Tue, 12 Aug 2003

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 15:54 CEST 18/08/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Finland ( all photos )

Suomenlinna Sea Fortress ( 21 photos )
Heading back into town, we had the general task of getting ourselves a ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm.
But first, two main things. One was to satisfy my nerd-knowledge a little for a change, heading to the Department of Computer Science of the University of Helsinki. Some among you many realise that this is the birthplace of Linux. If you don't know or care, skip to the next paragraph. I just wanted to find out if there was anything there as a tribute of sorts to Linus Torvalds' time there, and some fairly helpful and suprised to see me people basically explained that there wasn't. After a bit of a nose around and a coffee in their cafeteria, we caught a tram back into town.
Next was a means to save ourselves some money - an International Youth Travel Card. This is accepted almost everywhere (we have found), entitling us to so-called "student" discounts which are sometimes as much as 50%. Why we didn't find out about this earlier I don't know, but some careful reading of Lonely Planet pointed us at the Student Travel Association, which conveniently have an office smack-bang in central Helsinki.
So, after waiting there for a while (where we noted that travel to Australia and NZ is very heavily promoted - they even have a special information night), we forked over a measly ten euro each for another photo card to prove who we are in our wallets.
This turned out to have been a very good move, as our next stop was the offices of Viking Line, one of the ferry companies sailing to Stockholm. After a bit of negotiation, we managed to score ourselves good cabins on a ferry for the following day, the student cards saving more than ten euro each right away.
So, this left us with a day more to spend in Helsinki. This worked out well, giving us time to get the tram around a little (a couple of embassies which were closed), then get back to the fish market for a ferry across to the Suomenlinna / Sveaborg Sea Fortress.
The fifteen minute, already paid for with our tourist ticket ferry ride across to the set of islands was nice enough, and we soon set about wandering around the place. This is yet another World Heritage Site, a 250-year old sea fortress built by the Swedish into a city with more inhabitants than Helsinki itself. What remains is a series of interconnected islands with museums, parks and plenty of history.
Our wanders were fairly non-specific, taking in plenty of old buildings and lazing in the parkland. One thing of interest was the Submarine Vesikko, the only remaining Finnish submarine (the rest were destroyed). Saving huge sums of cash by waving our shiny new student cards, we got a glimpse into what life must have been like cramped into a tiny tin can under the water for months on end.
After a long wait for a return ferry (no problem, just relax and enjoy the view across the water), we got back to the other side and then the caravan park to pay for another night's accommodation. This bought another nice suprise for the day - the fourth night is free!
We rounded off a cheap day (well, except the ferry tickets) with a home-cooked meal and some duty free beers.

(customised)