Chapter 8 - From Finland to Switzerland

On arrival in Helsinki, Finland we were greeted by a couchsurfer who happened to be a radio show host (on a station similar to Triple J in Australia) and a local celebrity in the capital. Our first step outside the airport was into freezing cold darkness at 3.30pm in the afternoon. With only 6 hours of daylight each day we'd need to pack our sightseeing in.

Our day in Helsinki was cold, windy and gloomy and we looked forward to boarding our ferry that would take us across the Baltic Sea overnight to Stockholm. Imagine picking up your main street and putting it on the sea, these ships are like floating hotels, nightclubs and shopping malls all rolled into one. The locals use them to buy tax free alcohol and party all night, and given that we were in the cheapest dorms at the bottom of the boat (under the cargo like Jack Dawson in Titanic) we were exposed to it all.

Although we encountered rain and our first taste of snow on this trip, Stockholm still presented as one of the world's most beautiful capitals. We stayed with Kris' friend, Angelica Stenberg, who she met in Utah, for 3 nights.


We had not planned on travelling to Denmark, but given that the capital Copenhagen was only a 4-hour train ride from Stockholm, we thought we should see as much of Scandinavia as possible while we're here. We organised last-minute accommodation on couchsurfing.com. This is when an unbelievable "coincidence" occurred.

Prior to this, Kris had been unsuccessful in getting in contact with her friend Maria Paulsen (Ostergaard) in Copenhagen to let her know of our decision to come to Copenhagen (Kris had not seen Maria since May 2004 and did not know her address in Copenhagen). We took a bus from the train station to our couchsurfer's street and proceeded to walk down it to find his house. As we were about to cross a street on the corner of an intersection we stopped to let a car pass by. After some confusion as to who had right of way, the driver and Kris began staring at each other and to our shock the driver was Maria! In a city of 1.5 million, it just so happened that Maria and her husband Andrew lived 6 doors up from where we were staying. Had either of us been 5 seconds earlier or later the incident would never have occurred.

Given their close proximity they were able to show us around Copenhagen in our limited time. We wandered the city streets and caught the changing of the guard at the palace, and drove out to the castle where Prince Frederik and Tasmania's Princess Mary live. At night we visited the LDS Temple.

We really enjoyed the Scandinavian countries, they are unique to the countires we've seen in Europe. Stockholm and Copenhagen are the first two cities we could see ourselves live in (if we survived the winter).

From Copenhagen we took a train to Berlin to see if the Germans lived up to their strict and humourless reputation. Probably no other country has contributed more (both positively and negatively) to the current state of the European continent than Germany. In freezing conditions we took a fantastic 4-hour "free" tour of Berlin. Starting at the Brandenburg Gate (once the boundary between East and West - the site where WWI and WWII began and ended), we visited the Reichstag (where in 1990 the reunification of Germany was enacted), Hitler's Bunker (where his body was burned), the Holocaust Memorial (to commemorate the 7 million Jews killed), the Berlin Wall (built around West Berlin for 28 years), Checkpoint Charlie (a major crossing between East and West during the Cold War), the Bebelplatz (site of the first Nazi book-burning in 1933) and many more interesting sites.

Walking around Berlin you can't help but think how did the Nazis come to power. Apparently one main reason is that after WWI the new government was severely hampered by impossible reparation payments. Hyperinflation and economic depression bolstered support for extreme groups, including Adolf Hitler's Nazis. I was wearing a "LONSDALE" sweater and a backpack, with the backpack straps covering the "LO" and the "LE", leaving "NSDA" across my front in big letters. Our guide was kind enough to point out that "NSDA" stood for Hitler's "National Socialist Deutsch Army" (the Nazis)....I fixed the straps quickly.

Berlin was great, and it was unfortunate we had a short time there, but we had to catch a budget flight to Budapest, Hungary. It was clear that Hungary was not as modernised as the Western European countries. Budapest is famous for its thermal baths, so while it was snowing outside, we sat in the hot baths with some old naked Hungarians. Finding the way to the swimming pool through small, dark, misty rooms with grown naked men massaging grown naked men was worrying.

We stayed with a couchsurfer and his family in Budapest and he was able to show us the sights in the afternoon and we checked out the citadel by night with his friends which gave great views over the city.

I delayed our train ride to Vienna, Austria by 3 hours by getting us on the train in the wrong direction. Our couchsurfer described Vienna as Budapest with make-up. It was a nice city, but not very interesting. Possibly due to the fact that there was "just another church, just another museum". We attended a university dormitory party in Vienna so our couchsurfer could launch his business venture, and the following morning we wlaked past a dead guy on our way to catch a train to Salzburg.

Salzburg, birthplace of Mozart and location for the Sound of Music film, was covered in snow and very picturesque, but the -4 degrees celsius high for the day was difficult to handle. After spending the day in Salzburg, we boarded an evening train for Innsbruck, which had a similar feel to Salzburg although being surrounded by snow-capped mountains made it more beautiful.

From Innsbruck we stopped by the tiny country of Liechtenstein on our way to Lucerne, Switzerland. Liechtenstein is just 6km wide and you can see the entire country in a day. We only visited the "capital city" Vaduz which you can jog end-to-end in 5 minutes. Although small, the country's royal family is worth UK£3.3 billion, and the nation is the world's largest exporter of false teeth!

After spending the afternoon cruising on Lake Lucerne we boarded a train headed for the backpackers mecca of Interlaken. Renowned as the adventure sport capital of Switzerland, we did not have the cash to jump out of a plane or base jump off a cliff, so we walked around in the snow instead. From Interlaken we made our way up the Swiss Alps to the small town of Lauterbrunnen. It is known for its 72 surrounding waterfalls and at this time of the year they were frozen still against the cliff faces creating amazing scenery.

Our next stop could only be reached by cable car. High up in the Jungfrau Region was the tiny village of Gimmelwald, which had to have had some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in Switzerland.



We had a couple of days spare before we needed to be in Geneva. Paris was one "must-see" city in Europe that we had not been to, and although we'd be back-tracking, the opportunity may never arise again. So from Gimmelwald we made the 7-hour train ride to the city of love. Thankfully the recent riots in Paris did not effect us visiting the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame Cathedral and Montmarte Hill.

We head to Zurich tomorrow morning to catch a flight to my most eagerly aniticipated city of the trip, New York City. So I guess that's it for Europe, no more museums, no more statues and no more churches.