After returning from St. Petersburg I had only a short break to collect myself, get some sleep, and catch up with the missed work before I was packing again for a 3 day cruise in the Baltic Sea. First stop: Tallinn, to get the big boat. As we waited in the port, one of my friends gave me a beer (and it was 12.30 pm) and it became apparent to me what this trip was for people - an excuse to disrespect your liver...and to whomever is reading this who judges about this kind of thing I would like to point out that I was relatively speaking responsible, although I did have a few. Regardless, I was armed with my small army of German's and Spanish with the odd Belgian here and there, and I knew I was in for a good trip.
The first day however, turned out to be one of mixed emotions. The buffet was fantastic, and a somewhat childish experience, but stood as the prerequisite for the seasickness I was about to feel. It seemed around half the people on the boat were suffering from the rather worrying rocking occurring, and many people were being sick, including myself. However, I continued, and eventually gave in to the drive to sleep and went to bed.
The next morning we arrived in Stockholm and received various information, which first included riding the metro. We then proceeded to walk around the old part of the city, taking in it's fantastic views, regardless of the nausea I still felt from the night before. We came across an ice rink in the centre of the city, and passed an hour or so on that before eating. One down side of this trip is that we were not given long in either of the cities to see, and so after eating we decided to walk back to the boat, some 2 or 3 km away. It already being dark, we arrived just in time to the boat. I had another beer put in my hand.
I was lucky that evening, either due to the lulling for the sea or the change in direction of the boat, as I experienced much less rocking and subsequently an absence of sea sickness. This certainly improved my moods. Although I returned to my cabin at the quite respectable time of 4 am. (given the club was open until 9 am.) I did not actually get to sleep until around 8.30 in the morning, and it was disturbed by the various comings and goings of my room-mates. One of them (Andres) actually came to bed at 9.50, given that the boat was arriving in Tallinn at 10. Crazy.
Now it need be said that by this point everyone was beginning to feel the effects of tiredness, and so we retired to an African restaurant for some lunch (with many a joke about ordering an Elephant). I was convinced to have a beer after my initial order of Coca-Cola Light was deemed "cowardly", to paraphrase. Having spent most of our time in the restaurant we returned to the boat with some 'drinks' and then enjoyed watching nearly the whole boat sleeping on the way back. German's, it seems, have as much determination to drink as the English, which ensured me of company on the return journey. Armed with cheaper alcohol, we returned in the dark again, we made our way home and for many people more sleep. I couldn't for some reason...
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