… at least in the blog.
We’ve been traveling through India for the past weekand a half where internet access is sparse to say the least. We should be in China by September and I will certainly be able to write more often. Until then, posts might be rare.
Cheers.
When I was growing up, I was too young to travel very much in Russia, so when planning this trip I insisted that we visit at least one of the former USSR countries. We settled on Estonia, as it was only a 2 hour ferry ride away from Helsinki. Since Helsinki is a major port city in the area and Tallinn (capital of Estonia) is one of closest destinations there were several ferry options available. Our hostel in Helsinki was pretty accommodating and helped us book our tickets (about 30 euro a piece).
The weather was grim and the commute was pretty uneventful. The ferry pulled in, we grabbed our packs and poured out into terminal with everyone else. First things first, we needed to exchange our currency. Even though Estonia is part of the EU, they have their own currency (EEK). A member country may choose not to adopt the Euro when they join the Union. Anyhow, a US dollar is worth roughly ten Estonian Krooni.
As with most ports of arrival in a city, except maybe the airport, the ferry terminal seemed to be located in the worst part of town. The whole place looked like a huge slab of concrete with a staircase. Cigarette butts, broken glass, and garbage lined the ground. Grey cement walls were dirty and covered in graffiti (no offense Taylor). As we exited the parking lot, we passed a group of kids who couldn’t have been more than 14 years old. They were speaking Russian and I could understand that they were headed to the gas station to pick up beer and get wasted. Off in the distance we could see a faint outline of the downtown. Across the lot there were two men in a BMW; they were smoking their cigarettes and slowly following us with their eyes. I wanted to get out of the port as soon as possible. We sped towards downtown. Soon, very symbolically, we crossed the train tracks and were in the city. [Read more]
Scandinavians are notorious (among other things) for their love of heavy metal. June 27th through June 29th Helsinki held their 11th annual “Tuska Open Air Metal Festival”. Finland hosts well over a dozen music festivals, but this bad boy was headlined by none other than Slayer! Tuska, which is Finnish for “agony” is the largest metal festival held in all of the Nordic countries. We arrived in Helsinki on June 27th and had no idea what was going on. The city seemed infested with Swedish, German, and Finnish metalheads and Goths. (Trust me; “infested” is an understatement.) I wish we could attend Tuska, but it was already sold out to a crowd of 36,000.
Anyhow…
We had two full days to explore Helsinki before we left Finland. I had no preconceptions about this city, but I must say, I was very pleasantly surprised. Helsinki, which holds a population of about half a million people (roughly the size of Denver County) is Finland’s capital and largest city. Granted I had only 50 hours to form my opinion, the city felt very very safe. It was the only foreign city where I felt comfortable enough to go out shooting (photos) at night, by myself. In fact, Helsinki was rated world’s second safest city.
Hi all. We just wanted to thank you for reading our blog, posting comments, emailing us, and generally keeping in touch. We’ve read every piece of correspondence that has come our way. Unfortunately, it hasn’t always been easy to write back. Our internet access is spotty at best. With much luck, we’re able to get online at a hostel, train station, airport, or bus terminal. If we are lucky enough to catch a wireless signal, we use it to get directions to our hostel, check our bank accounts, read some emails. So please, keep writing, keep commenting, keep in touch.
Cheers,
-Raili & Alex
P.S. It’s nice to hear from friends and family back home when you’re in a foreign land, so keep writing…even if you haven’t heard from us in a while.
After a week in Tampere we headed north, way north to Lapland. A friend of Raili’s family has a cabin in a small ski town of Pyhäjärvi and she was nice enough to let us spend a few days there. Getting to Lapland was surprisingly inexpensive - 60 Euros, especially considering it took over 11hrs. Our train rolled in around 9am into Kemijärvi, where Tarja, our host, was already waiting for us with a car. Kemijärvi, which was originally settled in the 1500s, is a small city (or by US standards a small town) about 55km south of Pyhäjärvi, our destination. After about 40 minutes in the car, we pulled up to the cabin and this is what we saw:
The house stood on a small lake. The sun illuminated the clouds from above, giving them a silver shine; everywhere you looked the ground was yellow with dandelions and globe flowers. Next to the house stood a red barn and next to the red barn laid a neatly stacked wood pile. [Read more]
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