Intermission

Act two had always required a camper van. The initial plan was to get hold of one in Helsinki then touring Scandinavia in an anti clockwise direction before heading through the Baltic states, into the Caucuses and beyond. Unfortunately the world is yet to become anarchic and nations still have stupid rules about ownership and registration etc of vehicles so after some intense research we found that the best place to buy a camper van was in Germany where at least one company could also register and insure it for us.
Hence we found ourselves not in Helsinki but in a small town outside Dortmund next to the Dutch border.

We left St Petersburg on the overnight ferry bound for Helsinki. Our ferry experiences amount to the Rottnest Islander or the ones that cross the English Channel. The ferry we found ourselves on this time was more like a cruise liner (not that we’ve been on one of those yet) it had three bars including a sundeck bar* three restaurants, a cafe and an evening cabaret show.
* with howling arctic gales it was more of a freeze deck, but that didn’t stop us rugging up for an Aperol spritz!!

We treated ourselves to dinner at the ‘fine dining’ restaurant. A buffet dinner, with screaming kids didn’t appeal. We booked early and got a window table and enjoyed a relaxing steak dinner for not much more than the buffet.
Having never ‘cruised’ before we adjourned to the cabaret lounge for cocktails and a rather splendid(ish) floorshow!!

We arrived in Helsinki early the next morning and were transferring to another ferry, late afternoon, for our onward voyage to Germany. Helsinki has numerous ports, so, after passing through immigration, it was a tram, train and bus ride to the other side of town and the port we were leaving from.
The port itself was in the middle of nowhere but the bus had passed through, what looked like, a rather pretty seaside suburb. With time to kill, we caught the bus back, bought some picnic food for the voyage and strolled back through the suburb, along its beachside promenade, past its quaint boat club, up its well manicured stream, past its challenging links golf course, through a small logistics zone and finally to the ferry terminal in time to board a much more utilitarian ferry to Germany.

We arrived in Travemunde late evening and as there was no accomodation available there, we caught the bus to a town down the road called Lübeck. We woke the next morning to realise that Lübeck deserved more than a transit stop... but more on that in the next blog... We headed to the station to enquire about tickets for our onward journey...damn its expensive! It was actually cheaper to hire a car, so that’s what we did. For the first time in months I got behind the wheel, for the first time in years it was on the wrong side of the car!! Tentatively at first, ie why turn left when you can make three right hand turns, we headed toward Münster in northwest Germany.

We knew of a dealership that could assist with the purchase of the camper van but felt it prudent to check around first. The first place had a couple of options- a 1980’s brick that would have been fine for the antiques road show but not for us! The second place had an ok van, not really what we were after but adequate, unfortunately even if we bought it that day it was 7 week delivery...no chance!! We finally went to our original dealership and OMG they had the exact van at the exact price, perfect, and they could register and insure it so we bought it. It’s 10 years old, white and the paint work needs attention but it’s only got 76,000kms on the clock and seems to run ok.

The van was unregistered, so while the dealership arranged that and the insurance we had few days to busy ourselves with fitting it out with the essentials: bed linen, towels, cutlery, crockery, photo frames, BBQs, toaster ovens, outdoor furniture, decorative solar outdoor lights, French press coffee pots and a well stocked bar. Just over the boarder in the Netherlands is a a store called oberlink.... it is caravaners version of Hamely’s... thousands of sqm of everything for camping and caravanning, we visited it more than once!!

Ten days after leaving St Petersburg. We now had the van and it was kitted out all we needed to do now was leave Germany and head straight to Scandinavia!