Helsinki

It all started on a slow Sunday night in downtown Uppsala. Taylor, Ryan and I met this wonderful Swede named Texas. Yes, his name is Texas and no, he’s never been to Texas. But he also happens to be an American culture junkie. His knowledge is not only really entertaining but also really helpful when it comes to bridging the gap between all things Swedish and us. Upon meeting Texas, he could name all of Chicago’s sports teams, our mottos, our tourist attractions and even made fun of the Chicago Cubs.
Anyways, it was no wonder that Texas had the hook-up when it came to finding a place to watch the Bears vs. Packers game. We had met some Illinois State University students recently so we invited them and anyone who wanted to come, to watch the game with us.
Not many people go out on Sunday nights and the game didn’t start until 9 PM Swedish time. Needless to say, it was about 7 Americans, 1 Swede and 1 New Zealander in a completely empty bar watching the worst game ever. The only upside was that we didn’t have to deal with any Packers fans. But while talking to the ISU students, we made a wonderful discovery.

Apparently, there is a cruise ship that goes from Stockholm to Helsinki, Finland almost everyday and if you book the tickets last minute and you are a student, you can get the fare pretty cheap. It’s basically a “booze cruise.” It earned this nickname because onboard the ship all the alcohol and cigarettes are tax-free. This is amazing because Sweden has fixed-prices on their alcohol and it’s very expensive compared to alcohol pretty much anywhere else.
So we took the ISU students’ advice and booked a cruise. Here’s the best part: It only cost $5 US Dollars. $5 dollars per person got us a place to sleep. You’re supposed to buy the really expensive food on the ship... but we packed our bags with food and barely bought anything on the ship.
At first I was really nervous because I only spent $5.... so the ship must be deteriorating or really small or dirty or something. But when we got to the harbor in Stockholm, our boat was a big cruise ship. It was not unlike the cruise ship I took to Caribbean with family a couple of years ago.

We left on a Tuesday, partied and gambled all night on the boat, and when we woke up on Wednesday, we were in Finland. We only had about 8 hours onshore before we had to be back on the boat. But we got to see a lot of the city. First we found some really delicious and cheap food for lunch (I actually had Indian food for the first time ever...in Finland). Then we just started walking towards the big cathedral and just wandered around. It was actually a lot of fun because the cathedral was absolutely beautiful. It was so large you could see it from the harbor. We also ran into the Helsinki City Museum (which had free admission). When all of that was done, we had about two hours left before we needed to be back on the boat. We asked the nice museum staff for any advice and their advice was to get on one of the main tram lines and take it all the way around the city. It was the best advice ever. For about 3 Euro we saw every side of Helsinki in about one hour. We never would have known to do that and now I can’t wait to go back so we explore the other side of the city.
Wednesday night was just a repeat of the night before but when we woke up on Thursday morning, we were back in Stockholm.

Overall, Helsinki was a wonderful city. I really loved it. I’m really hoping we can repeat the cruise in the future (maybe when it’s a little warmer out).