Blogging is a dying art. You know it, I know it. Actually, as I write this, I'm not even sure anyone is going to read them. Who can be bothered reading all those words in 2025, when you can get soundbites and micro-blogs and Threads fed to you? In fact, never mind having to read at all: break out the cameras and the microphones and let's go full influencer. That's where the money is.
I've long resisted videos based on the fact that, well, I know what I sound like when I talk. I've known for forty eight years that I can write but I can't speak. The internet came along in the 2000s and gave us socially awkward losers hope that maybe we could be useful members of society; our brains were valued more than our looks. What we said was more important. Then came YouTube and cameraphones and always-on high speed broadband and you didn't need to be able to say anything any more, you just had to be pretty and boisterous and outgoing. And preferably have big tits.
I've tried doing a couple of videos before, where I played with some not-Lego. I thought I might try to push this a bit further on the Helsinki trip. I didn't want to do the whole week as a video, but I did have an experience that I thought would make interesting content. I was going on a boat.
There's an overnight ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm every night and I thought it would be fun to take the ferry and do a kind of video blog of it. Stick it on YouTube, see what the reaction was, see if it worked.
I went to the Viking Line port at Katajanokka in plenty of time for my ship, as advised. "The gates will be open two hours ahead of sailing," it said, so I turned up two hours ahead of sailing, because I am a very well-brought up young man and I do as I am instructed. A quick scan of my QR code at an automated terminal and I was issued with a credit card-sized piece of paper. This was the key to my berth on board (oh yes, I know the lingo).
I followed the crowds up and round to the departure gate and this was where I was hit by my own naivety. I'd thought that as it was a ferry, and we all had our own cabins, that we'd be welcome on the ship any time. I thought we'd wander across when we wanted so we could partake of the delights of the ship.
Nope. Instead we were held in a tight lounge, decorated to look like a Moto service station but without the joie de vivre, with a single bar and not enough seats. Not nearly enough seats. The MS Viking Cinderella has a capacity of 2,700 passengers and they were all brought up into that little airless room. For two hours I leaned up against a column and cursed everyone who worked at Viking Line from the CEO down to the lowliest waitress.
Finally we began to shuffle towards the one (1) access point for the ship. Apparently we needed to have our IDs checked first, so the Viking Line laid on a couple of members of staff to do so. And when I say "a couple" I'm talking literally: two men checking each and every passport and ID card.
Worse, there was no official queue, no roped off route for us, so people fed into the scrum from every direction. We shuffled forwards, slowly, the time of departure getting nearer and nearer. I'm afraid I got very Brexit in my head, calculating how the space could be reorganised so there was a proper line instead of this awful European throng. In England there would've been a single file snaking through miles of rope fences and it would've worked a lot better. I was about three rows back from the gangway when a senior looking man appeared and basically said "fuck it"; passport checks were suspended and the crowds were allowed to push through, IDs be damned. If an international terrorist made it from Finland to Sweden that night he's the one to blame. I'd used my waiting time to look up the schematics of the ship and learn what deck I was on and how to get there and I practically ran there to get ahead of the slow moving throngs.
There it was. My neat little cabin. I'll let Video Me take over here:
I'm sure you'll agree the presenting and editing jobs will be flooding in from there. Can I explain that the yellowish tinge to my glasses is because of the sunlight bouncing in? I don't want you to think I have tinted lenses like Cliff Richard.
There's also a guided tour of the cabin, if you want to hear from Video Me again:
Thrilling, I'm sure you'll agree. I hope you enjoyed that because that's the last we'll hear from Video Me. As you may have guessed from the several hundred words preceding the videos, I realised that I didn't actually like filming anything. I didn't like talking to the camera, I didn't like videoing. I'd thought I'd wander round the ship filming it, so you the reader-slash-viewer could experience it too, with my thoughts and ideas, and I realised I didn't want to do any of that. I didn't want to be noticed. I didn't want people to stare at me. I didn't want people to hear me chatting to myself for "content". In short, I didn't want to look like a cunt.
I wish I'd realised that before I bought a gimbal, mind.
I headed to the main entertainment deck. There were restaurants and bars here, plus a theatre with some kind of show to keep the kids entertained, and even a casino. It was, as I said in my video, a proper ship. It was huge. I was overawed by it.
The restaurants were absolutely rammed; it seemed you'd be wise to book a slot ahead. I couldn't see any spare tables so I did my usual trick. I went to the pub.
The Admiral Hornblower promised a "truly British" experience and it certainly reminded me of a British pub: specifically The Favourite, the now-demolished flat-roofed establishment on my estate in the 1980s. It had a plasticky, inauthentic feel, as you'd expect from a "British pub" on a ferry in Scandinavia. I ordered a pint - they even had nonsensical imperial measures - and took up a spot to watch the entertainment, a little blonde man with a guitar singing No Woman No Cry.
He ran through a selection of rock classics, mostly in English but with a peppering of Finnish ones too, which the crowd sang along to. I sat in my seat (bolted to the floor) and supped my beer and watched. He stepped away after a while, and an extremely jolly and extremely annoying woman came out to launch the karaoke night.
By this point I'd had enough beers to stop me finding it hopelessly embarrassing. It was actually quite charming when they sang a Eurohit song I didn't know. I wasn't really interested in the blokes doing My Way - I can get that in Liverpool city centre any time I want - it was the local songs that got everyone bouncing in their seats that I enjoyed. This diva, for example:
I subsequently ran into her outside the toilets and I told her I thought her singing was amazing. She looked properly thrilled.
A few more songs and I decided to call it a night. I was a bit worse for wear and I'd only eaten a bag of peanuts. I decided to go up on the top deck to get a bit of air, definitely not stopping to sing Diamonds Are Forever or anything insane like that on the way. I went up in the lift and stepped out into the twilight.
Out there, away from the land, surrounded by nothing but sea, all I could take in were the skies. The incredible burnished skies. Shifting layers of colour and shade. Clouds that merged with the water.
I stood there for a long time, until I began to feel chilled; I was only wearing a t-shirt and shorts. I couldn't stop staring at the water and the light.
I went back up there when I woke the next morning. The skies were heavier now - it had rained over night, and there was a dampness in the air. The deck was slick with moisture. By now though, we'd reached Sweden, and so instead of open water there were a hundred tiny forested islands drifting by. We were working our way inland through deep inlets formed by glaciers thousands of years ago.
Behind us was another ferry. There are two companies who go overnight from Helsinki, and it seems they follow each other exactly. It's strange how, as an island nation with a legendary naval history, we've sort of lost the idea of taking a ferry in the UK. The minute aeroplanes were invented we decided we'd much rather do that, thank you very much. There's still the ferries to Ireland, of course, plus Bilbao and the Hook of Holland and what's left of the Dover routes, but these are very much the bargain option. If you haven't got a car people would think you were mad to take them.
While I enjoyed the laid back journey, and it was very good value for money, I don't think I could stand it for more than one night. Taking the ferry effectively killed any interest I may have had in going on a long ocean cruise. After ten hours on board I already felt stir crazy; walking up and down the stairs, wandering around the decks, trying to find something new to look at. There were the changing views now we were close to land, of course, but imagine being halfway across the Atlantic and all you can see is the water. No wonder people spend the whole time getting drunk and filling their faces with buffets. There's nothing else to distract you.
I packed up my bag and headed to the exit. As with getting on board the boat, this was a long tedious wait in a chairless space. We docked in Stockholm and then there was a length stretch of nothing while we watched an army of cleaners come aboard.
Again we had the advantage of coming ashore right in the city centre. The Viking terminal is on Södermalm, and it was a twenty minute walk from me along the front to Slussen Tunnelbana station. When the Blue Line extension opens there will be an even closer station at Sofia, ten minutes walk away, but that won't be until 2030. Oh darn, I'll have to come back.
Slussen is still undergoing major building works; the new bus terminal is due to open in 2026, but it's a mess of routes and diversions. It's still an improvement on my visit last year, when I couldn't even find the entrance.
1 comment:
I've recorded my comment as a video in the usual place.
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