Traveling South to the East: Tallinn

On the Thursday morning I made my way to the Helsinki port, boarded the Tallink Star, sat around for two hours, and got off in the Estonian city of Tallinn.

Here I was staying with a girl called Triin, who at my time of landing was working, so I had half the day free to wander around the town before I had to meet her “in the square under the dragons” at 5:15pm. So I locked up my gear, got a map, and start walking towards the city. The map had twelve sights placed on it that were within the Old Town, so I figured that I’d check some of these out.

Walking through the (new) town, there was construction everywhere. It was blatently obvious that Tallinn was fast developing into a very Western city. The architecture was great, the streets were packed, and the people looked like they had taken all their style tips from those living in Berlin, Stockholm or Amsterdam (but probably Helsinki).

I entered the main town through the eastern gates.

Old Town Eastern Gates

To the left was a McDonalds, what an introduction to a well preserved medieval town. To the left, running along the city walls was some sort of knitwear market. These are everywhere. Every second shop is trying to sell you a knitted jersey or (and what I forgot to buy) one of those long woolen hat that you see people skiing with in cartoons.

Knitwear Market

As I ventured in, it became obvious that this was a town that would be overrun by tourists in the summer months. I keep hearing the word “touristic” being thrown around, I’m not sure if it’s even a proper word, but this is what I imagine it would be like. Similar to Brugge but with a more Eastern feel.

I began to follow the map around. It first led me up an old alley which was lined with ancient tablets from the old Tallinn.

Ancient Tablets

Once past this alley, I continued my way north within the town, and stumbled across St. Olaf’s Church, a huge white building with a tower which was once the tallest building in medieval Europe.

St Olaf's Tower

I walked inside and as the day was beautiful, I decided to climb the tower to the make shift viewing platform which they had built into the copper roof, 60m above the ground.

View from St. Olaf's Tower

From the tower I had spotted a huge building full of right and 45 degree angles, which looked to be made entirely out of concrete and left to rot. So I once I had decended the tower’s rickety stone staircase, I made my way further north towards the sea. What I found was a huge Soviet style building, purely in grey with huge staircases, graffiti and rubbish everywhere. Half the place was broken and it looked like no one had used it in 30 years. But it definitely had that Russian “for the people” feel to it.

Soviet Concert Hall

Later I found out that this place was built when Tallinn was under Soviet occuptaion, and amazingly, it is still in frequent use! You would never know it from seeing it, and even walking around on it. I was even on the roof to get some better photos, if I had known there might have been people inside I don’t think I’d be running around on the roof. It turns out that they can’t afford to renovate it, and they can’t afford to pull it down, and they don’t want to get rid of it because of it’s historical significance and architectural value.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the streets of the old town, through alleyways, pasts interesting shops and cafes, and at 5:15, I met Triin outside the town hall, but not after an interesting performance from a group of Hare Krishnas.

Hare Hare Krishna

We walked back to her apartment and hung out for a few hours, had dinner, then not long later, we were out again. One of the CouchSurfing hosts in town had moved into a new flat and was having a flat warming. There I met a number of the other CouchSurfing hosts in Tallinn and the people who were staying with them. There was Mattias from Italy, Ben (an Aussie) from Moscow, and Shigi (a Taiwanese guy) from Austria. We hung out and talked rubbish, listened to traditional Estonian music which they all know from their singing festivals (it turns out Estonians love to sing). Later, Shigi and I decided to meet up the following day at 12 and wander around the city together.

So at 12 the next day, we met outside the town hall.

Tallinn Town Hall

I ended up seeing a number of places that I’d seen the previous day, then I took Shigi to the concert hall. It appears that this is a place that no guide books talk about and no touists seem to know about, so I’m pretty happy thaat I found it on my own. Then we walked to the south end of the city, up into the highest part, past some crazy bird scultpures:

Me and the Bird

…the orthodox church:

Orthodox Church

and ended up climbing the town walls to spy on a crazy Russian wedding, complete with a guy with a megaphone ordering people about and “beautiful Russian women” who seemed a bit undressed for a wedding.

Russian Wedding

That afternnon Shigi and I decided to walk along  the waterfront towards the ruins of the Piirita Convent. This appeared to be a short distance on the map, but in fact took us about an hour and a half to walk. It was well worth it, though. This place was old, very old! There were floor foundations and sky reaching walls everywhere, and amoungst them were scattered gravestones and small underground passages. It was a beautiful place.

Piirita Convent Ruins

Later that night we met Triin and Shigi’s host, Christina, for dinner. Afterwards, they left and Shigi and I checked out a few bars.

The next day Christina and Triin wanted to show use a few more sights. First we headed into Kadrioru Park which was very close by to Triin’s apartment. Inside this park was the Tallinn art museum which was originally built as a Russian palace.

Art Gallery

Next we headed to a huge Soviet WWII monument which was built inside a massive park.  But before this we made a stop at the Estonian History Museum for a look around the ground, where we found a Lenin graveyard.

Lenin Graveyard

Soviet WWII Monument

Later on we visited a large park where these Estonian singing festivals are held.

Festival Park

That night it was the birthday of one of the Tallinn CS hosts. She had decided that she wanted a pirate party, so at about 8 o’clock, Triin, Christina, Shigi and I headed over to the home of Eva (who was hosting Ben the Russian Aussie). Everyone got dressed up in pirate regalia and we headed about 1 hour  out of town. The party was full of crazy Esotinans in priate gear, vodka, rum, and other assorted alcohols.

Pirates!

Later in the night it was time for me to finally experience the Finnish sauna which these people had in their house. So, basically, everyone got naked, went into a 60+ degree room, sat around for a while, and then went running around outside in the 3-4 degree night. Crazy, but very fun!

Finnish Sauna users!

The night was great and ended up with us all sleeping on the hardest floor I’ve ever experienced.

The next day it was time to go. I had decided to head back to Helsinki so I could sort out some visa issues, and I decided that even though my tour to Russia had been cancelled, after talking to Ben, I had decided to go anyway, I’m not going to miss that oppurtunity! So here I am, hanging out in Helsinki for a few days while I wait for my Russian visa to begin on the 1st of November.

Forests, Fun; Finland!

The ferry pulled up to the Helsinki Tallink terminal at 10am on Sunday in the pouring rain. For about 10 minutes I wandered around outside in the rain, looking for my next host, Sampsa, and soon found him before I was soaked. Twenty-five minutes later we arrived at his apartment where I had my own room, a first in a long time.

It was a wet Sunday afternoon, but we decided that we should probably do something as Sampsa had to work 6am-5pm everyday and would not really have that much time for me so we headed out to the local forest. Sampsa had a plan for us to do a ten kilometer round hike through the forest so we left the road and headed into the wilderness. This place was beautiful, even in the autumn with the baring trees.

Lead the way, Sampsa

We walked through the mud and passed the first of many lakes which we would see. What caught my attention, though, were these crazy-huge lumps at the base of many of the trees. Sampsa enlightened me, they were anthills, huge ones at that. He explained that they were always built on the south side of a tree so when you were hiking, all you had to do was look for one of these and you would always know where south is.

Anthill

We ventured further and further into the forest but soon it started to rain. We figure, though, that we would keep going because it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately but the time we got about a third of the way through, the rain was getting thick and heavy, so we turned back. I fell down a bank and soiled myself, but it only took about half the time to return to the car.

That night, Annika, Sapmsa’s girlfriend, made a delicious fish soup. Later, I found a message on my Couchsurfing account from a girl who I had requested a host with in Helsinki but who could not take me in. Instead, she suggested that we meet up and that she show me around the town.

And so the following day I met up with Meri at the Kaampi shopping centre in the Helsinki CBD. We decided that we would go and check out a local art gallery but unfortunately she had forgotten that all museums and gallerys were closed on Mondays. Lost for ideas, we walked around a bit and decided to check out the Tumio Church.

Toumio Church

Afterwards, Meri wanted to show me some of the more intersting shops in the design district of Helsinki, and we took a tour of some interesting clothing shops, I bought an illustrated story book in an independent book store and we fouraged through a second-hand market. We also had lunch at a Thai restaurant, which was very nice, and checked out what appeared to be the only open art gallery (of which I can’t remember the name), which was showing an Icelandic photography exhibition of images contrasting nature with people who have intellectual handicaps.

I had told Meri that at some stage during my stay I wanted to vist the Helsinki island fort of Soumenlinna, and she suggested that we go that afternoon as it was supposed to rain over the next few days. So we hopped onto the ferry and headed over the sea to Soumenlinna, the fort which has protected Helsinki through numerous battles.

On the way to Soumenlinna

When we got there, the wind was blowing but we still explored our way around the fading buildings in which a few thousand people still live.

Soumenlinna Clock Tower

Soon the sun started to set and we decided to head to the seaside to see the sunset, which was rather subdued as the storm clouds were closing in fast. The wind was strong and blowing a freezing gale but we spent a short time there and ran back just in time to get the ferry back to the mainland.

Fort Walls

Meri and I and the Sea

Back at the mainland, we went out separate ways but not after arranging to meet again the following day so we could actaully visit some art galleries.

At 2:30pm the next day I met Meri at the Atenium gallery. They were showing an exhibition which displayed the works of five friends of Finnish author Mika Waltari, author of a famous Finnish book called The Egyptian. The paintings had nothing to do with the book and some were more interesting than others, but there was an actual mummy in a glass case which was pretty cool! There were also galleries of posters for the book and film, another of Japanese post-WWII photography and lastly one showing Japanese landscapes and scenescapes from over 200 years ago (watercolour).

After this we left and went to find lunch. We walked through What is known as Plague Park, a historic burial place of plague victims which has been converted into a park but continues to be littered with graves.

Plague Park

We went to the supermarket to look for a cheap lunch, and ended up with the Finnish specialty of Carelian pies, mashed vegetables in a crusty open pie. Actually very similar to the meat version eaten by the Lebonese (which I can’t remember the name of, sorry Sarah’s grandmother!). After this, we headed to the Helsinki modern art gallery, Kiasma, only to find that it had closed at 5pm (yes, a pretty late lunch) was closed. Meri had suggested earlier that I come over for dinner, so after a little bit of shopping we headed back to her place on the train.

That night Meri cooked a very nice salmon (yeah, I know), and we drank a New Zealand wine which she was adement to try. We talked about al sorts of things, listened to music, and at some stage, Meri the art student decided to sketch me. I don’t think it was too bad for a 5 minute job either!

Meri's Sketch of Me

The following day the weather was nice again, and Annika suggested that we go to Porvoo. Unfortunately it was too late because Meri still wanted me to see Kiasma and I had to be in town at 5:30pm. Instead Annika and I went for a wander around the forest and lake which was so close to her apartment.

Forest and Lake

We walked for about an hour through the forest which proved to be  some sort of squirrel breeding ground, they were everywhere! I’m going to miss these little guys when I get back to New Zealand.

Tree Squirrel

I made it into town with about five minutes to spare, but had forgotten where the gallery was, and after asking about three or four different people, I finally found it, only ten minutes late. Ridiculous seeing as I had been there only the day before. And now came the third time that I was to miss out on Kiasma. Meri had jsut recieved some bad news about a family member and didn’t really feel like visiting the gallery as the building is a very intense place to be in. We decided instead to do something spontaneous and walked down to the metro where she asked me “east or west?”. I figured at home, west is best, so we went west and ended up at a disused cable factory, Kaapeli, which now housed twelve galleries and a number of small theaters and other places.

Kaapeli

At Kaapeli we found only one gallery open. This was showing the works of what made itself out to be a prestigious art group called the Finnish Artist Group. Unfortunately for anyone who wants to be proud of artistic expression in Finland, this art was terrible. Both Meri and I spent the time in the gallery laughing at how unoriginal and prententious it was. Soon it was time to leave as Meri had TaeKwanDoe that night, so we took on last photo and headed back to the centre on the subway.

Meri, Me and Streetart

The following day it was time to leave Helsinki. My ferrry was at 10:30am and was headed across the gulf, the course set for Tallinn, Estonia. Goodbye Scandinavia!

Stockholm!

I arrived back in Stockholm at around 4pm on a Tuesday. My next Couchsurfing host was Karl. He was busy working on a student radio show that evening so I made my way to his place using the instructions which he had given me. I always worry a little bit about using the local public transport systems, but as usual, this one was indcredibley easy.

I took the metro four or five stops and then met a bus. I asked the driver if he went to where Karl lives and how much the ticket was. He replied, “one thousand.” I said, “how about I give you two.” He laughed and then asked, “American? Canadian?” “New Zealand” I replied, and he told me to get on the bus and that he’d take me there.

I arrived at Karls apartment building, entered the door code and headed up to his place, found the key and let myself in. Nort knowing what to do, I looked through Karl’s bookshelf and spent the night reading a book until Karl arrived home.

Karl arrived home at around 9:30, and straight away we got along. He was a friendly guy with what I thoughht was an American accent. I later found out that he was purely Swedish but had lived in California for a year when he was 17-18. He didn’t seem to realise, but I think that the accent atoning his english was influenced from this experience – and network TV! That night we chatted about all sorts of things ’till late including Whatipu’s tunnel of wind (some of you will know of this amazing place on Auckland’s West Coast).

The first proper day I spent in Stockholm was beautiful, sunny autumn day, so I decided that I would just start walking and see where I ended up. So I headed across the bridge from Liljeholmen to Åsön. The view was amazing;

Bridge from Liljeholmen

I saw from the bridge a nice looking park which ran along the seaside, so I decided to head into there. The autumn trees were looking amazing, but the first thing which I noticed were these crazy little houses set into the hillside. I thought they might be something like a retirement village, but after inquirement it turns  out that they are summer houses which you can hire out from the government as a place to garden and hang out in when the weather is warm. A great idea for the thousands of people who live in apartments in the inner city.

Summer Houses

I continued my walk along the seaside for another hour or so and then headed into the city. I found a  cool shop called The T-Shirt Shop where I bought an urban guide to Stockholm which was to guide me to the best of the shops and other places in Stockholm for the next few days. I even found an awesome statue of Thor beating down upon a sea serpent.

Thor!

The rest of the afternoon I continued my walk around the city and in the evening headed back to Karl’s where we had dinner and hung out for the evening, him telling me crazy stories and showing me videos of mixed martial arts legend Bas Routen. Hilarious!

The following day I decided to check out the Old Town. Almost everywhere has some form of “old town” and this was no exception. Cobbled streets, ancient buildings, and hundreds of ridiculously expensive tourist shops. The palace was also on the island where the old town was located, a huge building complete with guards and everything!

Palace

Next on the list was the Swedish Parliment and a crazy round church, walking-a-tonne, and another evening of hanging out with Karl.

Swedish Parliment

The next day I decided to check out a few more parts of the city. The town hall which had this cool leave covered wall hiding an amazing lion statue.

Hidden Lion

Next I went to check out the Moderna Museet, but ended up not having enough time to go inside. Outside, however, were some very cool sculptures consisting of child-like giant lumps coupled with strange steam-punk style machines. Very strange but very cool.

Modern Sculpture

That evening things got more exciting. There were a number of options for the evening, but we had to choose one. At 7 we headed out to one of Karl’s friend’s place, Lena. Her and her friend Mary (I think, sorry!) had cooked dinner for us, a Swedish specialty, reindeer. The dinner was amazing and after a large helping and some crazy chat, we were ready to head out. Lena was running a club night at one of Stockholm’s clubs, but before we attended that, Karl and I headed to another club to see a gig by Californian experimental band Xiu Xiu. Later after the gig we headed to Lena’s club night, met her and Mary and had a few drinks, then headed off home.

The time in Stockholm was excellent, things just keep getting better! The next day, ‘though, it was time to leave. An overnight ferry was booked for Helsinki, and at 6pm, after only making the boarding with 5 minutes to spare I was off with the sunset behind me.

Stockholm Sunset

Back to Sweden: Borlänge

After an excessive trip from Tromsø which saw me flying from Tromso to Bodø, then taking the night train to Trondheim, and one hour later taking another seven hour train to Oslo, sleeping the night there, getting up at 5:30am and flying to Stockholm, then taking a two and a half hour train, I arrived in Borlänge.

Borlänge is a small town of not very many people, but it is the home of my childhood au pair, Marie. I figured, and mum said I had, to visit Marie while I was in Sweden. It had been fourteen years since I had last seen her, and meeting her on the platform was interesting, she didn’t look anything like how she had all those years ago. It actaully turns out that how I remember her is the time that she had a perm! Anyway, irrellevant as that is, we, her and I and her two daughters (seven and nine) set off from the train station soon after I arrived.

Marie had decided to take me to a little river side cafe which, when we turned up, was full of Swedish bikers! They soon left and we sat down, had a coffee and talked for a while.

Riverside Cafe

She then suggested that we take a walk. And off we went. Along the road and towards the local open-air museum which contained a number of historic houses and some sort of Swedish style flag pole which is danced around during mid-summer.

Open-Air Museum

The site was set river side and the autumn coulours were amazing. Red and golden trees everywhere, with evergreens interspersed between. Amazing.

Old Rowboats and a River

After this, we took a look at the oldest church in the town (I think it may have been from the 1300s!), and its amazing bell tower.

Autumn Bell Tower

Next we visited a spring which is well-known in these parts. It’s a place where people go to have BBQs in the summer, children run around on school trips spotting birds at 4am, and in the winter they may even ice skate here.

Natural Spring Water

While we were at the spring, we took a short walk in the surrounding forest, complete with bird houses and beautiful autumn trees.

Grumpy? Walkin' the walk!

That night we had some delicous tacos made by Marie and sat around talking for hours. She even showed me her photo albums from her trips to New Zealand. The photos brought back many memories, especially of her with the crazy perm she’d got! She told me all sorts of stories about her time in New Zealand. It turns out that she has seen much more o the country that I have, and that was fourteen years ago! Later that night her husband came home and I ended up looking at another bunch of photos of his trip to Nepal and India.

The following day, both Marie and her husband had the day off so they could show me around. The first outing we made was into the Swedish forest to see the cave which Per Gynt, the fabled huntsman, hid inside. (He is also the subject of a play by Norweigian playwrite Henrik Ibsen.)  The walk was beautiful, the forest was amazing with its autumn colours in full flourish.

Autumn Forest

After walking for a kilometer or two we got to the cave which was much smaller than I had thought it would be. Regardless of that, I decided to get inside it.

Inside Per Gynt's cave

After this we wandered into the forest a little further and ended up at Per Gynt’s gallows and also in a position for an amazign view over the local forest.

View from the Gallows

Later on we headed off to pick up Marie’s daughters, Gabriella and Rebecka from school. They finish at 1:30pm at their school so had time to make an excursion with us in the afternoon. We headed to the next town, Falun, 15km away, to take a tour through was what Europe’s largest Copper mine.

Falun Coppermine

We joined a tour which was to show us the mine and go through the history. It turns out the the mine had been running  for close to 900 years when it was closed in 1992. It has been set up as a place to made the common Swedish red paint and also for touring. The tour started at the top (the picture above) and then decended into the mine.

Decending the mine

For around 45 minutes we toured through the mine, seeing the 250m mine shaft, the old equipment which was used inside, we were told ancient stories about the ghosts of the mine, and at one stage all the lights were turned off. This was the darkest place I have ever been, there was absolutely no light, it was impossible to even adjust to the darkness.

That night was my last in Borlänge. The following day I headed back on the train to Stockholm.

Tromsø: Above the Arctic Circle

I landed in Tromsø at around 9 o’clock at night. Ula (the girl I was staying with) had given me pretty good instructions as to how to get to her place, so I decided not to follow them and got off at the wrong bus stop. This seems to be becomming a common theme of this trip. So, after wondering where in the world I was supposed to go, wandering around looking lost, I found my self in a psychiatric hospital – asking for directions. I was only 100m away!

I soon found my way up to the 5th floor of the Tromsø University student house where Ula lived. She was a Polish masters student of English Literature. I would spend two nights with her, and then I was to spend the following two nights in the room of her neighbour, Phil, who was a biology masters student, spending his time in a greenhouse germinating seeds taken from Svalbard. That night I also met a couple more students plus Phil’s friend Doris from Vienna. We all stayed up pretty late and Doris and I decided that the next day we would climb the local mountain which during the correct season is usually accessed by cable car.

The next morning I awoke and went out onto the deck. This was the view.

View from Ula's Deck

The weather was not so nice, but it wasn’t raining, so Doris and I set out for the mountain.
As we got close to the harbour, the mountain became visable. It dosen’t look so big, but I gaurantee you that it is definitely steep.

Climbable?

We crossed the massive bridge which links Tromsø to the mainland,

Bridge and Harbour

Passed the modern-style church,

Triangle Church

And headed up into the forest. The path was pretty crazy, it spent about and hour going along the bottom of the mountain and we figured that at this rate it was going to take forever to get to the top, zig-zagging across the mountain. After passing a good number of streams, we finally got to a more intesnse part which, more or less, went directly up.

Mountain Stream

It took about another hour of ascention to reach a point where we decided to go no further. It was freezing, windy and starting to rain. But the view was amazing.

View From Mountain

Me and the View

Soon it was starting to get dark so we began to make out decent. On the way down the sunset, though cloudy, was very amazing. Here is my favourite picture of it:

Mountain Sunset

That night Ula made a very nice Polish-style tomato soup and her and I and Doris and Phil all ate together and talked into the night. The following day Doris was going back to Oslo (where she studies German literature), so we made morning plans and then we all headed off to bed.

The next morning I awoke to this:

Morning View

The weather was amazing! Doris and I went walking again and had to stop and take pictures of the Tromsø Island lake on the way to town.

Central Lake

We got to town and decided that we wanted to walk to the very south end of the island. So we set off, passing some pretty cool street art,

Street Art

and Mack’s brewery, the world’s northern most beer brewery.

Macks Brewery

We never made it to the south tip of the island. We walked for so long but in the end it seemed as though Doris might miss her flight if we kept going. So we left the town goodbye and headed back to the student accommodation. Doris left for Oslo and I moved into Phil’s place. I then pitched the idea of tramping out into the darkness to Phil to try and see if the northern lights were going to show. He agreed, and after a nice dinner of vegetables and rice we bussed back into town, over the bridge, and walked up on of the cross-country skiing trails into the valley and beyond town’s visable light. We walked for hours and hours and the northen lights decided they were not going to show. I was not too happy about this, but cheered up after we did some interesting photography.

Phil and I

We had missed the last bus back but it was getting late and cold so we decided to make out way back home. When we reached the point where we could see the lights of Tromsø, we decided to take a few photos, the first looking like this:

Subtle Lights

We had to double take at the picture because there was definitely some green in there. The sky was almost blank but the photo showed up green. So we waited for a while. And sure enough, the northern lights appeared to us, albiet very subtly. I would have loved it to be amazing and bright and full of different colours, but I guess that it was a bit too early in the season. We watched the subtle green colours dance across the sky for around 20 minutes before they disappeared and then headed off home. We had been (mildly) victorious.

Subtle Lights

It was a long walk back with no bus to catch, but Phil and I got on so well that we never had nothing to say to each other, and we were home before we knew it. It was also very fun to throw rocks onto a frozen lake and listen to them bounce off emmitting a laser-gun like sound.

The following day I slept in. It was well deserved after all the time I have spent getting up early and walking around cities, etc. What happened that day was not a lot. But in the night Phil and I decided that we would do another night hike. So once again it was up the mountain for me. We got layered up in warm clothing, brandished head-lamps, and then set off along the forest trail. It seemed very different at night and we went much slower than I has previously gone with Doris. But soon we had made it as far as we thought we should go – this time we were not going to miss the last bus.

The view was very cool, and it was amazing how much orange from the city was reflected off of the clouds.

Orange City

The next morning it was time for me to head off, I had a lot of travelling ahead of me: A flight to Bodø, a night train to Trondheim, a day train to Oslo, one night in oslo, then a plane to Stockholm at 8am the next day, followed by a train to Borlänge where I was to stay with my childhood au pair, Marie.