Eleven hours for the Viking Line ferry between Stockholm and
Turku seemed excessive, but the reason became clear soon enough - for most of
the way we had to go slowly as our huge ferry negotiated the way through the
huge Stockholm Archipelago (made up of approx 24,000 islands) and crept almost
silently by a long line of other equally massive ferries and cruise ships
coming into Stockholm.
We stopped briefly on Aland
Island, then had to carefully weave
through the equally huge archipelago off Turku,
constantly changing course to stay in the narrow channel markered by buoys
between the islands and rocks. So in eleven hours, we were only in the
open Baltic sea - which was surprisingly rough
- for about 90 mins. And, at least up on the deck when the sun was shining,
it didn't feel too Baltic in temperature.
Previously I'd cynically thought that maybe the ferry was on a scheduled
go-slow to allow the Swedish and Finnish passengers as much duty-free drinking
time as possible.
Despite the sign in the terminal making the absolute zero tolerance policy on
drunkedness during the journey crystal clear, on board the promotion of drinks
at a fraction of normal prices was non-stop. I no longer think that the
Brits are ahead of the game in their duty free enthusiasm, having spotted
people getting off the ferry pushing wheeled loaders stacked high with crates
of beer, wine, spirits, alcohol and snus. As well as plenty space on the
ship for drinking, casinos and karaoke, there was a huge sauna area which took
up about a quarter of one floor of the ship.
Anyway, got into Turku
and found my 'staff free' hotel, the Omena... you book it on the web, get a
room number and a code for all the doors, and to check out you just put a
'checked out' tag on the door when you leave. Dead cheap for a hotel, and
it even included breakfast at a cafe round the corner.
Arriving quite late, and leaving Turku
early, I didn't get the chance to look around, but from what I did see and
hear, the architecture and language seems to be getting more Soviet in style as
I go further East. Which I suppose is what you'd expect. Prices
seem to be getting less unreasonable too, but still quite heavy.
Tampere is an old industrial town, but now has (amongst other things) lots of
museums including the coffee cup museum, the museum of refrigeration, the Finnish
boxing museum, the shoe museum and many others. I didn't manage to get to
the coffee cup museum, but did make it to the world's oldest spy museum.
They had lots of interesting actually used real spy stuff, like a bugged
ashtray used in industrial espionage, old cipher machines (one made by Nokia,
just up the road from here), and gadgets that were used to copy documents onto
microfilm. Amazing how much of the cumbersome equipment that they lugged
around in the 70s and 80s could now be replaced by a modern mobile phone with a
camera. But that could never replace the gearstick from a Lada which
concealed a large knife! They also had the same brand of lighter with a
hidden knife which was used in the 11th September attacks.
The spy museum was in the basement of the huge Findlayson Centre.
Findlayson was a Scot who brought electric light to Scandinavia
in 1882 for use in his cotton mill. And supposedly, as almost every
household in the UK
has a copy of 'Dark Side of the Moon', almost every Finnish household has
Findlayson towels and sheets to this day. And the brand is still going.
I was planning to look around more of Tampere
this morning, but it was pouring with rain, so (since someone in the hostel
dorm had woken us all up early anyway), I got the early train to Helsinki. It was a
fast Pendelino one, but quite a lot better than Richard Branson's narrow Virgin
trains. It even had screens to show us how fast we were going (200+ kmph)
