Silja, part I

We found the terminal (terminalen?) without too much trouble. It was quite a long walk, and we both got slightly lost, and then Jake kept stopping for tobacco and water and then of course I wanted to get water as well.

What more? I liked the port, as I always do. I adored the ship, which I liked for the same reasons as buses in Europe. For me, they represent transience and leaving, and arriving at new destinations, and being relentlessly on the move. Running away, if you will. Except that ships have duty free shops and a nice cabin all to myself and you can go to the sun deck and lean upon the railing and watch the harbour fade into the distance, growing smaller and smaller, and the feeling of watching the coast sink away into the horizon is oddly liberating.

I adored Silja, although I was easily one of the youngest passengers there, and at times I felt that I stuck out like a sore thumb. At any rate, I didn't see anyone else my age. Most of the people on the cruise were elderly Nordic or Asian couples, or families with their young children and strollers. The ship itself felt rather like a luxury cruise, with a vast tax-free shop that had a marvellous stock of cream liquor. Bear in mind that this was my first European cruise in about 15 years, and 15 years ago I didn't even know what booze looked like. The first time I laid eyes on their magnificent collection my jaw dropped, and I spun around like a carousel, or an excited child in a Christmas candy store who has just promised their beady-eyed mother 'only to buy that one small Smarties bar that costs 50p.' The warden in charge of the cream liquor, a Slavic woman probably my age with about a pound of makeup on her face and brittle, bottle-blond hair pulled back into a tight bun, eyed me suspiciously, which I brushed off. You learn to develop a thick skin when you're out and about. I had to exercise a lot of self restraint not to get any of the stuff, because they were huge bottles, and in any case I was here on a budget and I didn't really want to blow 20 euros on a deluxe Bailey's that I probably wouldn't be able to finish. That, and the fact that I'm a self-confessed hypochondriac who is deathly afraid of alcohol poisoning.

I'm sitting here in my hotel room on the 35th floor now and looking out at the dusty ME landscape. Being in a high rise is always oddly soothing for me, and here the weather is determinedly, invariably sunny. Endless blue skies stretch out, but the skies here are dusty and there is a faint yellow smog that dirties the horizon, unlike its Baltic counterpart up north. The effortlessly colloquial jabber that used to spill out of me little more than a year ago has run dry, it seems. Or maybe not, and all I need is the right context.

There is something deeply satisfying about the long-shadowed, early evening sun here, and the way its warm, soothing yet curiously defiant rays permeate through the sea port.

Next stop, Helsingfors