Floating on air (The Baltic Sea)

usually, getting into the philosophical frame of mind takes about a week of cycling or a couple of days of hiking, but this time around, all I needed was riding the short stretch from the gates of Vuosaari harbour into the guts of M/S Finnmaid. Sharing the ship with literally a hundred other cyclists (a group doing a charity ride to Paris to raise awareness on children's cancer) has converted this whole vessel into a huge bubble of cycling euphoria.


Last night, as the ship was gliding through the Helsinki archipelago in the loveliest weather Finland has experienced this summer, I felt happy to be leaving the country  under such conditions. Embarking on a trip is always a slightly emotional experience for me, as I cannot help asking myself if I will ever return, or at least, how different I will be the next time I see the same vistas. For there is no doubt that these trips do change me, and I always return a slightly different person than the woman who left.


After sitting on the deck watching Helsinki disappear into the horizon, I did the next logical thing a Finn does when wanting to contemplate life: I went to the sauna. There, alternating between the slightly too dry heat and the lazily bubbling jacuzzi, I had the first of the bouts of philosophical thinking that have come to characterize these trips for me: Life is like a jacuzzi; if you just relax and breathe, you will not drown. The bubbles, when they come, are just an additional bonus that makes the experience more exciting, but you don't need them to stay afloat.

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