Excellent future and other promises (Stockholm)


As was to be expected, my packing ended up taking most of the night, and still I have only a vague idea of what I have actually taken along. At some point during the night, in the middle of lists of unfinished business, I had the seemingly bright idea of baking some croissants in order to have something fresh to munch on during the train ride. This is an easy-enough task that I regularly manage quite adequately at the café (or so I like to think), but this time something did not go as planned (see below).


(To those of my readers who are familiar with the Finnish TV offer, one might even add that 'it did not quite go as in Strömsö...') Well, I did not really want croissants anyway.

Perhaps partly due to finishing one more bottle of sparkling wine that had been left over from the birthday party earlier this week, nothing seemed to be getting much readier despite all tmy efforts. In the end, I got something like 1,5 hours of sleep before getting up at the god-forsaken hour of 4.40 in order to make it to the early morning train.The ride through the sleepy suburbs of Helsinki was dreamlike in more than one sense of the word, as there was only the occasional jogger and dog-walker around, and my own mental state was more than a little dim. As usual, the last days and hours before embarking on the trip had been filled with self-doubts, questioning my motives and the sense in my chasing around the world for who knows what. However, during those first minutes of the trip, riding through the misty forest to Pasila station, I already sensed a hint of the incredible lightness of being that always fills me when I am bicycle-travelling. 

 

Nevertheless, it was to be a long and exhausting day. The train ride over, I cycled the couple of hundred meters to Turku harbour, got to ride in straight in, and before I knew it, was back at the now-familiar reclining chairs at the panorama deck of M/S Mariella. Last year, I had already taken this trip 3 times, and knew that the day at sea would be excruciatingly long. Sleeping in the deck chairs is almost impossible as there is nowhere to rest your feet, but at least I got to doze off for a part of the 11-hour sea voyage.

To entertain myself, I decided to make a visit to the ship's tax-free shop where for some reason, I ended up studying the endless rows of cosmetics in detail. I must say it was fascinating: not only was the purpose and application method of most of the products a complete mystery to me, but in addition it was the names of the lotions and emulsions that really had me hooked. The first cream that caught my eye was something called 'Excellent Future', a product that I may have considered buying just for the wonderful name, if I had not noticed that indeed it was aimed at women considerably younger than myself! To my amusement, I realised that due to reaching the notorious milestone of 40 I had now moved into a completely new category of women: all the products aimed at MY age group had names with a new kind of urgency like Ultra Correction, Time Freeze, Youth Code... Although realising that I might be making a costly mistake, I decided to keep on sticking to my face-care routine of only using make-up that can safely be left on to wear off as days go by...


Am now in Stockholm, having arrived in the early hours of the evening. Am sharing a room in a central hostel with several Rumanian Roma women plus one 9-month old baby, not entirely sure whether they belong to the groups of their countrymen begging in most street corners in any European City? Anyway, they seem ok and have not hassled me in any way. Unfortunately, they don't really speak English, so any hopes of getting a glimpse into their world seem unfounded.

Was astonished to find out that indeed there is no tango in Stockholm on a Thursday night. It was probably for the better though, as I am truly so tired that my dancing would have amounted to little more than tripping over the leaders' feet, not to mention my own :-)!

Am just about to hit the sack. Tomorrow will have a chance to take a better look at what I have packed, stock up on some maps and spare parts, as well as dancing at the famous outdoor milonga at Gröna Lund amusement park.

Comments

  1. Anonymous17/06/2011, 20:13

    I admire you... how you can mobilise such motivation and energy...

    Hang on !!

    Kiss

    Bernard

    ReplyDelete

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