Europe Trip Part 10: Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm, Sweden
(Continued because I wrote too much about the first day)

Monday, June 14

As it turns out, Mondays are a popular day for museums and other public places to be closed.  Fortunately, I'd done a bit of research and planning and had knocked out all of the anti-Monday venues the previous day.  That, and the fact that I'd gotten to visit the Vasa Museum already meant that I could take my sweet time getting up in the morning.  Which, given the early times at which I'd been rising for the past two weeks meant I "slept in" until the particularly unimpressive time of 8:45am.  I guess this just goes to show you that if you don't have anything important to do and without the internet as a distraction, you can get good amounts of sleep and still be up in the morning.  I'm going to have to try that back in the states sometime.

Anyway, as I woke up and got ready for the new day, I took the time to check out my cabin in the light of day.  While the view out the window (pointed straight at old town Stockholm) was quite charming, something that was more intriguing to me was the composition of my cabinmates.  Out of the six bunks in the room, we had the usual assortment of scraggly backpackers, skinny jean-clad bohemians, and the one middle aged businessman trying to attend a conference on the cheap.  However, the most curious thing about these people was that the scraggly backpackers were two British girls.  Turns out that co-ed hostel dorms would be fairly common for the remainder of the trip.

First up for the day was a trip to the old central palace.  Throughout the complex, there are several different museums, and you can get a combination ticket for access to all of them.  Unfortunately, the Swedish government heard that I was coming to visit and decided to close two out of the four museums for the whole month.  Or maybe it was because of that whole royal wedding thing I talked about yesterday.

So I saw the two things that were available to be seen.  One of them was more sculptures, but the other one - the Tre Kronor Museum - was pretty cool because of the fact that it described the history and construction of the palace itself.  But what's more is that inside the museum, you could actually go down inside the walls themselves and see the remnants of the old palace - the Tre Kronor, or Three Crowns Palace - whose smoldering foundations the new palace was built on after its destruction by fire several hundred years ago.  But... once again, no portraits allowed.

Luckily enough, the place I visited next was quite interesting to look at: my second guard changing ceremony of the trip.  However, compared to the one I saw in Oslo, the guards here in Stockholm were a well-equipped, well-trained show of precision.  I mean, not only were they crisp and accurate in their synchronization and step counting, they also seemed prepared to function effectively as actual guards with each officer carrying a handgun and a radio in addition to the seemingly standard Big Rifle with an Aggressive Looking Bayonet.  Plus, this ceremony came complete with music, and perhaps most interestingly this music was provided by a mounted band.  Sweet.

So by this point it was 2pm.  I'd seen the palace, I'd seen the guard changing ceremony, and I'd also seen the Nobel Museum, although there's no photographic evidence of this.  It's not that they prohibited visitors from taking pictures, it's just that the place didn't really have all that much interesting stuff of which to take pictures. I should have taken the advice of somebody I met on the ferry and skipped the museum after they told me that the place really wasn't worth the $6.50 they ask to get in.  After visiting myself and spending about 25 minutes inside, I'm inclined to agree.

Fortunately, the neighborhood around the Nobel Museum is really quite interesting to see.  Like the palace, it is located deep in the heart of the oldest part of Stockholm, so the streets are delightfully narrow and lined with all manner of shops.  Plus, the buildings come from a wide variety of architectural styles that we just don't get in the United States.  Because of the narrow nature of the streets, they're closed to traffic as well, so they make a great pedestrian mall to wander through.

Unfortunately, by this point of the trip I was so paranoid about pickpocketing that I honestly had a bit of trouble enjoying the scenic nature of it all.  Ever since a guy asking me for directions kept brushing his hand against one of my bags while making wild gestures on my first day in Oslo, I'd been constantly vigilant about that kind of thing.  So when I got to Stockholm and the museum guides kept telling us to make sure we removed our admission stickers "so you don't stand out to pickpockets while passing through Old Town", I kind of put myself on high alert.  It was probably unnecessary, but I found myself trying to keep a 5 or 10 foot buffer between me and anybody else for pretty much the entirety of the trip.  While walking through cities, I started to notice that I was most comfortable when I was either completely alone on a street or surrounded by an enormous crowd of people, all of whom looked more oblivious and touristy - and therefore more moneyed - than myself.


But I digress.  I was finished with what I'd originally thought would be a whole day's worth of museums by 2pm, and my next bus didn't leave town until almost 11pm.  So I dug around in the stack of museum brochures I'd picked up the previous day at the hostel and found one that looked interesting.


The Spårvägsmuseet is the Stockholm Transport Museum.  Like the Tram Museum that the American Contingent had visited in Helsinki, it details the history of local transportation.  However, unlike the one in Helsinki, this one was more than just a few signs and a few trams.  Open in 1920, he Spårvägsmuseet is spread throughout the basement of the city's main bus maintenance facility, meaning that not only were buses constantly rumbling around about 15 feet overheat, there was also plenty of room for lots and lots of exhibits.  The museum itself wasn't much for detail or visual flair, but what it lacked in refinement it more than made up for in volume.

All in all, the museum contains over 50 transit vehicles spread out over 1.6 acres of floorspace, ranging from horsedrawn trolleys to trams to articulated buses to the subway, covering the last 150+ years of public transportation in Stockholm.  What's more is that you could walk around in the vast majority of the vehicles.  In fact, a few vehicles were set up in such a way that you could climb into the driver's compartment and pull levers and flip switches.  While some of these ones even went a step further and had a "driving simulator," to my disappointment it was just a looping video of the trolley or the subway or whatever rumbling down the tracks.  I guess those exhibits were more set up for small children.

Even though it took me a good 90 minutes to make it through the museum - which was pretty impressive, considering all of the signage was, to my surprise, only in Swedish - that still gave a great excess of time to get to the bus station.  Fortunately, I suppose, the transportation museum was located several miles from the city center, so I had a good, long, healthy walk to pass the time in both directions.  Ironically, although I was just coming back from the transit museum, I decided not to take the bus back in - or in fact during any of my journeys in Stockholm - because of my staunch refusal to spend any more money than I had to while in the city.  However, the double irony that I discovered shortly after leaving Stockholm was that due to the royal wedding all public transportation in the city was free.


Oh well.  Might as well treat myself to a hot dog with all the money I "saved."  By this point, I was tired of eating pop tarts, raisins, and beef jerky, so I splurged and got something I'd seen advertised several times called a "French Hot Dog."  It's essentially a very long, very low quality hot dog served inside a hollowed out piece of french bread that's been lightly toasted in a grill press.  Aside from the fact that the street vendor had trouble understanding that no, I did not want any mayonnaise on my hot dog, it was actually really, really quite good.  The mild sourness of the french bread really served to set off the homogenized fattiness of the snappily tubular mystery meat.  I really think we're looking at the future of the streetside hot dog right here.

With my last few hours in the city in which I wound up spending the most time sightseeing over the entire trip, I continued my itinerant wandering.  I saw my third American embassy, following up on my impromptu sighting of the one in Norway and the near-wild goose chase Donny and I undertook in Finland before settling down on a park bench across the street and enjoying the view off across to Skansen, a surprisingly expensive living history exhibit and zoo on one of the islands east of downtown.

On the way back to downtown, I picked up my luggage from the hostel's storage room and marched back to the bus station by way of still more concerts.  These ones weren't quite as attention grabbing as the rain-soaked raucous party I'd been at the night before, so I didn't stop for long.  However, I did notice posters advertising shows by both Green Day and Guns N' Roses in the following week.  This revelation struck me as kind of odd, since it meant that both of those bands were following me around Europe, with Green Day having performed in Helsinki the previous Saturday and GNR being in Helsinki the previous week and Oslo the very day I arrived.  It's almost like the universe was trying to tell me something, but the heck if I'm forking over $55 for a band I don't even follow.

Speaking of paying lots of money for bands I don't follow, Green Day: Rock Band was released 3 days ago.  The cost? $57.99.

However, before too long I found myself waiting around at the bus station.for yet another lengthy journey by Swebus.  This time, though, the bus was cleaner, the seats seemed to have more kneeroom, and most importantly the bus was less than half full.  This meant that nobody had to share seats with anybody else, meaning that I could stretch out a bit and enjoy some decent sleep.

But not before we wound out of downtown Stockholm.  Like all the other Scandinavian capital cities I visited, Stockholm's road system has significant differences compared to a major American city, primarily having to do with the connection between large freeways and the central business district.  Even in a relatively mediocre city like Richmond, you're never more than a mile or so away from a highway while downtown - especially not at the intercity bus terminal.  However, getting out of Stockholm reminded me of the time I took a bus out of Blacksburg more than anything.  I mean, you make a few turns littered with traffic lights before driving along a road with one lane in each direction for about a mile before finally getting a passing lane.  About 10 minutes after you leave the VT campus on Main Street, you finally get to the highway... and that's about how long it took to get to the highway from the central bus station in Stockholm.

I guess that just goes to show you how much priority highways in the US were given during the sixties, cutting through poor sections of town - that's where the cheapest land was - to get to the city center regardless of the effect it would have on the communities the highways tore apart.  But that's a story for another time, and certainly not tomorrow when we'll hear the tale of how I drove (or was driven) from Sweden to Denmark, something that wasn't possible even 10 years ago.

Europe Trip Part 9: Stocking Up

Stockholm, Sweden


Sunday, June 13

In the morning, I took full advantage of the solo cabin - and, most notably, the last private bathroom I'd have for the entire trip - to gather my things, grab a bite at the hideously overpriced but oh so satisfying breakfast buffet, and use the slow but free internet connection to make my last blog update from the European continent. Around 9am, the boat finally docked in Stockholm and I got out and hiked the 2 miles from the ferry terminal to my latest hostel.

I wandered through downtown again, this time without all the streets closed off for marathoners. However, as I walked through Old Town, I noticed just how many advertisements there were for something called "Love 2010." A bit of investigation showed that this was in fact a series of concerts and other festivities that were being held in advance of a royal wedding, specifically that of the Crown Princess and her old gym instructor - a commoner, how shocking! Anyway, I had seen all the stages across the city being constructed during my earlier visit, but now it turned out that in addition to all the thrilling (read: low scoring) World Cup action in the evenings, I'd also have a rather sizable concert series to keep myself occupied.

After about an hour of walking, I finally made it to the af Chapman, my lodging place for the night. The interesting thing about this place is that the af Chapman is a 120 year old sailing vessel that was converted to a youth hostel back in the 1940s. When I booked the room, I was quite excited about the prospects of staying in a boat - a boat! - for my one overnight in Stockholm. However, in actuality this anticipation was significantly tampered by the fact that I'd just slept in a ferry boat the night before, and it was quite a rambunctious night at that.

But no matter, a prepaid night with a bed is better than neither. Although in some ways I wish I'd booked at Stockholm's other vehicle-turned-hostel, the Jumbo Stay (housed in a converted 747), now that I look at it this hostel is really far from downtown and is also INCREDIBLY expensive. So the af Chapman seems like a good deal to me now.

Since by this point it was still well before noon, I couldn't get a room. However, the hostel staff made me aware of the availability of their luggage storage room, so I dropped my stuff and headed off into town. Man, if I'd been thinking about storing my luggage at the other hotels, I could have saved... well, I could have saved some money.

The af Chapman is located on Skeppsholmen, one of the 14 islands that make up the city of Stockholm. While it was nice to always be near the water, it was kind of frustrating to be around 200 yards from the central palace or the National Museum yet have to walk a mile to get there because of where the bridges are located. So instead, to start out I stayed on the island and walked the 2 blocks to two prominent museums.

First up was the Moderna Museet, home to a bunch of exhibits of modern art. Like most of the museums I visited in Stockholm, they didn't allow cameras. Suffice it to say that the art was quite... contemporary. In some ways the trip reinforced my concept that modern artists are lazy and unimaginative, but I guess that a couple of the exhibits were intriguing enough to make it worth the 6 bucks.

Attached to the modern art museum was the Architecture Museum. The museum was really quite small, so I was glad that I took advantage of the cost savings of the combination ticket with the Moderna Museet. In fact, both museums are actually attached, in the same building. I wandered around and saw a few exhibits on building materials as well as probably 150 models of different noteworthy Swedish buildings, so despite my initial concerns over its size I guess I was at least as interested in this museum as the other one.

Again, owing to the picture prohibition the only photos I have to show of either museum are of these funky sculptures in the plaza outside, next to the Calder mobiles.

I hadn't spent very much time at either of those museums, which fit in with the trend I'd observed so far of Scandinavian museums being quite small. So it made sense to me that my next stop should be equally short, especially given the fact that they were only asking for the equivalent of $3.50 to get in. But, as it turned out, I was completely wrong about Stockholm's Musikmuseet - the Music Museum.

Again, I don't have many pictures to share because of camera restrictions - other than the one below of the inevitable ABBA exhibit - but the whole place was really quite fascinating. Right off the bat, the museum began with a multitude of hands-on exhibits on such physical concepts as pitch, resonance, and amplitude before moving on to a section where you could play rudimentary instruments to see how they take advantage of their shape and form to produce sound. As you progress through the museum, you see how instruments have become more complex yet more capable in varying fields, from brass to woodwinds to strings to percussion and more. They even had a section just for kids with a bunch of unconventional instruments like lengthy springs and PVC pipe drumsets and didgeridoos to play.

My favorite part came towards the end in the electronic instrument section where they actually had an entire band - keyboard, electric guitar, and electronic drums - for you to mess around with. Somebody who designed the museum had clearly been thinking because each instrument was also equipped with headphones so people in adjacent exhibits didn't have to listen to "Chopsticks" played over and over again by small children. However, the part that really set the electronic instrument section apart for me was that one of the instruments that was available to experiment on was a theremin. A theremin! I love those things.

After a while in the museum, I looked at my watch to discover that I'd been in there for over two hours. Compared to the amount of time I'd spent anywhere else on the trip, that was quite impressive. I guess that's some indication of just how interested I was in what the museum had to share.

Although by this point I'd visited all the museums I was interested in that were going to be closed the following day - a Monday, which as I discovered is just a bad day to try to visit European museums - but I still had one more on my list for the day. When I was growing up, we had this big poster sitting in a corner in one of the upstairs rooms that had a picture of a big ship with the word "WASA" written in big letters.  Well, as it turns out, the Vasa is a real boat, and on top of that a really old boat.  Given my tendency for going to see old boats on this trip, I figured I might as well make the trip over to the Vasa Museum.

By this point, it really shouldn't have been a surprise, but I was still caught off guard by the fact that it took another 25 minutes to walk to a place that was under a half mile away in terms of straight-line distance.  But eventually I managed to get to the appropriate island and saw the imposing Chernobyl containment structure-like museum building.  Seriously, the thing is enormous and creepy.  

What's more, after you've gone inside and bought your overpriced ticket, you have to go through 3 more sets of doors before entering the main room of the museum.  However, upon entering the gigantic interior space, you finally start to understand why.  As you enter, you're immediately struck by the size of the main exhibit of the museum, the Vasa herself.  All those doors are meant to serve as a series of airlocks to help the building's technologically impressive climate control system do its job to combat any further degradation of an immensely old artifact.

This ship was constructed in the late 1670s to be the flagship of the Swedish fleet.  No expense was spared in terms of her impressive proportions and the hundreds of intricate carved sculptures that adorned her sides, rails, and stern.  Unfortunately, due to the fact that her oversized proportions led to the inclusion of an inadequate quantity of ballast stones, she tipped over and sank less than one mile into her maiden voyage.

Because of her size, salvage was impossible even in only a few dozen feet of water, so she rested on the bottom of the Stockholm harbor for almost 300 years until she was rediscovered and salvaged back in the 60s.  After years of collecting pieces from the surrounding waters - all remarkably well preserved due to the low oxygen content of the fairly polluted harbor among other reasons - and several decades of reassembly, the ship was on display for all to see.  In fact, thanks to some complicated chemical process that replaced all the water in all of the ship's wooden parts and after replacing all of the rusted out nails with non-corrosive stainless steel, the ship actually looks remarkably new considering that it is actually over 330 years old.

While seeing the ship itself - in all its poorly engineered magnificence - is really quite impressive, they also have some pretty neat exhibits.  In one, you get to climb around through a reconstruction of a few decks of the ship, while others delve into how the sinking could have been prevented (don't make the ship so darn top heavy) as well as the salvage process.  However, the most interesting one in my opinion is a small model of the ship itself located near the information desk.  During your time in the museum, you begin to grow accustomed to the waxy brown sheen that covers the entire boat.  However, this appearance is entirely a result of 300 years of slow wear from water currents and the subsequent chemical preservation.  Tests of particles found on the boat's surface indicate that the whole thing - elaborately carved sculptures and all - were painted in very vivid colors.  To this end, the 1:30 scale model was left bare until about 10 years ago when the paint research was completed, at which point the model was updated to reflect the best guess as to what the Vasa actually looked like.

The whole experience was all really fascinating, so it was too bad that the museum closed at 6pm, like all the others in this region of nonexistent darkness.  Fortunately, as I wandered the streets of the city I eventually started to hear the blaring of music from a few different points throughout the city.  After wandering past two different parks with seemingly identical pop musicians singing whiny songs in Swedish, I eventually stumbled upon what I eventually found out was the main stage for the citywide concert series just in time to catch the tail end of the Stockholm Concert Orchestra's stirring rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" to close out their set.  Since as much as anything else I was eager to hear a bit of English once again, I stuck around through an artist change to see what they'd play next.

By the way, it was raining quite a bit.

Fortunately, they were just giving the singers a bit of a break, and during the intermission a bunch of very tall blondes wandered through the crowd passing out sheets with the lyrics to several songs that - gasp - I'd actually heard of.  The performers returned and explained that we should feel free to join in the singing whenever the mood struck us.  And so the orchestra and the performers launched into a set of predominantly English-language show tunes from The Phantom of the Opera and The Sound of Music and other notable musicals.  At first, the audience was slow to warm up to the potential for audience participation, but before long pretty much the entire crowd was belting out tunes from Grease, which fed nicely into the concluding medley of ABBA songs - once again showing that ABBA is apparently the best thing to come out of Sweden with the possible exception of IKEA - culminating with a big and enthusiastic roar as the crowd shouted along with the chorus of "Dancing Queen."

As I made my way back to the boat in the perpetual twilight (the picture below is from around 11pm), I reflected back on the day's events.  If this trip had been a movie, I thought, this day would have been the feel-good conclusion, where everybody fades out into the credits, swaying back and forth shoulder to shoulder belting out a slightly off-key rendition of ABBA's greatest hits.  I'd pack up my bags and head to the airport in the morning and be back in the US with my ears still ringing with "Super Trooper" or "Mamma Mia" or something.

But this isn't a movie, and there are still 4 days of globe-trotting semi-excitement left in my increasingly lengthy
recount of the trip.  Stay tuned for more!

Updates Will Resume Next Week

Hey everybody-

Jumping forward to the present for a moment, I'd like to report that I am safely back in the US and have just about completely caught up on my backlog of communications from during the trip. I was unable to post more info from later in the trip because computers became increasingly hard to come by in Sweden and Denmark.

However, I'm heading off again to go on an extended boat trip in the skinny part of Maryland, so updates will have to be suspended a bit longer. I hope to have some more posts completed about the end of the trip by sometime next weekend.

Thanks,

Peter

Europe Trip Part 8: Don't Say There's Nothing to Do in the Doldrums

Helsinki, Finland

Saturday, June 12

Of course, on Saturday the conference was over and it was time to start thinking about leaving Helsinki. But since my boat didn't leave until almost 6pm, I figured that I had a good bit of time to go around and see the sights some more.

I still got up at the regular time, had breakfast, and packed up my bags before heading into town. Today, it was my goal to go and see Suomenlinna, an impressive fortress complex located on a cluster of five islands out in the harbor. I had formulated this plan on Sunday, but once I found out that there were other people I could hang out with in town, I figured I'd might as well invite some of the others. Of the Americans, Kathernie had plans to go across the sea for a tour, and upon the recommendation of some of the Finns Donny decided to go to Tallin, Estonia as well.

Unfortunately for him, he was only able to get tickets for 2:30pm. So he decided that if he couldn't get on standby on an earlier ferry - a long shot - he'd meet me at the Helsinki city ferry terminal for the boat ride to Suomenlinna at 9:20am. I figured I had plenty of time to get there, but I must have let time get away from me because I didn't leave the hotel until after 8:50. I managed to get my bags locked up at the station right around 9:05, but unfortunately I got on the wrong tram and found myself heading away from the harbor. So I got off at the next stop and practically sprinted to the harbor, and around 9:18 - just in the nick of time - I got to the ship to find Donny standing on board. "I thought you were going to stand me up," he said casually.

So the two of us headed to Suomenlinna. The entire trip was shrouded in mist, so there wasn't really much to see. Even though the islands are only a few hundred meters offshore, there were points on the boat ride over where we couldn't see town or the fort complex, much less the dozens of rocky outcroppings that the boat was (presumably) avoiding on the trip along. After about 15 minutes, we finally arrived. In those first few minutes, the clouds were so thick that the most interesting thing to see on the island were the countless geese. I mean, you could barely see the buildings. But hey, the geese were adorable so it was OK.


Eventually, the clouds began to clear and we were able to survey the sheer size and extents of the fort complex. Suomenlinna was started in the 1700s after Helsinki residents finally started to tire of people coming by and capturing the city. The mouth of the city's harbor is really quite narrow, so the fort was positioned in such a way that all large ships must pass within about 50 meters of the cannons in order to get into the city. It really is quite effective looking, and based on the information placards served the city well through at least a dozen armed conflicts.


As we walked around the island, the clouds finally started to lift. But that was probably because of the tremendous wind that started to blow. Donny did his best Conan O'Brien impression and repeated a quote from the series of episodes taped in Finland, screaming to be heard over the wind, "I can't imagine... why my ancestors... ever left this place!"


Eventually, the wind got so brutal that we decided to hole up in a cannonade and ate some cheese and bread, away from the wind. The seas crashing just outside the fort's walls in some way foreshadowed the rollicking boat ride I was going to have later that day.



On the way back to the main section of the fort, we found a closed ramp up to the ramparts, so we turned right and found ourselves going deeper and deeper into a pitch-black tunnel. The floor was good quality, but the roof was painfully pointy and covered in stalactites from all the lime deposits in the moisture, presumably. The tunnel must have been 100 meters long, at least, so I was lucky to have - if nothing else - my dinky keychain flashlight that I'd been hanging on to for use in late hours in the dorms. But eventually we started to see a glow at the end and found ourselves going up a steep ramp back into daylight. We turned around to look back down the tunnel and both instantly agreed that we would never have gone in if this had been our view at the other end. It was creepy, and disconcerting, but it was probably the most interesting thing I did all week. And once again, I almost certainly would have turned back if I had been there alone. But being in a group just made it fun and laughable and completely glossed over the fact that it was probably a terribly stupid thing to do.


Eventually, it became time for the two of us to split up. He had to get to his ferry, and I to mine, but it had really been great to have somebody to hang out with during the trip. Great guy, that Donny.


His boat was quite a bit earlier than mine, so to pass the time I rode around on the subay and trams, visiting various suburbs of th city, until it was time to return to the central station and pick up my bags from the €4 locker. At this point, I tried to set off on the #4 tram to the ferry terminal, but for a second time in as many ferry trips, a big event was interrupting my journey. This time, however, it was just a bunch of road and, most frustratingly, tram closures relating to Helsinki day. This year, the city was celebrating 460 years since its founding by King Gustav of Sweden way back in the year 1550. And, by the looks of the Helsinki day program I picked up, apparently they're celebrating by having a bunch of samba dance festivals.


So anyway I had to walk to the ferry terminal even though I had a perfectly valid transit pass. Oh well. At least this terminal seemed to be configured for people to walk to. I mean, they even had signs!

So I checked in and found my cabin. This time, for the nominal fee of €16 I had upgraded to a single berth (two beds, but just me) that was probably only 2 feet shorter than the four person one. There was all kinds of space in there, including a couch that converted into a bed using the most clever mechanism. Plus, I had a bathroom with a decently sized shower. I mean, that thing was at least as big as the one they gave us in the dorms back at school.



After stowing my stuff, I went back up on deck to find that the weather had cleared significantly since my trip earlier in the day. The view was great! I could see the fort, and that sign where I'd taken my picture earlier, and a bunch of other things. As we rounded the corner of the fort remarkably close to the island - too close if you ask me. But, hey, that's probably just based on my sailing experience being entirely in the Pamlico Sound of North Carolina, where you quickly learn that if you're even remotely close to land the water is probably shallow enough to get out and walk.




So we rounded the edge of the fort, and were rewarded with one last view of downtown.


But at this point we were fully out in the Gulf of Finland, and the boat began to be ripped by wind. I had trouble just standing still out on deck, and my glasses were about to be torn from my face, so I went back inside and enjoyed the roller coaster-like rocking of the ship.


Seriously, we must have been tipping back and forth by several feet. Walking down long hallways was especially interesting, because you would get the distinct impression that you were walking uphill, and as soon as you'd start to take a step the ground would drop out from under you. It was fascinatingly disconcerting, especially when you throw in the fact that the whole hallway would be rocking side to side at the same time, occasionally sending the inebriated passengers returning from the ship's several nightclubs careening into a wall or down a side hallway.

So I decided to find a place to park myself until it was time for bed, and fortunately for me it turned out that I will have great evening entertainment for the remainder of the trip - the World Cup. What's more is that since I was now heading for Sweden and the central european time zone, I'm even at the same time as South Africa, so all the primetime games remain in primetime. Even better was the fact that today's match was between the USA and England.

After touring the ship to find the best viewing venue, I eventually settled on what in retrospect is the only option that made any sense - a British pub. So there I was, mostly surrounded by Swedes and Finns, but with a few Americans, one Canadian, and a couple of Britts. It was truly a great atmosphere, and really quite an interesting game to watch. The second half lacked excitement from a scoring standpoint, but there were a great many absolutely fantastic plays.


As I left the pub and headed back down to my cabin - only 2 floors down this time, not 6! - every TV I passed had been surrounded by a fleet of chairs. It is just great to realize that I'm in a region where everybody else is as interested in soccer as I am. I am really going to love these next few days.

Europe Trip Part 7: Vroom, Vroom, Das Party Starter

Helsinki, Finland

Thursday, June 10

And so the conference continued along in much the same way as it had the previous three days. Dr. Kikuchi, my advisor, finally presented to the conference on Thursday morning. Reviews from the other students were quite good, and apparently the consensus is that I'm lucky to have him as my advisor.


Thursday's food choices, I should note, were pretty darn good. Apparently the cafeteria always serves the same thing on Thursdays - split pea soup - and it is apparently a fairly traditional Finnish dish, according to the locals. I've got to say, Scandinavian food is good and hearty, but honestly I miss a lot of the... flavor... that I've come to expect from meals in America. It's not that the food is bad, I just expect it to taste like something other than starch.

Anyway, I have no photos of the food itself, but I did take this picture of the curious mural they have on the underpass to the cafeteria. I hear from the locals that there was a plan to expand the Helsinki metro to the Otanamei college area at some point a decade or two ago, and this mural was painted in support of transit. But based on the butt grabbing and breast fondling that is present in it, I'm not really sure they got their point across.


In the evening, Donny and I stayed late on campus and used the good internet connection - not to mention the fact that we were in a computer lab and therefore didn't have to queue with all the hotel guests for use of the single terminal in the lobby. I was able to by and large catch up on the blogging front before the two of us embarked on a quest across town - me to get a milkshake and him to get a full meal - from something called Hessburger, the local fast food chain.

I can report that my milkshake was satisfying and reminded me just how much I appreciate frozen desserts. However, Donny says that his burger was lacking in flavor - thereby confirming the observation I had made just a few hours prior about the generally bland nature of the food there.

Friday, June 11

So the conference had come to its last day. People trekked into the lecture hall, as usual, and we were treated to a couple more talks about a variety of transportation subjects.


Today, however, we were asked to split into groups and conduct a planning exercise using some of the techniques we'd learned over the week. Specifically, we were supposed to develop a plan for a new connector between the airport and the downtown area, with a couple of other goals like reducing congestion for commuters and improving environmental quality along the route. The groups all wound up coming up with slightly different solutions, from a bus rapid transit system to HOT lanes and general freeway improvements to my group's solution of a new spur line on the city's metro system. It was all quite interesting.

At the end of the afternoon, the session finished with a toast of champagne - techincally "sparkling wine" since we're in the EU and the beverage wasn't from the Champagne region of France - before we were all dismissed with a few hours to spare before the big dinner banquet downtown.


So being good transportation engineers, the three Americans decided to make a stop on the way back at the Helsinki tram museum. Unfortunately, my camera's batteries died and I'd forgotten to take spares, so until Donny sends me some of his picutres you all are going to have to make due with this.


We finally met up around 8pm at Kellarikrouvi, a really fancy underground dinner place. Now I know where all the money from the €500 tuition fee is going. (Fortunately I got a tuition waiver.) We ate a lot, and there were drinks and toasts, and it was good. In fact, the food was so fancy that a representative picture is below - it was the first time I'd ever had any sort of fish eggs. I don't know what the big deal is... based on this experience I almost certainly wouldn't pick them myself.



Finally, as the night was wrapping up, a group of us headed for a bar at the top of the tallest hotel in Helsinki. Apparently there were a lot of high-level cold war negotations there as well, so it was interesting to know that we were in the company of a great many historical figures.

However, as a storm rolled in - making my day trip plans for the following day a bit more uncertain - the group of us was more concerned withthe present then with history: it was the first day of the World Cup. By the end of the second match, everybody in the group was crowded around the bar's tiny TV, eagerly awaiting the outcome of the game. True to form, it was a tie - all 3 games I have seen have been ties - but in the early rounds of the tournament that's still a very important result.


And that's how my trip in Helsinki ended. Or so I thought, until a bit of company on Saturday changed the experience of that day around for the better.

And I'll talk more about that later, but here in the present I'm being kicked off of this computer terminal on the cruise ship on Sunday morning so they can clean the room. Time to get off into Stockholm again!

Europe Trip Part 6: Take a Good Hard Look at the... Boats

Helsinki, Finland

Wednesday, June 9

Things were looking up on Wednesday, because we were scheduled for a field trip! I have to say, I'd been particularly exhausted the last couple of days. My thought was that after a week of running across three countries and getting practically no sleep due to my unfortunate habit of staring out the window instead of napping, the fact that I was sitting in a classroom for 8 hours a day meant that all my pent up sleep debt was finally catching up with me. So I sincerely hoped that getting out and getting moving again would be good for me.

So in the afternoon we loaded into a bus and headed around the outside of town via ring road 3, the outermost circumfrential highway, to the newly completed Vuosaaren Harbor. You see, Helsinki used to have two smaller harbors very close to downtown, and a combination of outdated facilities, overcrowded freight lines, and skyrocketing land values caused the city to decide to relocate the port. The new one, built from scratch on the outside of town at the end of ring road 3, opened earlier this year.


All of us in the conference were expecting a tour of the harbor complex, perhaps with a drive through enormous stacks of shipping containers and under towering gantry cranes. However, and to our slight disappointment, the visit consisted of us watching a series of presentations - albeit engaging presentations about planning the layout of the port, overcoming environmental difficulties during construction, and then the problems they encountered in linking the new site up to existing highway- and rail-based freight infrastructure. I do have to admit, it's hard to be upset at a company who didn't meet your expectations when they did provide us with a bunch of interesting stories, from the need to construct the second longest tunnel in Finland to the way they were able to separate overseas traffic from domestic traffic before it went through customs. Plus, they gave us a bunch of snacks. I told you, the Finns love their coffee breaks.

Oh, right, and the conference room was located on the 13th floor (yes, they have those here) of the harbor operations complex. So during the break we were able to wander out onto the balcony and have a look around.

Yep, I was there.

Anyway, eventually it was over and we headed back. As if understanding the need for a visual display of just how tired I was getting during the presentations, Donny took a nap on the bus.


Anyway, we got back to downtown around 5pm, as usual. Donny and I both remarked that we had been remiss in getting postcards for our family, so we stopped by the main post office building on the way back to the hostel. At that point, we both decided we were hungry, so we decided to head to the center of town.

At this point, I decide that I must be imposing myself on Donny's dinner plans, but he assures me that he enjoys the company. He's far more traveled than I, and he responds that "the worst thing about traveling alone is that there's nobody to share your thoughts with." I nod in agreement and am about respond, but at just this moment we get to the main tram junction in the center of downtown and decide to take the first tram that arrived in whichever random direction it happened to be going.

We just so happened to pick the tram that went back towards the port, backtracking the route our tour bus had taken earlier that afternoon. Fortunately, Jukka had told us as we went past that there were a lot of cheap eateries in this direction owing to the fact that a lot of students live in the area. So, we figured, we were set for a good dinner.

But that still didn't tell us where we should get off. We both peered out the window, waiting for some unresistably appealing restaurant to go by, but nothing really caught our eyes. Then, out the window, we saw a crowd of people shouting at a bunch of guys who appeared to be playing baseball. But we knew they weren't. We knew, based on what some of the Finns had told us, that this was Finnish baseball.

Finnish baseball, or Pesäpallo, is a curious sport. The locals at the conference had told us that it was like a bunch of Finns had watched a baseball game on TV and then decided to try it themselves, not knowing the layout of the field or the rules or how to play. Plus, they were probably a bit drunk. Donny and I watched for a while, not knowing what was going on, as you can tell from our video commentary. People didn't run when we thought they were in a forced situation, the base paths are different, there were significantly more than 3 outs, catching the ball didn't get the batter out - it was just generally confusing. Wikipedia's article tries to make some sense of it, but I think it's still fairly confusing.

Anyway, eventually Donny and I found a place to eat. Interestingly enough, it was a Tex-Mex/Italian/Indian pizza parlor/bar. True to Jukka's declaration, we each got a pint of beer for €2.50 on top of the €14 "kebab pizza" with big strips of meat and onions and the like. It was delicious, but I completely burned the roof of my mouth. By the time I left, I had a big blister, and it really stung quite a bit. Ehh, still worth it.

We finish up and head back to the tram. This time, we decide to ride around on the 3T tram, which is widely regarded as the tourist tram. It does something of a figure eight around downtown, passing all the good, touristy sites. So it seemed the perfect way to relax after a filling dinner.


Eventually, after rolling gradually throughout town we decided to get off and go on a crazy quest to find the US embassy. You know, just to see what it looked like. We wandered around, passing various embassies from a variety of countries before admitting to each other that we really had no idea where we were going. No address, no nothing. Again, I'd say that we could just look it up in a phone book... but once again, I'm compelled to point out that there are absolutely no pay phones in this country. We saw an internet terminal in a cafe with a VOIP phone attached, but I hardly think that counts as the same thing.

Anyway, we (and by "we" I mean "Donny") then started asking around for information. It turns out that most Finns - aside from knowing that we were in the section of town full of embassies - had no idea where any specific embassies were. Eventually, just as we were on the verge of giving up and getting back on the tram, Donny found a guy who pointed us down the appropriate street.

A few blocks down, and we eventually reached the embassy. It was a stately complex of brick buildings, surrounded by a very aggressive fence. We snapped a couple of pictures and were remarking that it reminded us both of the Independence Hall complex in Philadelphia before we noticed a series of signs that warned tourists not to take pictures of the complex. Oops.
So we hastily left before the feds came after us (neither of us had our passports) and found ourselves on top of an old fort or something with views out over one of the city's numerous harbors. Thinking this good enough for the day, we turned around and headed back to the hotel.


Aside from passing what we agreed must be the most popular party in Finland at the moment, the trip back was fairly uneventful so we had some good time to talk. On the way, I begin thinking that Donny represents the "What-if"s in my life. What if I'd done more traveling between high school and college? What if I had the confidence to go up and ask a stranger how to get to the US consulate in a foreign language in a foreign country? And, perhaps most importantly, what would my life be like if I'd gone to Georgia Tech.

People outside on top of an European Winnebago pregaming for The Biggest Party in Finland

Now that I've met back up with Donny, I've been thinking a lot about what things would have been like at GT. I think a lot about the time I spent with Dr. Meyer, a pretty cool guy, and also about that evening I spent with the students coming back from The Front Page News. That whole night where I was spending time with the whole compilation of students seemed great and like I was a part of a family group. Sometimes, I wonder what things would have been like if I had gone to Georgia Tech.

But I try not to let things like that bother me much. I'm trying not to be so sentimental now.

Tomorrow, more information about the remainder of my time in Finland.