Through the Baltic
Trip Start
Jan 23, 2011
1
30
36
Trip End
Oct 30, 2011
Harwich, England, United Kingdom
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Perhaps we could have taken a bit longer, but after leaving Russia we both felt pretty keen to get to the UK so we probably did the right thing in the end, as travel (museums in particular) fatigue was setting in!
For anyone curious about travelling to Russia, the St. Petersburg – Helsinki train seems like a really excellent way to get there – it’s fast, and passport control on the train was quick and painless.
Helsinki we found to be a very relaxed city - it didn’t feel at all crowded or busy. It has a beautiful harbour and lots of green spaces filled with sunbakers. While there we realised we were in a country with impeccable education standards when not once, but twice a random lonely oddball latched on to us for a chat, and both spoke excellent English!
Tallinn is just an hour away from Helsinki on a fast ferry, so we popped over there for the day, and witnessed what seems to be a favourite pastime in Finland – the cross border alcohol raid!
Over the centuries, old Tallinn has been the target of numerous invaders from all directions, but despite this, it is remarkably well preserved. The old city walls and towers are still mostly intact, and medieval houses, shops and churches line the narrow cobbled streets. While Estonia today is the least religious country in the world (only 15% of Estonians profess a belief in a god), the old town has a number of churches from different denominations - Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox. The Lutheran church houses the only remaining (and thus quite famous) original portion of a medieval, Black Death era style of frescoe known as a Dance Macabre by Bernt Notke , showing skeletons dancing gleefully amid the rich and poor alike, reminding us mortals that everyone ends up the same in the end.
We were especially impressed with the small size of the Estonian Parliament, and the fact that there is a public car park right out the front - all governments should be this approachable!
The Baltic is full of gigantic cruise ship / ferries, and the ship that took us from Helsinki to Stockholm was no exception – there can’t be too many car ferries out there with 13 decks, a casino, nightclub, and half a dozen restaurants!
We had very little time in Stockholm between arriving on the ferry and departing on the train, but we managed to fit in some quick sightseeing, mostly around the old town. There are several very intricate statues of St. George slaying the dragon in the old town – it was a very popular legend in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe in the middle ages.
We were a little bit surprised by the train we caught from Stockholm to Malmo – the engine and carriages were very old and rickety, and wouldn’t have looked at all out of place on the trans-Siberian – not what we expected in Sweden at all!
In Copenhagen we also had very little time for sightseeing, so we just hopped on a boat tour of the harbour and canals. Unsurprisingly, we were reminded a little of St. Petersburg. Copenhagen was by far and away the most expensive city we visited – it makes Moscow look very cheap!
After another cross country train to Esbjerg and an overnight ferry to Harwich, we reached the UK, where we had one more little hurdle to cross before being let into the country – the immigration officer questioned us for so long about our long winded journey from Australia that all the other passengers had long since passed through passport control, and when we did finally get to the exit we found that security had locked us in! So we had to go back to the immigration desk and ask to be let out – they were very apologetic, and we learnt that Mark was the officers’ first ever non-EU passenger, hence the long winded questioning!
