Today started for me at 4:45 AM, thanks to our 6:40 AM train to Helsinki. With our last few rubles, we got little cups of coffee and got on-board the train. On the way out, we got some confused questions from the Russian passport inspectors about how we had no entry stamp to Russia (since we cam in through Belarus!). So technically we had an entry stamp to Belarus and an exit stamp to Russia on our single-entry visas. Does that mean we can enter Russia and exit through Belarus one more time? The inspectors didn’t seem to give a crap that we had never registered our visas with the police, however! Technically we were supposed to do this every 72 hours. We got through the inspection successfully and made our way through Vyborg and out of the country, and into Finland, a country historically tortured by both Swedes and Russians.
We arrived in Helsinki at a sleep-inducing 9 AM. This early arrival meant we couldn’t yet check into the hotel (another Holiday Inn, like in Poland). Luckily, unlike St. Petersburg, at heart we were clean and rested. We went to Cafe Ekberg, which for 8.7 euros would give us croissants, ham, coffee and egg desserts in nearly unlimited quantities, with free (stolen) Internet to boot. We also stopped by Market Square, along the harbor, which had a ton of exotic food and shops.
A few hours later, we made it to the hotel where we napped for a while. Although pretty low on energy at this point, I managed to convince everyone to go biking (finally something I wanted to do!). After some famous Sunny negotiations to lower the price (we would only have the bikes for a few hours), we biked along the shore, which was a lot of fun. We didn’t quite make it across the bridges to any islands, but we did circle around the center of town and saw the summer home of Finland’s ice breakers. We also got to encounter genuine Finnish service. When stopping for drinks along the way, we had to wait a good 5 minutes while the customer before us engaged in a long conversation with the drinks attendant and seemed to not notice our presence. This didn’t seem like a slight against us in particular, however, as she took just as long getting our drinks. Everything in Finland seems a bit slow and measured.
Max and Sunny followed the ride up with some drinks before a nice filling heap of Nepalese food for dinner. After dinner we paid way too much (30 euros) for 2 glasses of wine and a beer, after which we went to sleep.