Life in Helsinki Part 4 : The Travel Industry

The issue of travel has come from a potential event which didn't actually happen. The idea of going on a cruise was floated (sic.) last night, but it never really got off the ground. To 99,9% of the world's population, the word "cruise" conjures up images of cocktails, evening socials, outside swimming pools on deck, luxury cabins and sunrises in the Bahamas. To women with an active imagination, it also conjures up images of a short, dashing Scientologist who appears in action movies. The remaining 0,01% of the world's population, however, are Finns. The word takes on a slightly different meaning here. There are 2 choices from Helsinki - you get on a very large boat and go over to Sweden on an 18-hour-each-way sailing, with a potential stop to do nothing much in the Åland Islands on the way; or you go to Tallinn in Estonia which takes around 3 hours each way. There are no palm trees, no outdoor swimming pool and ladies in ballroom dresses don't sip expensive cocktails while chatting with gentlemen in tuxedos. The idea yesterday was to hop on a boat at 9pm tonight, return to Helsinki tomorrow afternoon, and in the mean time go over to Tallinn.

The first surprise to the outsider is that "going over to Tallinn" on this cruise, for a lot of people, does not actually involve going to Tallinn at all. The boat sails over, docks in the harbour, and people stay on the boat and get drunk. This is encouraged by the ferry companies and on this particular trip, even though the boat arrives in Tallinn at midnight, no one would be allowed off the boat until 8.30 the next morning. The advantage for others is that, given that people go on these boats with the sole aim of getting trashed, astronomical amounts of money are spent on booze. This drives ticket prices down and you can get over to Stockholm and back for as little as 25€, and to Tallinn for 10€ return.

The majority of people who disembark at the other end will go to the closest shop, stack up with Estonian price vodka and cigarettes, get back onto the boat and start drinking again, stopping only when the ferry arrives back in Helsinki. When the time comes to step back onto Finnish soil, you see a gang of Finns lined up like cattle in front of the door with trolleys specially designed to hold the maximum allowance of cigarettes and vodka. After they have smoked and drunk everything, they book another cruise to Tallinn. It's quite amusing and quite depressing at the same time.

Despite the enormous size of the boats (most of the friends I've had over to visit have been so amazed by the scale of the beasts that they've taken pictures of them) there really isn't all that much to do on them. The boats to Sweden, for instance, are on about 12 floors - mostly car parking spaces, cabins to sleep off hangovers, restaurants, bars and a nightclub to get pissed in and a duty free shop to buy booze and cigarettes in, and lines and lines of one-arm bandits and poker machines, seemingly to encourage kids to lose their money. Add to this the fact that the aforementioned bars and nightclubs are crap, and you suddenly find that joining the cattle in the duty free shop and getting sauced up and facing the prospect of wandering around Stockholm hungover isn't such an unattractive idea after all. In fact, it's almost compulsory to do so in order to divert your mind from jumping off the deck and swimming to shore just to give yourself something to do.

During the course of the trip, you'll probably see most, if not all of the following :
- A bunch of students dressed up as superheroes or wearing stupid wigs on a stag night
- A middle aged man/woman in a severe state of emotional decay, with the possible presence of tears and a consoling friend
- Someone wandering aimlessly along the cabin corridors, drunkenly staggering from one wall to the other
- Groups of people standing, not talking to each other (see most other posts for further details)
- A balding man in a suit desperately looking for younger female company
- Someone asleep on the floor

The slightly richer Finn takes these trips on Silja line, which is more expensive. I've never been with this company so I'm unable to comment on it but I'd imagine it's a higher class example of exactly the same thing. The much richer Finn will generally go on a package tour to Thailand, lie on the beach and come back with a tan and, in the case of single men, a wife. A Finn who goes anywhere else has undoubtedly declared him/herself to foreigners as "not the typical Finn" and, in my opinion, this isn't so far from the truth.

So to you all I would suggest the following - indulge yourself in the Finnish travel industry, hit the boats, go on a "cruise" - It'll probably be one of those things you'll be happy you did but won't be jumping to do again...