Not long after our amazing trip to Helsinki on our own bat, the International Committee were, as usual, hot on our heels, and for a very reasonable price offered to take us on exactly the same cruise, only this time there were 250 of us…
The way down to Stockholm was slightly more pleasant this time, what with the drunken middle-agers of the last trip being replaced by what seemed to be nearly all the native German speakers who study at Mälardalens, which gave me a nice opportunity to catch up on my German! The general greater amount of people we knew had both advantages and disadvantages, as it’s obviously nice to have people around and it was good to get to know a lot of them better, but it also gave me the feeling (especially the first night) that I wasn’t really anywhere different. All the same, it was good fun, and I felt more up to it the second night, though the first night did have the advantage of the all-you-can- eat/drink buffet included in our price for the trip this time, which was lots of fun, and rather tasty :)
Helsinki itself was, as always, enjoyable for me, and it was certainly different from the last time. The tour we’d had planned was unfortunately cancelled, but having had one not a month beforehand, I was ok with this, and satisfied myself by taking pictures of the sights I’d only seen from the coach last time. However, the main aim for me, which was much aided by the shops being open this time, was to find myself a Moomin, and as no-one else really had any better ideas, this was what we devoted a lot of our time to…It’d become something of an obsession for me since the last time we were in Finland, as I remember being vaguely scared of them as a child, so I needed to conquer my fears! And so it was, that, in-between other shoppings, eatings, photoings and the like, that we searched high and low for a suitable Moomin. Eventually we found him on the 6th floor of a department store, so Mr Credit Card made friends with Miss Cashier and I got my very own Moominpappa! :D Much to Outi’s disconcertion, I promptly named him Tony, as there are many Moominpappas in the world, and I felt he needed his own identity. Anyway, he has an ace hat, and there’s a picture of him down there.
The second night on the ferry I was feeling considerably more up to it, and after finishing off my Oktoberfest beers from the Duty Free, I merrily wandered upstairs to the club to speak to many people in as many different languages as I could (think I managed 4…5 if scouse counts as a language!).
Not much sleep was had until the coach the next day…but the fun didn’t stop there. On the way back from being dropped off at the university, we were very privileged to see 2 red squirrels scampering about a tree in the park! Being as this is such a rare sight in England, I spent a good five minutes taking pictures of the little chaps, which nicely rounded off a fun midweek weekend :)
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