Day 196: Cruising the Baltic

A common trip for Swedes is a cruise across the Baltic to the nearby cities of Tallinn and Helsinki. Some people also travel to Åland, an island between Sweden and Finland.

The reason for these cruises are 1) holiday but more predominantly 2) to get shitfaced.

The cruise itself is very cheap and since you sleep on the boat you save money on hotel costs at the city you visit. This means everyone has more money for the 10+ drinking establishments on board.

I didn't take this, I stole it from here

I would say that the British equivalent is the booze cruise to Calais on the French coast. However, the Swedish booze cruise isn't just for the purpose of stocking up on beer to take home (don't get me wrong, they do that too. Your multitude of beer crates come with a wheely trolly included.)

Indeed the cruise itself is designed around cheap drinking in international waters. When I got on the cruise in Stockholm even the cruise staff smelled like yesterday's bar and there was an avalanche of old beer cans that came tumbling out of the wardrobe.

I suspect also that the former residents of my cabin got into a drunken brawl, as they kindly left blood splatters on the carpet, mirror, bedclothes, window and walls. I'm not really selling this trip am I? It was fun! Plus we were compensated for the blood and the beer cans with... drink coupons handed to us by a hungover information desk man.

Incidentally, Finnish for drink coupon is "Drinkkikuponki" which is fucking brilliant, well done Finland.

Having been on a Tallinn trip previously I can honestly say that none of the journeys are particularly different, although the Tallinn boat was red and the Finnish boat blue. I have heard it said that evading taxes is a national sport in Sweden. Well, if that's the case then evading the government booze monopoly is an international sport in Sweden, too.