This is it - my mother's massively chaotic, vaguely feared and not very much anticipated cruise to Helsinki. Unfortunately, I was right about the family side of things: they're on each other's throats just about 24/7 and as per usual even the simplest questions such as "what should we have (note: have, not even make) for dinner?" turn into matters of life and death. However, that was all to be expected and is thus not really any of my concern.

More importantly, the cruise itself was quite nice. I have a thing for giant machines of humming and roaring, so boats are my friends. They comfort me. The downside of all this is that I promptly fell asleep outside, which means that I am ever so slightly sunburnt now. Curses.

Now we're in Helsinki, where we shall stay the night in a hotel and tomorrow evening we're headed out again, back to Rostock. Helsinki is a nice city, it has all the right ingredients, architecture to keep you entertained for weeks, amazing landscapes, things to do, all the fun stuff and only two problems: One, things are rather expensive. Two, due to the former russian influence and the trams, it reminds me far too much of eastern Berlin which makes things a little bit confusing for me.

So, overall, it's all good and on the way back I'll find somewhere on the ship where I can enjoy the view and the noises and not get sunburnt, it'll be grand and when I get back I shall immediately get in touch with slightly more sensible people and recover from things.