Up to Scandinavia : stage 8

Stockholm, Sweden -> Turku, Finland
95.2 km dep: 05:05 arr: 19:45 (+1)
Date: 30/07/2012
Weather: Overcast

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This day of was not like any other because most of the distance was done on the sea: I took a ferry from Stockholm to Finland. Yet, it still was not any other ferry I had taken before; this felt much like a cruise. The vessel was more than 200 meters long and could take in as many as 3000 passengers. Inside it had all the kinds of enternainment one could hope for in a cruise ship: shows, live music, a cinema, many bars, many restaurants, a pool, a sauna, a sun deck, duty free shop, slot machines, etc. Since none of that was free, I mostly kept to reading, working and walking around but 50 Euros for a 11 hours voyage, I cannot complain.

The city of Stockholm turned out to be dissapoiting. While I did not try hard making friends at the hostel, the crowd hovering over downtown was much older than that of the other capitals I went through. As a consequence everything was overpriced restaurants and tourist shops. I strongly suspect that the inhabitants of the city do not hang around that part of town but for a lack of a decent map, I could not find out the districts that still belonged to them.

While walking along the pier tough, I made an interesting encounter. There was camper that really stood out the rest and on closer inspection, it had dozens of stickers from countries all around the world on its back and sported a North Dakota license plate. I decided to go knock on the door to inquire and was met by a very friendly american of around 65 years of age. On telling one another’s story, I learned that they (his wife was away visiting a museum) had been on the road for close to eight years and had seen the whole americas (north and south) and were on their way to completing a full tour of Europe. One question that even before our discussion was bugging me was how they got their camper across the Atlantic and apparently, its much more simple and affordable that it seems. All you have to is make arrangements with shipping companies that ship cars around the world (some boats are made specially for this purpose) and as soon as they get a free slot on one of their cargo they will be more than happy to fill it with your vehicle. It only costed him 2500$ and took about two weeks from Florida to continental Europe (can’t remember where exactly).
It is always inspiring to meet this kind of persons and luckily, they keep a log of their adventures at Travelling Tortuga.

I am now sitting in the Finnish wilderness by small campfire I made because it is quite cold out. Tomorrow, I will be in Helsinki. As a matter a fact, I could already be dare had I taken another ferry but I wanted to drive around Finland.