Vanhankirkonpuisto

We checked out of our accommodation in Stockholm and had about six hours to kill before our cruise ship left Vårtahammen terminal for Helsinki. We got to Stockholm central station and had to buy our train tickets from the ticket counter because the machines weren’t working. What does work these day! While I've been trying to learn a little bit of Swedish, I would have made a dog's breakfast ordering tickets. Fortunately, most people speak English in Sweden.

The train ticket guy heard our accent and asked us where we were from. Then he said something about being Russian; I thought that he was referring to us, but Jason reckons that he was referring to the ticket machine because it was taking so long to print out the tickets. The ticket had to come all the way from Russia. If it had to come from Russia, it wouldn't have made it through customs. Entry denied.

We made it to the ship terminal and found out that we could check in early. Luckily ‘cause I didn't want to wait in the terminal for five and a half hours. As soon as we could, we boarded the ship and dumped our bags off in our cabin. We set out to explore the ship before a horde of Swedish revheads/bevans/bogans invaded the cruise liner.

As we boarded, we could see them in their cars getting ready to embark. Later, we caught sight of their long mullets that swept the bikie club emblem on their leather jackets. I thought I'd been transported back to the early eighties when we walked through the promenade as the cattle drive of bikies, sporting either a business in the front, party at the back or frizzy perm hairdo teamed with denim and leather, moved through the ship. There were a few cool rockabilly types with brightly coloured hair, they stood out from the regular bikie crew.

As we explored the ship, Jason heard the HRT (high rise tone) Aussie accent from a group of women. They asked us where we were from and we replied “Brissy”. This was meant with a hissing sound. My immediate response was, “so you’re snobs from Melbourne!”, knowing full well that the answer would be in the affirmative. Jason tried to convince them that Brisbane wasn't what they thought: a backwater village. They wouldn't have it; we don't need any more Melburnians on the move to Queensland anyway.

There was even a huge duty free store on-board and a massive buffet restaurant. We gorged ourselves on the buffet food like it was our last supper before heading to the galleys to face execution. I mean you need to get your money's worth. I snuck in a small bottle of gin to spice up the soft drink on offer. As we were eating, a baby belonging to a nearby Swedish family was mesmerised by Jason. Normally he scares small children, but this one wasn't afraid. The mother even commented that the baby liked him. There's a first for everything.

When we got back to our cabin, I thought Jason was going to strap down anything that could move for fear that it would fall during the night, expecting the Titanic to plunged into an iceberg and take everything down with it. The fear was all in vain. The only movement we felt was the crazy Swedes and Finns partying in the nearby cabins. It’s crazy, it's party. There was going to be some sore heads in the morning. We definitely noticed an absence of people at the 7:30am breakfast buffet. The only other movement we felt was when the ship was docking at Mariehamn, a small island between Sweden and Finland.

After enduring a lot of Finnish karaoke, we retired to our cabins for the night. I mean we had a breakfast buffet to prepare for. There wouldn't be any more food until after we landed and travelled to our accommodation in Kallio, Helsinki. We were fuelled up and ready for our half-hour walk through the city centre and old town, bypassing the Helsinki Cathedral, Parliament House and the Presidential Palace.

Helsinki, the pearl of the Baltic sea, has a metropolitan population of 1.5 million and is the world’s northernmost metropolitan area. Finland is ranked as the happiest country in the world, with Helsinki having one of the highest standards of urban living. But as we walked through the city, people didn't look as happy as the rankings suggest. Maybe they're happier on the inside.

After wandering around the city centre, we made our way to the harbour markets and stopped for some rare cuisine; well, rare to these Aussie travellers. Reindeer hot dogs and moose hamburgers were on the menu. I couldn't come at the moose hamburgers but we did try Rudolf on a roll. Sorry kids, we killed Rudolf; there will be no Christmas for you this year. Maybe it was karma but I had Rudolf repeating on me all afternoon.

I did impress the woman selling Rudolf with my piitos paljon (thanks a lot). I'm sure she was just being polite when she said "great pronunciation". We had thought Welsh had some long words, Finnish seemed just as long. But in the case of the Finns I think they bought too many vowels in their game of wheel of fortune.

We didn't have a lot of time in Helsinki, so we decided to do a tour around the archipelago, which consists of more than 300 islands and a shoreline that stretches 130 kilometres. The crazy Finns love their saunas (as do other Scandinavians) so much that they even have mobile saunas on boats dotted around the archipelago. But during winter all boats have to be taken onto land so their hulls won't be damaged by the ice. There are even special boats that break the ice to allow other bigger boats to enter the harbour.

The tour guide of the archipelago, a pre-recorded script spoken in Finnish, English, German and Swedish, pointed out beaches along the coast of the islands. But they really didn’t meet our definition of a beach. They were more like a narrow strip of dirt.

The tour claims that temperatures can get to 30 degrees in summer, and quote “the water simmers at 20 degrees”, which is still cooler than the water coming out of Brisbane household taps in winter. I think that it might be an exaggeration considering the highest temperature ever recorded in the city was 33.2 degrees Celsius in 2019, breaking the previous record of 33.1 degrees in July 1945. The temperature needs to be almost 40 degrees and the water closer to 30 before we will go swimming. But then most Aussies North of the New South Wales border think anything below 24 degrees is cold. Apparently even a moose swims across to one of the islands because it's so picturesque. Obviously it's not the one that they've made into a moose burger.

As a final culinary treat, we had dinner at the Thai restaurant, Lemongrass, which was located across the road from our accommodation. We impressed the Thai owner with our Thai. She got a kick out of two Aussies speaking in her native tongue, as she did multiple and vigorous wais (the Thai greeting). We actually spoke more Thai than her daughter who only spoke Finnish and English. It was great food to end our time in Helsinki.

Next destination: Tallinn.

Finnish: Hei (Hi pronounced hey), Kiitos paljon (Thanks a lot), Mitä kuuluu? (How are you?)Read more