On the ferry from Turku to Stockholm
Step by step we were finally arriving in Europe – although the final destination is Niamh's home, for me Germany, where I spent so much time in the 1990s, was a kind of arriving too.
After arriving in Turku we boarded the ferry after a surprisingly chaotic wait in the departure hall; internally, the basic design was very similar to that of the KM Awu that we'd spent four nights on from Kupang to Surabaya, but there the similarities ended! Instead of worn lino floors and fading paintwork all was spick and span; our budget-end double room was like a fancy hotel, the showers worked and, instead of being ushered into a modestly furnished room for a meal of lukewarm rice and small whole fish, with an occasional karaoke performance by the ship's officers, there were floors of restaurants, bars and even a huge duty-free shop.
Our cabin!
We ran around like kids, trying to catch everything before getting some sleep on the 21:00 – 06:30 journey! The scenery was beautiful, heading for ages through seemingly impossibly narrow channels, past pretty houses and beautiful, wild scenery until we got out on the open ocean. The weather had continued to be mostly cold and rainy since Russia, so sitting on deck watching the night approach was beautiful, but not the most relaxing, even with all our warm clothes on, but we held out for a while and watched the beautiful scenery pass from up on high.
One of the outdoor sitting areas
The huge ship somehow weaved its way through these small channels
Sunset, 11pm
After watching a World Cup game we headed to bed well past midnight, to be awoken rudely four or five hours later by an announcement on the speakers and on the tv screen, which had automatically turned on. In my sleepy state I misunderstood it and thought we had ten minutes until disembarking, so woke Niamh and we dressed in a panic. I then went to check with the information desk and found it was still an hour away (in my defence there is an hour's time difference between Finland and Sweden and the tv screen notice was very unclear!), so we tried to sleep a bit more, only to be awoken soon after by another booming announcement.
So, apart from whingeing about unpleasant and unnecessary announcements, the point of all that is that we spent the next day pretty washed out. We got a shuttle bus to nearby Stockholm station, had a bit of brekky, then got on the train to Copenhagen, zooming along through the countryside, across huge bridges and through huge tunnels to arrive five hours later in Copenhagen.
A snatch of Stockholm as the train left for Copenhagen.
Ocean windmills from one of the huge bridges crossing from Sweden to Denmark.
We spent most of our afternoon in Copenhagen on the Sønder Boulevard near the train station, wandering and grazing.
Copenhagen station.
We spent an afternoon wandering around, then got on the night train to Frankfurt which - again! -, to my great disappointment, didn't have a dining car, just a crappy buffet. Apart from that it was fine, but somehow, compared to train travel in Russia somehow lacking! The next morning, early, we arrived in Frankfurt, bought onward tickets and travelled on three more hours to Jena, to meet my old friend Eva.
Leaving Copenhagen on the night train.
Another day, another train!
Approaching Frankfurt.
The last train before Jena; after changing at Frankfurt, we travelled on a fast, long-distance ICE train to Erfurt, then got this regional train on to Jena.