Goodbye Finland, Hello Estonia!

Monday, 13 July

Dee has officially called Finland ‘boring’. With their relative low population over a fairly broad area, there isn’t much to see in regards to museums, or attractions that are attractive to us. There is also a shocking low level of op shops for Dee to ferret around in. And apparently there are too many trees.

I like the place even if I can’t figure out any of the words now. But the place is different with enough ‘normal’ things to make it not feel alien. Although, having poker machines in petrol stations is just weird…

Dee is missing 2 main things from the Northern part of our journey:

1.       1. Travelling the back roads to get from point A to B. In the UK you could do that but here it’s not really feasible and/or possible. Myself, I enjoy the open road and not go through the gears every minute but that’s only because I’m doing the driving.

2.       2. The lack of traditional craft to be seen. Dee was hoping for seeing people making traditional art and craft for the various countries we travel through. I can understand that but I think it’s hard to expect to easily find them.

I think it’s pretty hard to find ‘traditional’ or ‘cultural’ centres now. There has been a massive global change to cultures over the last 100 years. There’s a reason why we use tractors instead of sickles and buy clothes from China instead of hand looming and sewing our clothes.

We realised when we were having a traditional Nepalese meal in Finland a family moving to another country has at least the option of opening a restaurant of their home country. I can’t think of too many ‘Australian’ meals that justify a whole menu if we moved anywhere. It’s like we’re too multi-cultural….

Tuesday, 14 July

I just realised that it’s the first time in many years I didn’t have to worry about the end of Financial Year. I was only made aware of it when I received an email from the ATO. Weird.

After a short drive, we were in Helsinki before lunch. We decide that we would try to have a break from each other. Gene wanted internet time at a library, Dee wanted to go shopping and I wanted to visit the island fortress. After I dropped the girls off in the city, I went looking for my island but I couldn’t find the bridge to get there, so I went and parked where I could. 

When I stepped out of Springy, I heard ‘Highway to Hell’ booming from a large stage nearby. I thought it was some concert but it was the 15^th International Gymnastics competition with 55 countries attending. After lunch I filled in the time watching a male Austrian Skipping troupe, an USA team doing ‘Oh Mickey, you’re so fine’ in 80’s hypercolour clothing and a Swedish group juggling large balls. It was quite entertaining, especially with the old American ladies behind me going ‘Oh My God!’ every time something gymnastically occurs.

At 3pm I picked up the girls. Their day didn’t go as planned either as Gene was only able to get 15 minutes of internet time at the library and didn’t want to be abandoned by Dee, so Dee had to drag Gene around which sucked some of the fun of the ‘gathering’ experience of shopping.

We followed the GPS to the port to discover it was the wrong port for our ship, so we quickly found that companies port. We then found out it was the wrong port for the destination we wanted. We needed Tallinn and this port serviced Stockholm. We made the ferry with just enough time but not enough to stop Dee from stressing. The trip over was fantastic, the sea being so smooth (thank you Neptune and Poseidon). Dee had a bit of a claustrophobic episode trying to get to Springy as all the trucks on our deck were all squeezed in together making a rather tight maze.

We found the camping site, a refurbished, falling-down volleyball court, and after looking at what Tallinn could offer us tourists, we’ve decided to stay another day.

Apparently, there is multitude of traditional craft shops here for Dee.

J