Finland – country where I’d like to be… but won’t

Sean and I are making good headway on my itinerary. One of the things you learn as you go, is the importance of balancing time with route. Sure, I want to go everywhere I can – but I also have 4 months, and teleportation only exists in movies like The Fly, and we all know what happened there.

There are always tough decisions to make. Planning a trip, once again, reminds me editing a story: you write more than you need, because you can’t edit what isn’t there.
For my trip, that means dreaming big, and paring down. How many cities and countries would I like to see? Well, shagging all of them. How many can I feasibly see in 4 months? Far, far fewer, of course.
One of those somewhat difficult decisions just came up, on the Scandinavia leg. I’d love to see Finland; Helsinki would be a great city to include on my itinerary. However, the ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki alone is 17 hours—that’s a lot of travel time, for just one city that is a little out of the way. From Helsinki my thought was then to ferry to Warnemunde, Germany, to put me back on Europe mainland, a ferry ride that must be 3-4 times as long. It’s just not something that’s really feasible for this trip (sorry Carita!).
So this time around, Finland, Finland, is a country where I want to be—but it can’t make the cut this time. Maybe next year, and Carita I hope you’re back and with a cold glass of “black stuff” waiting for me.