And So it starts - Helsinki, Finland

Rides: 1 plane, 1 bus, 1 ferry Country count: 33+2! Today I have been in three different countries. I started in England - a night on the floor of Stansted airport to prepare me for the trials and privations of budget travelling to come, and then a way-too-early flight to Tallinn, Estonia, where I caught the first ferry I could to Helsinki in Finland. Kate met me at the ferry terminal, and took me to the hostel, where I promptly collapsed from exhaustion. I think this travelling thing will take a few days to get used to! And so it's begun. Our mad plan to travel from Helsinki to Istanbul, hitch-hiking and camping our way through at least 11 countries in 6 weeks. The route goes pretty much straight south from Helsinki, but as we don't have visas for the seriously eastern countries like Belarus and Ukraine, we have to stay a bit west - in Slovakia and Hungary. We will try to get a Ukrainian visa though, at some point on the way. Photos 1&2: After years of playing and singing "Finlandia" it was good to see the monument to the composer Sibelius. This is one of Helsinki's main tourist attractions, and in the half hour we were there, several bus tours turned up to take the required photo - usually from a distance and missing the best view - the one from underneath it! Photo 3: While wandering around Helsinki, we came across some completely inexplicable random statues. And one was a moose. Actually, two were mooses, but this was the best on. Perhaps if we could read Finnish, they would have been explicable, as there were some captions on some of them.