Finishing Finnish

And so we enter endgame.

And by that I mean my little nothern tour has come to an end. Tomorrow I fly to Warsaw to meet up with Dzido and figure out what on earth to do with my trip and my life.

I spent the rest of my time with my two Canadian buddies Laura and Kevin. We got along great. Travel has a way of making perfect strangers seem like your best friends ina very short period of time. With these too it was taken to an extreme level. They are headed back home to Canada, so I have one more day of solo travel.

Many stories from the last few days, but by far the most memorable was the 24 hour period from leaving Tallinn to arriving in Helsinki. First of all, my hostel was very nice (as I mentioned) but the drunk Aussies and Brits were in rare form the night we left. I have never slept so badly in a hostel before. Every half hour someone was coming into the room yelling and turning on the light. One guy was so drunk he couldnt stand, so he crashed headfirst into my bunkbed and then had to crawl to the bathroom to be sick. It was not fun.

Then the boatride. Tallinn seems to be a big destination for Fins who want to buy cheap beer (cheap because of the weak Estonian currency mostly). They take the ferry across, which is only 3 and half hours, stock up on cheap beer and then go back...drinking half of what they buy. It was so bizzare to see EVERYONE carrying special trollies with 4 or 5 cases of beer or wine or whatever they wanted. So we were going through customs and this drunk guy starts talking to us. I think it is the backpacks that makes us targets. He was slurring big time (it was 11:30am by the way) and was almost impossible to understand. He kept trying to get me to drink he Russian champagne. I guess this is pretty common because he went through customs with the open bottle and gave the officer his passport and there was no reaction. Very strange.

On the actual ferry the mayhem continued. This is a huge ferry, in fact it is the size a cruise ship. 10 floors, full of shops and bars. There were intoxicated people everywhere. One guy was parading around the halls wearing just a bedsheet as a toga. At least it was entertaining...until they tried talking to you. Overall, I didn't like the ferry. While I did think it was funny to see all of these people, I was feeling seasick most of the way. Too much swaying. Didn't help that I didnt sleep the night before.

Anyways, made it to Helsinki. The city is...well....pretty disappointing actually. It is not my kind of place. There are some beautiful streets that are done up very nice with Christmas lights and everything, but most of the city feels like a shopping mall and there is very little character to the buildings. They have so much seafront, but nowhere nice to walk along the coast. It lacks the charm that medieval Tallinn had. The people are very nice and I have eaten well, including having Reindeer Stew at a Finnish restaurant. The other thing is that everything is VERY expensive here, certainly compared to places that are not on the euro. I will be glad to try a new place after this.

So that is the end of this leg of the trip. I end by holding 7 currencies on me (Dollars, Pounds, Euros, Krooni, Lats, Litas, and Zlotys), most of it in coins that I can't exchange, but it is neat to have.

I have literally no idea what I am doing next. There are many ideas bouncing around, which I will keep you updated about. I will also post a ton of pictures as soon as I can.