I wear no cape...

Last weekend Sandy and I, along with most of the other exchange students took a cruise to Finland and back. Sounds wonderful. I pictured a small boat much like the ones you take on New Year's Eve cruises around the harbour in Vancouver. Wrong. This thing really was a cruise ship. I was impressed. It all started well but it quickly became apparent that this cruise was not a sightseeing wonderland when I noticed that the Duty-Free shop was about the size of half the ship and there was a mob waiting for it to open a half an hour after departure. It further dawned on me that the people on this cruise were not of the upper class. There was no Professor, Millionaire and his Wife and no Ginger. The purpose of the cruise was basically to buy as much alcohol and cigarettes as possible tax free. The other catch is that you are only allowed to bring 1L of liquor back, so you have to down as much as you can during the night. Let the fun begin!

We soon joined in the party, drinking in a cramped cabin with no window (although curtains to fake a window). Soon we were visiting several of the bars on the ship and I ended up at the roulette table. I did well for a while but nothing noteworthy. Eventually Sandy and I decided to get some air up on the roof and see the view - there isn't much of a view at 2 in the morning by the way. Immediately we met an incredibly inebriated swede who found out we were from Canada and promptly told us how he loved Mats Sundin and was sad that he will never win a cup in Toronto. It got worse from there. He then told us that he hated his life and was going to jump overboard. We basically started trying to reason with this guy cuz he was clearly serious and was attempting to scale the railing. Sandy left me with the guy to go get help while I had to basically pull this guy down several times and keep him talking to avoid him from jumping over. I had to support Sundin and Leafs as much as possible. I suggested a trade so that Sundin could win a cup and that pissed him off even more(this was quite difficult as I hate the Leafs as any true Canadian not from Toronto does). Eventually after I pulled him back multiple times Sandy showed up with two security guards and 3 crew members. They eventually started talking to him and ultimately had to drag him inside and handcuff him before taking him to the drunk tank. It was an amazingly taxing experience on the emotions.

We basically went back to our cabin to collect ourselves afterwards. Any inebriation is quickly lost by something like that. No one really believed our story until the next day. I tried to party it up for the rest of the night but there really is nothing to do on a ship when all the stores close. Eventually avoiding the drunk old man in his tighty-whiteys in the hall was too much and I called it a night.

So quite the trip. Two cameras were also stolen and I think everyone was just happy to get off the boat. Oh, and the archipelego was really nice, but the weather was miserable, which is why in the photo I look so cold. In the summer though, I can't wait to go from little island to little island. But not on a big cruise ship, I'm done with those.