Finland
This was the trip that started it all, this is the big bang of the Swedish Nerd vs. The World. In early 2015 I had just broken up with my girlfriend and all our plans for moving abroad came to an end. Lonely, bored and with a lot of savings I thought, hey let’s do something fun. Not many would think, yeah let’s go on three cruises in the same week from Stockholm to Finland, Estonia and Latvia but then again, someone had to be the first to think that. At this point of time I had a very vague idea with the trip that it would also become the first trip of seeing every country in Europe, but that was more of a way too big idea that I couldn’t grasp just yet. I didn’t even think I would do that since it was so many countries left to be seen, so at the end of it all it was a start but I also didn’t see it like it had to be that. That would grow on me after these trips and here I am, two years later and I have seen almost every country in Europe and wants to see the whole world instead.
Finland is the neighbor to Sweden that was playing hard to get for me. Since I lived in southern and western Sweden in Helsingborg and Gothenburg all my life it was easy to go to Denmark and Norway but Finland always seemed so far away since the big sea between. The stereotype of Denmark is that everybody is drunk because they are cheerful and the stereotype of Norway is that they are cheerful without booze, everything they say sounds jolly anyway. But Finland is the black sheep of the family who only drinks because they want to commit suicide. I hoped this was just a stereotype and so I went on the famous cruise which in Swedish is known as Finlandsfärjan (the ferry to Finland) which is known for people being drunk and behaving like idiots.
When I arrived at the harbor in Stockholm to go on the cruise, the first thing that I saw was a park named Finlandsparken (The Finland Park) and of course it was filled with empty bottles of alcohol lying on the ground everywhere. Then the famous Finnish comic strip character Moomin greeted me at the docks.
I had bought a cheap ticket for the boat called Silja Symphony and I expected the cabin to reflect that, but damn I loved it! It’s always so boring when cabins don’t face the sea and therefore you have no windows but here they have made windows out to the boulevard on the lower level, which was the center of the boat. It was a clever design. A band was playing on the boulevard to greet the guests and even though it was worthless covers of famous songs it still gave it a feeling of a good vibe, that kind of vibe you get from small streets abroad in places like Spain that are packed with vibrant restaurants.
I went to the spa on the sun deck and watched Stockholm archipelago fade away in the sun, it was gorgeous and the glass roof didn’t make it worse. I then spent some time in the sauna to get ready for Helsinki where we would arrive the next day. And I realized that you don’t have to be a drunk bastard to go to Finland, you can also enjoy life in a hot tub with a beautiful view, sober and all.
I woke up the next day and the first thing that got to me was how cold it was in Finland, but it also felt right since rumors are that Santa lives there so I didn’t mind. I just wandered around with no direction and I went into the Helsinki City Museum just to get some warmth. It was boring as city museums usually are and I went to see the train station instead, a famous landmark, before I went into the city center.
I noticed a big building made of wood in a square in the middle of all the shopping malls and I had to go in to find out more. It was intended to be a place where people can have a moment of silence and meet each other. An opportunity to calm down in the middle of perhaps the busiest area of Finland. I loved the idea and it was unfortunate that they had to ruin it a bit with bringing religion into it with Christian crosses.
Fed up with religion I went to Temppeliaukio Church, hey I can’t help that the most beautiful places in Helsinki are Christian.
It wasn’t hard to find my way into town again since all the signs for roads and places are written in both Swedish and Finnish. It should be like that all over the world I think, especially in the countries with Cyrillic script.
I have a fetish for the weird so when I googled Helsinki before the trip and saw a gigantic sculpture of a blushing boy pissing in the sea in the harbor of Helsinki called Bad, Bad Boy I knew I had to see it. But all the comments under the picture were that it wasn’t there anymore. Saddened by this I never went to that side of town and since I had a lot of time on my hand I thought I would pay a visit to a computer and game console museum instead to live up to the epithet nerd. I looked and looked for it but couldn’t find it. I noticed they were building a whole new area in the west harbor where I was, all the houses looked brand new and you could see that new buildings were set up all the time. I thought maybe they have relocated the museum or closed it due to this. I would give it a last chance, if it’s not around the next corner I’m giving up and will go back to the ferry instead. And would you believe it, there was no museum. Instead there was a gigantic sculpture pissing and blushing at me, there he was, the bad, bad boy! He wasn’t gone at all, he had just been moved to the new hip place in town. This would never happen in Sweden and that’s one thing you can love about Finland.
Back at the ferry I enjoyed some Angry Birds snacks (the game is made by a Finnish company) together with a Moomin drink to keep the Finnish spirit alive while watching TV. And suddenly I saw a friend from the past, called Jerina, on the TV, and she has roots in the island Åland which belongs to Finland. It was a perfect fit and it was so fun to see her again after some years where we hadn’t talked that much since she had moved from Gothenburg. It was a show about how crazy youngsters are these days and how dull old people are and the contrast between them, and I must say that even though the concept was ridiculous I enjoyed watching it because of Jerina.
I went to the sun deck at night time and walked the moonlight promenade as it was called and standing under the stars while hearing the sea made me understand why I love cruises. Even though I had travelled on my own and would have preferred company it had been quite fun and now all that was left was to see if I could see the Paris Saint Germain match in Champions League on my computer as the internet on the boat was of very poor quality. It was the second game against Chelsea and the first had ended 1-1 in Paris so I didn’t have so much hope for advancement. It was impossible to see the game and so I tried to listen to it via radio instead on the internet but it was hard enough to do that. It was flickering all the time and you could hear a portion of it and then it was lost for 5 minutes before it returned and so on. When Zlatan got sent off with a red card early on, I knew it was over since 0-0 would even do for Chelsea to advance because of the away goal. Then Chelsea even took the lead and I was devastated but suddenly from nowhere Paris equalized in the last minutes and it was going to be extra time. Chelsea took the lead again and the radio show that broadcasted the game wasn’t prepared for the extra time so they ended the broadcast briefly, and I thought nothing more of it since it was pretty much over by then anyhow. Then suddenly the broadcast came back and the reporter just screamed how Paris had equalized once again in the last minutes of extra time which would make Paris advance, it was a miracle in football history and I even think it added something that I could only hear it in a flickering way. Some days everything just goes right and this was one of them, so I will always cherish this trip to Finland in many ways!
Maybe God was involved somehow after all my visits to the churches, just kidding!
_________________________________________________________________________________
Three years later I returned to the starting point of seeing all of the world, to go to the last country of Europe that I yet hadn't visited, Russia. The cruise went from Helsinki to St. Petersburg in Russia and then back again to the Finnish capital. I felt I had seen it all last time I was in Helsinki, but my friend Erik who I travelled with told me about a sea fortress called Suomenlinna built on six islands. It's popular amongst foreign tourists and during our visit we got accompanied by a Russian cheerleader team. Quite funny since it was originally built by Sweden to keep the Russians from St. Petersburg away, when Finland was still a part of Sweden.
Erik had some ancestors from the island so he was interested in seeing how they have lived. The weather was awful unfortunately, rainy and windy, so I don't think we saw it from the best side. There are about 900 people living on the island and it must be a very special way to live your life. I have always been interested in living on an island but I think I'll save it for when I'm older.
We walked around the islands and then Erik called his mom Ingrid who gave us a guided tour on distance. She told him which house his ancestors had lived in, the one with painted windows instead of real windows at the top floor, and it was now a museum.
We went inside and there we met Nelly who was born and raised on the island. She worked at the museum during the summers while she now lived and studied in the city of Helsinki. Erik went into the museum and I stayed behind and sat quietly before Nelly broke the silence. It was interesting to hear how she had been brought up on the island and how happy she was about it. She was another proof of how fun it is to go to new countries and meet new people who all got their own life story. Even if it's as close as in your neighbouring country and as odd as on the second floor in a yellow house on a fortress, which we would just have passed by if it wasn't for the connection to Erik's ancestors. Nelly is the first I've ever met from Finland that doesn't drink alcohol. In the morning I had met a guy who said he couldn't read because he was, as he said, "fucking drunk" at 10.00 AM on a monday. So it was nice to see that some people don't live up to the stereotype!
I went home to Sweden again knowing I had visited all countries in Europe, pretty crazy! I didn't go home satisfied though, instead I was inspired to see all of the world, Europe was just the beginning!
* Best things about Finland – I’m sorry to have to say it, but the best thing was the ferry, don’t get me wrong, Helsinki is alright but nothing stands out as something extraordinary, except for the bad, bad boy that is
* Most mediocre thing about Finland – it doesn’t even feel like your abroad when people don’t understand your bad English and asks you if you can talk Swedish instead, and even the signs are in Swedish
* Worst things about Finland – the pizza tasted like sand in Finland, probably the worst ever, go for the meze at Levant instead, yummy in my tummy!
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. Andorra
2. Denmark
3. Belgium
4. Estonia
5. Finland
6. Bosnia And Herzegovina
7. Albania
8.
9.
10.
Finland is the neighbor to Sweden that was playing hard to get for me. Since I lived in southern and western Sweden in Helsingborg and Gothenburg all my life it was easy to go to Denmark and Norway but Finland always seemed so far away since the big sea between. The stereotype of Denmark is that everybody is drunk because they are cheerful and the stereotype of Norway is that they are cheerful without booze, everything they say sounds jolly anyway. But Finland is the black sheep of the family who only drinks because they want to commit suicide. I hoped this was just a stereotype and so I went on the famous cruise which in Swedish is known as Finlandsfärjan (the ferry to Finland) which is known for people being drunk and behaving like idiots.
When I arrived at the harbor in Stockholm to go on the cruise, the first thing that I saw was a park named Finlandsparken (The Finland Park) and of course it was filled with empty bottles of alcohol lying on the ground everywhere. Then the famous Finnish comic strip character Moomin greeted me at the docks.
I had bought a cheap ticket for the boat called Silja Symphony and I expected the cabin to reflect that, but damn I loved it! It’s always so boring when cabins don’t face the sea and therefore you have no windows but here they have made windows out to the boulevard on the lower level, which was the center of the boat. It was a clever design. A band was playing on the boulevard to greet the guests and even though it was worthless covers of famous songs it still gave it a feeling of a good vibe, that kind of vibe you get from small streets abroad in places like Spain that are packed with vibrant restaurants.
I went to the spa on the sun deck and watched Stockholm archipelago fade away in the sun, it was gorgeous and the glass roof didn’t make it worse. I then spent some time in the sauna to get ready for Helsinki where we would arrive the next day. And I realized that you don’t have to be a drunk bastard to go to Finland, you can also enjoy life in a hot tub with a beautiful view, sober and all.
I woke up the next day and the first thing that got to me was how cold it was in Finland, but it also felt right since rumors are that Santa lives there so I didn’t mind. I just wandered around with no direction and I went into the Helsinki City Museum just to get some warmth. It was boring as city museums usually are and I went to see the train station instead, a famous landmark, before I went into the city center.
I noticed a big building made of wood in a square in the middle of all the shopping malls and I had to go in to find out more. It was intended to be a place where people can have a moment of silence and meet each other. An opportunity to calm down in the middle of perhaps the busiest area of Finland. I loved the idea and it was unfortunate that they had to ruin it a bit with bringing religion into it with Christian crosses.
Fed up with religion I went to Temppeliaukio Church, hey I can’t help that the most beautiful places in Helsinki are Christian.
I then went to the outskirts of town to escape the religious places and I found Sibelius Park with its famous monument made for the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Who has composed Christian themed songs of course, god dammit!
It wasn’t hard to find my way into town again since all the signs for roads and places are written in both Swedish and Finnish. It should be like that all over the world I think, especially in the countries with Cyrillic script.
I have a fetish for the weird so when I googled Helsinki before the trip and saw a gigantic sculpture of a blushing boy pissing in the sea in the harbor of Helsinki called Bad, Bad Boy I knew I had to see it. But all the comments under the picture were that it wasn’t there anymore. Saddened by this I never went to that side of town and since I had a lot of time on my hand I thought I would pay a visit to a computer and game console museum instead to live up to the epithet nerd. I looked and looked for it but couldn’t find it. I noticed they were building a whole new area in the west harbor where I was, all the houses looked brand new and you could see that new buildings were set up all the time. I thought maybe they have relocated the museum or closed it due to this. I would give it a last chance, if it’s not around the next corner I’m giving up and will go back to the ferry instead. And would you believe it, there was no museum. Instead there was a gigantic sculpture pissing and blushing at me, there he was, the bad, bad boy! He wasn’t gone at all, he had just been moved to the new hip place in town. This would never happen in Sweden and that’s one thing you can love about Finland.
Back at the ferry I enjoyed some Angry Birds snacks (the game is made by a Finnish company) together with a Moomin drink to keep the Finnish spirit alive while watching TV. And suddenly I saw a friend from the past, called Jerina, on the TV, and she has roots in the island Åland which belongs to Finland. It was a perfect fit and it was so fun to see her again after some years where we hadn’t talked that much since she had moved from Gothenburg. It was a show about how crazy youngsters are these days and how dull old people are and the contrast between them, and I must say that even though the concept was ridiculous I enjoyed watching it because of Jerina.
Suddenly I heard cheers from the boulevard and I rushed to the windows to see what was going on. And sailors flew by the window doing acrobatic moves while jumping on trampolines. You got to love stuff like that.
I went to the sun deck at night time and walked the moonlight promenade as it was called and standing under the stars while hearing the sea made me understand why I love cruises. Even though I had travelled on my own and would have preferred company it had been quite fun and now all that was left was to see if I could see the Paris Saint Germain match in Champions League on my computer as the internet on the boat was of very poor quality. It was the second game against Chelsea and the first had ended 1-1 in Paris so I didn’t have so much hope for advancement. It was impossible to see the game and so I tried to listen to it via radio instead on the internet but it was hard enough to do that. It was flickering all the time and you could hear a portion of it and then it was lost for 5 minutes before it returned and so on. When Zlatan got sent off with a red card early on, I knew it was over since 0-0 would even do for Chelsea to advance because of the away goal. Then Chelsea even took the lead and I was devastated but suddenly from nowhere Paris equalized in the last minutes and it was going to be extra time. Chelsea took the lead again and the radio show that broadcasted the game wasn’t prepared for the extra time so they ended the broadcast briefly, and I thought nothing more of it since it was pretty much over by then anyhow. Then suddenly the broadcast came back and the reporter just screamed how Paris had equalized once again in the last minutes of extra time which would make Paris advance, it was a miracle in football history and I even think it added something that I could only hear it in a flickering way. Some days everything just goes right and this was one of them, so I will always cherish this trip to Finland in many ways!
Maybe God was involved somehow after all my visits to the churches, just kidding!
_________________________________________________________________________________
Three years later I returned to the starting point of seeing all of the world, to go to the last country of Europe that I yet hadn't visited, Russia. The cruise went from Helsinki to St. Petersburg in Russia and then back again to the Finnish capital. I felt I had seen it all last time I was in Helsinki, but my friend Erik who I travelled with told me about a sea fortress called Suomenlinna built on six islands. It's popular amongst foreign tourists and during our visit we got accompanied by a Russian cheerleader team. Quite funny since it was originally built by Sweden to keep the Russians from St. Petersburg away, when Finland was still a part of Sweden.
Erik had some ancestors from the island so he was interested in seeing how they have lived. The weather was awful unfortunately, rainy and windy, so I don't think we saw it from the best side. There are about 900 people living on the island and it must be a very special way to live your life. I have always been interested in living on an island but I think I'll save it for when I'm older.
We walked around the islands and then Erik called his mom Ingrid who gave us a guided tour on distance. She told him which house his ancestors had lived in, the one with painted windows instead of real windows at the top floor, and it was now a museum.
We went inside and there we met Nelly who was born and raised on the island. She worked at the museum during the summers while she now lived and studied in the city of Helsinki. Erik went into the museum and I stayed behind and sat quietly before Nelly broke the silence. It was interesting to hear how she had been brought up on the island and how happy she was about it. She was another proof of how fun it is to go to new countries and meet new people who all got their own life story. Even if it's as close as in your neighbouring country and as odd as on the second floor in a yellow house on a fortress, which we would just have passed by if it wasn't for the connection to Erik's ancestors. Nelly is the first I've ever met from Finland that doesn't drink alcohol. In the morning I had met a guy who said he couldn't read because he was, as he said, "fucking drunk" at 10.00 AM on a monday. So it was nice to see that some people don't live up to the stereotype!
I went home to Sweden again knowing I had visited all countries in Europe, pretty crazy! I didn't go home satisfied though, instead I was inspired to see all of the world, Europe was just the beginning!
* Best things about Finland – I’m sorry to have to say it, but the best thing was the ferry, don’t get me wrong, Helsinki is alright but nothing stands out as something extraordinary, except for the bad, bad boy that is
* Most mediocre thing about Finland – it doesn’t even feel like your abroad when people don’t understand your bad English and asks you if you can talk Swedish instead, and even the signs are in Swedish
* Worst things about Finland – the pizza tasted like sand in Finland, probably the worst ever, go for the meze at Levant instead, yummy in my tummy!
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. Andorra
2. Denmark
3. Belgium
4. Estonia
5. Finland
6. Bosnia And Herzegovina
7. Albania
8.
9.
10.
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