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From Helsinki I caught a bus to Turku, on the western coast. It’s Finland’s oldest town, founded as a Catholic settlement in 1229. I spent an afternoon wandering around Turku castle, built by the Swedish rulers at the mouth of the Aura River and intended as a military fortress. Construction started in 1280 and continued into the 19th century, and the tourist literature bills it as one of the oldest buildings still in use in Finland. It’s variously served as a fortress, mansion, prison and now museum and conference venue. The medieval keep (built in the early 1400s) and renaissance bailey (late 15th and 16th centuries) had interesting and different styles.

Rauma is about 1.5 hours north of Turku, also on the coast and the old part of town is UNESCO listed for the collection of around 600 wooden buildings that are found there. It was beautiful to wander the cobbled streets between colourful low rise wooden buildings that are still lived in and used today. The sun also made a rare appearance, though it was a winter sun that warms nothing apart from photographer’s hearts. Rauma’s prosperity came from its proximity to the sea and in 1897 the town had Finland’s largest sailing fleet with 57 boats. From here goods were exported to Germany, Stockholm and the Baltic states.

Back in Turku I headed out to karaoke with my couchsurfing host. It was so long since I’d done karaoke that I was pretty excited until I realised it was public karaoke, not the private little booths I was used to in Japan. It was fun though, and I got to see a guy “sing” Metallica’s “One” while a drunk guy slow danced with his girlfriend, regularly stepping on her feet. The next morning I caught a day ferry to Stockholm, a 10 hour cruise that took me out through the archipelago with its many islands. In Stockholm I met a guy who also led tours in China while I worked for Intrepid. Pawel moved back to Sweden and has settled down with his girlfriend, bought an apartment and four months ago became a father. Little Ines was gorgeous and Majda was a calm and patient mother. I have to admit I felt a twinge of life envy.

I spent my first day in Stockholm wandering through the old town, full of narrow cobblestone streets flanked with tall buildings that made them seem even narrower. The next day I spent almost the whole day at the Vasa museum, dedicated to the ship of the same name. It was built in 1628 at great expense for the King of Sweden and was meant to be the flagship of his fleet in the war with his cousin, the King of Poland (and previously King of Sweden). Everything was going swimmingly well and it launched on time to much fanfare. It sailed out of its dock and into Stockholm harbour where it sank 20 minutes later. Oops. It was top heavy with all the cannons the king had demanded and the shipbuilders had no experience building a ship with two gun decks. History has revealed that they knew this in advance through a failed stability test but nobody was brave enough to tell the king.

On the night of the 31st I headed to Skogskyrkogården, a cemetery to the south of the city which was designed in 1915 and is UNESCO listed. This year Halloween happened to coincide with the traditional celebration of All Saints Day which is a day to commemorate the dead and visit the graves of deceased relatives. There were lots of people there, lighting candles, cleaning graves and leaving offerings of flowers or wreaths and it was a beautifully peaceful setting. As darkness fell the candles flickered amongst the pine trees and turned the ground into a starry night sky.

From Stockholm I flew to Bergen where Brett was docking after 5 weeks working at sea. He’d actually come in to port earlier than we’d expected and by the time I arrived the guys he works with were already working towards drinking the bar dry, as were plenty of other guys who’d also been on boats for long periods of time without any females. There were a total of about 5 women in the bar and I was treated to the sort of pick up lines that only true desperation can create. “I can show you the equipment on my boat sometime” was one of my favourites. He seemed unperturbed by my mention of a husband but when he realised that Brett was 6 foot, well built and nearby he apparently made a very quick escape.

Bergen is beautiful, lots of old buildings around the harbour and we’ve been treated to some great weather. It’s cold and the wind when it blows is biting but the skies are blue and the air fresh. After a long sleep in yesterday for Brett to catch up on some much needed rest we wandered around the hilly streets and enjoyed the crisp autumn weather. We’ve spent a bit of time down around Bryggen, a line of wooden buildings originally built around 1100. The current buildings were rebuilt after a big fire in 1702 and aren’t quite straight anymore, they line up higgledy piggledy along the line of the Vagan harbour which is still an important port today.

We’re in Norway in the off season and while that’s usually no problem there seems to be a very distinct divide between tourist services in the summer and winter seasons. Many of the attractions are closed, or only open very limited hours which happen to correspond to the limited hours of daylight this time of year. A church we wanted to see was only open between 11am-12:30pm and we missed it as we were exploring a museum which was only open from 11am-3pm. Earlier today we ate some delicious marinated salmon with dill mayonnaise at the fish market. We were also given a small piece of cooked meat which the shopkeeper later told us was whale. There you have it, time for the environmentalists to crucify me. To be honest it wasn’t very good, had a strange taste to it and certainly not something I’d kill an endangered animal over. If salmon or dill were endangered we might have a fight on our hands though.

Tomorrow we’re catching a few modes of transport to get us to Flam, including a boat along the Naeroy Fjord which is UNESCO listed and then on to Oslo after a night in Flam, via the scenic Flam railway and normal train. We think we’re flying to Sofia, Bulgaria, next.

Tags: Finland, Norway, Rauma, Skogskyrkogården, Stockholm, Sweden, Turku