We arrived in Helsinki home to 569,892 people. Did you know 1 in 10 people in Finland were born in another country? That's how fun Helsinki is... Arriving in the western part of the City, we had to make our way over to the other side, the east side, and catch another boat to Estonia. Where do they choose these countries? We rushed through the streets of Helsinki with many people shouting and it being surprisingly loud and active.
We were walking down one street when we came up to a pub. It looked completely Finnish. We walked in and sat at the bar. They had these leaflets at the bar saying which beers were available. There were all different types of beer but there was definitely one which came to my attention. "Sahti".
"Can I have a bottle of Sahti, please?"
The Landlord just stared at me. The people around me laughed and it seemed when I looked around that there were no foreigners. Were we even allowed in this pub? I looked at Landkort who smiled and turned to the Landlord.
"Voinko min? saada pullollisen Sahtia, olkaa hyv??"
"Tuleva oikeus yl?s!"
Yeah, you understood as much as me there I think. He can speak English, Danish, Russian and Finnish now? I wonder if he can speak Estonian. Anyways we got our drinks and paid the bills. We decided to sit in and watch the entertainment. Entertainment? Finland? Yeah you've probably guessed; we stayed in there for about 5 minutes. Not particularly known for their entertainment in Pubs.
We took our beer and left. We took a few shortcuts and soon arrived at our next destination. Instead of a hard paddle boat which Lennie and I had to cross the North Sea in, a speedboat which Landkort and I had to power at all times, we had a ferry. We set off, early in the morning. The Baltic sea looked lovely in the morning, with the sun just rising.
"Landkort, how do you know so many different languages?"
"What do you think I've been doing these last 15 years? I had to, so we could get back to Russia."
"You knew we would be taking this route back to Russia 15 years ago?"
"I did have a slight inkling."
He's been planning this trip for the last 15 years? No wonder it's done to perfection, even if we have to nick a speedboat here and there. Anyway now to the important stuff. Alcohol and our evaluation of the Finnish bear. We said we'd both down it on the count of three, no matter how bad it was. So we picked up our bottles, looked at each other...
"1, 2, 3!"
Result? Both of us were sick in the following 5 minutes. It was the worst beer I had ever had, it said on the back "Used in Michael Jackson songs". There was a warning that it was terrible right there. We looked at the ingredients and nearly threw up again once we saw what was in it. One of the ingredients were oats! It had oats in yet it had a distinct flavour of a out of date banana.
If we were being sick then, then the morning after was going to be pretty horrific...