We’ve had a couple of fairly quiet, non-touristy days in Helsinki, sleeping in, cooking, doing washing, working out how and where to clean the car before we return it in Stockholm on Monday. It feels like the first section of our trip, the Scandinavian road trip part, is coming to an end and we’re getting ready for the Russian train trip part.

We had good intentions of visiting Suomilinna, ‘the fortress of Finland’, today. It’s a short local ferry ride from the centre of town. We found some cheap metered parking and walked into the city, but it started raining before we got to the wharf and we had no wet weather gear with us. We took shelter in a David Jones-type department store but even after we had looked at all the electrical appliances we never knew existed – designer stubble electric razor, home fake nail kit, domestic laser hair removal instrument of torture – it was still overcast and raining occasionally, so we headed back to the apartment and baked apple turnovers for afternoon tea instead.

Tomorrow night we’re putting the car on a ferry and heading back to Stockholm, arriving at around 10am on Sunday. We have to return the car on Monday morning, and on Monday evening we’re flying to Riga in Latvia. We’ll spend a day there, then go to St Petersburg for a few days, catch a train to Moscow for a few days and then start our Trans-Siberian train trip.

We are offloading giving our camping gear (tent, chairs, table, various other bits and pieces) to the owner of the apartment. Not sure what he plans to do with it, but we’d rather he take it to use or give away or sell  on eBay or do whatever he likes with it so long as we don’t have to throw it out. We’ll hopefully then be down to one duffle bag plus our nice small Osprey that are within the size limits for carry-on bags.

At the market in Helsinki

Floating Restaurant. Helsinki has lots of islands and inlets

One of the main streets in central Helsinki

We did something today that Australians just cannot do, visit another country for a day, and be back home for dinner. We caught the bus early from our apartment into the bus terminal at Kamppi. The Kamppi bus terminal is underground, very modern and organised.  It was then a walk for about one kilometre to the Linda line ferry terminal. We joined the long line to board the ferry where they checked our passports and we boarded. The trip across to Tallinn in Estonia is about 80km over the gulf of Finland. The Linda line fast ferry took 1 hour forty minutes. (people only – no cars there are other car ferries).

We arrived in Tallinn to find no passport control, it was left to us to wander off into the city over a strange aging soviet-era plaza. We found Tallinn old town and eventually the tourist bureau to get a map. Tallinn old town has been left pretty intact with lots of old buildings dating back hundreds of years. However what surprised us was the number of tourists – it was packed. The last time we saw this many tourists was Bourbon Street in New Orleans on a Saturday night. Tallinn old town was packed to the point it was a struggle getting along some of the narrow lanes in the town. After wandering around in old town for a while we left the tourists and headed for Tallinn new town and a shopping centre for lunch. We found a eatery that was a jazzed up modern cafeteria and had a cheap meal for 3.20 euro (meals in tourist trap Tallinn old town where 11+ euros).

After lunch we braved the tourists again and climbed to the top of the hill in Tallin old town to enjoy the view.

We were suffering from the cold. The weather forecast for Helsinki had been 23C and partly cloudy, and our previous day in Helsinki had been warm. So we didn’t take our jackets with us (we were very under equipped for visiting another country) .

We headed back to another shopping mall to find afternoon tea/dinner and get warmed up. We then headed out towards the ferry terminal past several bottle shops selling cheap Estonian alcohol. We knew that Finns travel over to Estonia to get cheap booze, but we were somewhat surprised by how much people managed to take back. Finland has a state owned monopoly on selling alcohol (except beer in supermarkets) called “Alko”, and and a result alcohol is expensive, although not as expensive as Norway.

We got the Ferry back at 7pm and saw a sign on the wall showing the fast ferry had been built by Austal Ships in Western Australia in 1999

Just one Finn with his pile of cheap alcohol from Tallinn waiting for the Ferry back

Old Town Tallinn packed with tourists

Just some information on camping equipment we use that we find useful. Firstly our gasifying wood stove. Ours is a Woodgas Campstove, but there are several other brands of stove around. These stoves burn twigs and sticks (no bigger than your finger) very efficiently, and produce lots of heat from a very small amount of wood. It is about 8cm across and 15cm high and has a battery pack that takes 2 AA batteries. The battery pack drives a fan that circulates unburnt wood gas to make the burning more efficient. You just scout around for some twigs and with a few pieces of paper in a few minutes you have enough heat to cook with. We have used our stove now for nearly 40 camping nights including hiking the Larapinta trail. We have a MSR stove that burns multiple fuels and is very good, but suffers from the problem that it is very difficult to take on planes. There are rules that allow fuel stoves on planes, but they are getting tighter (Qantas wants you to to request written permission in advance now to take a fuel stove on a plane).

The gasifying wood stove is not a problem on planes because the fuel is wood, and you don’t take that on the plane, its just a metal cylinder with a battery pack and an electric fan, perfectly safe. We have had some problems in the extreme north with finding enough dry wood, but with hindsight we could have collected some along the way, it would have taken little room. We also tried using BBQ briquettes, but found they didn’t really burn hot enough.

Having a stove means we can self-cater, buying food cheaply from supermarkets and cooking it on our wood stove, and not have to pay to eat out at restaurants (especially in expensive Scandinavia).

Secondly our next item of essential equipment is our Coleman fridge. This fridge is not very large and uses the piezzo effect cooling, so it only cools relative to the surrounding environment (when its hot it struggles more). However it is light, and small enough to take on the plane as carry on luggage. It plugs into a cigarette lighter socket, and means we can carry milk, meat, and other things saving money. An Australian 4WD camper would scoff at the Coleman fridge and they would prefer a proper fridge like an Engel (which we also have). However an Engel is very heavy (never get it on a plane) and large (never fit it in the back of a small hire car), and expensive. Our coleman fridge cost us $60 at Walmart in the USA (there are other similar fridges around). We even have a 240v/12V adaptor so we can run the fridge in a hotel room if there is no fridge.

Thirdly our 10 litre Kitchen sink. We have a smaller 5 litre one, but our 10 litre sea to summit kitchen sink is great. We bought it for the Camino Portuguese to use it to soak our sore feet in. However it has many more uses. Washing up and carting water. It folds up into a little container.

Woodgas stove

$60 coleman fridge piezzo electric

Sea to Summit kitchen sink 10 litres