Longhand Entry

Suomenlinna
Helsinki, Finland
July 5 - 4:03

There must be only a handful of perfect spots in the world. Luckily, in the last few days, I've happily happened upon several of them. I'm sitting in a sunny spot between a cluster of shady trees along side the Suomonlinna Church on the Finnish island of the same name off the coast of Helsinki. This is the story about how I got here...

From where we last left off, I had another half day until I had to get on the boat to Finland. I spent the day, after an expensive mishap with the storage lockers at the central station, roaming around the modern part of downtown Stockholm and visiting another great museum - the Moderna Museet. At 4ish, I hurried over to the ship terminal for Silja Lines and got on to, what I was very pleased to discover, a full on cruise ship!

Complete with buffets, bars, a casino, a tacky evening show, duty free shops, and a spa, this was much more than I expected from a Eurail pass! And whats more, no ticket agent or customs official ever asked for my ticket or ticket number, meaning that I never had a day of travel marked off my pass. So, in essence, it was a free cruise! (sorry for all the exclamation points, but its been a great couple of days!)

I shared the room with a very talkative German, originally from Russia, named Andre who felt inclined to tell me all about his friend who moved to New Jersey and shortly thereafter had twins. Great things happen in America, I suppose. I spent much of the cruise walking the ship, eating, loosing 30€ gambling, reading yet another Bill Bryson book, and altogether having a great, solitary sort of night.

This brings up another interesting part of this whole trip experience. Why do I call home so often? Why do I hop online every chance I get? Why do I spend my free time writing in this silly journal? Is it because I want someone to share my experience with or that I want to better document my time here? I think that its because, when it comes down to it, I just want someone to listen to me talk for a while. I notice it in the other solo travelers I meet too. It's like, when I meet another solo traveler, its almost a competition to see who can talk more. Maybe I just need this alone time to learn how to listen more, or at least, learn how to be quiet every so often.

It's like, right now, I'm sitting on a spectacular hilltop on Suomanlinna (which I will get to in a second), on a beautiful afternoon and all I want to do is call my parents - just to talk. Anyways, the flip side to all of this solitude is that I have great flexibility on this trip and I have meet incredible people - both things that wouldn't exist if I had even one other euroschlepper by my side. This greatly outweighs the cons, but sometimes, on days like today, I just want someone to talk at.

Alright, enough of that. Back to business...

The cruise was great. Much more than I expected. I arrived in Helsinki - a city that apparently saves up all its beautiful people and scenery for most of the year and lets it all out spectacularly for a few months in the summer - at noon-ish. I found my way to my hostel which is literally in the Helsinki Olympic Park. So far, I have only met one of my 10 roommates, a great guy from Mexico City named Carlos.

Carlos, also 22, is a college student from what I expect to be a very wealthy family. He doesn't work, but has developed a habit of taking each summer as a chance to travel around the world alone. This summer, his focus is Scandinavia. We both agreed that Helsinki seemed like a one day only sort of place and so he and I made plans to leave the city tomorrow and head for Tallinn, Estonia.

 

I keep thinking about how funny it sounds... I'm running away on a last minute trip with a wealthy young Mexican named Carlos. I feel like a desperate housewife.

Any how, I set out into town (without Carlos) and walked down the city's famous Esplanadi - a city park/promenade - to the lively Kauppator, the town out door marketplace. Between all the live music, happy looking family, fashionable youngsters, and sunshine, I had a pretty fantastic time. I enjoyed a grotesquely un-kosher lunch in the marketplace and then hopped a boat to the fortress Island where I am now sitting.

This fortress was built by the Swedes in the 1700s to protect against a possible, and inevitable, Russian attack. The fortress switched hands several times over the centuries before finally settling with the Finns in the 1970s. Its a Unesco World Heritage site, its got dungeons, beautiful buildings, stunning vistas, and a butt load of history. I love it.

Anyways, I'm going to make my way down to a famous pizza place that's buried somewhere in the dungeons below . See you after Estonia!

-euroschlep