Day Ferry to Turku
We set our alarm for 5:00 in order to pack up and leave for the subway by 6:00 so that we could catch the ferry to Turku by 7:00. Stockholm’s subway stations are world famous for their design. Some people boast that it is the world’s largest underground museum and recommend riding the whole line stopping to see each station. I wouldn’t go that far but I did like the two station’s we saw on our way to the ferry terminal. The second one was particularly cool with the artwork on the ceiling above the exit’s impossibly long escalator designed in such a way that it seemed like a person was ascending into the design. (stop one, stop two)
A very long escalator.
A lot of staircases in Scandinavia have these stroller-ramps.
We made it to the ferry terminal in with plenty of time before departure which was good because it took us quite a while to check in as the man in front of us, who seemed to have had plenty to drink for 6:45 in the morning, was engaged in an exhaustive argument with the clerk behind the ticket counter. Eventually they sorted things out and we got our tickets approved then went to stand with the other passengers in a large milling group waiting to board.
Finally the ferry operators opened the gates. Paul and I were excited to be at this stage of the trip’s journey because our route took us through the Åland Islands which had fascinated us from the time we had first found out about them. The 6000+ islands of the Åland Islands sit between the Stockholm and Turku archipelagos at the southernmost part of the Gulf of Bothnia. The Åland Islands are a strange political entity. They are an autonomous region but also belong to Finland even though the official language is Swedish and they have their own flag and elected government. Between the archipelagos and the Ålands the ferry would be passing through a narrow corridor surrounded by some 20,000 islands. Even before the ship started moving we were on the topmost observation deck, 12 stories up, to take a look around. The islands are very beautiful gray slabs of rounded granite just barely lifting themselves out of the sea. From a distance the treeless ones look like the backs of whales. Many of the larger islands were treed however, pine and birch forests on the Stockholm and Åland Islands, almost exclusively pine nearer to Turku. Most beautiful to me were the autumn red-gold marsh grasses on the shores of some of the islands, often, if still near Stockholm, with a small red and white wooden summer house sitting between the marsh grass and the trees.
Paul and Kaitlin walking on the top deck.
Scarries in the Stockholm archipelago.
Other ferries were passing us all day.
No matter how pretty it was it was also very damp and chilly so we eventually made our way back inside. We spent almost the whole day inside at a table by a window looking out and commenting on the view while all around us our fellow ferry passengers had a very different idea of what was fun about taking the day ferry to Turku. As soon as we had gotten on the boat via an elevator ride full of drunken Finns we figured out why the all-day ferry ride was only 16 euros. The ships are casinos and duty free alcohol drinking zones. Even before the ferry left port little kids were running around putting coins into slot machines and as the day progressed people were sitting down to do some serious drinking. There were several bars and the cafeteria buffet offered beer, and wine on tap next to the soda fountain.
Kids gambling.
There was a duty-free shop on the 7th floor of the 12 story ship that had great piles of stacked up beer cases and rows and rows of wine and spirits, mostly vodka. The prices were wildly cheaper than in Bergen and we bought a bottle of wine, coffee liqueur, a small flask of Finnish licorice vodka and some truffles. We had our first Finnish food on the ferry – buffet style comfort food potatoes, cabbage and meat heavy on butter and smothered in cream.
The ferry was also our first encounter with hearing Finnish spoken in conversation. Finnish is famously hard for English speakers (or anyone really) to learn and the polite but firm suggestion is to not even try. Because of this the Finns have decided that it is most practical to be multilingual so almost everyone we encountered spoke either English or could understand Paul’s attempts at Swedish. This is good because Finnish was by far the furthest I’ve strayed from my language comfort zone. The first time someone said something to me in Finnish my brain didn’t even process it as a language, just as a wall of sound. Once I adapted to hearing it around me though I was delighted – its a beautiful language to see and hear even if it is totally alien.
The sun was setting around 4:45 at the beginning of the trip and it was quite dark by the time we pulled into Turku around 6:30. Announcements came over the loud speakers in Finnish, Swedish, Russian, and English that we were to gather on deck 5 to exit. Once we were gathered there however, a great mass of people each made larger than life by all the coats, hats, gloves, scarves, and overboots worn to ward off the Turku cold, we waited for almost half an hour before the doors were opened. This gave me plenty of time to notice that while everyone not only smelled rather beery, but were also almost all carrying 24 packs of Karhu beer in rectangular cases under their arms, or on small hand carts stacked 4 or 5 high and tied on with bungie cords, no one seemed impatient or out of control and when the doors finally opened the mass of people somehow magically formed a nice orderly line pulling their beer trolleys behind them off the boat into the Turku night.
Where to go now? This was the one connection of our trip Paul had always been a little vague on. We needed to take a No. 1 bus into the city but where it would be was unknown. I walked up to a random person who pointed to a bus that was just pulling up saying, “That’s the No. 1 going downtown.”, so we gratefully got on. Then what? Part two of the unknown was how to get to our hotel from the bus stop. The girl across the aisle from us in the bus leaned over, “Excuse me, do you need help?” She even went so far as to get off with us and walk us over to the door of the hotel even though it was a little out of her way. We were doubly grateful. Then the third task – could we get into our hotel? This was an Omena hotel – a strange Finnish creature with no front desk staff. You make a reservation online and receive a code to punch in after 4:00 on the day you reserved the hotel room for. If you lose the code too bad. If the code doesn’t work… We punched it in and the door opened! We went upstairs to our reserved room and punched the code in again. Again it worked! We had completed all the tasks and the day’s travel tale was complete.
Ferry stop at the Åland Island capitol of Mariehamn.
The sun hangs low in the sky in November this far north.
