So I decided to make my move onward to Goteborg Sweden, after pulling an all nighter, I hopped on an early morning train to Oslo, but realized that I would have a few hours to kill in Oslo, which was good because I still hadn't figured out where to sleep in Goteborg. I was having a hard time finding hostels, as there seemed to be none there, and I decided to give couch surfing a try. For those of you who don't know what couchsurfing is, check out www.couchsurfing.org :) It is a traveling community where you can create a profile and host or surf on people's couches. You can also meet up for coffee or a drink, and just get a feeling for how locals live.
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| Some of the views from the train ride to Oslo |
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| More train ride views |
So anyways, I sent out a few requests to some people, as well as tried emailing my friend Max whom I had met several years earlier in Germany, to see if he was around. I was fortunate to hear back from one guy who said he could provide me a place for one night, but only one night as he had another 7 couch surfers coming the next day. I then put up an emergency posting for couches on another page, and hoped to hear back from others. I arrived in Goteborg quite exhausted since I didn't really sleep the previous day, and ran out of credit on my phone, which was a pain in the ass. I managed to find a payphone when I arrived in the late evening and get a hold of Jonas, who told me to take a tram to his place or to come meet him at one of the trams stops, which I said I would do.
And that began a mess of trying to figure out where the hell the tram I was meant to be taking actually left from. I ran around the train station area for about 15 minutes trying to figure out where my tram was meant to be leaving, and finally asked some lady, and she directed me towards the stop. I then sat at the stop and watched several trams come and go, but not one of them was the one I was actually meant to take...at this point I was already 45 minutes late for when I was meant to meet Jonas, so I asked someone else if they knew where the tram was meant to and they told me that it switches stops between day and night, and that I was at the day terminal, so I found the night one to be a minute away...damn! So I finally arrived at Jonas's place and sheepishly apologized for being so late. We ended up having a good chat, but I was exhausted and just went to sleep and ended up sleeping in until 2 pm.
So I finally figured out why Goteborg was so difficult to find a place to sleep, and it was because there was a huge festival going on that weekend, so that was what made things so tough. I met a few of the new couchsurfers who were coming to Jonas's place, and made my way off, as I had found an emergency couch host in the Northern part of the city, so I was off to his place. I met Nicholas, and he was a fairly interesting character, as he was a 30 something computer nerd who loved hosting people in his one bedroom flat. There were two other guys staying there, one guy was from Italy and covering the festival for a newspaper, while the other guy was some dude cycling across Europe. I ended up getting to a supermarket near his house and finding Billy's Pan Pizza (which was often talked about in the Millenium Trilogy, which were some amazing books btw), so I managed to buy one of them and enjoy the greasyness of it!
Seeing as how Nicholas was kind of a nerdy type, he wasn't really up for doing anything fun, and I didn't want to really stay in all night, since it was a Thursday after all, so I decided to head back to Jonas's place to hang out with him and some of the couch surfers, which was good fun. Unfortunately, I lost track of time, and ended up getting back outside 5 minutes after the last tram of the night left, so I was stuck way in the south end of the city and had a very long way to get back. I started walking towards the downtown core just in case there were some later trams running from down there, but unfortunately there weren't, so I was stuck in the city centre without a way to get home, so I ended up getting a taxi after grabbing some McDonalds and using their free wifi, but when I told the taxi driver where I needed to go he drove me in the completely opposite direction! I started to think he was going the wrong way about 10 minutes into the ride, and then when we arrived at the destination, I told him it was the wrong place so we had to come to an agreement on the pricing for the taxi, which ended up being not too bad.
I unfortunately didn't get back to Nicholas' place until like 4 am, but because I didn't have a key, and I couldn't wake anyone up, I was forced to sit outside the apartment until 6 am when Nicholas woke up and say that I was outside waiting for him ha ha...it was a long wait, and I apologized for getting back at such a weird hour, and just crashed for awhile.
The next day there was a coushsurfing event organized at a pub in the downtown where people were meeting for drinks and "afterwork" where the pub provides free food to people who buy a drink. I got down there a bit early and the place wasn't open yet, so I went and sat down at a cafe when two pretty good English speaking girls walked in. I've been reading an interesting book called the Mystery Method on how to meet women, so I used one of the techniques to go up and ended up sitting down with the girls for a beer. They were in Sweden with Kanye West, as they were dancers for him and from the states. He was playing at the festival, so they were there for a few days for that. We had a good chat, but then I had to leave but it was interesting to try out the technique.
Then it was off to the pub for the free food and to meet some other couch surfers, which was all good fun, as we ended up staying quite late into the evening talking about travels and what not, and one of the Finnish girls there took a liking to me so we ended up heading back to her place to hang out for the night, and had a bit of fun ha ha. Unfortunately she had an early morning and had to go sailing so I had to leave at like 6:30 am and take the tram all the way back to Nicholas' place and awake him again to get back into the place...ahh poor guy having to deal with me!
So after catching up on a bit more sleep, Nicholas took me around for a walk up to a nice point in the city where we could see all of Goteborg, and of course providing a cool place for some more Owlin'...
After walking around for a bit, we headed down to the city centre and hung out there for awhile, then went over to the festival grounds where there were a bunch of people partying before the concerts started, and we ended up meeting up with Jonas and some of his couch surfers. We hung out there for awhile enjoying some music being played by a DJ and just chatting about Swedish things. I happened to be wearing the South Africa rugby jersey, and one guy there was from SA so he was asking me a bunch of rugby related questions, which I had no clue as to the answers ha ha. So anyways, I agreed to come meet back up with Jonas and his group after the concerts were done, so we just went back to Nicholas's place for a bit.
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| Partying outside the Festival |
I went and meet up with Jonas and the crew and we had a few drinks at his place, and then tried to head out to some nightclubs, but the lineups were 2 hours long, as they had some free concerts going on in the clubs, as well. Unfortunately it was already like 4:30 am and everyone except for me was staying at Jonas's place, so they decided to catch the last tram home, and I just decided to wander around the city to kill time until I could get back to Nicholas's place at a decent enough hour so that the door wasn't locked and I didn't have to wake anyone up. I didn't get back until 9 am or so, and then was going to just go out and catch a train to Stockholm and try and catch a ferry to Estonia, but unfortunately I could only get on a late night train, which meant I was going to miss the ferry.
I arrived late in Stockholm, found a hostel, and just hung out with a new group of people, including one American dude who was also doing an around the world tour, and had some pretty hilarious stories. There was also a cool Portuguese dude who had been hitchhiking all the way up to Sweden, and left Portugal with 50 euros in his wallet....pretty impressive. He was a street performer during the day to make enough for food and the occasional hostel, otherwise he was just couchsurfing the whole time. Meeting people like this often inspire me a lot :)
So I just caught up on some sleep, grabbed a lunch and found my way to the ferry terminal, where I was able to get 50% off my ferry ticket since I had a Eurail pass. I was a bit confused when I got into my room, and found one bed only but bags on it....so I thought to myself, hmmm okay, maybe they gave me the wrong room, so I went back up to the desk and said there was someone in my room, to which the lady replied "it's a shared room sir". So I go back downstairs and think to myself, wow this really is a full on shared room, looks like I have to sleep on the floor, so I unroll my sleeping bag and get ready to have a sleep when I look at the wall and realize that there are 3 other murphy beds....ha ha duh! So I pull one out and have a little nap.
I woke up a few hours later and met a cool Brazilian dude who was having some wine, so we went for a walk around the boat, enjoyed some wine, and them some more wine, and then decided to check out the nightclub on the ship....yeah the ferry was a full on party boat with 2 nightclubs, a casino, and such. We were partying until probably about 4 am at least, when we finally called it a night.
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| Hard to see but it says this is Santa Claus's ferry line :) |
So anyways, we were woken up at 10 am by the boat staff to say we had arrived and that it was time to get off the ship....well holy crap were we both so hungover. We started walking off the boat, and the Brazilian couldn't even make it off the boat and had to go lay down on the ground near the exit until they kicked him off, meanwhile, I made it into the terminal, but found a bench and that was as far as I could go. I ended up sleeping on that bench for about 5 hours trying to feel better, but still didn't make much difference. Eventually security woke me up and told me that I had to leave the ferry terminal as it was closing.
Periodically during my sleeping time, I had managed to send out a few couch surfing requests and call some hostels, but only one place had a room available that night, and it was for 70 Euros..ouch! So I eventually made my way out the terminal and found the hostel, and pretty much collapsed into my bed and didn't get up to much. I popped on the internet after a quick dinner, and found that my friend Sampo had finally gotten my facebook messages, and that I could come stay with him for the next few days, which was great! So we made arrangements to meet up the next day.
I walked around Helsinki for a few hours until I was meant to meet up with Sampo, and found some interesting sights (including a Nepalese restaurant that didn't' have Everest beer unfortunately) until he picked me up after he was finished work and took me to his student flat outside of Helsinki. Of course during my walk around I turned on my supposedly indestructible camera and found that I had somehow managed to break the LCD on the ferry the night before, even though it is supposed to be resistant to 6 foot falls..damn!
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| Senate Square |
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| Helsinki Central Station (at this point I realized that I had broken my camera somehow arggh) |
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| Brewed with "Special Himalayan Essence" but brewed in the UK ha ha |
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| Theatre of arts I believe |
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| Near central station |
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| A friendly Canadian creature |
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| Lutheran church in Senate Square..amazing building |
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| On the ferry to the Island |
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| As we were approaching a few of these cannons I yelled out "wow, nice cannons" while a big group of girls walked by :) |
After hanging out on the island for a good portion of the day we ended up grabbing some cheap pizza and beer (5 euros for 1 L of beer and a huge pizza) then went and met some other guys at a pool hall. I ended up schooling the boys pretty good at pool, winning like 5 out of the 6 games or so, which was pretty good for the ego. After the pool, we just went ahead and headed back to Sampos for the night. When we were getting on the train I noticed a pretty girl near us who seemed to be a bit intrigued about our conversation while waiting for the train. When we got on the train, we sat down beside her and I started speaking to her about my travels and what not. Turns out she was a freelance journalist for Helsinki's largest newspaper called Helsingin Sanomat, and was intrigued enough by me that she was considering writing up a story on me for the paper. I gave her a card with my name on it so she could find me on Facebook and get in touch with me if needed, then we said goodbye at our stop and got off.
Sampo was meant to work the next morning fairly early, but after a few too many beers he slept in, but fortunately he was working for his father so it wasn't such a bad thing, as he has flexible hours. Meanwhile, I had purchased a Helsinki card, so I had a few tours and museums to go see by using the card, but unfortunately I arrived just a bit too late to catch the last bus tour of the day (although I later found out I was actually sitting in the wrong place to even get on the bus ha ha ha), so I decided to just walk around a bit more and see the city. I came across a few more cool sights and popped by a museum detailing Finland's history. Eventually Sampo finished work and came to meet me in the town, so we went and did some quick shopping as I really needed some new socks, and then we went to meet one of his German buddies again.
We went for a subway ride to a far East end of Helsinki to find a pub that had 1 Euro beers, but unfortunately it was no longer open. There was also meant to be lots of crazy people there, but we didn't really see too many of them, which was too bad. We ended up stopping at a supermarket and picked up a beer for the walk back into the city, and at this point I must have accidentally left a 50 Euro note on the counter while counting change and left it in the shop...so I basically had a 53 Euro Apple and Beer combo...damn!! At least the name of the beer was comical enough to cheer me up, but I still wasn't too happy about losing the money.
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| loves Le Coq |
The next day Sampo had to leave for a mökki with his friends, but fortunately I was also able to find a mökki of my own through some couchsurfers. For those of you who don't know what a mökki is, it's basically a traditional Finnish cottage on a Lake where people retreat to for weekends and for most importantly, Sauna! Now a lot of us in North America are familiar with Saunas, but this is Finnish Sauna that we're talking about, which is much more intense. Finnish culture revolves around the sauna, as children used to be born in them, and the dead were placed in them until burial. Also, it was a bathing place, and a place to discuss politics, etc. It is very Finnish.
But before I met a bunch of random people for this weekend retreat, I was able to catch up with my friend Sverker who I had met at the World Cup in South Africa the previous summer, and it was nice to have a beer and catch up for an hour or so. Sverker helped out a few friends of mine last year when they were stranded for a place to stay in Helsinki, but unfortunately he didn't have an apartment to let me use this time around, but that was okay since I had Sampo. So I wandered over to the designated meeting place and met Oscar and Lukas, who were the two couchsurfers I was catching a ride with to the mökki.
We ended up meeting the rest of the crew, which consisted of two Brits, a Finnish and Russian couple who organized the weekend, Oscar the Spaniard, Lukas the Austrian, and myself. We all got settled into the cabin, and got to know each other a bit over dinner and some drinks, while the sauna was prepared. Eventually, the organizer went back to grab one other guy who showed up an absolute drunk mess. The guy could barely stand up or speak, and that set the tone for the rest of the weekend unfortunately. Once he fell down a few times, we put him to sleep on the varanda, since no one really wanted him sleeping in the cabin due to his drunkeness. After he went to sleep, we all went and checked out the sauna. Now usually I'm used to a sauna that is maybe 50 to 60 degrees, but Finnish people love their sauna very hot, so it was cranked up to around 90 degrees Celsius....sooooo hot! I could only last about 15 minutes or so, then would run outside and jump in the lake and cool down, then go back in the sauna. One would typically do this 5 or 6 times over a sauna session. We learned a fair bit of knowledge in the sauna from the Finnish guy, which was a good cultural experience.
The next day we went on a nice little nature hike to pick some wild berries and mushrooms (which I was a bit leery about and figured I wouldn't eat any in case they were poisonous ha ha), which the one drunkard from the night before tagged along on, and got absolutely smashed again and fell over several times and pretty much pissed himself. At this point, we were all quite tired of his antics and felt like we had to babysit him from not hurting himself, but eventually he made it back to the camp and went back to sleep again, which was good. We then played a really great Finnish game called Mölkky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6lkky) and we all loved it. I am keen on buying it and taking it back to Canada some day for sure!
After the Molkky a few of us went for a ride on the lake with the boat that came with the cabin, and enjoyed the still calmness of the Finnish nature. We then returned and had a huge feast where everyone chipped in and cooked various things such as Mushroom risotto, sweet potato curry, blueberry and nutella crepes, etc. I ended up eating those questionable mushrooms, as they were in the risotto and didn't die ha ha. After dinner we enjoyed another sauna session, several beers, and great company, until the late evening. When I went to bed in the common room, the one guy was snoring so loudly that I had to move over to the kitchen to try and sleep, but then I could still hear him through the walls ha ha....then I had the worst stomach ache ever, and started to think I was probably poisoned from the mushrooms LOL, but I ended up being fine.
The next morning we cleaned up, said our goodbyes, and hit the road after a great weekend :) Here's some photos....
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| Out on the lake |
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| Mokki! |
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| Where we go cool off after Sauna |
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| Melkky |
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| Can you guess the drunk ha ha |
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| Lukas showing off his rowing form |
So I was just surfing the net for a bit before packing my bags up, when Hertta (the freelance journalist) contacted me and said she talked to her supervisor and was cleared to write up a piece on me, but wanted to have an interview. session. I told her I was going to head to Tallinn that day, but figured I could stick around for one extra night if she wanted to chat. So we agreed to meet up later that evening for an interview and photo session with a photographer from the paper.
So I headed into town, did a funny photoshoot with the photographer in front of Central Station, then went for a nice Italian dinner and interview session. We got along really great and went for a drink afterwards to another pub, and then it was getting late, so we went and caught the train and said our goodbyes. If you are interested in seeing the article then send me an email and I will send you a copy :) reillycowan@hotmail.com
So the next day I was on my ferry to Tallinn, and arrived in Estonia, which I will update on shortly.
Cheers,
Rye
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