7 hours adventure! - Part 4 - The End

 The waitress at the McD asssured she has "Cheese burger" which was vegetarian for her, but not for me. When I enquired her about the ingredients I found out it was not vegetarian! I had to settle for French fries. We were laughing thinking of Vijay's "vegetarian" friends who'd been taking this Cheese burger for weeks by then.

Though it was only around 3-3.30 pm it was starting to get pretty dark already. Since we had to return to the cruise at 5 pm, not even a minute late, we decided to move towards the nearest Tunnelbana. That was when Vijay gave that idea (which could've cost us dearly). He suggested we visit his university which was "just on our way" to the port. We hesitated but decided to give a try. What is life without adventure!

His university was pretty good and we got busy clicking some photographs in front of everything that was visible there. Even the closed doors and fallen bicycles.

Minutes ticked away so fast that by the time we realized we were getting late, we were well behind our schedule. As we were accustomed to running in dense snow, which has been our "most favorite mode of transport" since our departure from my house @ Helsinki, we started sprinting towards nearest the Tunnelbana again.

Murphy's law got proved once again. If something has to go wrong, it will. And it did. Unusually, the metro train in our route got delayed. Though it was only by few minutes, those final moments were precious for us. I was a bit optimistic when we were in a similar situation only a day ago, but this time I was perspiring. It was a diffferent country, different situation.

When we ran just like Jack of Titanic, once again, rushed in to our cabin, took a sip of Redbull and witnessed the slow departure of the vessel from the port, we still couldn't believe how we made it. Vijay was so kind he ran along with us all the way from the metro station under the earth till the boarding point. This trip was so tiring and adventurous that I was so sleepy on the last lap to my house from Helsinki port.

Though I could see very little of Stockholm, Sweden, these few hours will remain in my memory as solid as the rocky ice of that December Scandinavian sea, until old age like summer melts and takes it away from me drop by drop.


-The End-

--S--

7 hours adventure! - Part 3

What I thought would be a "short while" took much longer than that! Reasons being X-mas, New year and holidays :)

I mention 7 hours in the title because I was inside Sweden, in the city of Stockholm for just 7 hours. And adventure is not what anyone would normally imagine. No heroics. No tiger chased me in some deep interior forest. And I didn't climb any mountain. What made the entire trip adventurous was the time constraint I had. It was 10 AM when I left the cruise and set my foot on this amazing country which has given us Ingmar Bergman, Björn Borg, the Ericsson and Alfred Nobel! My return cruise was to leave Stockholm for Helsinki @ 5 PM the same day. So I had just 7 hours to see all that I want to. I did manage to see a lot. Or I should say, "experience" a lot. And yes, I did struggle (as usual) to catch my cruise in the evening, which made this trip very memorable :)

Before I move on I must tell something about the setting. The temperature was close to double digit in the negative. Dense snowfall had painted the city pure white. Whiter than the purest white I had ever seen. (Helsinki streets were filled with snow too, but it didn't seem so clean then.) And it was just a week before Christmas, and so it was celebration mood everywhere. All this together gave me a dreamy feel. If you are a fan of the Potter series you can relate it to how Mr. Potter felt during his first visit to the Hogsmeade village! This is the closest and the best comparison I can imagine. :)

My short stay at this foreign city was made comfortable and easy by my friend from college and later colleague at workplace - Vijay, without whom I wouldn't have seen as much as I did. He made the trip cheerful, unforgettable and exciting, not just for me, but also to my 2 friends (Athi &  Anto) who came with me from Helsinki. Vijay even brought us his friends' travel cards so that we need not waste some Swedish Kroons (which we exchanged for Euros inside the cruise middle of that Nordic sea!!). He met us near a "Tunnelbana" which is the Swedish term for Stockholm metro stations, and we headed straight to the old town area. From my previous visit to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, I learned that the best place to visit in a European city is its old town area. The new, urban areas of all the cities have no distinction. They all look the same. Shopping malls, McD, clubs, etc.

The first couple of hours were spent in roaming around the old town area (called "Gamla Stan"), looking at the narrow streets decorated for Christmas, petty souvenir shops, Churches, etc. We saw the Royal palace where the guards changed duty at the hour (Sweden follows Constitutional/Parliamentary monarchy). Then we saw the Swedish parliament. While we were clicking some photographs in front of it we saw a lady come out of a room, lock it and drive away in her car. Vijay joked she could even be a member of the parliament! We were told, the MPs there are very simple (should I mention 'unlike ours'?).

We then moved to a small junction which seemed like some market place, with several souvenir shops, lots of pigeons, buildings painted in many interesting colors, Christmas gift shops, etc. Those tiny streets led me to the Nobel Museum which houses lots of information about the life and inventions of Alfred Nobel. I also remember seeing his Will regarding the Nobel prize awards. That one hour spent there was definitely worth it. 

When I came out of the museum it was quite different than how it was an hour earlier. There were lots of kids, playing with a Santa, and someone was arranging mikes and speakers. Within few minutes the cute little kids starting singing some songs, should be Christmas choirs I guess, which was lovely!

By this time we started feeling hungry. Being a 'strict' vegetarian I don't expect to get veg food everywhere. During such trips I prepare myself to mange with just some chocolate bars and energy drinks. Those are enough for me to keep myself active. But still, at that time we felt it necessary to eat something. Vijay said the local McD serves Veg burger, which I didn't believe. We decided to try my luck and started marching towards the McDonalds without knowing that I would remain hungry throughout the remaining of the day. :(

(To be contd..)

--S--

7 hours adventure! - Part 2

The next couple of minutes took very long time to pass. At least that was how I felt. Probably, "'hundreds' of automobiles" is an exaggeration but certainly there were enough cars and buses ahead to shock us. Slowly they moved. The moment we reached the bus station we jumped out of the bus, ran to the Tram stop, jumped in to the next tram and lost us amidst the crowd, counted the seconds, reached the port, ran ran ran! Finally, we made it to the port, and thankfully due to heavy crowd check-in was still open. After few minutes of standing in one of the most disciplined queues, and clicking few pics near a miniature Eiffel tower kept nearby, the excitement was back in me. The enthusiasm and energy was back!

As we were rushing in to the tunnel leading to the cruise I noticed few young guys who seemed like students holding some signboards and thrusting something in the hands of everyone entering the cruise. When I was rushing past them, one of the girls there gave me a small packet and said something which was neither audible nor understandable to me. It was then that I noticed the red-ribbon symbol on their signboards and could guess this is what she must have said - "Have it safe!". We three kept on laughing about this incident for a long time.

Like any other luxury cruise you must have heard of, this one too had so many things. Restaurants, coffee shops, gaming centers, pub/disco, swimming pool, massage parlor and lot more. I spent some time sitting in a restaurant, sipping coffee and watching a fantastic violin performance by 4 Bulgarian girls.

And then there was this cartoonist/caricaturist from Bulgaria again who made a caricature of me with few "Indian" elements sketched around - which included, elephant, snake and kamasutra. I wanted to ask him why didn't he know anything else about such a big sub-continent of India, but I stopped myself, for a moment I thought what I knew about his country. I couldn't recollect even the capital of Bulgaria for a long long time.

The best time pass I had was watching a Premier league game of Arsenal, a Real Madrid game and a Serie A game all running parallel on European satellite channels inside a sports bar. It didn't occur to me for a while that I was in the middle of some sea in the Scandinavia!

If you were wondering what is this "7 hours" about, I'm coming to that in a short while.

--S--

7 hours adventure! - Part 1

Laziness, carelessness, 'small' mistakes, procrastination and being unpunctual are not bad always. Sometimes these are the qualities that put you in to lot of excitement, action and adventure. This is what happened to me and 2 other friends of mine when we made a weekend trip from Helsinki to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden (which is the center of world politics right now, thanks to Julian Assange and his Wikileaks!).

It was a dull-white, snowy but pleasant afternoon, the weekend before Christmas. Most of my colleagues there were already on long vacations or were about to dump their laptops and jump on a flight or cruise depending on their destination. But back home in India, my team was working hard as any other 'insignificant' day of their lives. Me, caught in the middle, was neither needed to work as hard as I would have done had I been at Chennai, nor was I able to pack-up and go on vacation as coolly as my European colleagues. So was the situation of my 2 other friends - Athi and Antony. But we managed to book a day's trip to Stockholm that weekend in a cruise from Helsinki.

While laziness and carelessness are my personal traits, collective procrastination and unpunctuality of some of us in the team adding to that caused a hurdle to our departure to the Swedish capital that evening. Our cruise was scheduled to leave the port ('satama' as it is called in Finnish) at 5 pm and we had to check-in at 4.30 pm. We hurried from office at 2.30 pm, and reached my house, did some last minute packing/stuffing some snacks/charging batteries and mobile phones etc etc. Meanwhile I got a couple of phone calls (wasting few precious minutes!! ;-)). It was 3.15 pm when we ran out of the house targeting a bus to Helsinki (we were in a place called "Espoo", about 40 minutes from Helsinki city) which would arrive in a couple of minutes.

It was at this point we made that 'small' mistake. Before our bus there came another one, numbered 216A if I'm not wrong, which was also heading to Helsinki. Why wait then! We just jumped in, only after confirming with the driver that it IS going to Helsinki. What the driver didn't tell us, and what we realized after few minutes, was that it was taking a different route. And that different route was in the opposite direction which we'd never tried till then! By the time we realized it was a new route we had come a long way, and were, as fate decided, back near our office premises! What a tragedy! Clock was ticking as usual, but the circumstances made it seem running faster. For a moment, I imagined, Einstein was laughing at me and teaching me relativity yet another time.

We were clueless how long it would take for the bus to reach Helsinki central, though the driver assured us we'd reach Helsinki 'soon' but never mentioned any time. He did not know English much and our Finnish vocabulary was lesser than the number of fingers on my either hand. Thankfully, after few anxious minutes the bus got back to right direction to Helsinki and we breathed a bit easier. Anto started clicking few photographs and the situation relaxed little bit. We kept assuring ourselves that we will reach well in time, since the roads were almost deserted all the time in Helsinki and also the way our bus took was not the main highway. It was 4.10 pm when our bus took a sudden turn towards the main highway and came to a halt few minutes later from where it should take no more than 5 minutes to reach Helsinki central. We looked forward through the front glass and we couldn't believe what we saw. There were hundreds of automobiles ahead. For the first time in 5 months we saw 'traffic jam' in Helsinki.

With only 10 more minutes for check-in to close, and since we had a 4-minute tram travel from Helsinki to the sea-port, we couldn't avoid sweating even in that minus-degree snowy weather. The usual, unavoidable, inescapable silence of Helsinki amplified our heart beats several times.

(To be contd..)

--S--