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November 15, 2004
Ferries Fraught with Frustration
This morning I woke up and had breakfast at the hotel while Susanne slept in for an extra hour. The two of us were catching a 12pm express ferry that would get us to Tallinn in less than two hours. The breakfast room had the same morning smorgasbord as yesterday, though the charming 1940s Finnish music had been replaced by Freddie Mercury singing "Who Wants to Live Forever" from the soundtrack to the movie Highlander. After breakfast I jumped in the shower -- no bubble debacle this time. Susanne and I then packed our bags, checked out of the hotel and called a taxi for the 10-minute ride to Helsinki's west ferry terminal. As we left the hotel, I noticed that flag fall for the taxi was five euros -- glad we didn't have to take too many short taxi trips in this town.
Soon enough we arrived at the west ferry terminal, where an enormous Tallink ferry was waiting in port. The terminal was surprisingly quiet, which didn't register with us until we approached the check-in desk.
"The ferry is canceled," the woman behind the counter said rather tersely.
"Cancelled?" I asked.
"Yes, due to the weather."
Outside, it was very cloudy; we'd gotten some rain during the night as well. But otherwise the conditions didn't seem too bad.
"When is the next ferry?" I asked, getting worried.
"Tonight, perhaps," she said noncommittally.
"Are there any other ferry lines to Tallinn that haven't been cancelled?"
"Yes, the Silja line," she said. "It is a bigger ship, so it will not be cancelled. You must hurry because it leaves at 12pm." Fifty minutes from now.
"Are you sure it is not cancelled?" I asked, somewhat incredulous.
"It will not be cancelled. You should go now, to the east ferry terminal in the central harbor."
The central harbor was only five minutes past our hotel, so we'd get there in less than 15 minutes. So we walked outside to hail a taxi, only to discover that the taxi stand was empty. (In retrospect, I suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise, given that they'd have no customers arriving at the terminal to pick up that day.) Now I began to get nervous. With Susanne waiting outside just in case a taxi arrived, I ran inside the terminal and up the stairs with all of my bags in tow, begging the ticket agent to call a taxi for us. Trying to catch my breath, I began to walk more easily towards the taxi stand, only to see Susanne waving at me from outside the door, mouthing the words, "A taxi is here!"
I ran down the two flights of stairs and outside, where I found Susanne seated in the back of a taxi van, with a smiling middle-aged man getting into the driver's seat.
"Hello," he greeted me in English. "Where exactly would you like to go?"
"We were told to go to the eastern terminal along the central harbor, for the Silja ferry to Tallinn," I replied, still trying to catch my breath.
"Silja to Tallinn?" he said, somewhat surprised. "No, the Silja ferry to Tallinn would be on the western side of the harbor. The eastern side is for Stockholm."
"The Tallink ticket agent told us we needed to go to the eastern terminal," I replied, exasperated but trying not to get frustrated with him, since he was clearly trying to be helpful.
"No, that cannot be the case," he insisted. "She is wrong. I will bring you to the main Silja terminal instead."
11:20am. Only 50 minutes left.
I didn't want to argue with him; I hoped that a taxi driver would know more than one of Silja's competitors would, especially since the Tallink ticket agent seemed to have no interest in helping us in the first place.
"Okay, so we'll try it his way," I said to Susanne. "We should get there by 11:30. I'll haul ass inside and find the first ticket agent I can to see if there's a ferry or not. If it turns out it's on the eastern side as the Tallink woman had insisted, at least it's less than a five-minute drive from here."
The taxi pulled over in front of the Silja terminal; Susanne waited to get her backpack while I ran inside with my luggage. Once again, the ticket booths were devoid of customers. 11:32.
Two ticket windows were still open for business. I spoke to the first person who made eye contact with me.
"Has your ferry to Tallinn been cancelled?" I asked, again having to catch my breath.
"Yes, due to inclement weather," she replied.
"When is the next ferry?"
"We have no other ferries today, but next door you may find that their ferry will depart some time this evening if the weather improves."
This was looking like serious trouble. My first meeting in Tallinn was 10am Tuesday. Where would we spend the night tonight? Would there be an early-morning ferry that could get us there in time? 11:33.
"What about the eastern terminal?" I asked, almost begging for any piece of positive news I could get.
"Oh yes, of course, the Viking Line," she said. "They will have a ferry at 12:30pm, so you have time to spare."
"But how do you know they won't cancel as well?" I asked. There's no way I could handle striking out for a third time.
"It is the Viking Line," she said, in a way that sounded like I should know something about the Scandinavian ferry industry. "They will not cancel."
Unlike the woman I'd dealt with at Tallink, the Silja ticket agent seemed like she knew what she was talking about, and appeared to be sympathetic to our plight. I thanked her and met Susanne before walking back outside for our third taxi in 20 minutes. Five euros a flag fall, I thought to myself. I hoped I had enough cash on hand, since we'd been living mostly on credit cards.
We grabbed a taxi outside and made the brief drive clockwise around the harbor until we arrived at the Viking terminal. Adjacent to the terminal was the Viking ship, as it were; you couldn't miss it. The ferry was primarily an auto transport, and its size was somewhere between a container ship and an oceanic cruise ship. Simply enormous. So that's why Viking never cancels, I thought.
The entrance to the terminal was teeming with travelers, mostly exiting in what appeared to be a good mood. They must have just arrived there. If the conditions had been good enough to get to Helsinki, hopefully they'd be good enough to leave it as well. At the ticket booths, half a dozen people stood in line, passing cash and credit cards to the agents. Transactions must equal transportation, so hopefully the third time would be a charm. When the next agent became available, he confirmed that their auto ferry would be leaving at 12:30pm, but that it was "the slower ferry." This meant we'd cross the Gulf of Finland over a period of three hours rather than an hour and a half. Slower journey, but hopefully safer as well. And to top it off, the tickets were half the cost of what we would have paid for the Tallink ferry. But I guess that's fair since we'd be traveling at half-speed as well.
We took our beautiful, hope-inspiring tickets and went upstairs to the departure lounge, where we waited for about 30 minutes before the crowd began to assembled around the exit doors. Eventually the doors opened, and we saw that we'd then have to go through immigration -- a surprise, since Finland and Estonia are both in the EU, but Estonia's recent membership must have meant that the more typical, smoother, intra-EU process would not be in place yet. Perhaps that meant we wouldn't be using the euro in Estonia as well? That hadn't even occurred to me.
Immigration was quite painless, as could be expected from Finland, and we joined the queue to board the ship. We followed the ramp to the port entrance, abaft the midship about the stern. (Or, back and to the right; I've been reading Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander books so nautical terms are just oozing out of my brain, accurately or otherwise.) At first we tried to store our bags in coin-operated lockers, but the machines would take only one-euro coins, rendering our two-euros coins and 50 cent pieces impotent. Our next idea was to stow them in the public luggage room, but it was almost deserted; perhaps the local Finns and Estonians knew a robbery trap when they saw one. So we tucked them in a corner, hoping they wouldn't be noticed, and then went to the closest passenger room. We grabbed a pair of seats and sat down, only to notice a small row of luggage shelves on the left-hand wall. Better to stow our belongings as nearby as possible, we figured, so I ran around the corner to the luggage room and shlepped our things back with me, sliding them onto a shelf.
The ship departed a few minutes late, its motors humming as a flock of seagulls dive-bombed the fish stirred up in the ferry's wake. We chugged slowly out of the harbor past Soumenlinna and a handful of other islands before reaching open sea -- or open gulf, to put it more accurately. Either way, there was nothing but water as far as the eye could see.
The seas picked up within 15 minutes of our departures; swells of 15 or 20 feet battered the starboard side, occasionally spraying mist to our window on the fifth floor of the ferry. Conditions worsened as time past; every few minutes we'd hear a loud crash emanating from the port side, then a few moments later a cascade of water and foam would come downward the starboard side. The waves must have been so powerful to the left of the ferry that they were actually sending plumes of water more than 100 feet into the air, over the ship, then back down to the see for me to watch with a mix of amazement and horror. A couple of times the captain spoke to the passengers in Finnish; each time I worried that he was going to say that we were turning around due to the weather. But Susanne had said prior to boarding the ship, "The longer they talk, the less important it probably is," and that seemed to be the case, since he wasn't bothering to translate his monologues into Estonian or English.
Just past the half-way point, still in rough seas, the captain came over the PA system again. This time, his Finnish was brief, and he then spoke in English.
"Hello from the captain," he began. "Due to the current weather conditions...." Pause. "... we will be approximately 30 minutes late into Tallinn. I would like to apologize in advance for any inconvenience this might cause you."
Thirty minutes late. Could be worse, I guess. Thankfully there was no sign the ship would turn around, but that's because we were probably past the half-way point. The point of no return I thought, grimly.
Susanne wasn't even slightly fazed by all of this. Even though she's more prone to seasickness than I am, she's also a professional cat-napper, and went to sleep within several minutes of the ship's departure from Helsinki. So while I tried to work on my journal and gingerly nibble on a granola bar -- in fear of a full stomach -- she shrugged it off unconsciously, literally going with the flow. In our case, the flow would be 20-30 foot seas, but who's measuring? -andy
Posted by acarvin at November 15, 2004 7:57 AM
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