We finally arrived at 9 p.m. in Hanko and we still hadn’t an hotel or an youth hostel. But we were lucky that we took a prospect from the ferry, where we found different addresses and telephone numbers of hotels and youth hostels.
It was difficult to get an accommodation at this late time. Eventually we realized that after cancels in two hotels. The first one was only dark and at the second one nobody opened. Also a call didn’t help.
So we decided to visit a last hotel at the harbour. First we didn’t find there the entrance and went to a pub nearby the hotel. The people there couldn’t speak English very well and tried to talk with us in Finnish. The pub seemed to be very strange: the people looked strange and were also inebriated.
I already wanted to leave but then Sabrina talked with a Finn. He called a woman, who went with us to the hotel. We had to fill in some documents and finally received the keys for our double room. Furthermore we still could receive calls at our room until 23
o'clock. The price for the double room was 66€. Fortunately the woman could speak English very well.
In the room we were surprised about the good equipment: two beds, one television, a sofa with a table, a desk, a hall-stand, a bathroom and the best: a balcony with view on the Baltic Sea – brilliant!
We decided not to go out anymore to find a restaurant but be content with sweets. Then we watched a little bit MTV and went sleeping.
In the morning there was a fantastic sunrise – like a dream. Then we went down to the breakfast room. The breakfast was very good. We paid the room and left the hotel.
Afterwards we went to the beach, where we made some photos with our cameras. Then we continued our trip to Vaasa.
When we left the hotel with the car we saw very much people making flasher. We realized that our light on the car wasn’t on and that is forbidden in Finland. But then we became further signs, also from passers-by – we were confused.
So I got off the car and noticed that my toilet bag was still on the car – lucky guy.
We left Hanko and drove direction Helsinki. First we noticed the big forest cover and the signs “Respect for reindeers”. I decided to buy such a sign later one. We were hearing different Finnish radio channels but it was only messy music like HR4 in Germany.
But that couldn’t diminish our good mood, because the weather was great.
We drove very much country roads and rarely through towns (only through 2), because we were guided around them. Speed limit was often 100 km/h, sometimes only 80 km/h. A few times we had to drive slowly because a truck was in front of us.
There was a motorway near Helsinki and later on also near Tampere. We were surprised because there were no crash-barriers on the motorways and a speed limit of 120 km/h. You could always drive on the left lane and almost nobody overtook. The exits were long and better suitable for leaving the motorway.
We stopped only once on a parking place near a sea. There were many seas along our road, which looked very nice, also because of the weather. All the days of our trip we had nice weather, except once on the ferry when it was raining. The last part to Vaasa was a country area with many tractors and farms. We arrived in Vaasa around 5 p.m. and directly met our tutors Anne and Heidi.