The trip to Scandinavia

[ Travel blog disclaimers ]
[ link to photos : Flickr Pbase ]
8 days.
7 thousand kilometers.
A whirlwhind tour of Scandinavia.
I have just returned from a trip that took me across the whole of Scandinavia. From the Finnish countryside to Norwegian fjords, I saw an amazingly huge variety of landscapes. Our group was the group of 5 – me Ghalib Ghanta Danko and Jhaag. I must call the group an eclectic mix of crazy bums.

Anyway, the trip started Saturday night from Cologne, where we took the direct train to Copenhagen. Little did we know about the issues at hand. In Scandinavia, every country has its own language and currency, not to speak of its own stupidities. So Copenhagen was spelt as Kobenhaven [ with some dots and crosses to garnish the word ]. We alighted there after spending a tiring night on train. Copenhagen isn’t my favorite city, I must tell you. It is old, and it was cold. And I have already seen a lot of old buildings in Europe, so the little we saw wasn’t so enchanting. But the ferry ride around the city was interesting. It took us around the main landmarks of the city though the main part of the trip, which was the last leg through the city [ yes, canals criss cross the city ] had to be cancelled due to bad weather. By this time, I had rediscovered my penchant for reading maps and was beginning to demonstrate competency in this area.

From Copenhagen, we took the train to Malmo, which is in Sweden. But it is very close to Copenhagen and is connected by a long bridge which has its 17kms stretch over the sea. If Copenhagen was cold, Malmo was colder. But we found some of the best houses we have ever seen there. Facing the sea and surrounded by walkways which run beside the sea, it looked like the perfect location to settle once the bank balance issues are settled.

We moved on to Stockholm, the journey using up most of the night. We had couchette tickets, and we guessed that it would mean reclining chairs. To our pleasant surprise, we discovered that couchette were quite akin to Indian sleeper class trains. And it was much, much more comfortable.

Stockholm, if you ask me, is among the most beautiful cities in Europe. The golden color of the leaves spawned everywhere by the onset of autumn made it look like the perfect calendar landscape. In Stockholm, we had our lunch at a small restaurant near the Swedish Royal Palace, where we had gone to see the change of guards. Swedes call the daily lunch menu @$# [something I can’t seem to remember ]. It was amazing food, served by a very cute and sweet lady.

A quick tour of the city later, we found our way to the Silja shipping line. We were going from Stockholm to Helsinki on a cruise ship. Now, we had only heard of a cruise, and at times, we heard that our ship was like a ferry. Some of us were confused, other were imagining a mediocre sized boat just good enough to carry people across the sea. When we saw the ship, we were all dazed. It was Titanic rescaled. And we had a cabin to ourselves. However, the spoiler was the unique combination of incredibly costly shops and our shoestring budget. So we had to be content with just walking around, and buying fast food. We spend early parts of the night playing DumbC and the latter half sleeping like dead donkeys.

Helsinki was another cold but interesting city. Another language, another currency. But it was hard not to notice the similarities between Norwegian culture and Russian culture. Not that I am an expert in either, but the similar phonetics in the language couldn’t be missed even by laymen. We had our lunch at the Porthania, which is the student mess of Helsinki University. There, Ghalib bhai decided to ask them a question which they had never encountered before and they could only answer it after a round of consultations. It turned out that he asked if he could take a second helping, since the menu said it was a buffet lunch. They decided to let him do that, and I think it was a cardinal mistake on their part. They have been reeling in debt ever since then. We also saw the Helsinki Olympic Stadium and a few other things before we decided to start the most happening part of our trip.

We took the overnight train to Rovaniemi, which is in the heart of Lapland. It is known for housing the Santa Claus’ office, and the arctic circle passes through it. God ki kasam, it was freezing cold there. Must have been close to zero degree Celsius. We found very few people in that place [which is 8 kms from the city] except the stupid 5 of us. In freezing cold at 8 am, when everything else was closed, we were roaming around in the Santa Claus garden. We only had a little time to spare there, so we hurried back. Took the train to Kemi, then the bus to Torneo. From there we walked across the Swedish-Finnish border and reached Haperanda. Then the bus to Lulea, from where we took the train to Stockholm.
All these minor details would really be inconsequential except for the fact that most of this journey was through the Scandinavian countryside. And it was awesome.

From Stockholm, we headed towards Oslo. We already knew that we had very little time to spare for Oslo if we wanted to reach back to Vallendar in time for my next class on Monday morning. So we headed straight towards Bergen. It is a town famous for its fjords. And that was where or trip ended.

The main lessons from the trip:
Swedish ladies and Finnish trains are the best of the lot in Scandinavia.
If there’s a dream Eurotrip [ for the purpose of travel or honeymoon or anything else] , then Scandinavia has an indispensable place in it. As far as I am concerned, time and money constraints notwithstanding, I already have my honeymoon trip planned out. I am just hoping the travel bug catches up with the-someone-somewhere-who-is-waiting-for-me!

On the trip we met a guy who has been traveling for the last 17 years, and has seen an incredible 76 countries. When we asked him about traveling alone, he told us that his wife couldn’t take so much so much of travel and they split after four years. That’s the time between two consecutive Olympic games. And that’s why my wish for a she-Marco-Polo. But he had some really nice things to say about India. He was upfront about the lack of cleanliness and all that, but he praised us for being so brave against adversities.

On other trivia, my group tested me time and again on my map reading skills. Except for the time when I misread the scale and estimated a distance as 600m which really was a kilometer and a half, I think I fared pretty well.

The quest for free WC and free water continues.
I think I have put enough travel details for one post. Some top-of-the-mind-thoughts are waiting to come out now. They can wait till later!