Helsinki And Lots and Lots Of Shots

September 20th

After a nice meal and a good nights sleep, I had a few hours to spend in Helsinki before we had to head to our next portion of the journey. The little area I saw was clean, beautiful, and expensive. You can see the full set of photos here, but don't expect captions. If I ever want to get caught up, I need to just write these posts and move on.

We tried to eat at this restaurant the night before but it was closed for a private party.

I explored down near the waterfront and this poor big booty statue had a permanent bird friend. I feel her bird poop pain.

We ducked into this church to get out of the rain.

In the market down near the water they had everything on sale from fruits and veggies to reindeer antler bottle openers and silver jewelry. But they also had full reindeer skins and these poor little guys.

The sun made an appearance for a brief moment and this building looked beautiful. You can see more shots in the full set of photos.

As this was actually a journey to Spain it was time to move on. Our next stop: a 26 hour ferry ride on the Baltic Sea to Lubeck Germany. You can see our boat waiting at the back of the harbor.

This sucker was pretty ginourmous. (Check the link. It's an official word now.) It could fit about 10 trucks across and front to back. There was also a separate deck for cars as well as an area for cargo containers.

This was my own personal cabin on board. It's no luxury cruise line, but it was clean and had a bed. The only downside was the latent stink of cigarette smoke.

The boat left Helsinki at 6pm and we got some nice shots of the harbor, skyline, and surrounding islands while eating our buffet dinner that included some extra salty reindeer meat.

Now, there's not too much to do on board this ship. There is a shop with weird hours and occasionally you could get a fuzzy signal from a Swedish or Danish TV station, but for the most part boat life revolved around the dining hall. Of course when traveling with Finnish truck drivers, "dining" means "drinking". Our indoctrination into trucker life began with a round of cold vodka shots and was followed shortly by a delivery of some absurd Blue Hawaiians. When coupled with the beverages he was already drinking with dinner, PJ's alcohol collection looked like this.

No self respecting American man is going to drink a Blue Hawaiian, especially not while traveling on the Baltic. Guess who drank theirs?

So, here's some of our drivers. I think this was 5 or 6 shots into the evening. Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of the main shot fairy, but this guy in the middle cracked himself up buying the absurd tropical drinks.

Not long after this special cocktail arrived for Hans, I made my exit. I think I did pretty well for the only woman doing shots with ten men, and mostly truck drivers at that. But I did have to knock on PJ's door to ask for a Dramamine not too long after. I wasn't sure if it was the shots or the rough sea that was making my bed move!