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2001-11-16 - 11:50 a.m.

Sheesh, has it really been 11 days??

Lessee. Week of the 5th I worked at least one day, pottered around the house, ran errands, etc. At least I think I did. I'm sure I did something constructive. Went to fighting practice Tuesday but didn't fight - back was hurting. Actually, was trying to avoid being sick all week, and getting over back fu. Oh well.

Then Thursday we set off for Estonia (Dan, the sausage man from Wen's tales, and I). A *most* excellent trip. We flew from Heathrow (after a few mishaps on the tube) and landed safely in Helsinki after a lovely in-flight meal. They offer you cognac with your coffee in a real *glass* glass (when all the rest of the tableware is plastic) on Finnair. Yum. And I got mistaken for a Finn.

Unfortunately, when we arrived, the flight from Beijing had arrived just in front of us so the queue for non-EU passports was astonishingly long. Ah well. Tero picked us up and we got a brief driving tour of Helsinki on our way to the ferry port. It even started snowing!

We managed to board the ferry successfully and set off across the water to Estonia. The SuperSeaCat is a pretty speedy little craft, laid out like a more spacious airplane with more walking space, and a little section where you can go up and peer through thick windows into the bridge where they're running the ship. Pretty cool. I got thirsty, went down to the bar and discovered that we're back in Scandinavia, land of splendid fruit ciders!! (See entries re: Double Wars)

So I had a pear cider and all was well in the world.

I'd also forgotten how much the Finns drink. Astonishing. There were two guys behind us at Passport Control who'd had a little more than a little too much Salmiakki (licorice/vodka goo). One of them fell over, his friend helped him up, then the friend fell over and passed out. Dan and another passerby tried to help him through customs by essentially grabbing one arm each and holding him up to the window like a rag doll but they wouldn't let him through. His friend was helpfully trying to wake him by dragging him along by his shirt, punching him in the jaw, and picking him up by his shirt then dropping him. Such friends....*grin*

But we made it through, met up quite by accident (use the "spot the Scadian" technique in foreign airports, Luke!) with some Finns who had offered to show us around, got settled into our hotel and met back up for dinner.

Estonia is cheap. Dinner for two, including three ciders, a beer, four starters, a soup, and two mains, was, um, 20 pounds sterling. Excellent! We ate in a restaurant serving traditional style Estonian food (very yummy)(and besides it had a cute logo) and then wandered our way back to our hotel via cheap taxi.

More later.

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