http://www.pdsnoki.org/
Fundraising Goal: $9,000, or $9 per kilometer!!!
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I arrived in Helsinki after connecting in London. During the flight, I was lucky enough for the clouds to clear just as we flew over Stockholm, so I had a beautiful view of the city and its archipelago, as well as the hundreds (thousands?) of small islands on the west coast of Finland. It was a gorgeous sight, especially as the sun was setting.
I stayed in a nondescript, basic hotel (Hotel Avion) in a northern suburb of Helsinki called "Malmi", which had an easy 15-minute commuter train connection to the center of town. When I checked into the hotel, the lady saw my box and asked me why I carry my own TV with me. I thought that was hilarious, and then later in the day I saw a boxed TV that looked a lot like my box!It
is already a little chilly here, which has me concerned since my minimal packing did not allow me to take a jacket. But I think it will be OK -- the sun eventually came out today and it was beautiful and warm enough.Some observations on Finland. First of all, to me, it looks exactly like Sweden and Norway (no shock, I guess). The geology, food, architecture, etc. are all very similar. But the one thing that is RADICALLY different is, of course, the language. I find it so fascinating, really...and incomprehensible with no indo-European roots. Of course, EVERYONE speaks English (again, as expected), but the other lucky factor is that Swedish is the second language of Finland, so everything is also posted in Swedish, which has been a big help for me in figuring out what I'm doing.
I walked all around Helsinki today and it was much nicer than I had been led to believe. I naturally had to make a pilgrimage to the place where the Leningrad Cowboys -- a Finnish rock band voted the worst band in Europe -- had their "Total Balalaika Show" with the Red Army Chorus in 1993:http://www.leningradcowboys.fi/main.site?action=siteupdate/view&id=22
I also had a wonderful lunch (open-faced shrimp salad with lemon and mayonnaise -- that great Scandinavian delicacy) in a park café overlooking the Gulf of Finland and learned very well how to use the commuter rail system. The Finnish design museum was a bit of a disappointment, since it was really more of a contemporary art museum, and was quite small. And I got to see the 
mothership stores for Ittala and Marimekko -- exciting stuff.At 9:30, my Viking Line ferry left for Tallinn. I expected it to be a scene on the ferry, since it was a Friday night and these are often used as booze cruises fo
r Scandinavians who don't want to pay exorbitant taxes for their liquor. But in the end, it was a pretty tame, 2.5-hour ride. The boat was mainly filled with families and various scattered Russian toughs, the former singing Finnish karaoke and the latter drinking hard. The one, refreshing exception was the Finnish, medical-themed bachelor party. A group of about 7 guys had strapped the bachelor into a wheelchair with a Hannibal Lector mask and were already quite drunk by the time they boarded. I hung out with these guys a little and I expect I will see them passed out in the streets tomorrow morning here in town. One of them asked where I was from. When I told him Ohio he said, "ah, yes, Ohio. Lots of dessert there. I mean desert." I said, "You must be thinking of Utah!". Turns out he was on the Finnish national basketball team and knows Utah for the Jazz, so he quickly corrected himself.
The only other encounter was with a Russian cyclist who saw my box when I boarded and was excited about my trip. My Russian is so bad these days that I think -- but am not sure -- that I turned down his business proposition to start importing bike frames into Russia.
Now I am at Hotel Skåne in Tallinn and plan to get some sleep before bringing my bike to the nearby bike shop for reassembly. The owner of that shop, Toomas, told me he might be in late tomorrow, since he and his crew are on a similar trip to mine -- the Marie Curie ride for cancer -- and they will be passing through Tallinn tomorrow:
http://www.mariecurie.org.uk/events/cycling/bike_the_baltic/
It's encouraging to know this ride is doable, since someone else is doing it in reverse! Oh, and I have also already discovered that speaking Russian is a big help here, since the native language is, again, totally baffling to me. So far everyone does speak Russian (since a huge percentage of the population consists of Russians).
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