Finland – Europe'16

No sleep on the Party Boat

Posted on July 9, 2016 by Steven

After a very calm and tranquil wait for the 00:45 ferry, watching the sunset for the first time in over two weeks, any thoughts that I might sleep on the boat to Stockholm was dispelled as the sounds of the onboard night club preceded the boat – it was, after all Friday night.

I think that the boat was populated only by very drunk young Finns on a weekend cruise. As it turned out there was a very large tour group of Chinese who had sensibly gone to bed in their cabins and only appeared at breakfast.

As for me, without a cabin, well I did get maybe one or two hours of shuteye but, always seemed to get involved in unintelligible conversations with very drunk Finns that were conducted in half English, half Finnish, with some slurred Swedish thrown in for good measure. Hopefully none of them were going anywhere near a car for the next week.

Slow Travel

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Steven

The wind has quietened to a zephyr, probably because it knows I’m getting the 00:45 boat to Stockholm. It’s a beautiful warm late afternoon. I’m sitting in a wood typing this with just the sound of seagulls. For the last three days I’ve been doing the cycling version of slow food. Not travelling far but stopping frequently and sampling the local fair, be it museums, food and attractions or whatever.

My lunch spot

There was a delightful little museum displaying the paintings of a artists colony from the early to mid 1900s – it reminded me of the paintings in Mogs flat!

Art Colony Museum

Then I spend the better part of 2 hours at a small café run called Lumparby Ollas by Peter. By my reckoning it was out of the way, by his reckoning it was close to town, of course he had a car. It was only open in the summer and in the winter, he runs his sled dogs as a hobby. Apparently when the sea freezes, you can get to to the Finnish mainland in about 8 hours by dog sled.

Lumparby Ollas Cafe

The harbour where I catch the boat is Långnas. It’s about 30 kilometres from Mariehamn and only used because of Alcohol. To explain, the EU banned duty free between member countries. This slashed the revenue that the ferry companies made. But because Åland is a self governing body it was declared an exception so all ferries stop there and people travelling between Sweden and Finland or Estonia can load up on Booze.

My teachers at School didn’t tell everything

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Steven

Not content with the 9 hour coach ride and a 14 hour train ride, I tacked on a 5½ hour ferry ride to get to the Åland archipelago that runs between Sweden and Finland.

Such a change, it is flat, relatively speaking and has forests! I also did my bit of remedial learning. I’d always been taught that the Crimean War took place in, as you might think, in Crimea. But I’m camped next to the ruins of a Russian fort that was the scene of a major battle and where the first ever Victoria Cross was awarded – along with two other ones a few months later.

Basically Russians had built the insides of the fort but were rather tardy in putting up the outer defences. Unsportingly the Brits and French bombarded the place and captured it. But the Russians got their own back by bombarding the fort after the French had taken it and scoring a direct hit on the munitions magazine – could be they had some inside knowledge of the place. My teachers at school have some explaining to do.

The Techie Stuff of Touring

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Steven

Being of a Geeky background, I feel the urge to comment on things techie. Long gone are the days when bike touring was accompanied with paper (maps, directions et al), rolls of film, phone cards and the weather forecast was about what you could see on the horizon or catch on the 6pm news bulletin in a language you couldn’t understand.

3 years ago I used my iPad, iPhone and digital camera to replace the lot, all powered by the sun, bike hub Dynamo and the occasional power outlet. Hey, I was even able to use TeamViewer to fix a laptop back home in NZ from a campground in Denmark.

Today I still use the same tech, although with some hundred upgrades or improvements – at least that is what it feels like. The key difference I’ve noticed this time is connectivity. So far in Norway and Finland I’ve rarely been out of a cellular signal and every boat, train and bus has had free wifi, as well as most of the town centres and malls.

When I can get a strong cellular signal in a deep fjord surrounded by mountains 100 kilometres from the nearest town, it makes the claims by the telcos back in New Zealand such as “we cover 99% of where New Zealanders live” rather shallow.

I’ve now swapped out my NZ sim for a local Norwegian one that for $50 that gives me 3 gigabytes of data plus unlimited calling and messaging throughout Scandinavia for a month. I did this after continuing frustration with getting roaming to work with my Spark number and then too many Call Failed messages. By the way Spark, it’s kind of difficult to be on hold for 2 hours when you’re on the other side of the world and your phone doesn’t work. Thank goodness for Twitter, it seems to get more attention.

On a somewhat different vein, my go to app this time around has been Google Translate, it works wonderfully both on and off line. I’ve even had a conversation with a Russian lady who spoke as much English as I speak Russian – nil. It’s still a bit weird taking turns in talking to my iPhone and then reading the translation, but, hey it works. It’s also saved me from regrettable errors at the super market like the time I once bought anchovies and vinegar instead of herrings and red wine.

Written and posted from the middle of the Baltic using the free wifi on board the ferry.

Heading south by ways other than a bike

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Steven

It is not often one gets the chance to have a 9 hour coach ride immediately followed by a 14 hour train journey and it be enjoyable! The day started at 6am, although the coach wasn’t scheduled to leave Tromsø till 7:30, after all, I needed my coffee and finding good coffee in Norway is problematic.

I would show a photo or two of the lakes and woods of Finland but we had rain, hail and thunder the entire 600 kilometres to Rovaniemi so there was not much to see really apart from rain-deer and the odd moose.

At Rovaniemi, after a ¾ hour break, I managed to get the sleeper to Turku in south west Finland that had a lovely old dinning car to compliment the modern sleepy carriages.

All in all a much better option than fighting the wind, rain, hills and mosquitoes on a bike. By the way, didn’t see a single cycle tourist on the way – except the two who also rode the coach south.

As for the weather, we’ve reached Oulu at the top of the Baltic and it still raining

Hopefully tomorrow will be different.