke. Sigh. We went to duty free and bought some drinks, and spent our hours reading, chatting, and drinking it up together. We arrived in Helsinki and then had to seek out Josef, a friend of one of the cruise guys- who was out of town and letting Josef and us stay at his place! So, Josef was waiting for us (his place had flooded), and took us to our place for the night.

The following day we walked around FREEZING cold Helsinki. The water was still completely frozen! We didn’t have time to go to the one recommended tourist spot, some island or another, so we did the next best thing- hopped on a trolley and spent our afternoon shopping! The trolley system around Helsinki is really easy to figure out, and a direct shot from the ferry terminal to the city center. Needless to say, I can’t tell you much about Helsinki, besides the fact that they use the Euro and make good coffee. Hmm.

We hopped on our next ferry that evening (we made it!)

Helsinki Friends

Sara poses with some of our new friends on the ship.

to overnight back to Stockholm. Turns out that this time we had booked ourselves on High School Spring Break 2K9. Not so awesome. We gave it our best shot, going to some of the singing and dancing shows on the boat, popping in on karaoke, etc. but we just felt too old for that boat. Sigh. Off to bed with us, so we could be up and ready to explore Stockholm the next day!

So when we got to Stockholm, we hopped on a metro (after my first day there, I was an old hand at Stockholm’s transportation options) and headed to Shawn’s house. Shawn is a friend of Sara’s that was letting us stay on his couch for the long weekend. Shawn met us at his place and we dropped our stuff and promptly hopped on some bikes (2 extras- how fortuitous!) to cycle around Stockholm for the day! We saw a bunch of the different districts of the city, several of the parks, and stopped for some coffee along the water. It’s a wonderful outdoor city, with so many dogs being walked and played with everywhere! Everything is very organized and dependable. Kind of like Switzerland- but

Climbing in Tallinn

A children's park full of fun toys and exercise equipment!

colder and more blonde. We also went to see the Vassa museum- which is a museum centered on an old war ship from the 1600s, which the King kept adding cannons and men to. On the day that the boat set sail, everyone came to see it and cheer it off. Well, the boat got around the corner ( a whole 10 minutes en route), and then tipped over and sunk! Too many men and cannons! It was at the bottom of the sea until the 1950s or so, when it was brought up and restored. Very interesting to look at and learn about. That evening, we cooked dinner and had some people over to Shawn’s house. We spent the evening discussing sustainability, the environment, and Africa (all related to our chosen careers) and drank a whole lot of Jameson’s whisky.

We spent the next day on a boat touring Stockholm’s archipelago. It was lovely weather- 15degrees or more… so we could get away in just t-shirts in the sunshine! We saw several of the little islands and historical sights, and even the typical Swedish summer homes dotting the coastline. Apparently most Swedes have little summer cottages outside of

The Tallinn Library

Very cheap, very useful, very... pink

the city that they spend weekends and summers at, relaxing and enjoying the outdoors. It was very cute to see. Upon returning, we relaxed for a bit and then went out for our last dinner together in Stockholm.

The next day, Sara left me to head back to school and I happened upon one street with open shops (on Easter Sunday) to entertain me for the afternoon. Following this, I headed on a train to the airport and shuttled out to my airport hotel for the night. I pampered myself with some room service and relaxation before getting up at 4am for my flight back to Dar, via Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, upon reaching my departure gate, I ran into a guy I used to work with at Sail Caribbean! He works for the US Government now and is doing roadwork projects in Tanzania, so he gets sent to Dar every once in a while to check on things! How fun!

So now I am back in Dar, getting settled back into my routines and busy life here. Kibo continues to be cute and cuddly as ever, and tomorrow my good friend Meghan is arriving to travel and stay