Båtturer (Boat trips)

Right now I feel like I'm rocking side to side...

This weekend was full of boat trips. In total, I spent about 36 hours on various boats over Saturday-Tuesday...

... but first, the gasque. Gasques are an awesome Swedish university tradition, a fancy dinner party with lots of singing. This gasque was only for new students, a 'reccegasque'... they have several throughout the year open to everybody. But this one began at 3:30pm with everyone meeting in front of their nation in suits and knee-length dresses & heels. We all pair up and 'march' to the central Uppsala University building (from previous photos, it's the oldest building of the univeristy) with our nation's flagbearer, and then everybody 'marches' into the main hall. It's a gorgeous round hall, gold leafed everything, high arched ceilings. We listened to speeches, a classical ensemble, and one of the nation's choirs, then we all marched back to our own nation (technically my nation is Snerikes but all their events sell out quickly... so I go to Värmlands instead). You have the option to buy the nation's songbook, which I did, then you sit at your assigned seat in the main hall. My 'cavalier' was an Australian called Rhys. A gasque involves a lot of sitting and toasting as well, it turns out. We didn't even eat anything until 9pm. There were some more speeches, a skit (in Swedish), and many occasions when you sing a "schnapps song", toast "skål!" in a very precise way (right, left, in front... and NO clinking), and then drink 1/3 of your schnapps. Since they know a lot of international students joined Värmlands, they had a booklet at each seat with a couple of 'rules' like this. Anyway, there are dedicated sections in the songbook for beer, wine, schnapps, Uppsala, and other random categories... ones that involve lots of arm linking and swaying, and also standing on chairs... Amazingly, it includes "The Beaver Song" which I learned at Outdoor School ... I really couldn't get over that. Why on earth??? At the end of the dinner, everyone signs each other's songbooks, and everyone tried to sign on my Beaver Song page...

The next morning, we woke up really (really) early to catch the bus to the Grissleham ferry terminal, to take the Eckerölinjen ferry to Åland. The crossing time is about 2 hours, and then we were in Finland! Åland is self-governing, has their own stamps, speaks Swedish, yet is technically part of Finland. Lots of Swedes take the ferry to Åland just to buy duty-free.
Anyway, we took another bus to get into Mariehamn, the largest city in the 6700 islands that make up Åland. It's a really sleepy, charming little town. There wasn't very much to see, and the main island is fairly flat, but we were able to hike up to a beautiful viewpoint to see a big Russian sailing ship that was docked (complete with real Russian sailors), and afterward we accidentally wandered into a little fall festival. Mariehamn had dozens of beautiful wooden sailing ships docked in the 'marine quarter' where the festival was, and we stayed a long time poking around in the little harbour and just enjoying the view.

Sunday afternoon, we hopped on yet another bus to take us to Stockholm's port, to ride the Tallink ferry to Riga. The crossing time for this trip was 16 hours. It doesn't need to be so long, but it's an 'overnight' trip so that people can enjoy the restaurants, bars, spa, and shops on board. We brought our own food because it's really expensive (30 euros for dinner??). Our cabin was really tiny. I have never been on a cruise ship, so I have no idea if they were unusually small or just normal... there were four beds, a bathroom, and a TV crammed into a maybe 4x6 meter room. We spent a lot of time up on the sundeck and in one of the lounges,and they were actually running a presentation on Riga in the lounge, which turned out to be really helpful. We left as soon as the mime started, though...
We got off the boat around 10:30am Swedish time and had the whole afternoon in Riga. Me and Carina took a Hop-on Hop-off bus tour on a bright red double decker bus... really glad we did, because we would never have seen so much of the city by ourselves. Riga is a really interesting and different city. The old town centre is mostly original medieval/slightly newer buildings, so it's a UNESCO world heritage site. There are definitely a lot of places that look just like haunted houses... ancient buildings, falling apart, boarded up windows, cats jumping around on the roofs of little shacks... it was so cool. But I was glad I was on the bus and not walking past. There are also tons of city parks, and some ultra-functional looking Soviet buildings, which makes for a really jumbled-up city.  There is a lot of energy in the city, a lot of really modern stores, but you really get the feeling there is a lot of poverty. We saw several of the stereotypical old baboushkas begging in the underground and by the market. Some of the stores (the grocery stores or ones that sell lottery tickets) had security guards (or policemen?) patrolling the store... it was quite odd.
I would have loved to stay another day to see the old churches and some of the other monuments and parks.

For lunch we accidentally found a Charlie Chaplin themed restaurant, with some somewhat creepy sticker/cutouts of Charlie Chaplin on the walls and in the bathrooms etc, but the restaurant was actually really nicely decorated and we got a really great meal for only $4 CAD. We also tried some deep fried bread with garlic cheese sauce!! It was really tasty but it was a good thing we shared between 5 people!!

I have to go do my group assignment now (finally some homework!) and pack up for Copenhagen Thursday morning! I didn't have time to sort through my pictures or steal any from other people, so those will be posted maybe when I get back from my trip.

Bye all!

UPDATE:
Gasque photos:  here
Aland photos:  here
Riga photos:  here