Boozy Baltic Buccaneers

Photos Added...!

Christmas Market in the square below the Cathedral, Helsinki.  No Snow!! It was a "Black" (aka green) Christmas in most of the southern part of Finland this year.

I met Scott in Helsinki on Thursday morning and we had a few days there to check out the big city, or pääkaupunki (literally "head city" aka capital city).  We spent most of the time wandering the streets, checking out the architecture and stopping in on a few shops.  There was a big Christmas market in the square at the base of the Helsinki Cathedral, so we spent some time there looking at what the stalls had to offer.  Lots and lots of knitted things, wooden things, woven things, home-baking, and of course the odd place with some very imported-looking goods.  I could be wrong, but it was sort of like the old "One of these things is not like the others" game.

Not the exact ship we sailed on, but pretty much identical.  There are passenger decks above (alcohol store, bars, shops, restaurants) and the middle decks have cabins (for consumption of purchased alcohol) and the lowest decks have cars.

After a couple of days in Helsinki, Scott and I set off on a quintessentially Finnish experience - the Estonian Booze Cruise.  Due to taxes, alcohol is significantly cheaper in Estonia than it is in Finland.  The obvious solution is to go to Estonia regularly to a) stock up and b) party.  Several ship lines run regular sailings each day between Helsinki and Tallinn that take about 2.5 hours each way.  These may be ferries, but they are nothing like the BC Ferries I am familiar with.  For starters...there are cabins.  Some of the sailings leave Helsinki in the evening and then overnight in Tallinn harbour.  This way people can party all evening, pass out in a cabin, then find themselves in the land of cheap liquor in the morning.  This sort of brings me to the second difference: the passenger decks don't really have seating areas. Instead.... there are bars, gambling areas, an enormous liquor store, a dance floor, cafés and restaurants, but no real areas to just be comfortable and wait out the 2.5 hour journey.  There are no real restrictions on these bars and gambling areas; children can be seen running across the dance floor at the bar or teetering on their tippie-toes to reach the buttons on a slot machine.  Ok, so, children aren't served in the bars, they are merely present and they may not have actually been playing the slot machines, just pressing the buttons. 

Old Tallinn street and graffiti

Our crossing had some pretty rough waters, so people were having trouble maintaing their balance as we rolled across the Baltic Sea.  However, I noticed that when we got to the calmer waters just outside the port of Tallinn, people still had trouble maintaining their balance....and wow...what A LOT of people.  We went on a Saturday at a popular sailing time and the boat was PACKED!!  I have never seen so many Finns get so close to each other as on that boat.  Never mind that old "personal space" cliché...we were just packed in there.  Especially as we queued to get on and off the ship.  It was most entertaining as we left the ship to go into Tallinn.  These were hundreds of the most...uh..."talkative" Finns I have ever met.  Some still had beer glasses in their hands, others swayed merrily with their suitcase in tow as we were herded down the gangplank...and disappeared into the horizontal sleet we had arrived to...

Orthodox Cathedral

Prayer at the cathedral steps

This is our second night in Tallinn and it's an interesting place.  Most of the city is pretty "normal,"  but there is a section called "Old Town" that is medieval.  Very neat old city wall, winding old streets, apartment blocks, aaaaaand.... churches, churches, churches.  The only thing that outnumbered the churches were souvenir shops (...and the tourists outnumbered those).  There was, of course, a Christmas market, cafés, restaurants, museums, embassies...all neatly contained within the old city walls...where they still exist.  If you ever have the chance to come to this Nordic/Baltic part of the world, I do recommend it...just hope for better weather than what we have found!  Snow would improve matters as would sunshine...

Christmas Market in the main square.  Rain...rain...wind....rain...

A forgotten corner of Old Town