A long time in the making, this post tells in short the trip I took to Helsinki and Tallinn. Thanks to a pretty interesting offer from Finnair (Finnish air carrier), I started toying with the idea of visiting Finland and maybe Sweden. I intended to travel 9 or 10 days, however when talking about travels with a colleague of mine we decided to attempt this together.

So a change of plans occurred (for the better I would say) and we ended up going a long weekend to Helsinki and do a day trip to Tallinn (in Estonia – the Baltic countries). It was a nice change of style for me to travel with other people (he he), and sharing the tasks (flight tickets, accommodation, planning,…) was pretty nice. Also this is one of the few trips from which I return with pictures of me

We flew from Bucharest Otopeni on Thursday evening, while Bucharest was still hot, and arrived in chilly Helsinki pretty late at night. However, like most cities Helsinki Vantaa airport has a fast, cheap, bus to the center of the city. 11pm found us in Helsinki trying to find our hostel. Which unfortunately proved harder than anticipated, as Helsinki has a pretty bad way of writing street names. With some help from Finns (do all people in Finland speak English? It seemed so to us) we did manage to find our accommodation.

Next day we visited the main sights of Helsinki – especially the extremely nice cathedrals (one Lutheran, one Russian Orthodox and one catholic – talk about variety) – and enjoyed a nice slice of Rudolf. Yes, we did try reindeer meat (or so it was advertised, anyway). Delicious, especially with sweet potatoes and jam. We found a lovely place to eat – right in the port. The evening closed with a small pop concert in the church (apparently it has great acoustics, and a lot of small Finnish bands play there for free). Of course we could not understand any word, yet it sounded vaguely as Holograf. Nice experience – no Nightwish / Tarja level though…

On Saturday we went bye ferry to Tallinn. This meant waking up at 6am, and thus a lot of cursing took place in our cosy room (we got along very well, except in the mornings). Tallin was a very nice surprise – a city so lovely, reminding me of Prague, with cobbled streets and cafes, medieval walls and small restaurants.

We took a free guided tour in Tallinn, which was not to my liking. First of all because we didn’t get the extremely nice-looking guide, but another one. And second because it seemed that our guide was more interested in ghost stories and KGB conspiracy theories. Some of them we interesting, and somewhat true. Yet when every building proved to be haunted I started to have the impression that either Tallinn is cursed (which does not look like) or our guide didn’t do her homework. To put things in perspective, also Lonely Planet Estonia talks about some of the ghost stories.

We also lingered at some nice cafes, met two nice guys (one Dutch, one Canadian) and generally had a great time. My only complaint was that my ING card was not accepted anywhere in Tallinn. The ride back to Helsinki was uneventful – mostly as I dozed off in a char on the ferry. the girls were fast asleep – it was a long tiring day.

Next post? The UNESCO Suomenlina / Sveaborg fortress island and crawling in a WW2 U-Boat. (one of the 5 total Finnish U-Boats). In the meantime – enjoy the pictures!

You might also like:   Easter Bunny brings you more photos,  last day in China, going home,  lost in Shanghai,  from Shanghai to Zhujiajiao,  second day in Shanghai,