As I travelled rather fast these days, and as the trip enters a new stage
tomorrow, I´ll shortly describe what I’ve done so far. 6.10. Copenhagen: Not so much. 🙂
I’ve been walking around a lot. In the parks, along the sea shore.
The weather was very nice so I tried to catch as much sun as possi
9.10. Stockholm:A nice train ride over the very high bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö
and through the very nice scenery of southern Sweden brought me to Stockholm.
There I stayed the first night in the tiny flat of a friend of a friend of a friend. Her name is Sus and she belongs to the very creative people.
Together with friends she runs a trendy fashion store, doing a lot of clothes
herself. This evening there was a ‹clothes-cutting-appart-party› in her shop.
Old clothes were cut appart in small stripes to be weaven to new textiles.
It’s part of a students project. So I was there that evening, cutting clothes
appart as well. Quite fun, with all these folks.
Later we had a drink in a pub. I enjoyed it so much as in Scandinavia there
is ‹No Smoking› in restaurants and pubs.
Next day Sylvia arrived and we moved to a hostel. We strolled around and
visited the Vasa museum, where an original, very well preserved viking war ship
is displayed. 11.10: Mariehamn:
Together we took a ferry to Åland. I knew that there are thousands of Islands
on the way from Stockholm to Turku, but I did not know, that there is a Åland.
It’s part of Finland, but it enjoys a huge amount of independence.
It has it’s own stamps.
But more important: It’s beautyful out there. In summer there must be loads of
tourists, but these days it was very quiet.
A lot of small and bigger islands, rather flat, covered with forests. Dozendsof bays and lakes. A sailors paradise!
The ferry to Åland is very popular among scandinavian folks. Some of them board
in Stockholm, drink a lot of cheap (tax free) beer, have a 30 miutes stay in
Åland, just to take another ferry back to Stockholm. Arriving there they are
completely drunk. This makes it a nice and cheap day trip for them. 14.10. Turku:
While Sylvia traveled back to Stockholm and then Zurich, my journey continued
with another ferry to Turku in Finland. There it was foggy and wet, so I didn’t
do much there. 15.10. Helsinki: I arrived in Helsinki after a 2 hours train trip. First thing I did was purchasing the ticket to St. Petersburg. Again I strolled around in the city, bought new hiking shoes, as the ones I was bringing with me were falling appart (which I didn’t notice back in Zurich). Today I visited an island off shore Helsinki, where the Swedes had built a huge fortress, to defend against the Russians. These 11 days are a short period, but as I’ve passed so many places, it seems
to me as it was much longer already.Tomorrow morning I’ll catch the train to St. Petersburg and this excites me
very much.
cu, Thomas