Rolling Home

Although this is the slowest and most expensive way to go home, I don’t regret taking the ship. Much more still than the international bus it is a world of its own – and you have freedom to move around. As we were made to board in time for a departure at 3pm, but we even miss the usual time (5pm) due to delays of cargo loading, I happen to see the end of the last Harry Potter movie (with Finnish subtitles) when I check the channels available on the TV in the cabin. After a while I am joined by an older Russian woman, the third bed remains unoccupied. She doesn’t speak German or English and I think she overestimates my Russian, half of her questions I have to answer with “I don’t understand”. As the small inside cabin is a bit claustrophobic I spend most of the time out on deck although it gets quite cold in the damp cool air and the wind. But I enjoy both the views of the skerries around Vuosaari Harbor and details of the ship and the way the small engines juggle the containers onto the upper cargo deck. As it gets darker the harbor lights are impressive, too, so I certainly am not bored.

I go to bed early and sleep for twelve hours in the completely dark in-cabin which nearly makes me miss breakfast. The Russian lady in my cabin offers me one of her many breakfast eggs, they are small and freckled, and it’s only when I already cracked one open that I realize they are raw. I feel it would be awkward to refuse now, so I do as she tells me and open it at the top, put in salt and empty it in one go. It doesn’t really taste of much, so, not all that bad. I take breakfast at a window table with a view over the grey sea below a cover of heavy clouds. Quite dark for nearly ten. But then again, while the time on the boat will remain Finnish we already entered the Central European Time zone, so actually it’s before nine. And I see a rainbow which seems to be really close by. What a nice start of the day.

I stroll around on the ship after breakfast, read a little and talk to a Russian woman who spends a lot of time on adding decorations to her daughter’s ice-skating costume in this unheated ‘lounge’. At lunch an overly exact Finnish couple really does me a favor by driving me away from my table – I hadn’t known there are fixed assigned tables and, of course, there are free tables all over the place, but they insist this number is theirs and I am invited by the woman at the next table to join her. So I meet Katrien from Belgium and we spend the rest of the day together. As usual on these Scandinavian ferries there is a free sauna and whirlpool, it’s quite empty and we spend about two hours there. Being truly Finnish this sauna is close to 100 degrees and during breaks there is the quite special opportunity to step outside in the middle of the sea. We spend the rest of the evening in the restaurant and bar area, you don’t have to buy anything to sit there and it’s somewhat warmer than the “lounge”.

 

Time passes easily with reading, writing, sharing pictures, talking – and listening to a group of German seniors. When we get closer to the coast it’s also warmer outside. I guess the bright white blinking we see for a while belongs to a lighthouse on Rügen, the biggest German island and popular weekend resort for many people in my region. And there are birds now! Seagulls floating in and out of the light cones of our windows somehow make the air seem like something they swim in. We slow down and nearly stop altogether when Lübeck already is in sight. Then, like the seagulls, but much quicker and muck bigger, another Finnlines ferry dashes past the window, some minutes later followed by the Nils Holgersson, a big ferry going to Sweden. Now our ship gains speed again, we had to wait for our slot at the quay. After a last waiting period during which the trucks disembark from the first cargo deck, a port bus takes us to the “Hafenhaus”. Back on solid ground is also back to reality: The worker driving the bus tells the steward who accompanies us about the pending labor dispute at the port. I had planned to take the train to my parents, but luckily the offered to give me a ride, so they have already spent some time here watching the ship tracker. It’s nearly midnight and I’m home.