Day 18: Tallinn

Saturday, August 31

Eighteen days. This trip has now exceeded the length of Amanda's & my original Europalooza.
    If i'd gone just a little further down the hallway and turned the corner last night, i would have found that there's a green couch in a vestibule that's next to a power outlet, and not directly outside the shower room. It is at the intersection of several other dorm rooms, but it might be a little quieter here.
    I'm starting to write this at 11:30pm, against my better judgement. I'll try to keep it short. You know. Like i do.
    Despite how excited about Estonia i had been before the trip, and how bummed i was when Stockholm ran a day late, then Helsinki ran a day late, then i discovered the travel disruption at the Estonia/Latvia border which forced me to now cut half a day off the end of my Tallinn time...i still got started real slow this morning. This is my only full day in Tallinn, and i do not feel that i utilized it effectively. It did rain all morning, though, which probably affected my willingness to go outside.
    I did take a shower though, that was good.
    It was nearly noon by the time i was actually leaving the hostel. I was looking for food, even though i didn't feel like i was that hungry. I did feel a little weak, and my brain was maybe a little sluggish...and as i walked down the street, i suddenly realized i hadn't eaten since the Finnish spite pizza, other than a small bag of chips on the ferry. It had been 24 hours since i'd had a meal.
    Hopefully some food would make my brain work enough to make decisions.
    I found myself at a pub called Hell Hunt. Incredible name, if you read it as English. I kept thinking of it as a Bob's Burgers reference, even though, obviously, no.
    Translated from Estonian, though, it literally means "Gentle Wolf."
    I walked up to the building, and saw their logo, a naked blonde woman riding on a wolf's back, with an affectionate smile on her face. This may as well be a portrait of Amanda.
    The internet had recommended their pub burger, so i went for that. Some of the salads looked more interesting, but i was too hungry for a salad. A burger would do nicely.
    And it was quite good! I don't know that it's incredibly distinguished from other pub burgers, but it was reasonably priced and came with fries, which is not something you find in the kinds of hip-looking bars like this in the United States anymore. It came with a white sauce for the fries that i found delectable.
    I also had one of their brewed-in-house ciders, the Hell Hunt Siider. Same sentiment; it was very good, but i'm not sure that it's very distinguishable from other ciders that i've enjoyed.
    The bar also featured local artwork across its walls, much of which was for sale. There was also an interesting nature-focused wallpaper on the lower half of the walls.
    Other items on the menu include a salted herring, boiled egg, and potatoes dish like what i had in Helsinki, although listed as a main course this time, and a pig's tongue, as an appetizer. I thought about that pig's tongue. I really did. But in the end, i was not feeling ready to roll those dice.
    Since i was in the area, i decided to go ahead and walk through that KGB Prison Cell Museum that i saw yesterday.
    It was haunting. The building was originally constructed as residential apartments in 1912, but during the Soviet occupation, the holding cells were built in the basement, and the rest of the building was converted for government use.
    The museum includes a full timeline of the building's history, from inception through the first Russian occupation, through German occupation during WWII, then the post-war Soviet era through 1991, and into present day. That building has lived many different lives. When Estonia gained independence, it was used for their fledgling government to get things in motion. Then it was Tallinn's police station for a while. It was only finally returned to habitable apartment space in 2013.
    Each room in the museum tells harrowing stories of how people were arrested by the KGB for little to no cause at all, held without trial, tortured, and sentenced to hard labor or death. They have one of the interrogation chairs on display in the first room, with arm and leg restraints included. They have an example of a small closet that people were sometimes shoved into for days on end.
    Then you turn the corner into the second part of the museum, which includes a solitary confinement chamber, and has boards explaining the mass deportations of Estonian citizens to Siberia, the separations of family, and children being sent into orphanages which programmed them to be good Soviet citizens, on a steady educational diet of propaganda. There are letters that were sent between family members that detailed the hardships they faced, the lack of food and clean water, the deaths of parents and children. Reading the firsthand accounts is absolutely devastating.
    And it leaves me absolutely gutted to think about how the United States is doing all of this right now, under both major political parties. The family separations at the borders. The unmarked police trucks grabbing protestors off the streets and holding them without charges. See, the problem wasn't communism, it was authoritarianism all along.
    Since i've been here, i've heard a lot of concern among people about the war in Ukraine. I feel like Americans have largely forgotten that that one is still going on. It definitely hits harder here, as Estonia was also part of the USSR, against their will, and there is a lot of worry that if Russia is successful in Ukraine, they will attempt to retake the Baltic states as well. They've seen this all before, they do not want to see it again.
    Saint Olaf's Church is on the next intersection from the KGB holding cell museum. I thought i'd give that a look.
    I think i may have written some misinformation about Saint Olaf's yesterday. For one, it was built in the 12th century, not the 16th; but 1590 is when the tower was reconstructed to its maximum height of 159 meters, making it, at the time, not the tallest building in Europe, but in the entire world. The church has been fully destroyed by fire three times, and the tower has been rebuilt several more times than that. It currently stands at 124 meters.
    It was originally constructed as a Roman Catholic church, became a Lutheran church during the Reformation, and switched to Baptist in 1950 as a mass exodus of Germans from the city led to the Lutheran congregation being too small to support the building.
    During the Soviet era, the church tower was used as a radio tower and observation post by the KGB.
    Entry to the church was free, so i looked around a bit, and found it mostly to be just a church. But then i paid six dollars for the right to climb the church's claustrophobic spiral staircase up the tower. Just like we did at the Christchurch in Christchurch, New Zealand. As i entered, i snapped a quick pic and sent it to Alyssa. "This looks familiar," i wrote.
    My legs were burning as i chugged up those stairs. My breathing was labored gasps. The sweat poured out in buckets.
    But i made it, without taking more than a quick moment to pause once or twice.
    I kept thinking, if walking up a few stairs is getting me this badly, there's no way i'm going to be in shape to run a marathon in November.
    I know stairs are entirely different from running, but i don't feel like this bodes well for my physical state in that kind of a situation. I gotta get back to training.
    After the spiral staircase, which does break a couple of times, once for a straight set of stairs, once for a flat, straight hallway, to give you a few seconds respite (and the spirals switch direction after each, so you can work both your legs evenly!), i entered a large, wooden attic. There were two people sitting at an information desk, but there was a wooden causeway that zigzagged across the floor, with rails, so i don't know how you're supposed to reach the desk if you need it. The path leads to another staircase, this one only about a story and a half, but so shallow and narrow and steep that it's nerve-wracking to put your feet on it and ascend. I used the rails on both sides to keep steady, and still felt like i was falling backward.
    This final staircase leads you to a hatch that pops you right out on top of Saint Olaf's spire. Here you are, over a hundred meters above Tallinn, standing on a narrow metal catwalk around the outside of a church spire. You can walk all the way around it, all four sides of this square tower, for a 360 degree view of the city. There are guardrails and a fence which extends above your head and becomes a roof, so you can't fall off; but on the other side, there is nothing, so you can touch the oxidized copper roof of the actual tower. It's covered in scratched-out graffiti.
    I counted the stairs on the way back down. 257.
    On the way back down, it's much more noticeable how uneven these stairs are, how the distance between them is not uniform. And hell, that uppermost staircase, the one that leads to the outside at the top, was so vertigo-inducing to go down that i almost did it backwards. Probably should have, to be honest. Probably should've treated it more like a ladder.
    From there, i got on a bus to the Tallinn Open Air Museum, which is well outside of downtown. If i hadn't gotten such a slow start this morning, i would have gone there first; Triin was singing with a group there at 11am. Sorry i missed it.
    She did meet me there, though. So we walked around the museum together for a while. Like the open air museum in Oslo, it's a collection of buildings that have been moved here, representing all eras of Estonia's history.
    Triin first took me to their newest acquisition, an apartment building that was constructed in the 1960s. It has four large apartments in it, and each has been decorated to represent how it would have been laid out in different decades of Estonia's past. The first two were the 60s and 70s, which honestly were more or less what you'd expect.
    Then we got to the 90s. This is a period right after Estonia gained its independence, and did not have a functioning economy. The country was very poor, just setting out on its own again after six decades of oppression. The 90s apartment is filled with outdated appliances and furniture, in various states of disrepair, and the kitchen is filled with trash, dirty dishes in the sink, and every visual shorthand for poverty you might imagine. The kitchen table is covered in liquor bottles.
    The last apartment is supposed to represent present day, and it is a dramatic contrast from the 90s apartment. Everything is updated, modern, and in good condition; the design of it is very similar to what we'd expect in a middle-class apartment in America.
    We talked a bit about how the economy shifted in Estonia over the last few decades, and how Finland is largely responsible for Estonia's recovery over that period.
    We saw some windmills. We walked through many much older houses, many which more resemble huts or log cabins. We walked through some buildings which came from southern Estonia, which has a very different culture; these homes themselves come from a city that Estonia did not get back in 1991, it is still in Russia today.
    We grabbed some food at a restaurant inside the museum. I asked Triin what would be the most traditionally Estonian item on the menu, and she guided me toward a dish with roast pork, boiled potatoes, and sauerkraut. I thought about ordering something else, because i don't like sauerkraut, but hell. This trip has seen me intentionally put both beer and bleu cheese in my mouth on purpose more than once. Let's see where we stand with sauerkraut now.
    She also encouraged me to try a drink called Kvass, which looks like a beer, but is non-alcoholic. She said it's very sweet, but even with that head's up, i was not prepared for it to be sweet. If beer tastes like bread (i said "if," put your pitchforks away), then Kvass is a King's Hawaiian Roll.
    The pork was pretty good! The potatoes were alright. And the sauerkraut...yeah it worked for me today. It was not bad. I did not hate it. I ate it all. Not on its own, i was shoveling it on top of bites of potato or pork, but i feel like that's how it's supposed to be eaten, right?
    Would i seek out sauerkraut and eat it intentionally? No, probably not.
    But i also might not avoid it in the future.
    I don't know, it might just be the difference of having authentic sauerkraut in a country where it's culturally relevant, versus having it on a hot dog in Waterloo, Wisconsin during a once-a-year festival. Someone in Denmark suggested that maybe i never liked beer because i only ever had American beer. And the bleu cheese...yeah, that's European too. Maybe i just never liked these things because i've only had imitations of the masters before.
    Or maybe my palette has just changed as i've gotten older. Who knows.
    Or maybe it's a phase.
    Hey we're on page 100 of this document now.
    We hopped on the bus over to a pier Triin wanted to show me. It started raining as we got off the bus, which turned into a downpour by the time we reached the water. We hid under an overhang with a dozen other people and a shiba inu for maybe fifteen minutes, then, as suddenly as it started, the rain was over.
    Once it was clear, we walked down the pier for a minute, saw a DJ performing under a tent, and then headed back.
    The pier was really just a way to kill a little time before the Muinastulede Öö, the Night of the Ancient Lights, a traditional ceremony held on the 31st of August every year, where several small bonfires are lit on the beach, plus several out in the water, and then an enormous one on the beach. It's to celebrate the end of the summer, but also has its roots in ancient sailing, outlining the land for the boats at sea. Like lighthouses.

    It was starting to sprinkle again as we were leaving the bonfires. We had taken a Bolt car to get here, which is a car-sharing system that uses an app to get you into one of hundreds of vehicles around town. Kind of like a Lime scooter, but it's a car.
    Triin parked by the bus stop near her house, and we stood under the shelter as it downpoured and chatted for a bit while waiting for my bus to come take me back to the hostel. I thanked her for showing me around these last couple days, and we said goodbye, probably never to meet again. I'm glad we did. She's a good person. I had a good time this weekend. She wants me to let her know how hot it is in Spain when i get there.
    Old Town seemed a little quieter tonight when i walked in, but by the time i made it to the Monk's Bunk, it was still clearly loud and bumping. The bar/check in area was packed, the common room was packed, the courtyard outside had people drinking and smoking even though it had just stopped raining. I made my way through the bustle, intending to go upstairs, do my log, and go to bed. However, i was a long way off from my water goal for the day, so instead i went downstairs to fill my bottles again.
    There were a couple guys in the kitchen eating sandwiches. One of them said hey, and reflexively, i said "Hey, how's it going?" as i proceeded to the sink.
    A moment later, after he swallowed the bite of his sandwich, one of them said, "Good, it's going well. That's a fancy camera you've got there."
    "Thanks," i said. "I'm pretty happy with it."
    So we got talking. His name is James, he's from New Zealand, and he wants to get into the film industry. He's thinking about moving to Amsterdam for it, he says the Netherlands actually has a pretty strong film industry and he thinks that's where he wants to go.
    He's pretty early on in his travels as well. I thought i was a little bonkers, going for two months. James is planning to travel for a full year.
    More power to him.
    There was a third guy hanging out with them that had been out of the room. He came in, and was also immediately quite taken with my camera. He's a photographer himself.
    The other two guys are from Italy, and i cannot remember their names, but one of them kept feeding me cookies while we talked. All three of these guys just met yesterday and have been hanging out since.
    The photographer asked me to show him something i've taken today that i'm proud of, and i tried to deflect for a minute, i'm never comfortable showing my video clips before they're edited and put in the intended context, but i showed him a bit of the huge bonfire on the beach. He and the other guy were very impressed.
    "Holy shit, that's here? In Tallinn?"
    "Yeah, on the beach. Today's the bonfire festival," i said, or something like that.
    "Oh, yeah," James said. "Someone was telling me about that on the ferry. I think i knew about it, and forgot!"
    The two Italians were loudly disappointed about this, they would have really liked to go.
    The conversation shifted to them talking about picking up girls, which is what they've been doing across Europe, and at that point i bowed out and headed upstairs. I'm too old and introverted for this conversation. They were heading out clubbing sometime after 10. I am going to bed.
    And hoping that, at some point, the taste of sauerkraut gets the fuck out of my mouth.

Day 17: Helsinki -> Tallinn

Friday, August 30

Part the First: Helsinki

I've made a mess of my locker over the last few days in this hostel, so i made sure to set an alarm for 7:00am, to ensure i had enough time to sort my shit and repack my bag before checkout.
    I hadn't slept terribly well that night, maybe the first bad sleep i've had in Europe, actually. So i turned that alarm off, but fortunately had the cognizance to set one for 7:30 before i drifted back off.
    I turned that one off too, but fortunately had the cognizance to set one for 8:00 before i drifted back off.
    Then i was awoken by an alarm that i couldn't reset.
    The fire alarm.
    It took a moment to register that that was what i was hearing. I sat up and looked around to see if anyone else was responding, and slowly, they were. I grabbed my dirty shirt from the top of the locker, which, on the top bunk, was functionally my nightstand, and descended the ladder.
    In my little cubby of the room, there are two bunk beds, four mattresses, and only the bottom bunk across from me was occupied last night. He had come in late and hadn't bothered with the locker at all, all of his stuff was strewn about the floor between our beds. He was also slowly rousing.
    I opened the locker to grab my cargo shorts, because i was not walking out of this hostel and leaving my passport to burn. That seemed like it would end in a lot of legal hassle, and i am 30 or 40 years old and i do not need that. I pulled them on over top of the basketball shorts i've been sleeping in.
    Since i was in the locker anyway, i grabbed my laptop and the R6m2. My SD card wallet is already in the cargo shorts, as well as my regular wallet. Put my shoes on, and followed the slow, confused herd of other backpackers out into the common area.
    There was still no sign of an actual fire, so a lot of people were simply congregating there, discussing how to react. Someone said that he'd heard it was a false alarm, but as i looked around the room, none of the staff were there. It's 24 hour reception, i've been in that room at 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon, there's always at least two people behind the desk.
    Did they all abandon us in our rooms when the alarms went off? They didn't make any effort to make sure people were awake and moving?
    I guess they're all college-age and probably getting paid minimum wage, it's probably not really their job to do that. When the alarm sounded, they probably just fucked off immediately. I can't really blame them.
    I didn't want to be caught waiting around in the bar like a dipshit if the building really was on fire, so i headed downstairs and out the door. Most of the hostel's tenants were gathered across the street, their attire showing a wide variety of levels of concern at what they thought was necessary before evacuation. Several of them had their phones out and were taking pictures or video of the building, but when i looked up, i couldn't see anything.
    No sooner had i joined the throng than i heard the sirens of the approaching firetruck.
    We waited outside for maybe twenty minutes, and then the fire department cleared us to go back inside. I never got any further information on what had happened.
    Well, i'm up, so i guess i'll just wait for breakfast to be-
    Hold up. The full breakfast buffet is already set up. There's dirty dishes on the tables.
    Breakfast starts at 7, not 8.
    Well. Okay then.
    This explains how the hard-boiled egg basket was already empty at 8:10am yesterday.
    I ate, i did morning things, i got my bag packed up, and i checked out of the hostel around 10. I needed to send some mail, which i wasn't entirely sure how to do, so i talked to the desk clerk about it. Unfortunately, since i did not already have stamps, i needed a full-service post office, and there wasn't one nearby. The closest one was in the opposite direction of where i needed to go. Since i was heading toward the docks, she ended up sending me to Helsinki's main post office, near the central train station.
    As seems to have been my morning ritual the whole time i've been here, i stopped into the grocery store that's in the corner of the same building with the hostel and bought a Pepsi Max and a metro ticket for the day. Then i was off.
    Walking over to the tram platform, i mused about how 20-year-old Trevor would have been appalled at the leisurely pace of my trip. Up at 7:30 but not out of the hostel until after 10?? Absurd! Wasting time abroad! He would have been trying to pack in as many sights and activities as possible, so as not to "waste time" and to "get the most value for his money." As if he was ticking boxes. As if he was trying to win at vacation. He also would have burned out by now, as evidenced by how high the stress levels between himself and his companions on previous trips had been.
    I was definitely feeling the stress in Stockholm, but i seem to have relaxed and settled into a rhythm for this one in Helsinki. The slower pace is suiting me. I may not be seeing and doing as many things in each 24 hour period as i could, but i'm taking the time to absorb and enjoy them as i go, give things as much time as they need to sink in and permeate my mind. Giving my emotions time and space to breathe.
    If i only have six hours of adventure per day, and i spend the rest relaxing, then this trip is a success. A true vacation. I'll take it.
    Even though i'm literally building the tracks right in front of the train, as it's about to roll over them, scheduling-wise. It's fine. It's fine!
    Exiting the tram at the Helsinki Central Train Station, i was immediately confronted with the four statues that make up The Lantern Bearers - an Atlas Obscura point that i had not bothered with. I didn't realize they were attached to the facade of the Central Train Station, i just hadn't thought they were worth my time to track down. But i had literally taken a picture of this building from the tram yesterday after i left that confusing mall -  i literally had already seen and photographed these assholes and not even realized it.
    The post office was close. I could see both Central Station and the transit mall/shopping square i'd eaten that "burger" and gotten lost at yesterday.
    My business there completed, i took a moment to sit and figure out what my next move was. I only had one real plan today, which was to order the Finnish spite pizza, and it felt like it was still too close to breakfast for me to eat again. But also, i was concerned that if i went later, i might not have enough time before i had to be on the boat. So i decided to just do it.
    I jumped back on the tram and headed for Kotipizza.
    From Gastro Obscura, the Atlas's food division, the story behind the Pizza Berlusconi is that, in 2005, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi visited Finland, and later loudly complained about how bad the food was, saying it was something he "endured" during his visit, that the Finns eat "only marinated reindeer." In response, the owner of Kotipizza created an Italian dish as an homage to Berlusconi - a pizza, made only from Finnish ingredients.
    The Pizza Berlusconi is made with a rye crust, cheese, smoked reindeer, red onion, and chanterelle mushrooms. Three years later, Kotipizza entered their creation in an international pizza competition in New York City and won - beating even the Italian entrants. With this validation, they made the Berlusconi a staple item on their regular menu.
    The Italian embassy was outraged, and demanded that Kotipizza remove the former Prime Minister's name from the dish. In response, Kotipizza's CEO suggested that Berlusconi himself come to Finland to discuss it with him. He never did.
    When i walked into Kotipizza, i spent a while staring at the menu, but could not find the Berlusconi. The large menus on display both on the wall and on the monitors above the counter are only in Finnish, so i couldn't understand anything, i was just expecting to see Berlusconi's name somewhere. After letting a few people go ahead of me in line, i finally approached the counter and asked the clerk if they still served the Berlusconi, showing him the article on my phone. He said no, but handed me a small paper menu in English. He said a lot more, but i didn't understand much of it. I think he only spoke Finnish.
    But scanning through the menu, being able to read the ingredients now, i found it. Rye crust, cheese, chanterelle mushrooms, red onion, smoked reindeer. They still have it, it's just not called the Berlusconi anymore. He must have finally made his trek to Helsinki. It's just the Reindeer Pizza now.
    I ordered the smallest one, thinking that it was going to be one of those long, rectangular pizzas, like i had in Oslo, because i saw that picture up on the board. It was not. It was a full circle, probably a 14 inch pizza.

    I certainly wasn't going to be able to travel with the leftovers, so it was up to me to eat this entire thing in one sitting. I didn't think i could do it.
    After four slices, half the pizza, i felt like i was full.
    After eight slices, the whole pizza, i felt like i was hungry again.
    A delicious paradox. I still probably shouldn't have eaten the whole thing. That definitely could have been at least 2 meals, under different circumstances.
    It was phenomenal, though. I do think the chanterelles drowned out the other flavors on the pie, but fortunately, i'm into that. I couldn't really tell you what smoked reindeer tastes like, now, though.
    I thought maybe i'd still have time to go see another statue of a person peeing, since i'd already walked so far out of my way in Copenhagen to see The Pee-er. Bad Bad Boy is an 8.5 meter tall statue of a young boy with a somewhat embarrassed look on his face, peeing into the harbor. Unlike The Pee-er, this statue is a functional fountain, although many visitors report that it isn't always running when they go see it.
    This one is a bit far away, on a peninsula opposite of the docks, so afterward i'd need to make a big arc to get back where i needed to be. I had to walk almost a kilometer to get to the tram station that would take me to Bad Bad Boy, but i did it, because i'm dedicated. To peeing statues. We all have our hobbies, i guess.
    I was expecting to wait a bit for the tram once i got there, but as i approached, i saw the route that i needed pulling in. Must be the previous run, a little behind schedule, but that would have worked out well for me...except two other trams were pulling in on the opposite track at the same moment, blocking me from getting to the one i needed. As they finally cleared, i was able to cross the street...just in time for the tram to Bad Bad Boy to pull away.
    It's fine, i was expecting to catch the next one anyway.
    Except it was not fine.
    I was starting to become concerned about time. It was about 12:15, and i was supposed to be on board the ferry no later than 1:45, for a 2:15 departure. I checked the tram schedule from Bad Bad Boy to the Viking Lines boarding facility, and it did not look good. I wanted to be at the facility absolutely no later than 1:30, and in order for that to work out...every tram from here would need to be on time, and i would still only have a couple of minutes at the statue. Which also means, i can't get lost walking to it from the tram station, which is not something i can guarantee here.
    I decided to cut my losses and just go to the Viking Lines building from here.
    The tram i expected to take...did not show up? I was watching Maps, and it said it was on time...said it departed five minutes ago, in fact, but i've been sitting here for over ten?
    I zoomed way in on the map.
    The instructions were missing a step. I wasn't at the right tram station. There was another one just around the corner. I must be close enough that the GPS just assumed it was a little off, and i was actually on that platform.
    Damn it.
    So i moved over to the other station, and caught a different tram over to the docks. I needed to make a transfer in the middle, but that went smoothly, and i made it, walking up to the building at 1:15.
    Yeah, it definitely seemed like the right call to skip Bad Bad Boy.
    I got checked in, no problem, found the gate for my ferry, and headed up to it, pulling out my passport and bringing up my ticket confirmation and the QR code and everything they had asked for when i boarded the last Viking Ferry in Stockholm.
    Gate 3 was locked. There were dozens of people standing around it, spilling out into Gate 2 territory, which was not scheduled for any boats today.
    I waited. It became 1:35. Suddenly i was concerned that i was at the wrong gate. The monitor with the gate information was on the other side of the turnstiles that i'd already scanned my boarding pass to get through, so i didn't think i could go all the way back there to verify. I wandered around the bars and waiting areas between the four gates. No other monitors. I finally realized i could see one through the glass back down to the main level, but all it said was "Tallinn" with an arrow pointing the way i had come. Which would be validating, except that there's a second, later ferry to Tallin yet today.
    I returned to the growing crowd, now hundreds of people filling the entire Gate 3 and Gate 2 areas and spilling out into the general waiting room and the bars. Finally i just asked a random guy, "This is for Tallinn at 2:15, right?"
    "Yeah," he said.
    "Oh, good. I thought the door would be open by now, i was afraid i was in the wrong place."
    "Yeah," he laughed.
    I found a place to lean my backpack up against a cement pillar, to help take some of the weight off my shoulders for a bit.
    They wanted everyone on board by 1:45. It seemed there was no way we were actually leaving at 2:15.
    At 1:50, the crowd started moving, and we all flooded through the gate, up the stairs, and across the gangway, into the boat.
    No one checked my passport, or my ticket, or any of my documents.
    Huh.
    This is only a two and a half hour boat ride, so i hadn't bothered booking a cabin. I headed straight up to the highest outside deck i could, and watched as Helsinki peeled away, at exactly 2:15.
    I stood at the railing for a long time, watching as Helsinki faded from view. We passed by the Fortress of Suomenlinna. Eventually even that faded away. Once i could no longer see Finland, i headed downstairs, to the lowest of the outside observation decks, and ordered an Aperol Spritz and a bag of chips from the bar, then sat down to get a head start on my log for the day.
    We entered Estonian waters half an hour ago, according to the text i got from T-Mobile about my data roaming. From here, i can see land. It's currently 4:25pm, we're supposed to dock at 4:45. This must be my first look at Estonia. I'll be in Tallinn soon.
    First things first, i'm gonna go drop my bag at the hostel, and then i'm meeting a new friend in Old Town right away!
    Wish my shy, introverted ass good luck.

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Part the Second: Tallinn

I sent Triin a message as soon as the boat docked to let her know i'd arrived in Tallinn. It would be about a 35 minute walk to the hostel, The Monk's Bunk, in Old Town. Triin had asked me if i was interested in seeing Old Town anyway, so i let her know that that's where the hostel is, so it seemed like a good place to start.
    GPS tried to lead me straight through a construction zone again. I had to detour around it, making it mad every step of the way, getting to the point where i was getting the little "you fucked up" ding about every two seconds. I kept pressing on. I knew i was going to reconnect to the route eventually. Once i got around this entire city block's worth of white construction fencing.
    Finally back on the path, i crossed a street, and immediately saw what looked like part of a castle. Like, the rounded tower, leading up to the turret. Like a rook in chess. There was a matching stone archway protruding from one side, but what it was connected to, i couldn't tell. If anything.
    Maps had me turning away from this, but i really wanted to investigate. I noticed that i was being offered an alternative route straight under that arch which was only one minute slower, so i went for it.
    Welcome to Old Town.
    Lots of cities have a part that they call "Old Town," but this is conceivably the oldest Old Town i have ever been in. Many of these buildings date back to the 1300s. The cobblestone streets and sidewalks throughout are wildly uneven, to the point where in many spots the road is completely convex.
    I went past a museum of KGB prison cells. The entrance was down a staircase into the ground, like the shops in Copenhagen. This may be the only place i've seen that since leaving Denmark. The little bits of the inside of the building that i could see already looked unsettling.

    But like. I have to go into that museum at some point, right? I have to check that out.
    I passed graffiti reading "Smile now, eatne later," or "ehtne later," i'm not sure, but multiple search engines have turned up nothing.
    And then there was a little clothing boutique with the sign outside reading, "There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours." I appreciate the sentiment.
    The Monk's Bunk is a fascinating building. It's clearly quite old, centuries maybe, renovated irregularly so that there's neat, modern-looking hardwood floors next to late-1800s windows with wide sills you can sit in that look like they've been beaten up for over a century, maybe last repainted sometime before i was born, over radiator pipes that are four inches in diameter from who knows what era. I'm sitting in one of those windows right now.
    The layout of the building is also entire nonsense. From the reception desk, the common room is on a level about three feet higher, so there's a small staircase. Then when you leave the common room, you go down about half a flight of stairs, so maybe five feet, which brings you to a fork where if you go right, it's another short staircase down to the kitchen, and if you go left it's a floor and a half up to the dorms, on a square staircase that winds around 180 degrees. Once you get to that floor, there's another mini-staircase up to the level where my room is. Every inch of this hostel belongs in the "Stairs that can kill you, stairs that will kill you" tag on Tumblr.
    It's got a lot of personality. It's charming, actually. But only the common room represents anything even vaguely "modern."
    I did have to make my own bed here, but at least i wasn't expected to slip an entire mattress into a large pillowcase in the dead of night this time. The sheets provided don't seem to have a fitted sheet at all? There's three top sheets, and none of them are quite as long as the bed. There's a sign on the wall that says, "IF YOU DON'T USE THE SHEETS WE WILL FINE YOU." So i just took two of them and tucked them into the corners as well as i could.
    My bag just barely fits in my locker, it's only slightly bigger than the one at Rosenborg Castle was. Hopefully less squishing has occurred, but it did catch on the sides of the door a lot and needed some coaxing.
    Triin met me outside the hostel at 6:15. She's nice! There wasn't much in the way of pleasantries, she launched into the tour pretty much right away. I didn't record very much, i was trying to keep up with her through all the sights, and i don't know what i still remember.
    We visited multiple historical sites around Old Town, including government buildings and architecture left over from the Soviet era. For example, there's a Russian Orthodox Church directly across the street from the main government building, which is still controversial to many. The church has an unmistakably Russian design.
    Triin was 9 when Estonia declared independence, 11 when they got it and the USSR dissolved, so she offered quite a bit of perspective on that time period and how things have changed. She casually mentioned several historical events that she participated in during the fall of the Soviet Union, such as the raising of the Estonian flag over the tallest tower in the city, and the Baltic Way, an event where millions of people joined hands, forming a continuous human chain from Tallinn, Estonia, through Riga, Latvia, and ending in Vilnius, Lithuania - the three capitols of the Baltic states which would gain independence from Russia two years later. The 35th anniversary of the Baltic Way was one week ago today, actually.
    The whole city is fascinating in the same way that my hostel is. Old brick buildings from the 1300s next to the same wooden houses i saw in Helsinki from the early 1900s next to the same ugly-ass prefab modern apartment buildings we seem to be constructing across America in the last decade. Not necessarily in districts, just all mixed together in a spicy melange of architecture. Every style of building for the last millennia seems to be on display around here somewhere.
    My bio on BeWelcome, the web site that Triin and i met through, starts with "Aging punk rocker," so she showed me the spots around town where the punk kids, including her, used to congregate in the 90s. Most of it's been gentrified now, but it sounds like it was a scene i would have liked, about 10 years before i was old enough for that.
    She talked about how the punk lifestyle was illegal in the Soviet era, so many of the buildings she showed me have a history of being raided by Russian police and the kids getting detained.
    We walked through an old industrial district which has been almost completely renovated into a hipster's paradise. "Lots of hipsters and craft beer here," she said. It's exactly like what we're seeing in America now; literally, industrial buildings standing from the 1800s suddenly full of fake Edison bulbs, those shitty metal stools everyone hates, and $30 burgers that don't come with a side.
    Lots of cool art throughout, though. I was admiring the murals and graffiti and street installations all through the district, and then we came to an honest-to-god Banksy museum. We didn't go in. I probably won't later.
    She took me through a public park which used to be a cemetery, but the Russians destroyed it when they occupied Estonia after World War II. You can definitely tell the park is laid out like a cemetery, but no bodies are buried there anymore. That we know of.
    My memory of everywhere that we went and everything that we saw is hazy already, because it was a lot, and i shot footage on the R6m2, but i'm gonna have to take a lot of time later to analyze the map and figure out what the hell i'm even looking at. It might have helped if i had been taking selfies with my phone like i've been doing for the 'Gram in other cities, i don't know. I did record the walk on my Garmin, so at least i do have an accurate map of the route we took. I'm just listing things that left an impression right now, they may be out of order.
    Like this one i know happened earlier in the walk: she took me up to an observation deck high above most of the city, near the government buildings, where you can see most of Tallinn below. It's a gorgeous view. She pointed out several landmarks, such as Saint Olaf's Church, which at the time of its construction in the 14th century, was the tallest building in Europe, at 124 meters. It is known for having survived many lightning strikes.
    Toward the end of the walk, we passed a former Soviet prison/torture facility, which a wealthy businessman is currently trying to get grants from the government to convert into a combination apartments/hotel/airbnb/museum/banquet hall/multiple restaurant space, which is...a choice. Triin says the building is "very haunted." I kind of feel like "museum" is the only one of those options that's respectful. Who the hell wants to move into an apartment that used to be a Soviet torture chamber??
    There's already a bougie neon sign above the door that says, "Let's collect memories."
    Coincidentally, we were ending the tour very close to Old Town, so she walked me back to the hostel. On the way, she took me down a narrow alley which is currently undergoing renovation that has been used as a set for many movies, including Tenet. Lots of movies like to shoot in Old Town, she says, and i can totally see why. It has a perfect aesthetic that filmmakers are always craving. Much production value, and i'm sure shooting in Estonia is inexpensive compared to, say, Los Angeles.

    Having walked nearly five miles, Triin headed home, and i went back into the hostel. What a difference a few hours made at this hostel. The common areas were packed, the music was louder, as were the people. If i remember correctly, tonight's community activity was "bar crawl," and the hostel has a full bar at reception, sooooo. Lots of drunk twentysomethings down there.
    I laid down on my bed for a bit, thinking i was just going to reply to a few messages, and then i'd rally and either go out and explore this corner of Old Town a little deeper, or maybe get some food, but i ended up just puttering around on my phone for an inordinate amount of time. Finally, i rallied hard enough to stand up, lock up all of my cameras, and grab my laptop and power cable. I thought i'd head down to the common area, plug in, and just sit and write my log amidst the fray. This is kind of what i've been doing the last few days in Helsinki. The big couch was empty when i'd last passed through, so that might work.
    It had gotten still louder while i'd been upstairs. The big couch was now inaccessible, a beer pong table had been set up practically across it. I didn't even enter the common room, it was swarmed. I looked around the dining room, up a partial staircase from the common room. One table was completely taken, the other had just a single guy at it, but i couldn't see power outlets anywhere.
    I went downstairs to the kitchen to refill my water bottles, then back up to the dorms. I didn't really want to sit on my bunk and write, so i ended up in the hallway, sitting in one of the big bay windows, right outside the co-ed shower room with the sign on the open door that says "PLEASE DO NOT CLOSE THIS DOOR." People kept coming in and out, doing makeup, getting dressed to the nines, ready to go out and hit the town, it seems. Or just go downstairs and play beer pong, i don't know.
    The only power outlets in the hallway were on the other side from the windows, so plugging in would have been a tripping hazard. I started at 13%, and wrote in my log until i got down to 3%, then admitted defeat and went back to my bunk to finish it out.
    And so i have. Good night!

Day 16: Helsinki

Thursday, August 29

Don't forget that L'Étranger tickets go on sale at noon today.
    Don't forget!
    Don't forget that L'Étranger tickets go on sale at NOON TODAY.
    DON'T FORGET.
    Je ne dois pas oublier les billets!!

I was Johnny-on-the-spot for breakfast right at 8 this morning. Yeah. 8am. They only serve breakfast for two hours.
    And it is...sandwich things. Thin cold cuts and slices of cheese with white bread and butter.
    There's also apples and cereal. But that's it.
    Sure. Alright.
    I took a shower this morning, too, after skipping one yesterday. The shower setup here is not to my liking. There's very little privacy in the shower room, and when the door is open, it looks straight down the line of stalls. There's a sign on the door that says "please leave door open when not in use." This shower room is not for modest persons such as myself. Don't look at my weird butt.
    I stopped at the grocery store and bought a full day pass for the metro. I figured i'd shoot around the city and hit a bunch of those points of interest that were far away that i've been finding excuses not to go to for the last few days.
    First up, the Sibelius Monument, conveniently located in Sibelius Park. Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) is considered Finland's greatest composer. Starting in the late Romantic period, Sibelius composed symphonies which are credited with helping establish Finland's national identity when they were breaking away from Russia. The monument is meant to look like the pipes of a pipe organ, arranged to look like part of the waveform to one of Sibelius's pieces. Consisting of over 600 steel pipes, reaching 27 feet high, it was erected in 1967 by Finnish sculptor Eila Hiltunen. And of course i took a camera mounted on a monopod and shoved it straight up at least one of those steel pipes.
    From the monument, i could see a body of water, Seurasaarenselkä, with a pedestrian path along the shore. I kind of wanted to go over there and gaze at the water a bit anyway, but first i popped a destination into my GPS: Pronssikautinen Hauta. The directions told me to walk to the water and head down the path on the bank.
    And hey, along the way, i would be passing the Finnish Prime Minister's official residence!
    I was enjoying the walk so much that, by the time i came to the Prime Minister's house, it almost didn't even register. The path had parted from the water a bit and led into a forested area; the large estate was situated between the two. I had walked past at least three "STOP: GOVERNMENT RESTRICTED AREA" signs on the wrought iron fence before the fourth sign finally made me aware that there was a wrought iron fence at all.
    The house itself is barely visible from the road. But the guard buildings at the gate, and a smaller outbuilding of unknown purpose, sure are. I could barely glimpse the actual residence between these features.
    I didn't spend much time on it. I just kept walking.
    Soon after, i saw an opportunity to break off of the walking path and get onto another one of those stone embankments next to the water that i don't know the name of, like the one i walked along at the naval base yesterday. I walked in a little bit, then found a comfy-looking boulder to sit down for a moment and appreciate the aquatic spectacle before me.
    There were a few other people out on the rocks, including at least one woman out sunbathing in a swimming suit with no shoes. I kept looking around at the rocks underfoot and seeing broken metal spikes poking out of them, as if something manmade used to be constructed here. Plus, cigarette butts, broken glass, and a little bit of other miscellaneous trash. This is not an area i would be comfortable walking around shoeless, and lying down in a bathing suit. Personally. Ma'am, don't take this the wrong way, but i hope you're current on your tetanus shot.
    I walked around a bit, curving inland a bit, sweeping back out toward the shore, walking without rhythm. The whole area was gorgeous. And it went on much further than i expected from what i saw when i first broke through the treeline. Eventually, the rocks swung upward, elevating me at least a story and a half, forming kind of a cliff down to the water. There was a flat shelf of rock at the base of the cliff, almost level with the water, and additional sunbathers had taken up residence here.
    I followed the edge of the cliff until it ended, then found a slope downward, to that shelf by the water. I walked along underneath the cliff for a bit, until i got to a turn just before the sunbathers. I turned back at that point, not wanting to bother them by entering their space carrying cameras.
    After slowly meandering through the rocks for about half an hour, i thought maybe i should return to the path, lest i stay here by the sea forever. The rocks were a bit inclined toward the path from here, so i followed it up. Once i reached the walking path, and the road, i checked my GPS to see how much farther to Pronssikautinen Hauta.
    I was right on top of it.
    I'd accidentally bumbled directly into my destination. It was at the top of the incline i had just come up, right before the walking path.
    Pronssikautinen Hauta is a 3,000 year old grave, and the oldest known manmade structure in Finland. From the surface, it looks like a pile of ritualistically arranged rocks, and all there is to designate it is a small plaque. There are pylons at each corner, with a chain between them politely asking people to keep away, but if you didn't know what you were looking at, you probably wouldn't even notice it was there. I sure didn't when i first passed it by.
    I'd traveled about as far northwest as Atlas Obscura entries existed; everything else would be a ways south and would necessitate jumping on a tram or bus. I checked Google Maps quick to see if anything else in the area caught my eye.
    "The Meilahti Cliffs." That sounds interesting. Not too far away, and i can keep walking down this path i've been enjoying, back into the woods.
    It didn't stay just a path for long, soon i was on a street. Still winding through the woods, though.
    About halfway there, something out in the trees caught my eye. I thought it looked like a canoe or other small boat suspended in the air. I backtracked about a hundred feet to catch a dirt trail that looked like it would lead me down there.
    There was also a road going this way, so it wasn't like i was getting into anything too remote. It wasn't a boat at all, it was a statue with kind of a scoop for a head, like a spoon with the point flattened off. The rest formed a gangly body, maybe, i couldn't really identify limbs. Now that i'm thinking about it, maybe the whole thing is more of a tail?
    The plaque on the base was written in Finnish, and Google Lens couldn't figure all of it out, but what i got is "Daughter of the Baltic Sea." Erected October 17, 1971.
    I continued on. Eventually, my GPS just told me to "turn right," although i couldn't see anywhere to turn right into. After about another hundred feet or so, i saw what i thought *might* be a trail? I crossed the road, and jumped into the unknown.
    Just behind the treeline, it became obvious that yes, this was a trail. And yes, i was next to a cliff. It was pretty well obscured by the trees from just the other side of the road. I hiked the trail back the direction i had come from, essentially doing a switchback with the road in the middle. The cliffs were not tall for cliffs, maybe three stories, and i kept wondering, can i get up there? I wonder what's on top?
    I soon came to a locked door embedded in the rock face. It was covered in graffiti. I wondered if perhaps it was a bomb shelter?
    I feel like there are a lot of these in-the-bedrock buildings in Helsinki that seem like bomb shelters. These large rocky areas seem to be everywhere, i'm sure they're neither cheap nor convenient to excavate, so maybe it makes sense to sometimes just use what's already there.
    Fifty feet later, another locked door in the side of the cliff, covered in graffiti. Then another. The fourth one was a little deeper, had a bit of an inlet in the cliff faces leading to it; before i came around that corner, i thought maybe this was going to be a canyon that led me somewhere. But just another locked door.
    After the fourth door, i found a spot where the rock sloped a bit, and there were trees growing through it. I thought, i've been walking for a while. There's probably a more accessible way up these cliffs, if i keep going; but there might not be. How much further do i want to go before i find it?
    Fuck it. Waco.
    I charged up that slope, feeling like a mountain goat. I'm pretty happy with my new trail running shoes that i bought the day before i left on the trip, they have great tread and they get the job done.
    I wondered if i was even supposed to be up here. There weren't any signs or fences, so i was just going with, sure.
    I had been hoping that, from the top of the cliff, i would be able to see the sea, but the trees were so much taller than the ground. It was still a good feeling, being up there, away from the ground, where i maybe am not supposed to be. I basked on a rock like a lizard for a little bit, then followed the rocks to see where they would get me.
    It felt really isolated, the spot where i first came up, but soon i started seeing signs that civilization had been here. I caught glimpses of a couple other hikers through the trees, a ways off from me. Then, i came to a clear trail.
    Arbitrarily, i chose to follow the trail left. And this decision got me exactly what i wanted.
    I came to another rocky plateau across the hilltop. There was a fire ring with burnt logs and not-burnt garbage in it, and as i continued on, signs of another recent campfire directly on the flat stone.
    Then the trees cleared, and i saw the sea.
    It was glorious.
    I tried getting shots with every camera that i had, and none of them could possibly capture the majesty of the moment. A wide view of the Baltic Sea, or at least some inlet thereof, with bits of cityscape barely visible at the periphery on both sides.

    I marveled at it. I worked to get here. Not super hard, but enough that it felt like a reward. I made decisions that a younger, more straight-laced version of Trevor would not have been comfortable with. This moment was a culmination of correct guesses and absolute luck.
    The glistening blue water was stunning. I could stand there and stare at it for hours.
    I climbed down the face of the cliff a little and sat on a cranny, extending the Insta360 on the pole to get a shot of me sitting there, enjoying the moment.
    I checked the footage right away with the Bluetooth-connected app.
    It's shit.
    There's a problem with the stitching between the two lenses. It's too compressed. The shot has cut a significant portion of my torso out. I look like my shoulders are connected to my hips.
    I started scrolling back through other footage i've taken on the trip. I haven't checked the Insta360 footage since Copenhagen, when it was all fine.
    Everything from at least today is cropped weird. The over-the-shoulder shots that i was lucky to be running the camera for when i discovered the clearing to the sea? I have no shoulders or neck. My head is mounted directly to my mid-back.
    Fuck.
    My data and cell connections were spurious at best out here, but i managed to get a message out to Drew describing the problem to see if he could troubleshoot for me. I was hoping it was a software issue, or a setting that got bumped, and not that my lenses were out of alignment or something which would require servicing, because that was not going to happen while i was out on the road. I've already got a few dead weight devices taking up the limited space in my backpack, i don't want this month-old camera to be another one of them.
    I tried to replicate the shot with the GoPro, but i didn't have the attachment to put it on the monopod, so the results i got were not stellar. That attachment is tiny, i should really make room for it in the vest so i always have it. It's in my backpack right now. At the hostel.
    Frustrated, i carried on.
    Soon, i came to a disc golf hole drilled straight into the rock.
    This is a joke, right? Surely this is an ironic art installation, i thought. I took a selfie with it where i'm making a face, and then started plodding away, checking the map on my phone.
    Suddenly, a voice yelled at me. I looked up, and he continued to say words.
    "I'm sorry, i can only speak English," i said, a phrase i've used more times than i can count lately.
    "Can you move please? You're blocking the hole, and i don't want to hit you!"
    "Oh! Sorry," i said, and moved over. Then he threw a frisbee.
    Okay. People really are playing frisbee golf at the top of the Meilahti Cliffs. Have fun i guess, i would be too afraid i'd yeet that disc over a sheer drop into infinity.
    I felt like i could have spent the day up there, just meandering around, with no objectives, enjoying nature. I've been wanting to get out and do some proper hiking outside the cities this whole time, but it has never worked out. There's been too much rain, i'm reliant on public transportation, the coolest shit i've seen on Instagram is hundreds of kilometers away from the cities, it turns out. But this. This was great. This was exactly what i had wanted out of the trip. Perfection.
    There were a few other sights i wanted to see, though, so i thought it was about time to get down and go do that.
    Trouble was, i was really fucking lost at this point.
    I was shooting a short video clip about how lost i was, when it became apparent i was hearing the sounds of children. I stopped recording, and noticed that, down the trail to the left, it became a road, and there was what appeared to be a school.
    Where the trail forked right, there were what looked like a handful of gigantic inflated tarps? Like. These are the size of two story buildings, but elongated tubes of buildings, and they're clearly parachutes with airflow blowing them up. No idea what this shit is.
    I took the right fork, and the trail ended at the back row of bleachers for a baseball field. I checked the map, and the buildings at the other end of the field were both identified as sports complexes.
    So what are these inflatable buildings? Are these sports things? Can anyone tell me? Because their outlines are on the map, but they are not identified. What sports uses inflatable buildings? Baseball?
    This baseball diamond, by the way, was an entirely alien configuration to me. The whole thing is on fine red gravel, and other than the traditional chalk marked lines, there's no division between the infield and outfield, and it's situated in the middle of a huge red rectangle.
    No idea.
    Drew messaged me back, and i sat at the back of the bleachers for a while, fucking with the settings on the 360, trying to get it back to the proper working order it was in two weeks ago. I couldn't find any of the settings that Drew suggested i toggle, so i just started flipping any damn switches i could find buried in the menus on both the device and the app. I really, really hate that every device has an app now, first of all, but it's even worse when half the settings are in the app, and half are on the device. What is the purpose of this?? Put everything in one god damn place. And put it on the device. The app should be an assistant, not a requirement.
    Old man yells at cloud dot jpg.
    I finally found something that seemed to make it work, switching the "Dive Case Version" from 2023 to 2022. I have never touched this setting. I have never even seen this setting. I don't know why it would suddenly be wrong.
    I found where the trail forked off from the baseball field, and kept following it. I felt like this was eventually going to bring me to a road, i thought i had seen cars moving through the trees opposite me, but it ended up being some kind of small service road leading to a parking lot. I was walking in the road toward the parking lot when a car came up behind me. I stepped off the asphalt for just a minute, and something stabbed me in the leg. Some kind of plant, or maybe i got bitten by a bug, or stung by a bee? I don't know. I checked my leg, and i couldn't see anything. I tried scratching it, but i couldn't even identify where the pain was, specifically.
    I got to the parking lot and sat down on a concrete barrier, inspecting the leg more closely. Still no indication of what had happened, no marks, nothing.
    This would continue bothering me for hours. It's currently 10:15pm, i'm back at the hostel writing this, and i can still feel a weird itching down there. There's no resolution today; i'm documenting this now in case i get gangrene later. It may never come up again. In fact i hope it never comes up again.
    I gave up on finding the road on my own, and plugged in directions to the church i wanted to visit into Maps. I have been having an issue with Maps, mostly in Finland, a little bit for the whole trip, a tiny bit perhaps for the last several months, where i'll be walking and the app is not sure which direction i am facing, or even which direction i am moving.
    This was one of those moments. I would be trying to follow the directions as well as i could, and suddenly it would make the dinging noise that it's recalculating. What the fuck do you mean, recalculating?? I did exactly what you asked!! Except now, it's telling me to go back the opposite direction!
    It's also tried to lead me through construction zones about seven separate times since i arrived in Helsinki. This was also one of those. The construction was impassable, and i tried to go around, only for GPS to tell me it was the wrong way. I eventually realized that i could go through the covered stairwell up a steep rock face, which looked like it was intended for the construction workers, but then i saw two civilians use it. That finally got me back up to street level. How i was below street level at this point, i have no idea. My internal altimeter must need calibration.
    GPS then tried to send me to a tram station to the left, when the tram would then take me to the right, effectively a lot of backtracking. To my eye, it looked like the next tram station, to my right, would be the more efficient option. So i headed for that.
    Only to find that the road had forked and i hadn't noticed, and i was on the wrong fork.
    I was able to correct and get back to the tram station just in time to see the one i was after departing. So i waited for the next one...which ended up delayed by about ten minutes.
    All of this is inconsequential, really. Could delete. But this is a stream-of-consciousness first draft, baybee, and you came along for the ride. Sorry. You're welcome.
    I approached the Temppeliaukio Church from a side street, seeing another park on top of a pile of boulders in the middle of a block like the one i visited in the Wooden House District. But i was expecting something different. This is it, i thought. And i was correct.
    This Lutheran church is actually carved into the bedrock. As i walked around the rocks, the sidewalk sloped down, and the rocks sloped up, so the wall next to me got higher. I finally came to a door, but it was locked; for a moment, i was afraid i wouldn't be able to get into the church. I really wanted to see this one. More than i wanted to see the Helsinki Cathedral. Obviously, because i was here instead of there.
    I kept walking, still descending, and then came to a much grander-looking entrance. Several people were standing outside, but the door was wide open, so i walked right in.
    Admission to the church was eight euros, which i gladly paid.
    The interior walls of the church are just the bare, roughly-hewn stone that the whole building is carved of. The church proper is circular, and the ceiling is a dome. The center of the dome is copper, which is a very interesting aesthetic, suspended by a ring of windows showing the beautiful blue sky outside. I scanned a QR code to get a guide to the church, which seemed to only be this one room. The QR code took me to a web site that told me to click to download an app, which would then allow me to pay an additional three euros to download the guide.
    There were several other areas of the church asking for donations. I felt it was weird enough needing to pay to enter the church, then getting nickel and dimed the whole way i traveled through it felt really. Uncomfortable.
    The church is gorgeous, though.
    I had a seat and looked around to absorb it all. Atlas Obscura says that the walls are not completely sealed, so when it rains, waterfalls run down them. That must be quite a sight to behold.
    I walked around and confirmed that, yep, there was not really anything else to see here. I was only there for about twenty minutes before i left. So. Maybe not the best use of my money.
    I continued to circumnavigate the building once outside. I was hoping to be able to see the parking garage, but it was locked; during the Cold War, it was constructed as an air raid shelter.
    I found a staircase, and walked up on top of the church, getting close to the dome, but not close enough to touch; there's a chest-height brick wall encircling it. It's still very pretty up there, very interesting to see all the moss and other small plants growing out of the cracks in the rock all along. And yes, the top of the church is set up like a park; there are benches and trash cans and obvious paths to take. I did not stick to the obvious paths.
    Checking the Atlas again, it looked like there was another item close by; the Bullet Holes in the National Museum. These are left from the Finnish Civil War, and from the article, i think they're on an exterior door. I didn't think i had enough time left in the day to make it worth entering a museum, but i could at least get a load of these holes.
    I walked to the museum, and was once again stopped by construction that i couldn't traverse. It was right at the entry to the museum's parking lot. It did look like the back of the building was being renovated from here, but the signage was unclear whether the entire museum was closed. Also, even if it was closed, maybe i could still get to that holy door? If i just walked around the perimeter, maybe i could still find a way.
    Nope!
    Plywood, all around the museum grounds. Scaffolding up the sides of the entire building. Whole thing's shut down until 2027.
    Cranky, i went to Atlas Obscura, intending to make the edit to say it's temporarily closed, only to see that there's already the disclaimer on the top of the page that says "Estimated to reopen Spring 2027."
    This is the second time that's happened to me. They're very inconsistent about this, the other one was hidden at the bottom of the page under "know before you go." Also, many other items have a "Temporarily Closed" tag right there in the title, why don't these??
    All i ask is a little standardization in formatting.
    Should i go see some 200 pound metal strawberries?
    Yeah alright.
    I was crossing in front of the museum again, going the other way. I noticed across the street what looked like dozens, if not hundreds, of flagpoles with no flags on them. I kind of wanted to know what was going on, so i crossed the street and looked for an explanation.
    The ground they were embedded in was raised up a couple feet from the sidewalk level, and there was a stone retaining wall holding it all in. I didn't see an obvious way to enter the flagpole park. I came across a spot where the wall had crumbled, and it looked like a bit of a path had been worn in there, but something felt off about it. This wasn't an official channel, which wouldn't matter too much to me, except that a non-official channel here would mean there's no plaque or sign or anything to explain. I kept walking, assuming that at some point, i would find a legitimate entrance to this area.
    The wall became full-sized, so i couldn't see through it. But i did come to an opening. It led me into a courtyard with three buildings and a huge flower bed. Not what i expected.
    I walked in anyway, although it felt weird. It felt like it should be private property, or that i might be expected to buy a ticket to enter. There was one guy on the stoop to the building to the left, and two women with a bike between them talking in front of the one on the right. The one in the center had a sign identifying it as a place of business.
    Brazenly, i walked to the left of the central flower bed, getting just past the building, and seeing that the back yard was full of tables and chairs, like some kind of café. I could see the unused flagpole field beyond it, but there were no paths leading there. I didn't want to just tromp through someone's yard uninvited, especially as it was behind a wall, so at this point, i gave up. I will never know why there are fifty or a hundred or two hundred empty flagpoles across from the National Museum of Finland.
    Back on track to those strawberries.
    I passed a large, official-looking building, which Google identified as "The Neoclassical Seat of Finnish Governance." That is. That is a title. What are you trying to say, Google?
    I ran into another protest march. I think this is the third one i've seen? Unclear what it was for, the signs and chants were all in Finnish, so i couldn't understand it. As i approached, they were walking perpendicular to me, from my right to my left. If i had not broken off from the main road to loop around a block looking for the strawberries, which are kind of in the middle of a triangle of roads, i would have run head-on into this protest.
    I had seen the strawberries, but walked past them to observe the protest for a few minutes. Then i returned.
    As i walked into the empty courtyard containing Oma Maa Mansikka, a woman was there, taking pictures of it. She walked off about as i entered, but i had to wonder if she was also an Atlas Obscura user. I have noticed that someone else has been visiting a lot of the Helsinki landmarks about the same time as me. When i tick the "I've been here" box on a window that's been open for a while, sometimes it goes up by two; also, the main city page lists "recent activity" and another user has had their activity intertwined with mine these last few days. Wouldn't it be funny.
    She started walking away as i approached, i don't even know if she noticed i was there. But no one else was there, so i had some time alone with the strawberries. I had a seat.
    Oma Maa Mansikka means "My land's a strawberry, other land's a blueberry." This is a common Finnish expression, referring to a custom that the presence of growing strawberries indicates land ownership. In this context, a ten-ton, nine-foot-tall steel strawberry bush outside a government building interprets the phrase as one of national pride. When the Finnish government constructed a new government complex in 2005, they commissioned six pieces of artwork to adorn it; this is the only one that's visible from outside.
    Sitting in front of this sculpture, contemplating my next move, i noticed that i could see the protest from here. The march was coming to its destination, the Neoclassical Seat of Finnish Governance!
    I thought i was pretty well done chasing Atlas Obscura items for the day, so my choices were either (a) get some food, or (b) join this protest, knowing nothing about it. I don't know much about Finland but i do have a general hate for governments, in a left wing way.
    The cops were already there, though, and the chants had quieted down. I probably shouldn't get involved in any ruckus in a foreign land.
    I analyzed my options.
    Okay fine, i'll go do one more Atlas Obscura thing today. It's thematic, anyway. And it's not far from here.
    I'm gonna go pay to enter another church.
    As i turned off the main road and into a courtyard to get to the Kamppi Chapel, described as "an alien church" on the Atlas, i was suddenly faced with a tall, green statue. I had assumed the "alien" description in the article was a metaphor! What's up with this green dude?
    Then i noticed that there were several large, bulbous protrusions coming up from the ground, with a wide cylinder sticking out from a random side of each. Like if Peppa Pig was just breaking the surface tension of a swimming pool, and the end of her nose was a window. And that her flesh was tiled like the heat-resistant bottom of a space shuttle.
    There were two more of these large green statues intermixed.
    What a weird place to be.
    People were climbing up onto the Peppa Pig-domes. Understanding nothing, i did the same, getting a view of the whole courtyard and all of its weirdness. This is Lasipalatsi Square, at Lasipalatsinaukio. I think it's part of Amos Rex's Contemporary and Modern Art Museum. All i know is, it's very strange.
    And the alien church is clearly visible behind it.
    I walked up to Kamppi Chapel, which looks like a three-story woven basket. Right away, i noticed the "no photography" sign, which was disappointing, but i was still interested enough in this weird little place of worship to go in anyway. I put the lens cap on my R6m2, hoping it would be enough to convince them i was compliant, and made for the door. There was a sign up that said this door was not open in the summer, so i went around.
    At the front door, i found another sign that ticket sales stop 15 minutes before close, and close is 5pm.
    It was now 6pm.
    So i guess i'm not getting in the alien church today.
    Atlas Obscura sold it as "a quiet place in the middle of a busy shopping district," and when i turned away from the church, i was suddenly confronted by that busy shopping district that i hadn't even noticed, i was so taken by the weirdness of Lasipalatsi Square and the Kamppi Chapel.
    I thought i'd sit down on one of the rainbow-painted benches and search for a place to get dinner; there was a restaurant on the Atlas that i thought i'd like to try, but it's all the way down by the docks, so i figured we're looking at metro travel again. However, the only unoccupied bench was right behind a food truck, and i was curious enough to walk around and see what they were offering. Plus, i was hungry now. I hiked up that cliff. I haven't eaten since that bargain-basement smørrebrød and Cocoa Puffs at the hostel.
    It was a burger place. The menu was 100% in Finnish, the man running it was Japanese, and spoke no English. There were pictures of everything, though. I used Google Lens to translate as much of the item names as i could, but some of it was just, like, "BIG BURGER." Not much help, that.
    I finally pointed at something that looked interesting and, according to Lens, was called "BROWN CHEESE BURGER." I don't know what "brown cheese" is, but hell. I'll give it a shot.
    What he served me was less a burger and more of a gyro with a beef patty in the middle. The bun was not cleft in twain like a normal hamburger bun - it was hard to tell whether it just continued around like a taco, or if the back was sealed also, like a pocket. Still clearly hamburger bun material, though. What was clear was that the opening went at the top.
    It's got lettuce and onions and some other stuff in there, and i suspect that the "brown cheese" may have been a mistranslation of "bleu cheese," but you know what? I kind of liked it! Didn't i have something with bleu cheese in Copenhagen that i liked also??
    Has my entire flavor palette changed??
    But what really made this thing was the sauces. Sauces, sauces, sauuucessss!!! I've had so much good SAUCE in Europe this month, good god!! Sauce!
    I was really happy with my decision.
    Other than the fancy herring yesterday, i don't know if i've eaten anything uniquely Finnish since i've been here, unfortunately. I have a lunch plan for tomorrow that's spitefully Finnish, but not traditionally. This burger, though. Can't be mad about it. So good.
    Seemed about time to be heading back to the hostel. I plugged it into Maps, and it offered me a bus that was leaving from a stop nearby in a few minutes. I walked in that direction.
    When i got to the waypoint on Maps, i was still on a pedestrian-only street, no traffic or bus stops in sight. It led me to the center of the street, where there was a small wooden shack with no doors, and a glass semi-circular booth up against one wall, half of which appeared to be a door. Inside, i could see a spiral staircase leading downward. I thought, oh, it's a subway, not a bus. That's fine, my transit card should work for both.
    The door was locked.
    I walked around the wooden cube, looking for answers. On the opposite side from the glass booth, there was a metal grate in the ground. I stood on the grate, at exactly the moment the bus was supposed to be leaving from this stop, and heard a noise coming from underground that sounded like a bus pulling away. "That's probably my train," i muttered.
    Suddenly, i looked up, and saw a bus emerging from a ramp to the underground, not ten feet away from me. It was indeed the bus that i had intended to be on.
    Okay. How do i get down there? It doesn't look like i should walk down that ramp, that doesn't seem safe.
    I checked the transit schedule again, there should be another bus soon. Now if only i could find out how to get down there.
    I walked back and forth, eventually getting back to Narinkka Square, the shopping district where i'd just eaten. I saw a sign for buses and subways, pointing into a mall. I followed it.
    It was indeed a combination shopping mall/transit station, the two blended so seamlessly that it was bizarre to see. Shop, shop, shop, shop, escalator to the subway platform, shop, shop, escalator to below-ground buses, shop, shop, shop, string of bays for buses to pull in and out of.
    I was extremely confused. I had only seen the escalator to the subway at first, and, following the Metro logo, went down there, thus accidentally blundering into another Atlas Obscura entry: "Roots of the City." This is a collection of clusters of signs that point toward the birthplaces of current Helsinki residents, hanging down from the ceiling of the subway station like stalactites, emphasizing the city's diversity.
    But i could not figure out where the bus terminal was supposed to be. I went up an elevator, then back down the same escalator, then up the other side of the escalator, then found there was a bus escalator across the way, went down that, and found that it was only for a range of bus numbers that stopped well short of Route 70, which i was looking for.
    I made my way back upstairs and found that row of bus bays, but these numbers were even lower than the ones downstairs. Nothing even approached 70.
    I wandered. I found a map, which indicated which buses left from the hub, but i couldn't find anything higher than about 60.
    All told, i probably mucked about cluelessly in that mall for over half an hour before i gave up. There was a tram leaving from an overground rail station five minutes' walk away in twenty minutes. I headed over there.
    I was two stops out on the tram when suddenly OH SHIT OH FUCK OH GOD I FORGOT TO BUY THE L'ÉTRANGER TICKETS NO NO NO NO NO NO NOOOO
    L'Étranger's website is garbage, in English as well as in French. It's difficult to navigate, it seems like someone tried to make an HTML3 web site with only rudimentary knowledge of HTML1. The theater which is hosting the festival's web site is not much better. It's been difficult for me to find my way around the site from my laptop, which is where i've been doing all my planning, and now i have to try and do this on my phone? Ugh.
    All my worrying turned out to be for nothing, though. It took most of the ride home, literally i finished the checkout as we pulled away from the stop before mine, but i successfully obtained tickets to all four of the screenings i wanted to attend. So i'm pretty happy about that. I'm still trying to decide if i want to also go to the special screening of Eraserhead on Thursday night. It starts at 10pm, so i'd be wandering the Paris streets at midnight, fumbling toward an unknown hostel, right after watching one of the weirdest films in David Lynch's oeuvre. So it's a maybe.
    Man i was really worried that The Thief and the Cobbler was going to sell out! I actually thought i was gonna get screwed on that if i didn't hurry. I probably could have just waited until i got to the hostel, where i already had all the windows open on my laptop and ready.
    I sat down to write out my log. I did a lot today! I've been sitting in the open common area a lot during my stay, but i had yet to partake of the hostel's bar...
    I ignored that urge for a bit. I started writing. But i kept glancing up at the bar's offerings. Yeah, there's my standard rum & coke, right there on the bottom corner of the board, but. But.
    Why can't i stop thinking.
    Why can't i stop thinking that maybe.
    Maybe.
    ...
    I want a Carlsberg?
    I kept writing.
    I tried to ignore it.
    I wrote the line, "Ma'am, i hope you've had your tetanus shot," and then i gave in. I got myself a beer.
    I took a picture of the open beer next to my laptop and sent it to Cyndi and Jake.
    "I think yall did something to alter my molecules or whatever."
    Beer. Bleu cheese. Pickled herring.
    I think a factory reset happened on my taste buds, and they chose a different path this time.

Day 15: Helsinki

Wednesday, August 28

My shirts and underwear were dry by the time i got done writing yesterday's log at midnight last night! Very excited about dry clothing!
    Socks weren't quite there, though.
    So when i woke up this morning, i set them out to dry again, hanging them over the rails of my upper bunk. These socks are so much thinner than the ones i usually wear. I don't understand why they take so long to dry.
    Even though i was done writing the log at midnight, and other than folding my laundry and putting it away (three shirts and four pairs of boxers), i don't remember doing anything else, i didn't get to sleep until 2am. Honestly. No accounting for time.
    So i didn't wake up until 9:30 or so. And as i'm lying there, awake on the bed, scrolling through my various feeds, as i am wont to do when i wake up, suddenly i realized, oh yeah, didn't i pre-pay for a breakfast buffet?
    I got up, got dressed, and strolled into the common area at 10:07.
    Breakfast ended at 10.
    Mother.
    Fucker.
    I was not able to get a refund for the meal, either. Which is annoying, but it's only 7 euros, i guess i can weather this hardship.
    I grabbed my amino powder and sat down to mix it into some water, the way i usually start my day. And as i was doing that, i received a message on BeWelcome.
    Someone wants to hang out and show me around in Vilnius, Lithuania. That's great!
    I think i forgot to mention in my log earlier, but this is not the only communication i've gotten from BeWelcome. BeWelcome is one of the Couchsurfing alternatives i had written about several days ago; this is the one where i was able to construct my trip and say i'm looking for hosts and/or guides. I said i didn't expect anything to come from it, given how difficult of a time i've had reaching out; sitting back and expecting others to contact me just felt like it was never going to happen.
    But it has! I have a guide lined up in Tallinn, Estonia, whom i've actually been communicating with today, as my arrival there is impending. She will not be hosting me, so i still booked a hostel, but she's a native, and she's happy to share her city.
    And now i have one for Vilnius, as well! I don't think she's hosting me either, but it's someone to spend time with and get a real tour with, instead of just bumbling around on my own with Atlas Obscura and Google Maps and the other miscellaneous spreadsheets and Instagram folders i've assembled haphazardly.
    I did also get an offer from a host in Berlin, but i ended up turning him down. 68-year-old Canadian nudist, looking for young men to be nude with. Best of luck to you, but that's not for me. I messaged back, declining respectfully, saying i'm not interested in nudism and i feel it would be rude of me to ask him to wear clothing in his own home.
    Getting the offer of a guide in Vilnius made me realize that i needed to firm up my travel plans for the next couple days. If i was going to be leaving Helsinki for Tallinn tomorrow, i'd better get that ferry booked.
    The ferry schedules for tomorrow were not feasible for me. There were two, and they were either way too early or way too late. So i looked at Friday. This offered the same two ferry runs, but also a third one at 2:15pm.
    I checked with the desk clerk, and was able to extend my stay at CheapSleep for one more day. I booked the 2:15 ferry on Friday.
    I am a bit miffed that i'm losing a bunch of Tallinn time. I've been telling people for months in advance of this trip that i'm actually really excited about Estonia. But i'm in a position where i need to accelerate my travel through the eastern European states, if i'm going to make it to Paris on time. So i'm still leaving Tallinn on Sunday.
    At least i can use that second breakfast voucher now.
    So this pushed me to look at the full travel schedule to Vilnius, to make sure i'm giving my guide a proper timetable. And...this is where shit got complicated. Evidently there is a "disrupted international connection" between Estonia and Latvia, so there are no trains between Tallinn and Riga.
    I spent what was left of my morning solving this problem. I'll have to take a train from Tallinn to Valga, and then a bus from Valga to Riga. Once i'm in Riga, there should be no issue getting to Vilnius. And while my Eurail pass did not cover the bus, it did get me a 20% discount.
    So with that bit of inconvenience cleared up, i decided i should head out for the day. I hadn't gotten my breakfast, so the first point of order was getting something to eat.
    I thought i was headed for a little café called "Restaurant Dylan Corner," but when i got there, it was in the lower level of a large office building, and it was a buffet. The registers were fully automated, and even pushing the "English" button did not turn the words to English, so i fumbled through it and paid for a buffet.
    There were many unfamiliar items on that buffet line, and i ate several of them. I got something with eggplant in it for sure. But the crown jewel of that buffet, as far as i was concerned, was the baked salmon. Holy hell. These Nordic countries do incredible things with fish.
    To the surprise of no one, i'm sure.
    I jumped on the tram back down to the docks, where i first entered Helsinki. I thought maybe i'd get the Fortress of Suomenlinna and the Helsinki Cathedral done today. Fortress first.
    This is the huge island naval base i had noted passing by on the ferry in yesterday. From the water, the walls and structures look impressive. I took another ferry out to the island to see it. A much smaller ferry, which took 10 minutes.
    Had a little bit of an issue getting on the boat, though. It was supposed to be covered by the same pass that i bought for the tram, but i kept scanning it and it wouldn't open the gate. I tried every terminal. The digital countdown until the ferry left was at one minute, then ticked to zero. I thought i'd just wait and catch the next one, giving me time to figure out what was going on, but then impulsively i just hurried over to the kiosk and bought a second pass. Except the kiosk didn't give me an actual pass, just a receipt with a QR code, which the gate wouldn't read.
    One of the ferry workers started waving his arms from the boat. "The gate is open, just come in!" So i pushed on the turnstile, and sure enough, it just let me through.
    "Thank you," i told him as he closed the boat up behind me.
    We were almost to the island when i reached into my other pocket and found a second card, only then realizing that i had been trying to get on the ferry by scanning the room key to the hostel.
    Idiot.
    Sveaborg began construction in 1748 and took 40 years to complete. It was commissioned by the King of Sweden, when Sweden owned Finland, and served as a Swedish naval base up through the Russo-Swedish War, when the base fell to Russia. It would remain a Russian military facility for 110 years, until the Finnish Civil War, when it was taken over by the newly formed Finnish government in 1918. They renamed it Suomenlinna, the Castle of Finland.
    Beginning in the 1960s, defense forces began moving out and renovations were done to turn it into a residential and tourist facility. It was recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1991. Today, about 800 people live in Suomenlinna, which comprises six islands connected by bridges.
    I guess i thought i was walking into a museum, but it really is a living community. There are shops and restaurants all around, occupying many former military buildings. Almost immediately, i wished i had not gone to that buffet, so i could have experienced the island cuisine, but i wasn't planning on sticking around long enough to need dinner.
    I had arrived on the island 17 minutes too late for the last English-language guided tour, so i was just making my way around with a map. The map has a blue route marked, which is considered the ideal path to see the base's most interesting features. I got lost almost immediately, but found my way on and off the path as time went on.
    One thing i did see before i went rogue was the Suomenlinna Church, a tall white building in the middle of all of this. It's tall enough that it's plainly visible from the mainland, over the island's tree cover. I didn't go in; it's one of a dozen or more museums on the island, and all of them charge their own separate entry fees, and i just didn't feel like that was gonna be worth it. But i walked around the grounds, and the church is surrounded by a fascinating circular "fence." Every ten feet, there are three cannons set upright on their muzzles, so if they fired, the ball would go straight into the Earth, and there are huge, heavy chains crisscrossed between them. These chains probably came from ships. Each link is the length of my forearm, and the metal is just as thick. I checked each cannon as i walked past it, they were all inscribed with either "1786" or 1787." I'm assuming those are either the years the cannons were cast, or the years they were decommissioned.
    Apparently today was my "wandering into deep, dark holes day" because i kept seeing dark tunnels leading underground to who knows where and just fuckin' diving in. Nothing bad happened. But mostly what i saw was abandoned brick tunnels from hundreds of years ago that today serve no purpose.
    After i'd ventured through to what i thought was the end of the blue route, i saw a path leading up and over a levee, and spontaneously took it. I found myself on a rocky embankment overlooking the water, as waves crashed up between the boulders, and the sun started thinking about setting. At first, i thought i would just sit down and watch the waves for a few minutes before turning back inland, but after i got up, i instead decided to keep following the boulders out to sea. And then winding a path around the trees, out of view of the mainland, just hopping from boulder to boulder.
    Every now and then, i'd find another good spot to have a sit and watch the Baltic Sea churn for a bit, then get up, and wander away until i found another nice spot. I don't know how long i did this. An hour? Boulders and pathways just kept opening up. Occasionally there was a nice wooden bridge to cross. Some of the boulders were engraved with Russian words, probably hundreds of years old.
    Eventually, i realized i could just keep going until i'd circled the perimeter of the entire main island, and i didn't think i actually wanted to do that. I found a path that led away from the water and took it.
    This brought me up behind some unfamiliar buildings. I had no idea where i was. But it did lead me to the Suomenlinna Dry Dock, where the decaying remains of several naval vessels spanning the ages sit on display. I would not have found this otherwise.
    I was heading back toward the dock when i thought, eh, fuck it. I'm gonna get me some of that Suomenlinna food anyway. One of the first restaurants i'd seen, Adlerfelt, had its menu outside the building, and i'd given it a look on my first pass. This was about when i had first thought "wish i hadn't eaten" because a lot of their items looked incredible, and incredibly Finnish.
    I walked in, and was greeted by a sticker on the door that said, "We speak gay."
    I ordered the "preserved Baltic herring with summer potatoes and poached egg," an item which was only named by its description.
    I guess i was still thinking of the island as kind of a museum experience, and this restaurant as more of a café situation, but it was actually kind of a fancy, expensive place. They had tried to get me to order wine with the meal, but i didn't want that. This herring dish, which was priced like a meal, was very clearly meant to be an appetizer.
    But they also brought me a whole bunch of bread, and the herring, potatoes, and egg were fuckin' delicious, and that all turned out to be the right amount of food for me anyway. I loved it.
    This is the only place on the trip so far that has prompted me to tip when i paid. That sort of thing just isn't typically done in Scandinavia. But what was really interesting was, the amount i was prompted to tip was...5%. Since i was tipping anyway, i clicked the button for the highest tip, and that was still only 10%.
    I returned to the mainland, once again boarding the ferry just as it was about to close up and pull away. I once again felt like it was too late to do a cathedral tour, so i just headed back to the hostel. I had additional housekeeping tasks to complete anyway.

    I set up my computer and all my peripherals on my bunk and finally did all that data management i've been putting off since the last day in Copenhagen. I started at 7 and it's almost midnight now, but i think my data is as managed as it's going to get.
    I have a bit of a problem. I brought two 5TB hard drives with me to store all the footage from the four cameras and two audio devices i brought with, and while i was in Copenhagen, i could not get data to transfer to them properly. I couldn't figure out the issue, but i figured the priority was adventure, so i didn't end up dealing with it.
    One of them is working now. The other one...i am afraid has died. The plan was to mirror them, so that i always had a backup, in case one went down. I didn't expect one to be DOA.
    I'm not going to trust all my precious footage to a single, four-year-old portable hard drive. I've shot a lot less footage than i had prepared for anyway, and i brought quite a few extra SD cards that i hadn't anticipated needing; they are slow and old and much lower capacity than what i usually use now, i just figured i might as well fill up my SD card wallet. So i've devised a system where i'm leaving data on the SD cards after it's dumped to the drive, and some of the old, slow cards are getting data backed up onto them. Everything should be stored in two physical locations at all times. There's also the advantage that my SD card wallet is on my person at all times, so even if my backpack gets stolen, i've still got my footage.
    This is not ideal, but hopefully it works.
    The possibility that i may break down and just buy another hard drive is on the table, though.
    Alright! I think that's all i've got for today. Tomorrow's another full day in Helsinki, which i hadn't expected, so i guess i'll get to that cathedral after all!
    Probably.