To Helsinki

17.8

We checked out and ventured again out into the streets, this time to find a good breakfast place. A bakery it was this time. Alma was more enthusiastic about this one: ”Dei hadde kjempemasse gode kaker og godt. Eg åt pastasalat først, og so blåbersmoothy og sjokoladekake. DET var skikkeleg yummy-mat.” Albert bought a pair of finger gloves with red and black checker pattern. Real punkish. He was also drawling for a Goth hat. After haircut for the 4 other, we fetched out suitcases and grabbed a large taxi to the port where we entered “Gabriella”. We checked into our compartment and let the kids explore the ship. They managed to get lost before finding again the sole elevator going to our floor.

18.7
At 10 o’clock, a good while after reaching Helsinki, we were thrown out of our compartment and took a taxi to Hostel Lönnrot. We let Albert out into the streets where he ran into the black outfit shop Hellsinki as well as a good record store next door. We bought a dozen CDs by Finnish punk and metal bands – grey to dark, and a few closer to black. At Hellsinki I got myself a Clash wallet, Torjus a cool wristband and Alma a fine cap – all in black of course. Astrid and Alma went to Marimekko. We all met again at an Italian restaurant, where Alma discovered she had lost her camera with many pictures. After searches at the record store and Hellsinki, we all went back to Marimekko, where to Alma’s delight the camera was ready to be reclaimed.

19.7
Breakfast at Lönnerot with TV set to an Italian soap with Finnish subtitles – quite interesting. We decided it was time for The Modern Museum. We were impressed by the clean Finnish architecture with white clean walls, lots of glass and lights and exiting angles and shadows. After again fetching the suitcases, we got ourselves to the train station and entered the Russian train heading for Moscow.

The first leg – to Stockholm

We had 5 suitcases, of which some were quite heavy from the many books we brought with us. It was a good trip on the ferry, then up to Myrdal with our first section of The Great Train Journey connecting the World Heritage sites Nærøyfjorden and The Great Chinese Wall. But before that, we ate at Fretheim – the food was very good – just what we needed after the two hours with the “service” provided by Fylkesbåtane.

 

After the first long train leg a night in Torhild and Kurt Arvid’s flat in Oslo was well appreciated.

 16.8

Now in line at the Russian embassy, this time with the necessary visa support documents. It turned out our desperate cry for help produced results. This was a cry far from the true Zen saying “Nothing is what I want”. The visa support was provided by the efficient folks at Scantravel Ltd.

 

This day Albert got his new hairdo. The hair is collected in 3-4 cones with half a bottle of glue so they stay pointed. With the hair covering the right side of his face my first association was to Ian McCulloch of Eco & the Bunnymen. And after a meeting with the Ole Korpreitan stand-in at Karl Johan with renewal of politically correct buttons, he was happy.

 

There was a quite impressive capacity utilization at Swedish Railways (SJ) between Oslo and Stockholm, particularly on the first leg to Karlstad, where a 150 % utilization rate could be estimated. Puh. I met Petter from my student time at UiO-ZEB. He was going with his two kids to the Steely Dan concert in Stockholm – should have been me.

 

Torjus had a “Swedes are so cute” (svensker er så søte) button, but there was no-one in Stockholm who commented on it, or perhaps they were just so polite that Swedes sometimes can be.

 

We arrived at 19.30. The poorly developed information system at Centralstasjonen gave us some headaches in localising the luggage storage. Alma expressed this quite well:

”Men detta må eg berre sei altso: Ikkje reis til sentralstasjonen i Stockholm, det er heilt forferdeleg der! Ingen informasjon, dårlege heisar og i det heile tatt; berre dårleg alt saman. Ikkje reis der!”

When we finally found the baggage storage and were relieved of the burden of the suitcases, we walked up Vasagatan to City Backpackers. The kids loved it – a room with six beds, a sofa and wireless net. After scoping it out, we ventured out into the streets of Stockholm to find a place to eat. We ended up at Kebab House, because all the other places were closed. This was not the greatest, again well expressed by Alma:

”!!Ja, so djupt kan ein synke! Off, maten smakte drit!”