In memoriam MS Estonia

This blog is mostly about books, but occasionally I just want to write some personal musings. Do a spot of writing things out of my system. This is one of those.

It has been 20 years since the MS Estonia disaster.

If you don't live somewhere around the Baltic Sea, I won't be surprised if you have never heard of this shipwreck - especially if you're under thirty - or just don't remember it any more. But around here, it's still synonymous with devastation.

It was a big disaster. Over 850 people lost their lives as MS Estonia sank. Most of them were Swedish and Estonian. Many of those who managed to get away from the sinking ship died in the stormy, freezing cold sea.

There weren't so many Finns on the ship, which was en route from Tallinn to Stockholm. I had no personal connection to the tragedy. But I remember how it shocked me, as it shocked all the Finns I knew. I think we all felt to some degree 'it could just as well have been me.' Travelling on the Baltic sea in a big cruise ferry, whether for work or leisure, was such a normal thing to do - as it still is.

Estonia is a small country. In the years after the disaster, whenever I was in Estonia and the MS Estonia tragedy was spoken of, it seemed to me that everyone had some kind of personal connection. If it wasn't an immediate family member or relative, there was a connection through a neighbour, a colleague, a schoolmate, a friend of a friend - someone they knew, in some way or another, had been on the ship, died or survived.

In the spring of 1998, when the film Titanic was released in this part of the world, I was in Estonia. We went to see it. The cinema in Tartu was old - my most vivid memory of the place is the wooden folding seat. Yes, wooden. It got a bit uncomfortable during the 3+ hours of the film. (I remember thinking 'just sink already' as DiCaprio and Winslet seemed to be endlessly running along the ship's corridors.)

But what was making me even more uncomfortable than my seat was the consciousness that sitting all around me were Estonians who were likely to have some kind of personal connections to a more recent shipwreck tragedy. It was less than four years since MS Estonia.

In the dark cinema, I wondered: how many others here are remembering MS Estonia, too? I'm sorry to say I did not feel much for the leading couple of the film. I felt more for the ordinary people trapped in their cheap cabins far down in the ship, like the Irish mother and her little children. The people who had no chance of saving themselves. Like so many on MS Estonia. Asleep in the middle of the night, when suddenly everything turns around and you don't have time to get out anymore. I felt almost sick in the cinema, trying not to imagine what happens to the people inside a passenger ship that sinks. What would I feel if it was myself and my family trapped in there?

I haven't wanted to watch Titanic since.

We still travel on these cruise ferries, more reminiscent of floating cities than means of transport. Usually, we do not worry that a disaster might strike again - no, not us. This huge, beautiful modern thing could not possibly sink, right? Security and safety measures have improved a lot since (and because of) the MS Estonia disaster. People are doing their best to keep these kinds of accidents from ever happening again.

And yet there are shipwrecks like the Costa Concordia cruise ship in Italy or the ferry MV Sewol in South Korea. People still die at sea - people who were only going for a leisure trip, or people who were only doing their jobs.

I may forget the film Titanic, but I hope to never forget RMS Titanic, or MS Estonia - the 'Titanic' of the Baltic Sea - for that matter. 

I hope to never forget that we cannot take any day of our lives for granted. Whether we go out to sea or stay at home. 

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, 

and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.”

Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. 

You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.

Instead, you ought to say, 

“If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”

James 4:13-15

Travelling Alone, Or Not

I used to be a solo traveller.

I was way past thirty when I got married; I lived many good years as a single woman. Occasionally, I travelled with friends, and as I got older and more confident in my ability to cope on my own, I began to travel solo.

I didn't do any 'epic' adventure trips alone. But I loved exploring and experiencing those places alone, on my own pace, free to change my plans on a whim.

So my heart beat faster and my head nodded in agreement when I read this, written by Shauna Niequist in Cold Tangerines:

There are only two things I like to do alone: reading and traveling, and for the same reason. When you travel, and when you read, you are not actually alone, but rather surrounded by other worlds entirely, the footsteps and phrases of whole other lives keeping you company as you go.

----

It felt like being at a fancy hotel's breakfast buffet, where you're so overwhelmed by the options, you almost want to give up, but more than overwhelmed, you are delighted, and you want to taste every single bite, and just walking up to the stacks of plates makes you feel like something great is happening to you. That's how it feels to be alone in a city, like something great is always about to happen to you. And it always is. There's always some side street or café or painting in a gallery or park or person or something that takes your breath away. And you look differently when you're alone. When you're with someone else, you share each discovery, but when you are alone, you have to carry each experience with you like a secret, something you have to write on your heart, because there's no other way to preserve it.

This comparison of reading and travelling hit me somewhere deep in my heart. Yes, yes. To be surrounded by the unfamiliar, to see and hear it, smell and taste it. To imagine what it would be like living there. Momentary immersion. Writing it on my heart.

But as soon as I had read this, something in me whispered: "I should not have read this right now."

We were in the middle of a family road trip. I'm no longer a solo traveller, I'm a mom traveller.

I do love travelling with my husband and my child. Seeing places not only from my perspective but theirs, too. Sharing experiences and discoveries. Again, Shauna Niequist has written eloquently about why they travel with their children:

...We travel because I want my kids to learn, as I learned, that there are a million ways to live, a million ways to eat, a million ways to dress and speak and view the world. I want them to know that "our way" isn't the right way, but just one way, that children all over the world, no matter how different they seem, are just like the children in our neighbourhood - they love to play, to discover, to learn.

        I want my kids to learn firsthand and up close that different isn't bad, but instead that different is exciting and wonderful and worth taking the time to understand. I want them to see themselves as bit players in a huge, sweeping, beautiful play, not as the main characters in the drama in our living room. I want my kids to taste and smell and experience the biggest possible world, because every bit of it, every taste and texture and flavor, is delicious.

Shauna Niequist in Bread and Wine

Yes, yes, yes to travelling together and helping my child to understand and experience that "different isn't bad" and our way is not the only right way. (I'm not so sure all the tastes and textures of the world are delicious, though. Perhaps Shauna has not yet encountered Swedish surströmming. :) )

What I really want to know is how Shauna is able to reconcile her 'solo traveller' and her 'family traveller' identities. Perhaps she gets plenty of solo travelling because of her work - speaking engagements, etc.? Enough to satisfy her taste for solo travel?

But my circumstances are different. I haven't travelled alone anywhere since getting married - 11 years ago tomorrow.

And if I start to long for solo travelling in the middle of a family road trip...? It's like seeing a little puzzle piece of my identity, a piece that has been lost under the carpet for so long that it has no place in the puzzle any more, now that the other pieces have shifted and changed shapes.

As a mom traveller, I can't focus solely on my own experiences. At least some part of my focus is always on the child - his well-being, his need for information. I need to constantly adapt my pace to his.

And yet I still have also this need for experiencing new places on my own. How do I put these pieces together? Our circumstances do not allow for me to hop off on solo trip. Getting some solitary hours in the middle of a family trip is great, when it's feasible - but I need to be more intentional about that, because if I don't ask for it, it's not going to happen.

I wonder how others solve this?

Quirky Places To Stay

I love road trip planning.

I love finding places for us to visit.

And even though we often use a tent at a campsite because it's the cheapest accommodation, we sometimes stay at hostels, too. Especially if we're only staying one night at a particular location, because putting up the tent and then packing it away takes more time and effort than we like for the sake of only one night.

BTW, when I talk about camping in a campsite, it doesn't mean 'roughing it' in the wilderness. The campsites I am talking about have communal showers and toilets, cooking facilities (as long as you bring your own pots, pans, utensils and food), even laundromats... Have a peek at www.camping.se if this sounds like a foreign concept to you.

But this time I wanted to tell you about a couple of quirky hostels.

For pictures, please click through to their websites. My pictures from these places were not very good, I'm afraid, and I don't want to snitch their pics (trying to respect copyrights here...).

Tågstallarna, Rättvik, Sweden

The name of the hostel means "train depots" - and that's literally what the hostel is. An old train depot. The showers and communal kitchen have been built into a huge depot hall, and the "bedrooms" are in old sleeping cars.

Sleeping in a sleeping car is not the most comfortable option, of course. The beds are narrow bunk beds, the 'room' is small, and there are just two toilets per sleeping car. But when we were there, there weren't too many other guests. And it definitely was an experience to remember for our young one.

There are several other trains built into youth hostels in Sweden, but this is the only one where we have stayed (this far).

If you want a bit more luxury :) - ever thought about sleeping in a prison renovated into a hostel? We have...

Hotel Gamla Fängelset, Umeå, Sweden

Gamla Fängelset = The Old Prison.

Good, clean, basic accommodation (bunk beds at least on the hostel side). I loved the surprisingly beautiful hall - heavy wooden doors, white walls, huge windows...

Långholmen, Stockholm, Sweden

Långholmen = The Long Island.

Ten points for the location: a picturesque island pretty near to the centre of Stockholm. Nice rooms. 

They try to capitalize on the history of the place as much as possible - selling prison-themed souvenirs etc. - and if you want to make the most of staying at an ex-prison, you could even do the "prisoner for a day" activity. We didn't do it. Didn't even have time to visit the prison museum, which is a pity - but perhaps we'll go back to Långholmen one day, seeing how much we like travelling to Stockholm. 

How about you? Any fun, quirky places you have stayed in? Any suggestions of where we should go, perhaps, one day, God willing?

Packing for a Road Trip (the Bookworm Edition)

The book-lovers dilemma of packing enough books for a road trip has become easier for me, now that I have a tablet with the Kindle app. But I do pack 'real' tangible books, too. I can't rely on just electronic devices.

I had to laugh when I looked at what I'm taking along this time:

Just read it as if it was a poem:

What is it like to be married to me?

Up close and personal.

I am potential,

Unstoppable,

Cycling home from Siberia.

No, we're not going cycling in Siberia. But reading about people struggling on their bikes in the Siberian winter does put the minor discomforts of a summer road trip life into perspective.

My Kindle app has Shauna Niequist's Cold Tangerines and Bread and Wine lined up, almost as if I was packing the cooler instead of the book bag. :)

Now the dilemma is my darling Junior Bookworm. He only reads in Finnish, which means there aren't a lot of inexpensive and suitable e-books available. (Plus we only have one device for reading e-books - mine.) So it's traditional, tangible books for him.

But how many will be enough? It'll be nearly three weeks. And he'll have plenty of time to read in the car, in the evenings before bedtime, etc.

This is the pile I have for him at the moment. I'll report back whether this was enough, too many or too few...

Because they're all in Finnish, for those who want to know:

We've got most of Enid Blyton's Adventure series (a three-in-one volume at the top, plus three individual books: two of the series are missing, because we didn't get them from the library yet, the hold queue is loooong). Then Jerry B. Jenkins's book about American schoolboys learning soccer. Winnie-the-Pooh plus The House at Pooh Corner: because he's seen the films, and I want him to read.the.original. Plus an assortment of other children's adventure books, mostly by a Christian publisher.

Goals And Desires - For This Summer

I started reading Linda Dillow's What's it like to be married to me? because I had a hunch that re-reading and really thinking through this book would be a good idea.

And already from the first chapter I picked up at least one gold nugget I had forgotten: the distinction that Dillow makes between a goal and a desire:

A goal is something I want that I can also control.

A desire is something I want that I cannot control.

One of Dillow's examples is making "an intimate, sharing relationship with my husband" a goal. A relationship takes two people, and I cannot control my husband's part of it. Maybe he's not a talkative type? Maybe talking about his intimate feelings doesn't come easy to him? I can't make it my goal to make him talk to me. The more I strive to do that, the more he'll clam up. My "goal" needs to be all about my own part, for example to be such a listener that my husband can feel it's safe to talk, whenever he's ready to do that.

The distinction of goals and desires works out also in holiday planning.

I have lots of desires for the summer holiday. I want us all to have fun. I want us to share good times. I want us to connect better as family members. I want us all to grow in our relationships with God, too. And I certainly want to experience and enjoy the places and activities on our itinerary.

What I can make my goal is the part I'm responsible for. Myself.

So, my summer goals could look like this:

• I choose a good attitude. I choose to enjoy the adventure, relax, have fun, let go, smile a lot.
• I try to find ways to encourage others and choose to serve their needs with love.
• I seek God in my life, consistently.
• I avoid complaining and griping, whatever circumstances we encounter.
• I tell others honestly about my needs, so they get a fair chance to take those into account. (My husband is a great guy, but he cannot read my mind - and shouldn't be expected to!)

I know from previous years that when we travel together, one person's mood affects all the others. We're in a small car together, stay in a tent or other small lodgings together, do activities together. As three introverts, each one of us also needs some 'alone time' to recharge, and in previous years, I have sometimes felt I didn't get enough. And when I get into a bad mood, everyone suffers.

I'm reading Dillow's book in preparation for our trip. And for the sake of the rest of our lives, too.

It's not going to be perfect, ever. I'll stumble and fall. Ask for forgiveness. Start again.

But I pray God that when the tough moments come, He'll remind me of what I have set as my goal, my responsibility. The strength to choose better comes from Him.

And I'm going to enjoy the process.

Loving Helsinki

Smultronställe is one of my favourite Swedish expressions. Literally, it's a place where wild strawberries grow. In its more commonly used figurative sense, it's a beloved, treasured place - usually off the most-trodden paths.

Unlike the best berry-picking places, which are never made public, my favourite spots in Helsinki are not terribly secret. Some of them are even on the most trodden tourist trails, like this one:

Suomenlinna

This UNESCO World Heritage site really deserves its place on the tourist itineraries.

Pack a picnic, hop on the ferry, and take at least half a day to explore and enjoy the islands of this old fortress. 

And please walk all the way around Kustaanmiekka.

Oh, and if you forget the picnic, there are cafés and restaurants on the island - check the website for details.

Harakka Island - Nature Centre

Another great island to visit. Literally "Magpie Island", it's a home to many kinds of birds and other wildlife, and there are small exhibitions about the Baltic Sea, too. Sometimes, there are also nature courses or guided tours. So, it's a good place for an educational trip - and also just for fun. Walk around (on the marked trails), observe, and enjoy the nature.

Check out the details and the boat timetables from the website, and remember to pack that picnic, too.

And when you come back from Harakka, buy an ice cream from the booth of Helsingin Jäätelötehdas on the seafront. The price may seem high but their scoops are really big :) #icecreamforlunch

Helsinki City Library on Rikhardinkatu

I visited this library a lot when I was studying at Helsinki University. They have a large department of books in English, including the British Collection (donated by the British Council), and the building is just beautiful. I especially love its interior, the "book tower" with winding stairs and the balconies with bookshelves...

(I'm sorry I don't have pictures of the interior.) 

I don't suggest you pack a picnic when you go to the library... :) Browse the library to your heart's content, then have the picnic at the nearby Esplanadi Park. And since this library is in the centre of Helsinki, there are lots of cafés and restaurants to choose from, if you like. 

 

Malminkartano Hill

Ex-landfill, now the highest hill in Helsinki.

Ultra runners and other crazy sportspeople use it for hill training. (Like these guys, who are training for mountain races.) Well, regular walkers also come here.

Wikipedia says there are 426 steps, but you can also use one of the paths to get to the top, which is what I personally prefer - trying to fit my stride length and rhythm to the steps gets a bit awkward.

 This picture was taken this spring; when the summer comes and trees get their leaves, it's prettier...

Loving Stockholm

I have not always loved Stockholm the way I do now. My love affair with Stockholm has grown over the last four-five years, as I have travelled there with my family and sometimes with friends, too.

It's fairly inexpensive to go there on a 'day cruise' from here. Actually, it's two nights on the ship and you get about six hours in Stockholm. Six hours, though, is plenty of time for visiting a museum, going for a coffee and perhaps even popping into a shop or two. And walking and enjoying the city.

Stockholm, Old Town

When we arrived on our last trip, the skies over Stockholm were gray and damp. Sharp gusts of wind felt cold. No problem; we're used to this weather. At least it didn't rain (much).

We walked through the Old City. We stopped for coffee and cinnamon rolls at a nice café. We walked some more, looked into a second-hand shop, visited a museum. And walked back to the ship.

I was teary-eyed for the sheer joy of being able to walk all those distances. (Like, six kilometres altogether. For our family, it's not that much. But it feels like a lot when coming out of an injury.)

I love Stockholm at any time of the year.  The autumn and the winter are the times when cruises are at their cheapest, especially with a club card and special offers. So that's the time of year when we get to go most often. My son loves those cruises. He's still young enough to enjoy the children's programmes (sweets bingo!) and old enough to relax on his bunk bed with a good book when there's nothing special on the programme. Stockholm has wonderful museums with hands-on activities and other interesting exhibits for children, too - fantastic field trips for homeschoolers, who can take advantage of travelling outside the peak seasons. *)

But summertime in Stockholm is wonderful, too.

The summer starts with the Stockholm Marathon (usually end of May or first weekend in June), which my darling Ultra Runner has ran a couple of times. Yes, they were some of those "romantic getaway for an ultra runner" type of holidays for us two. Just you and me, honey - and thousands of runners...

At a café in Skansen. So, what do you want to have with your coffee?

There's Skansen. Open-air museum, zoo, just a wonderful place to spend a summer day.

There are lots and lots of cafés, outdoors and indoors.

Swedes know how to have a coffee break. They call it "fika": a coffee break, a good cup of coffee and a sweet, with friendship-fellowship on the side.

And the water everywhere. Just imagine what this will look like in the summer, blue water reflecting the blue skies.

And the Swedes can have a quirky sense of humour, too...

God willing, we'll be back. Sooner or later. 

If not for the Marathon, then perhaps for the Ultra...

*) I'm not saying that Helsinki does not have good museums. At some point or another, I'll write my love songs to it, as well as other places I love to go.