Sunday 20th: Helsinki, Sveaborg, plane back to Manchester

The train was supposed to get into Helsinki at 8:30 or so, but after the previous trip I expected there'd be some delays. It was not the case! I woke up at 7:45 expecting to be about halfway there. The guy I shared the cabin with noticed I was awake and told me "15 minutes... Helsinki!" It was a big shock. I hurriedly got my stuff packed up into my bag and put on all my clothes. It was true; we were in the inner suburbs of Helsinki. I could even see the big white cathedralbuilding that I'd visited on my first day.

My bag is packed so I'm watching the suburbs of Helsinki move past. There is an amusement park that can be seen. (rollercoaster on left, ferris wheel to the right).

 We landed in Helsinki. This evening I was heading back to Manchester so I decided to work out how I would get back to the airport. When I arrived the bus dropped me off at the train station, so I should be able to catch it here again to go back. A guy at the information booth who spoke english "just a little" gave me a brochure for each of the two airport busses. The brochures had a map showing where the stop was in relation to the train station. I went and found them because I hate feeling lost at the same time as being late for somewhere.

I wasn't really sure what I would do in Helsinki for this day. I had a brochure on Art-Nouveau architecture around Helsinki. Apparently Helsinki has a good selection of that stuff. But first I wanted to find the sandwich store Subway to get some food. Unfortunately I soon realised that it was Sunday, and so most of the shops were closed until 10 or 11am. It was about 8:30.

Somehow, after wandering around for a while it eventually became 10am and I got in to Subway. I wasn't sure how I would go explaining which pieces of salad I wanted on my sandwich. They probably have their own names for most. I told her that I only speak english, and sorry about that. She said that was very good because she hardly speaks Suomi and is much more confident with english. She is from Estonia. I am very impressed by the amount of languages that people in Europe are able to speak. This lady must have spoken at least three quite competently.

Somewhere in this foreign land I'm hoping to find a tasty sandwich.

No sandwich here. The ground is very ice-y on every street in Finland. Except one street that has no ice at all for some reason. It's usually okay to walk on, because they put these small rocks down. But sometimes there'll be a patch that is just smooth ice which can make you slip a bit.

After my sandwich I walked a tiny section of the architecture walk.

This building has carved figures from or inspired from Finnish mythology.

One of the buildings on the list was the tourist information place (it happened to be in a nice building). I went in and asked about the ferry to the big sea fortress they have here (it's supposed to be one of the best sea forts ever constructed). I was expecting that I wouldn't have enough time to see it and that it'd be expensive since I heard it involved a ferry trip. But the lady told me the ferry was only 4 euros and that I should have enough time to see it in a couple hours. The ferry could be seen from the window and she pointed it out to me.

Unfortunately the next ferry was leaving in 2 minutes. I couldn't really make that. So I walked a little further along the architecture trail. Along the way I found the art gallery, called the Ateneum. It was free, so I had a little look inside. They had some nice paintings by Finnish artists which was a perspective I'd not really seen before. There were lots of depictions of Finnish scenery, and some of industrialisation, and worker uprisings. They also had a Van Gogh painting (the first van gogh ever acquired by a gallery) and another by the famous artist who moved to Tahiti because he was disgruntled with his society (forgot his name).

The ferry runs every hour. I had originally planned to take the one leaving one hour after the one I missed, but I enjoyed the gallery so I spent some extra time and took the one two hours later.

The ferry ride was amazing. The harbour is mostly ice. The path taken by the ferry has cut a route through the thick ice, but there are still lots of chunks of it floating around that the ferry has to ride over. I thought that this experience alone was worth the 4 euro price. I took a few pictures but they didn't capture the mood properly. The motion of cutting through the ice couldn't be captured. So I took a few videos. This is the first time I've taken videos with my camera and I wasn't sure how it would affect the batteries, so I jerked the camera around a lot trying to capture as much as possible. Next time I'll refine my video technique!

This duck thinks it is a great day for a swim. I disagree.

The other side.

I think the videos came out very well for a cheap camera.

The fort (Sveaborg, but I think the Finnish have a different name for it) is on an island. There are actually a few islands very close to each other with bridges between them. There are a lot of buildings on the islands for military things and for where they lived (people still live there). I spent a while wandering around.

These houses were built by traders, I think. People who provided a place to get food etc to the military people on the island.

In this park someone had built a kind of igloo.

Icicles.

An old submarine. I think the sign said that this was built by the Finnish and then some German people were interested in it to get some ideas for their submarines which they later became famous for.

Pretty deep snow! (later I saw another sign like this, and it was only a few feet high ):

Nice view of the city. There is a building on the right which looks very intriguing and I'm regretting that I didn't see it. It looks similar to the Empire State Building in shape, except it has a much larger spike on the top.

This guy thought it'd be a great idea to slide down this very steep hill which ended with the ice of the sea. From the top, the hill drops so steeply that you can't see what is over the side of the hill. Also I think it would be difficult not to gain a lot of speed before hitting the ice at the bottom. I really thought he was about to die! So I took a picture. All his friends were freaking out too. He managed to stop himself, and lives another day.

These people walked down to the ice where one of them put on ice skates. They then walked back along the ice to the mainland and the third one skated back.

A nice American took this photo for me. The cannons are massive.

Some people on parachutes with motors attached to the back. By applying more speed to the motor they can gain height. They can also steer.

This path up to the top of the wall looks very slippery. It's a bit narrow and is covered in snow. The drop to the left is about 4-5 metres. At the base of this, I read a sign from the back since it was slightly transparent. It said "on entry". I was confused. On entry.... what? I walked up and along the walls and then found that all the ways down were blocked by a low metal barricade. That led me to believe that it probably actually said "no entry". Whoops. Nit views from the top though.

The drop from the wall is really precarious. I almost think that walking along here shouldn't be allowed.

I almost lost one of my gloves. But I found it again right where I'd left it. Yay!

Crazy sign.

The dock.

My water is starting to freeze. There is only a tiny line of text on the back saying 'carbonated water'. I didn't notice until after I'd bought it. Damn.

Snowflakes! This is part of my arm. It was snowing very very lightly (you could only occasionally see tiny flecks floating through the air). Very cool that these snowflakes stayed in their snowflake form.

I spent 2 or 3 hours wandering around this old fortress. A lot of the buildings were closed because they were buried in snow, but it was a unique way to see it. I caught the ferry back and took a few more videos.

These dogs came back with us on the ferry. They were freezing! There are more dogs stuffed into the wheeled bag. The black dog is shaved to its skin. Its legs were shaking from the cold :(

I was very hungry so I went to find a pizza store. I found one that was buffet pizza. But it looked a bit average. So I went to the store next door and ordered a 'normal' sized margeritta. I was not sure where this pizza was going to come from. The shop was very small and he didn't seem to have any ingredients lying around. It turned out that he took the vegetables out from his fridge and cut them up individually just for my pizza (after rolling the dough specially). It was a very good pizza. Glad I didn't go to the buffet restaurant.

This pizza is actually about 13-14 inches. Excellent.

Ice skating rink outside the railway station.

-10 today. Quite a warm one.

I couldn't really think of anything else I wanted to do with only an hour or so left so I decided to head to the airport. I found the cheaper bus this day. I asked the driver if it stops at the international terminal as well, because I was tired and felt like asking trivial questions to reassure my tired self. He looked at me with a blank frustrated expression. He didn't seem to speak any english and was frustrated at people assuming that he should. Fair enough.

I got to the airport. I was a bit early, so I decided I'd try and work out some details of what would happen when I got back to England. I was a bit nervous because at the point of arriving in Manchester, my plans ended. My plane was getting into Manchester at 10:15pm and from there I had no hostel or hotel reservations, or train or bus ticket back to Nottingham. Manchester is about 90km straight line from Nottingham.

I spent some time on my netbook using the free airport internet investigating possibilities. By the time it came that I should line up for check-in, I still didn't have any concrete plans. Just a few possibilities that I'd try and choose from when I landed.

I checked in and went through the check to see if I had any dangerous items. I forgot to take off my watch which made the metal detecting machine beep. So the security man gave me the pat down.

Customs stamped my passport to say I was leaving Finland (this didn't happen in England for some reason).

I got a window seat! I'm also at the emergency exit, so I had to familiarise myself with how to open the door. I thought it was neat.

The flight was quite tiring. I was very tired but couldn't get to sleep. We landed, and I got back through customs. I was a bit worried about getting back through. But while in Finland I noticed that when I first got into England, they stamped it saying that I'm allowed entry into the UK for 6 months! Yay.

Then I had to face the problem of what I was doing now. Here are my choices: catch a late train to Nottingham that involves getting off the train in Sheffield at midnight and then catching the next train from Sheffield to Nottingham at 5am or so (this is the only train option and there are no busses). So I would need to pass through the night and catch something the next day. Options: pay for an airport hotel at 85 pounds for the night; catch a train into Manchester, find a hostel somehow and then get a bed for 20-30 pounds; or sleep in the airport. For the next day, the transport options are: catch the early 3 hour train back at 5am, or the cheaper 4 hour bus at 8:30pm.

After investigating the hotel (hearing that it'd be 85 pounds), I decided to look at the terminal which other travellers had said was good for sleeping in. The journey to Manchester to find a hostel seemed way too much effort for this time at night, and the hotel was way too expensive, unless an extreme need for it came up. Having a 5 hour stop over at Sheffield train station was identical to a stopover in the airport, except I thought the airport would be safer. The chairs in the terminal seemed reasonable. I tested it out by lying down for a bit. I felt like I could fall asleep, so I went for it.

Walking to the terminal.

This is the view from my chair where I spent the night.

Me, a little unsure of this prospect.

I laid on the chair over top of my bag so that hopefully no one could steal it. It wasn't that comfortable. At 1am I was woken up by a police lady. I think she must have been trying to get me up for quite a while. I'm a deep sleeper. She just wanted to know where I was headed to and where I'd come from etc. She was happy with my responses and thanked me for helping her out. She was nice. I think there is a loose policy where it's okay to sleep in the airport if you're a traveller stuck between modes of transport, but it's not okay if you're a homeless person because that's outside the purpose of the building. During the night another traveller arrived on a chair nearby. He was sleeping on his suitcase.

At one point I woke up and saw three people streaking through the airport. I don't know if it was a dream or real. My position was accurate. Every detail of the terminal was accurate, and the route where they ran was logical. Very strange.

A few times I had to wake up and change the side that I was sleeping on, but overall I slept quite solidly. I woke up at about 4am when the terminal started to be populated by people. After waking up once or twice and despite the growing crowd beside me, I persisted and got myself back to sleep. I was getting fairly casual about it. Eventually I got up at about 4:30.