From Hel­sin­ki to Stock­holm

A most ex­ci­ting night at sea

When I ca­me to Hel­sin­ki I re­gar­ded this jour­ney to be over. I had plan­ned to ta­ke the Finn­jet from he­re to Tra­ve­mün­de and to re­turn to Bonn by train. But now I stand at the rail of the Vi­king Sa­ga and ta­ke a pho­to of the Finn­jet. What has hap­pe­ned?

In Hel­sin­ki I ta­ke my ti­me to check in the fer­ry boat, ne­ver thin­king about the pos­si­bi­li­ty that the ship could be ful­ly boo­ked. But then, on a tu­es­day eve­ning, I have to face the fact that this is pos­si­ble. I am at a loss. How­ever, soon I rea­li­ze that there are other op­por­tu­ni­ties to go. And this turn of the trip turns out to be the most va­lua­ble ever sin­ce. I ta­ke my bike to the quay for Swe­den and get a ticket to Stock­holm at a pri­ce of one tenth of the Finn­jet ticket. The dif­fe­rence will last for an ex­tra week, I guess.

And this ex­tra week be­co­mes one of the most ex­ci­ting weeks of the tour. It starts the next mor­ning, when I get up with­out ha­ving slept at all, stan­ding at my fa­vou­ri­te place again, the rail. The ri­se of the mor­ning sun is over­whel­ming. If I told you about a boat trip to the Ca­ri­be­an Sea you might be­lie­ve it as re­gards the pho­tos. Now, in fact this is the Bal­tic Sea.

I sta­re at the ri­sing sun, seeing the rest of the jour­ney in a to­tal­ly dif­fe­rent light. When I have lear­ned so­me­thing from the ma­ny voya­ges I ma­de it is this: No trip is com­ple­te that ends so­me­whe­re whe­re did not start. To end up on a ger­man rail­way sta­tion is li­ke a cri­me play whe­re the in­spec­tor fails to un­co­ver the mur­de­rer. A dread­ful idea.

So I start to en­joy the thought that tra­vel­ling is a va­lue on its own. At six o'clock I step in­to the di­ning room at the ve­ry end of the fer­ry to have the best break­fast I eve­ry had. For about 30 schwe­dish crowns. The di­ning room is in the rear, so I can watch ano­ther fer­ry boat fol­low­ing us wi­thin a short di­stan­ce. The boat of the Sil­ja Li­ne is of the sa­me si­ze as ours - and I won­der how that boat ma­na­ges not to hit one of the ma­ny rocks that form litt­le is­lands in front of the swe­dish coast.

I get mo­re than I can eat, though I try hard to break eve­ry re­cord be­fo­re I quit the room again at about half past eight. I drink 8 to 10 cups of cof­fee bre­wed in enour­mous tanks and eat any­thing from bread to chee­e­se, fish to me­at, oni­ons to milk ri­ce.

Two el­der­ly ger­man la­dies at my ta­ble can't help tel­ling me that they do en­joy to see me ea­ting li­ke that: «Whe­re does all the food go?»

I tell them about the bi­cy­cle tour, the long and hard days in Fin­land and the bud­get that did not al­low me any­thing ex­tra­or­di­na­ry to eat. And to me it seems that their ad­mi­ra­ti­on is not on­ly ba­sed on the fact that I eat that good...

At about 9 o'clock we ar­rive at Stock­holm whe­re I don't rest for long. I fol­low the si­gnposts to Nynäs­hamn to get the fer­ry for Got­land, the big­gest swe­dish is­land. No need to tell that the boat lea­ves at mid­night. Ano­ther night with­out sleep.