Although I have touched a bit on the subject of the alcohol-nation relation in previous posts, believe me, I have barely touched the subject at all. And it is definitely a topic which I cannot cover in a single post. But since I’ve just yesterday experienced one of the holy grails of this relation, I thought, well, I have to begin somewhere.

The experience in question is a two day ferry trip between Helsinki and Stockholm (which actually spans three days). You might have noticed something peculiar in the previous sentence: a ferry trip between. At first I saw those daily cruises from Helsinki to Stockholm as a cool way to travel to Sweden, but boy was I wrong. For 99% of the travelers the trip has absolutely nothing to do with reaching the geographical, but rather a mental destination. People get on these ships not to travel, but, well, you’ve guessed already, to drink … and buy cheap booze (courtesy of exploiting the international waters’ taxation policies).

I can hear you saying already: “What the heck, what can a simple cruise change in people’s relation to the capital A?” But there are at least a few things you need to understand before you can put these cruises into the correct perspective. One of them is that ships do not leave only from Helsinki, but at least from Turku (the former Finnish capital) as well. Another thing is that two ships leave from Helsinki each day. Yep, no matter what, sun or hail storm, calm summer seas or frozen Baltic sea, two ships embark on this roughly 19 hour trip each day. And on top of that these ships are huge. The one I was on can accommodate more than 2500 people (which is the number of beds on the ships, thus the number of passangers gets much higher especially in the summertime when people sleep, or rather, party on the ship’s decks) and is 11 stories high. And the ship I took is not the largest one either. And above all the transportation is dirt cheap: if you make a reservation in advance the trip can cost even as little as 17 euros (that’s how much it costed me). Of course, they don’t really make money off of fares (as you’ve probably figured out already); it’s the on board shopping that brings in the most dough.

What in the world is sold on such a shopping craze that can make these trips profitable for the cruise companies? As is extensively advertised in the on board catalogues and is quite obvious from the passanger behavior indeed, you can save as much as 72% on booze if you buy it on board: anything from regular beer to wine costing 130 euros per bottle, and needless to say, everything in between. No, it doesn’t look like booze department of a duty free shop, it looks like a booze fair. And that’s exactly what people do. In fact I am sure that they would buy much more then they do as there are restrictions on how much each passanger can carry away with them. And what are the restrictions? One liter of booze, two liters of wine, 16 liters of beer - and these are one way restrictions! If you are wondering who the hell buys this much, well enough passengers that the on board stores sell even the olutkärry, or the beer carriages where you can strap on all your newly acquired booze and pull it to your doorstep. Of course, the cruise companies make sure that you don’t regret your amazing opportunity by reminding you on the back of the ticket: “Kannattaa ostaa suurin sallittu määrä!” (”It’s worthwhile buying your full allowance!”, allowance of booze of course).

True, a lot of that booze gets to go home with passengers, but you can imagine that huge amounts don’t get to see the home fridge at all. You probably still remember that I’ve emphasized the word between at the beginning of this post. And the between for a lot of passengers means just that - they get so wasted that they don’t even get to see any of the Stockholm, heck they probably don’t even get to see the harbor at all. But those that do, well, it’s no wonder that those Finns can be heard singing on the streets of Stockholm to the children’s Christmas tune “helvetin kova krapula” (”a hell of a hard hangover”) during the day.

Alcohol is one form of income on the cruises, the other being peliautomatti (the coin gambling machines). These follow you on your every step in Finland, but their population density on the ferries is much higher than the average. People mindlessly throw in tons of coins and banknotes, blinded by the fact that those machines are made for them to loose and for the owners to gain. Quite a site. People gather, sometimes several at a machine and cheaply sell their hopes. It doesn’t take a lot of smarts to connect the dots between booze and mesmerizing sounds of gambling machines. You get the picture.

Let that be all for now. However, this is just the first part of my first hand experience of the floating booze relationship between booze and Finns. Today in the afternoon I’m leaving for Tallinn to experience the second part. Stay tuned.

Cheers!

Mladen

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Culture, Sweden, Travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.