After almost a year of planning, working, waiting and wondering my first real adventure is just 5 days away. I've been through different stages of emotion in my waiting process... Mostly impatience... apprehension...nervousness...excitement... and more impatience. Mostly because i leave in 5 days but i still have a uni exam to complete before i can completely give myself over to my new and improved life of travel.
So a brief of the trip? Me and one of my best friends- Alice, more affectionately known as Albie. We fly via bangkok on the way there and Hong Kong on the way back, unfortunately not with enough time to spare to explore either of these places. We plan to hit helsinki, move up to the lake country to a beautiful town called Savonlinna, then down to Turku, the old Swedish capital for some archipelago and a rock festival (Ruisrock!) and then train it up to the arctic circle past Rovaniemi to the end of the train line at a town called kemijarvi, then back down to Helsinki for a Muse concert, a visit to Estonia, and an afternoon at the markets before flying back home.
So why Finland? Well it all started out with a TV show that Alice's brother had on dvd. She watched it, laughed, showed me, and i laughed. Its called the Dudesons, and they're a bit like a Finnish version of Jackass i guess. So its wierd that either of us liked it, coz neither of us like Jackass..probably something to do with their Finglish, calling a baseball bat a "golfbat". Anyway, the more we watched the more we learnt about Finland, and the more intrigued we were by it. Some research of course ensued and we were both in love with this amazing natural gem of a country that is so out of the common travels for reasons neither of us could understand.
So we began to plan, and people questioned why we didnt do the generic Europe Grand Tour. I will do that one day, maybe next year. But This way i've done the trip that no one else has. Its not about ticking off a list to drop names as if it makes me more sophisticated or 'world wise'. Im more interested in the natural wonders of the world anyway. But i want to visit those places less travelled, the rest can wait..
