Troutworthy's Travel Blog: Up and round

I leave Helsinki on the evening of the second, boarding a train that is bound for Kolari, in the far north. Kolari itself is the northernmost tip of the Finnish passenger rail network, but I'm not going that far: Tornio, on the estuary of the river Torne – the river that defines the Swedish-Finnish border for hundreds of kilometers – is my destination. Still, it's the furthest north I've ever been in my life, narrowly beating out Akureyri, in Iceland.

The Finnish night trains are well equipped. Like other countries of the former Russian Empire, Finland's railways are built to five-foot gauge, which allows these trains to be enormous beasts of burden. I'm in a two-bunk compartment on the lower level, effectively meaning that four people can sleep stacked vertically. The trains are new and very clean, with card-locked compartment doors. I don't sleep very well, perhaps because it's odd to be travelling so far north when I'll be turning round and heading south again the next day.

Tornio doesn't have much of a station – just a platform with a couple of signs on it. When I arrive, the sun is shining, but it's icicles-in-the-beard temperature. In principle, a branch to the southwest means that trains can travel between Tornio and its adjacent Swedish twin city, Haparanda, on the other side of the Torne, albeit with a break of gauge. In practice, no passenger trains currently make the trip, and so it's a trek of a little under five kilometers to Haparanda station.

The frozen river Torne.

This part of Tornio is pretty industrial, and the black ice on roads and pavements is treacherous, but I manage to find my way through via a surprisingly nice little bakery and café. A long bridge connects Tornio island – where the heart of the town is – with the industrial side, but it's not even necessary: the river is completely frozen over, and that doesn't look likely to change any time soon. With the morning sun reflecting off the white expanse of the Torne, it's dazzling.

A smaller bridge crosses the channel from Tornio island to Haparanda. It's blue and white on one side, and blue and yellow on the other. I'm back in Sweden. Some slipping and sliding later and I'm at Haparanda station.

Haparanda station from the platform.

This enormous building is rather ghostly. It is open and (mercifully) heated, but there's no one around. The ghostliness is accentuated by artistically-placed piles of early-twentieth-century luggage. Apparently the border here saw many refugees pass through during the wars. The station was recently and grandiosely renovated using EU money, but doesn't seem to see much use: there's a space for a café, but no café (alas). It's de facto the end of the line, and there are only two trains a day. I check my watch: the next one isn't for four hours. I remember that I've entered a new time zone, change the time on my watch, and check it again. Five hours.

Spectral luggage.

“One-horse town” would be an overstatement for Haparanda. (The Western allusion is appropriate, though: the whole area feels very frontier, the Wild North.) I head into town and find a simple restaurant offering a nice buffet with fresh catch. Although it's modern, the vaulted ceiling and long lines of tables put me in mind of a mead-hall of legend. Perhaps I've been reading too much Kalevala.

In the end, the train is replaced by a bus, a fact about which no one seems very surprised. Two hours later and I'm in the northern Swedish railway-junction town of Boden, for which “one-horse town” is a thoroughly appropriate descriptor. Along comes the corrugated-metal night train and I hop on, finding it hard to believe I'll wake up in Stockholm. Compared to the Finnish sleeper, this one is somewhat dated, but I'm in an ensuite, and it's beautifully spacious. (Probably because they put me in a wheelchair-friendly compartment, with alarm buttons everywhere.) 

Swedish sleeper compartment.

After this chilly, adventurous day I sleep the sleep of the righteous in the comfy train, and in the morning I change onto the fast train to Copenhagen, from where I will continue south. None of this was actually part of the plan! But improvisation is fun, when you can afford it.

Here's the outline of the trip so far. This'll probably be my last post from this holiday, since I'll be working on the train tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

Troutworthy's Travel Blog: Helsinki

March, and the Easter weekend in particular, isn't the best time to visit Helsinki. Lots of things are under (re)construction – the Sibelius park, the Havis Amanda statue – and other things, like the Seurasaari open air museum, are closed. The occasion for my visit was a gig by Mew, one of the best bands in the world, performing with the Danish Chamber Orchestra, but this too is a bust: they cancelled at short notice. Still, the day I arrive in Helsinki, the sun is shining.

Suomenlinna fortress in the sun.

Devoid of any grand plan, but with a few tips from friends to work with, I roam. The Temppeliaukio church, carved into the rock, is a sublime piece of modern architecture. Nearby, the Arkadia bookshop is well-and-truly lose-yourself-in-able.

Temppeliaukio Church.

Karelian rice pies are not in short supply.

Karelian pies in a hipster café.

Snow still gathers in clumps in the shade here, unlike in Stockholm, and much of the bay is frozen over. With the Sibelius park denied to me, I get a cinnamon bun and coffee at Café Regatta and gawk out over the ice. Later, wandering round town, hopping on and off ancient trams, I do some more gawking at the fine Art Nouveau buildings that seem to be on every corner. The Oodi central library is a bit of a monstrosity from the outside, but on the inside is a fine civic building, a library for the twenty-first century. At the Kiasma contemporary art gallery just round the corner, I'm surprised to see that one of the artists who's being exhibited is Simon Fujiwara, who's featured on this blog before.

On my second and third days in Helsinki, the weather turns cold and grey, and on the afternoon of the fourth it starts to rain quite heavily. This is fine; I'd probably have felt short-changed if I'd visited a Baltic city and there hadn't been at least one day like this. But four days is not enough for Helsinki, and I hope to come back here one day.

Troutworthy's Travel Blog: The Party Boat

The party boat.

Stockholm was in many ways as I remembered it – though, as I realized with a shock, it's been nearly twelve years since my previous visit, and even that was for a conference with little time for sightseeing. This time I found myself at the Hagaparken to the north of the centre. Most of the winter ice is gone, though a cold wind still blows. We stopped for coffee at a mysterious copper tent.

The next day, after some more wandering, we visited the Vasa museum. Not the titular “party boat” of this post, it's a seventeenth-century ship which immediately capsized in Stockholm harbour on its maiden voyage and was preserved in the city's historically-minded Baltic waters. The museum too was as I'd remembered it from my first visit, perhaps unsurprisingly. It's huge, dark and austere and a handy reminder of human hubris and folly. The academics and conservationists now labouring to preserve it seem almost monomaniacal: the constant visits from humans, we are told, take their inevitable toll on the ship's integrity, but they are working to make sure it lasts forever. Perhaps, when the apocalypse has passed and a future race of extraterrestrials stumbles upon the shattered remnants of our sorry planet, the preserved Vasa will still be there to teach its lesson to these new visitors. “Look on my Works, ye Aliens, and despair!” Or perhaps, more likely, it'll be a second-order failure.

The Vasa.

In the afternoon, we boarded the ship to Helsinki.

I must confess to having had the wrong expectations of this journey. For me it was a fairly sober and straightforward way of getting from A to B, and, from my knowledge of the inhabitants of the area, I expected the voyage to be dull, more than anything else. Turns out I didn't know the inhabitants of the area as well as I thought.

My associate sagely described the experience as a cross between Dubai duty free and a Barnsley Travelodge, and it's an apt comparison. Outwardly all is calm, at least for a while: for the first four hours, as the sun slowly sets, the Silja Serenade traverses the Stockholm archipelago, hitching up its skirts to navigate the narrow channels. It's tranquil and beautiful.

Dancing with another passing titan.

Inside, Ragnarok is here. In the time we've been out on deck, the Swedes and Finns have wasted no time, and have already put several away. Children spin each other around on rotating seats as their parents swill lager. On the stage of the Starlight Lounge, a cover “band” mimes along to various 80s classics; when Abba comes on, everyone goes apeshit. And down at the sixth circle of hell – sorry, deck – our Nordic heroes are fortifying themselves with as many twelve-packs and two-litre bottles of whiskey as they can carry. One can see why the Man in Seat 61 describes these voyages as having “a reputation as party boats”.

Bright lights, big boat.

At around midnight we're due to dock at Mariehamn, in the Åland islands. The ship slows down and stops, but the party doesn't. From here it's nearly ten hours across the open sea until we reach our destination, so I retreat to my cabin. The less said about the rest of the journey, the better; suffice it to say that I'm not much more of a fan of boats than I am of flying, and even with the partygoers well out of earshot there's plenty to occupy my mind.

We shuffle off the boat punctually in the morning. On the bright Helsinki harbourside, a group of youths with nothing in the way of luggage lurch endearingly along, likely readying themselves to do the whole thing again in reverse in the afternoon. All power to them.