You would think that, now that I'm home, I would do this more often. Not the case. I will try to get the final days of my journey as soon as I can.
8 January:
Although breakfast wasn't included in the room, I still didn't think it would cost 7EUR for it. 7EUR for an all you can eat buffet isn't that bad now that I think about it, but thinking in terms of American currency, that's about $11. Which is a bit expensive in terms of all you can eat buffets, especially ones that don't offer that much hot food. The only hot things were tea, coffee, porridge, and sausages. Not even a pancake in sight, which had me disappointed. Dined that morning on granola cereal and some fruit. The big projection screen had a BBC show about a racecar road tripping from Alaska to the southern most tip of South America. Crazy. It was all about how they were trying to find a charger for the car because it was electrical and they were stranded in the middle of nowhere. Brilliant.
Left for Soumenlinna, which is a big fortress Helsinki is noted for. Took me a while to get on the ferry to it. Soumenlinna is a big island and takes about twenty minutes by ferry to get there. Public transportation tickets work on the ferry going there, so that's what I attempted to get. But the machine didn't take my card because it wasn't a chip card. (Don't ask what that means. They have two types of debit cards over there and one has a chip in it, and others are like mine.) So I went to get cash from a cash machine. When I returned, the machine only accepted coins. Grrr. The ferry had left by this point, but I wanted my ticket so I went to find a place to get 20EUR in coins. Once that was done, I got my three-day travel pass and waited.
The giant parking lot nearby had a small market, so I walked around there for a while. There were mostly souvenir booths. I guess the market is bigger when it's summer and only open for tourists in the winter. Didn't buy anything, but I did try on a really cute hat with ears on it. It didn't seem like it would keep my forehead that warm though. Also, it was more than I would spend. Oh well. There were only two booths with food inside. But they were both for fish, and I wasn't about to walk in to smell the fish. Besides, I don't like fish. Don't really enjoy eating it, although I am trying to warm up to shrimp now.
Got on the ferry when it returned. I found a really nice seat by the window towards the front, but a team of men led a drunk in chains my way and he started making a ruckus nearby. I wasn't going to deal with that, so I got up and left for another seat. It wasn't by a window, but the people weren't drunk or in chains, so that was nice. I could still take pictures from my seat, so that's what I did on the ride.
At the island, I figured I would do what I do best and just sit and explore. So I wandered away from the main path several times until I started to follow signs pointing me to food. Except there was only one, maybe two places on the whole island that sold food. I wandered away from them and decided to eat a light lunch before I ate dinner back on the mainland.
Found my way into the Soumenlinna Museum where I learned about the history of the island and the fortress, mostly through a big 30-minute video presentation. This movie was interesting because before it started, you had headphones attached to a receiver. You chose the channel for the receiver depending on what language you speak. The narration of the documentary happened on the headphones, but the sound effects and the music came from the screen. I thought that was an interesting and unique way of doing things. It was a cool way to break the language barrier.
The rest of the museum wasn't much. The panels were only in Finnish, but there were booklets with translations in other languages. I picked one up and explored and read, but I missed just skimming something on the wall and moving on. Walked along the first floor and the second floor before exiting the museum to explore some more island. This isn't to say that it was a bad museum, it was actually really good. There was a lot of history and detail in everything. You can learn a lot about the island in that museum. I, for one, learned that Finland became an independent nation in the early 1900s, that it was inhabited by Russians before that, and invaded by Sweden before that. I also couldn't help but think that I would definitely have Suomenlinna has one of the first fortresses I conquer if I were to start conquering the world. I declare the walls thick enough and the fortress well enough protected to have it as a military base.
Outside the museum, I found the grave of the man who built the fortress. His grave was in the middle of a courtyard and covered in snow. Then I wandered over to the King's Gate, which was important enough to have a different colored sign on the street signs, so I followed them. Wandered up by some cannons with other people and saw children sledding down the stairs, which weren't maintained for winter so it required a bit of skill climbing up them. Then I walked down the fortress wall until I explored some not-so-hidden crevices and eventually followed a pair of footprints up to the top of the wall.
That was a really fun adventure right there. Wandering the top of the walls as the sun mingled above the horizon. It wasn't sunset just yet, but it was debating on it. I walked along the walls just to see how far I can go and if it'll lead anywhere. All the while, I thought about using it as a fortress just in case aliens attacked the planet and some people needed a safe place to defend themselves and think up a battle plan. The thoughts mostly included buffing up the place for alient invasion. Please, don't ask about the state of my imgination. Anyway, although I came to the end of the wall and eventually made it to the King's Gate, there was no way for me to get down easily, so I ended up retracing my steps back to the place I climbed up the wall in the first place and walking the rest of the way on the actual path.
The King's Gate wasn't as magnificent as I thought I would be. I didn't realize it was the King's Gate until I saw a map later. Good thing I took pictures of it. From there, I was sufficiently hungry so I went to find a place to eat. There was a small cafe in the small village by the ferry dock where I first got on the island, so I walked in there.
Cutest. Cafe. EVER!!
I dare anyone to find a cafe cuter than this one. It was tiny with only about five or six tables for people. The wallpaper was red and gold and intricate and reminded me of the 1930s. There was only girl behind the counter and a really small kitchen behind that. I didn't see an oven or anything, so I figured that you could only eat whatever was displayed in the small display case immediately to the left of the cash register. There were two pies on the counter: one slice of pecan pie left and about three quarters of apple pie. The apple pie came with a hot vanilla sauce that looked really good. Today's soup was smoked salmon.
There was a small line when I got there, and most of the tables were full already. But some of them looked done with their fika (fika being a Scandinavian activity involving tea/coffee/hot chocolate and conversation. It's basically a Swedish coffee break) so they left after a few minutes. I was patient and waited for a spot to open up. One did as I was ordered hot chocolate and the last slice of pecan pie. I settled down and set out to slowly enjoy my pie and hot cocoa.
Although any hot chocolate is mediocre compared to the stuff Ryan and I had in Berlin, I still ordered it just to see if it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal. So far, it is. But the hot cocoa was still good, even with the whipped cream. The peacan pie was also really good. I savored it and ate it slowly. There was an Asian man behind me in line. He got a slice of apple pie and coffee. He sat, ate, took pictures of the place, and left. Eventually, some others left and I was the only one in the cafe, now playing sudoku.
As new people came in for the next wave of customers, I finished up my puzzle (and pie) and left. I was nice and put my dirty dishes on the dirty dish tray next to the counter. Then I left for the mainland.
Of course, the sun sets about 4pm, and I left as soon as the sun set, which means I would feel eternally lame if I returned to the hostel now. So I went and walked around Forum some more because I didn't effectively explore it the previous day. Walked into H&M and bought some cheap wrist warmers and a cute hat. Dinner was a Chinese buffet in the food court basement. I found it unique that I walked the walls of a sea fortress in the afternoon and ate bad Chinese food for dinner at a very modern mall.
Went back home after that and spent the night on Skype. w00t
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