We Gotta Get Out of this Place

I have been in the Scandinavian Countries for the past couple of weeks. This afternoon, I am happy to be watching the coast of Finland fade into the distance from a ferry cruising across the Baltic Sea. Its not that they are particularly bad places, In fact they are quite nice, if bland and orderly is your thing.

I was sorting through the pictures from the Scandinavian leg of this trip and was having a hard time telling the countries apart from just the image content. Architecture is all pretty much the same. Especially when you get outside the historic center of town. Apartment block after apartment block. Nothing really standing out.

I don’t know if it was because I was at the end of a long cold winter or what, but I didn’t find the people to be very engaging as a whole. No smiles on the street, no eye contact. Earbuds in and stare straight ahead. I only met a nice couple in a brewery in Copenhagen. He is Irish and she is Norway. I think they were eager to talk to someone new too and they live there.

The high prices for everything make it hard to get out and really enjoy it all. In my opinion, $10 beers are an abomination to the order of the universe and should not be encouraged. I have a beer and nurse it for an hour while people watching. As mentioned above, not much to see. I hear that most people start their evening’s festivities at home over a batch of homemade hooch or their stash of duty free liquor. If they make it out, it isn’t until midnight or later. My experience is that only Youtube benefits from mixing midnight with alcohol so I tend to avoid them these days.

Luckily, I am a walker. Based on my GPS watch, I have been getting 10 miles or more of city walking a day. Just roaming around looking at stuff. Which I love to do. I rarely hit a museum. I just don’t like standing in line to look at stuff that I can see on the sofa and searching Google.

I did go to the Munch museum in Oslo where I got a good talking to because I used a tripod to take a picture. The security guard seemed pretty eager to yell at me but I was like sorry, didn’t see the sign. He wouldn’t let it go al thought there wasn’t much he could add to berating since he stated the rule and I agreed it was a good rule, so he just kept saying the same thing over and over until I just walked away. It was weird but it does make me smile just a bit. The Museum itself, didn’t even have the famous screaming man painting though. Just some other paintings that I am sure were good since the guy got a whole museum that they are able to charge people $15 just to walk through. I think there is a connection but not sure. They were showing a full-length movie on TV’s all the way through the museum. Each TV at a different part of the movie. It didn’t look like a very happy movie, cause it showed a woman graphically dying of TB at the end or middle or beginning depending on where you were at in the museum when you came across the scene. Not that I think about it, if you had unlucky timing, you could see the woman throwing nasty black bile every three feet of the museum.

 

As the Estonian coastline draws near, I’ll close of the Scandinavian leg of the trip with a quick recap.

Oslo: I have yet to speak to anyone that hasn’t agreed that Oslo is pretty boring. Especially on a late winter rainy weekend. Good place to walk around for a bit but even that turns into more of the same.

Bergen: the outdoors is the attraction here. Although, with the rain, I was mostly limited to looking at them from the indoors. I see why Bergen and Seattle have a sister city connection. Same weather, same access to water and mountains. There were other places on the Norwegian coast that I would have liked to have seen but were closed for the season. I think drier weather would have warmed me up to the area but the rain had set in for the much of the 10 day forecast so I decided to give up and move on.

I decided to fly from Bergen to Copenhagen. Although I am not in any hurry, a train would have taken a day and a half and a stop over in Oslo. The good thing is that flying is usually way cheaper than the train over here. The train does save the wear and tear of getting to and from the airport but that is offset by having to stare at mile after mile of flat Scandinavian landscapes broken up by an occasional red house or 2.

With rain delays and some equipment issues, I didn’t get into Copenhagen at 10pm. I was worried that the owner of the guest house would be long asleep by the time I got to the front door. I think I did wake him up when I finally rang the buzzer owner. He was very nice though, showed me around and left me to my devices. Which at midnight, after a long day of travel. are my toothbrush and pajamas. I was more tired than hungry and breakfast was just a few hours away.

I started my first Copenhagen morning with a $15 sandwich and a cup of coffee. Nothing special about either but that is what things cost there. I moved to the hostel, dropped my luggage and headed out.

Copenhagen. It is a good walking town. I walked for miles and miles and kept coming into new neighborhoods. The Little Mermaid statue was something to see, once, but a little underwhelming to be honest. The Sun came out for a little bit and helped with the pictures taking.

The 3 days I was there were mostly spent walking around. There are a lot of different neighborhoods that were interesting to see. On my last day there, the weather turned really nice. Still chilly but a nice day to while an afternoon at the famous Tivoli Gardens Amusement Park. It is a mix of Disney and Epcot without taking out a mortgage to pay for it. One of my favorite things so far. Later, I (and most of Copenhagen) came across a waterfront warehouse that had been converted to an indoor food court with outdoor seating. Great way to spend an afternoon.

In short, I really like Copenhagen. My favorite place so far.

I mentioned that planes are much cheaper than trains. But busses still beat them both. They are a little slower than trains but not by much. I didn’t really have anything to do in Stockholm that required getting there very quickly. The bus let me see the Bridge from Denmark to Sweden up close. Spoiler alert: Its just a long bridge with water views. Nothing special. After that it is 9 more hours of the aforementioned flat landscape and red houses. The sun was just setting as the bus pulled into Stockholm. There were no stops for food or beverage along the way so I broke down and hit the bus station Subway Sandwich shop.

By the time I was done with dinner, It was dark and had a 30 minute walk to the hotel. It was a nice walk through the cobblestone alleys of old town of Stockholm. I found the hotel and went out again. Just more walking. There wasn’t much going on worth dropping $10 on a beer. I turned in early instead.

More walking in the morning brought me to where the terrorist attack had occurred a few days earlier. The crowds were back along with piles of flowers all over the street where it happened. It was good to see that everything had gotten back to normal so quickly.

Stockholm is pretty small so I walked a lot and covered most of what a tourist sees when they go to Stockholm. I did take the bus to the world’s largest IKEA just south of the city. It was interesting. Instead of the winding path through the store like the others I have been in.  This was a multi level building each floor laid out in a circle. I had lunch there and as expected was cheap but not very good. From what I could tell they sell pretty much the same things as every where else except for Swedish Fish gummy candy. Which was really the only I buy there anymore. I was disappointed.

Back in Stockholm, I resumed my stroll but kept coming up on the same stuff so I broke down and went to a museum; the Medieval Museum. It was free and I was cold so I went it and it was well the price paid. It was pretty interesting. I wasn’t sure how much was real excavation and how much was just arranged to tell the story of how Stockholm looked 600 years ago. Either way, it’s a good place to spend a half hour.

But with that, I was bored again. I went out for a couple of beers that night but was happy that it was my last day there.

The next Leg was the all night ferry to Helsinki. My previous experience with the all night Ferry were just people laying around wherever they could find a spot. Not comfortable but cheap and did the job.

This ferry was a cruise ship with a garage. It had a casino, several restaurants, and a night club. None of which really interest me so I had a couple of beers, walked around and then went to my cabin. It was huge. 4 births and bathroom all to myself. I enjoyed that trip although, I could have done with less kids running around all over the place.

I arrived in Helsinki to a cold snowy day. It wasn’t much snow though. It didn’t even stick. Just enough to make the 30 minute walk to the hotel a bone chilling effort. By the time I got checked in, the sun even starting coming out. I had a Sushi buffet for lunch and it was pretty good for 15 Euro.

As I do, I walked around Helsinki. It is even smaller than Stockholm and with it being so cold, I didn’t mind that I logged fewer miles than usual. I popped in and out of the shops to warm up but nothing really caught my interest.  I went out for a bit that night but was underwhelmed. Nothing interesting to make me want to settle in on a bar stool somewhere and drink $10 beers. I had a feeling it was going to be like that, so I only booked two nights and reserved my ferry ride out of town.

 

With that, here I sit, with Finland to my back and Estonia ahead. Lets see what changes.