Jul 2006

After arriving by train Örebro, we checked in to our new hostel. It appeared that it was miles from the centre of town on the map, so we ordered a taxi but it only took about 5 minutes. Hmmm, next time we will look at the scale.

For our first full day in Örebro, we decided to do a walking tour of the town. The Lonely Planet has about a 3 line entry for the town, so it was left to us to figure out what to do. First stop was the castle and a quick walk through that. Unfortunately, we arrived just after the English language tour had finished so we had to guide ourselves. By all accounts, the tour includes a number of actors re-enacting pivotal moments in Öorebro history, scenes of torture, etc. Could have been fun to watch.

We then explored the old town of Wadköping. Whenever a city is being "modernised", the existing buildings are demolished - usually while the town planner has a manical gleam in his eye which would put the average psychotic to shame. However, Örebro decided to uproot the old buildings and move them to an area just outside the main city and opened it up as a museum. It is something that a lot more towns should consider to preserve their heritage. Cement monoliths may be efficient but they are ugly.

While on our walking tour, we managed to find an English theme pub where I was able to work my way through their English beer collection (and we were meant to be drying out in Scandanavia).

After our short time in Turku, we said goodbye to our friend Dan and boarded the ferry back to Stockholm. Unlike the outgoing leg, this boat was not quite so comfy (air conditioning on overdrive didn't help) and even worse than that, it was full of Moomins! Apparently, they are still big in Finland, to the extent there is even a Moominworld. After 11 long and painful hours, we arrived in Stockholm and went straight to our hostel where we crashed for the night.

The following day, we headed to Stockholm airport to meet Heather's mother as she was joining us for our time in Sweden before heading to the centre of the Old Town. This is the most picturesque part of Stockholm and has many side streets, some no more than 1 metre wide. I managed to pick up a decent newspaper as well, so I could catch up with whats happening around the world.

By the next day, we decided that Stockholm (although pretty) didn't have a lot to offer so we spent a day relaxing in the park and planned our next leg. After some head scratching, we decided the following day we were off to Örebro

On arrival in the port of Turku, we picked up our hire car from the rental agency. I had booked a VW Polo or similar as it was the cheapest option, but they gave us a free upgrade to an Audi A3. Nice one! Then it was off for a 300km drive to a tiny town called Siipy in the north of Finland, where our friends were getting married.

We eventually arrived at midnight (we had set off at 9pm), however as Finland is so far north, it was still broad daylight making us finding our cottage supposedly easier. In reality of course, we had problems and we had to give the bride-to-be a call and ask her where we were. After a number of phone calls, and disturbing a jet-lagged friend who had just flown in from Australia, we found our cottage and slept. And slept. And slept some more.

When we eventually woke up, we decided to head to the sauna with our friends Sarah, Dan and Tommy. The baking heat was interuppted only when we threw ourselves off a pier into the freezing lake - much to the amusement of the spectators we did not know we had. If I had known, I may have worn a cozzie!

The wedding itself was really nice, held in a Finnish church and conducted in two languages for the benefit of those of us whose Finnish is up there with their Swahili. The bride looked stunning and the groom looked appropriately nervous.

The post-ceremony celebrations started with a traditional wedding breakfast, and then the just as traditional revelerie. However, it is a Finnish custom to have a few games to get people in the party mood before hand and also for a couple of men to kidnap the bride. Once these festivities were over, it was down to the serious business of partying...

Music was provided by a live band, who did covers of some popular tunes plus a few of their own (this band has had a couple of gold albums in Finland). However, to keep the party going, plenty of drink was available - one was a lethal punch created by Jon (the groom). My first thoughts were that it was watery, one bite into a piece of apple convinced me otherwise. This was supplemented with a homemade beer called Sahti. This beer was as thick as syrup and was pretty potent.

I think there were many sore heads the morning after...

After attending Jon & Sini's wedding (thanks guys!), we returned the car to Turku (sniff, sniff - I was liking it) and caught a train to Helsinki.

We spent a short time with Sarah, Dan & Tommy - wishing bon voyage to Sarah and Tom as they were returning to Australia. The rest of the time in Helsinki was spent doing the rapid itinerary sight-seeing that we have perfected over the last few months so that we could take advantage of the beaches and the sun.

The main highlight with Helsinki was that it was the first use of the tent we had bought for Roskilde (our friends lent us their's when we there). Unfortunately, we were pretty hopeless without instructions and it took us two attempts to get it up (where have I heard that before?) and when it was up it seemed to shake a bit. Camping in Finland is a treat, the campsites are well equipped and the one we were staying at had a river alongside it where we could sunbake. One pain in the bum is the fact that the sun sets at around 1:30am and rises at 3:30am, at which point the birds think it is very entertaining to serenade the campers. Heather slept with ear plugs in and I buried my head under a towel.

Still good fun though.

After Helsinki, we caught the train back to Turku and checked ourselves into a hostel (that's enough camping for now). Turku is the former capital of Finland, and is seeking to be the European City of Culture in 2011. All this was wasted on 2 Australians and an Englishman though, as we had a much better plan.

One of the highlights of Turku is that along its river there are a number of boats moored up, which are licensed for sale of alcohol. The 3 of us decided that a pub crawl was therefore in order, working our way through as many of them as possible.

At around midnight, we decided that there was one more place we need to go: a bar that promised 150 different brands of beer. We headed there and read through a beer list that would put most wine lists in 4 star restaurants to shame. I managed a couple that were both English: Spitfire (an old favourite) and another one whose name escapes me (maybe I had too many). Very nice, all up.

Our last day in Turku was spent lying in bed trying to get rid of the drilling noise we could hear. Off to Sweden tomorrow...