We catch an early bus down to Tallinn’s ferry terminal and board the ship, no one even bothers to check our tickets. I receive yet another stamp in a passport that’s quickly losing its empty pages.The ship is run by Viking Lines, and its got all the kisch that you’d expect with a name like that. A stale orange/red carpet on the ship, some video-poker terminals where some fat guys from a biker gang are playing, and the smell of old cigarettes everywhere. We briefly see the top deck but its far too windy, we try sleeping in the reclining chairs and succeed for a while, but some fat asshole keeps pushing his knees into the seat forcing me to sit up. After 20 minutes of a wordless battle, where I push down and he pushes up, I give up.
Tatevik heads for the loo and I take a moment to examine a noticeboard that lists the names of
a few of the crew with their picture, all with Finish names and appearance. The captain, the chief engineer, and then I spot him, the cruise manager: Petri Lehtinen. The picture is straight from loveboat, in his double-breasted white navy coat and mic in hand, he looks like the typical cruise-ship-crooner. They even have POSTCARDS with his face on them available at the info desk, I pocket a couple for mementos. We spot him walking about, I suppose he only sings on the night cruises, I really wanted to ask him to autograph my postcard, but I sensed I wouldn’t be able to keep from cracking up.We waste time in the duty-free shop, and sit to have a tea, Tatevik’s cold is obviously gaining on her. I teach her how to play penny-hockey with estonian crowns. Finally the ship comes to Helsinki’s post and we disembark.
Helsinki has the unique quality of being a port city that actually still has major ports in its old harbour. Many port cities usually had their harbour right in the centre of the city, where ships could efficiently offload their cargo onto the city’s docks. Nowadays however the ships are much bigger and usually cannot dock where old wooden ships once were, and the advent of large trucks makes transporting the goods from large shipyards much easier, so most “ports” are enormous parking lots out in the middle of nowhere (aka see Dover). However Helsinki’s port area is still wide enough to allow the docking of the ferries, so you step off the ship and you are almost right in the middle of town. In fact on a warm day it would be a pleasant stroll into the city, but unfortunately our day is windy and chilly, but luckily still sunny. We want to drop our heavy bags in the luggage locker, so we start the walk across the harbour to our Stockholm bound ship. It’s a long walk along the water with the wind gusting, and Tatevik’s mood seems every bit affected by it. So to gain a moment of reprieve we pass through an old fish market, now converted to sell artisan breads, cheeses, and other delicacies. We finally reach our ferry terminal and pick up our boarding passses and stuff all our bags into a single locker.
The first few steps when you are free of luggage are always the best, so its with a better mood that we walk back out. The terminal is adjacent a hill and we walk up it to get a full view of the ship we will take this evening, it is much nicer than the one we came in on. The hills leads to the back of a park and we stroll down and walk towards the most visible landmark on the skyline, the Helsinki Cathedral. The Cathedral is located on Senate Square and it is built atop a massive staircase which elevates the Cathedral far above the surrounding buildings, even from the front door it is almost possible to see atop all the port buildings to the sea. From there we walk down a little directionless since we don’t have a map, but we eventually make our way to the train station where we drop into the tourist office to pick up some info. We don’t have many hours in Helsinki and Tatevik is cold and tired already, so we head into a coffee shop first to gain our bearings. The coffee shop is very modern and well lit from floor to ceiling windows, we sit and the sun and begin to warm up. The one sight we choose to see is the Temppeliaukio Church, built into bedrock in the centre of the city. We stroll from the Parliament building until we find the church, we walk along the bedrock roof and down the side into the entrance. The church itself is quite simple, a hole built into rock, with a large copper roof, and a ring of skylight windows letting light in from above. Tatevik sits in the pews resting, she’s obviously not well and while I would have liked to also see the Uspenski Orthodox Cathedral, it is in the opposite direction of our ship. So we walk in search of a public loo (which is probably the single most irritating thing to do in Europe), and hop the tram back to our ship.
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