Crossing the Baltic sea by bicycle
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The Franken-Peugeot has rolled onto Swedish soil!
Our recent, multi-wave move from Finland to Sweden involved a single
wave with a rented car to move the bulk of our stuff, and the original
plan called for my disassembled bike to be moved in this wave. This
plan was quickly abanoned when it became clear we had been ludicrously
optimistic about the size of the hire car and/or the amount of stuff
we'd want to take with us. So, I left the bike locked up in my
building's communal shed and planned to to come back for it later and
transport it without the aid of a car.
There are two companies running twice-daily ferries between Finland
and Sweden. I call these things "ferries" because that's the
convention everybody here uses when talking about these things in
English, but I think it's kind of misleading because most people, when
picturing "a ferry", imagine something that one of the boats I'm
talking about might eat as a light breakfast. These things are a lot
closer to what most people would picture when they hear "cruise ship".
200 metres long, nearly 3,000 passengers, multiple onboard shops,
restaurants and entertainment venues, and, crucially, multiple car
decks that you can drive right into and out of. Apparently the
industry term for this is "RORO", for "Roll-on/roll-of".
For a meagre 10 EUR extra you can add a bicycle to your ticket, so,
not really knowing how this would work but encouraged that it was "a
thing", I made plans in early January to head back for one day to
return some stuff to my former workplace which I'd not had time to
clean up before leaving, and to collect my bike.
I generally think of the Nordic countries as being exceptionally
bicycle friendly, and these ferries always make a brief half-way stop
at the Åland Islands, which are famous as a summer cycling
destination. So I expected this whole thing to be fairly
straightforward. It came as quite a surprise, then, when it turns out
that the way you take your bike on the ferry is simply to pretend you
are a car: you get to the harbour an hour early and line up in the
big multi-lane queues with all the other cars, and then you roll-on
via a huge metal ramp.
Now, this part was actually kind of fun. After checking in at the
boom gate I got told to line up in the bus queue (yeah, buses and even
semi-trailers loaded with cargo use these ferries), which happened to
be empty. So I got allowed on relatively early in the bording
process, while the car deck was still almost entirely empty. The
boarding process is quite well orchestrated, I guess to keep the boat
well-balanced, so the deck is full of men in fluorescent yellow
jackets guiding cars into appropriate lanes, and I got to go through
this exact same procedure. I tried to ride fast enough through the
large, empty and enclosed space that I wasn't at risk of being caught
up to by any cars which may have been released from the queues behind
me, and this combined with being guided into lanes by
officious-looking workers made the whole thing feel like some kind of
weird, very short industrial race.
I was surprised that the car deck included nothing in the way of
dedicated bicycle racks that I was guided to, I was just told to leave
my bike standing out of the way beside some random equipment standing
around. I don't know whether during the summer they install racks and
so I was seeing the situation at it worst, but it wasn't what I
expected. So, I left my bike on its kickstand, fully expecting to
come back in the morning (these passages take about 12 hours - they
could be done faster, but they're slowed down, in part to facilitate
the convenience of being able to get on at the end of one day and get
off at the start of the next, but also to maximise the time spent in
international waters where alcohol can be sold tax-free, which is what
these ferries are actually infamous for) to find it lying on its side
- which, to my astonishment I didn't.
Getting off was largely the same procedure in reverse, but not as fun
because all the parallel lanes of cars get released at the same time.
There is no bike lane in the harbour's internal roads, so I was riding
amongst real traffic in precisely the kind of way that I'm used to
absolutely never having to do in the Nordics. But it wasn't terribly
heavy or fast traffic and so I survived, rolling through the "nothing
to declare" lane and out into the free world.
The next leg of the journey was also a bit complicated. The ferries
arrive in Stockholm, but I don't live in Stockholm. However, it's
only a very short train ride away. Yet another surprise, though, was
that Swedish train operators are not terribly bicycle friendly. Bikes
aren't allowed on most trains. They are allowed on some, but only
outside of the 0600 - 0900 rush period. Naturally, my ferry arrived
at 0600, meaning I had a compulsory three hour thumb twiddle in the
cold and dark waiting for me. But this wasn't all bad, since even
outside of rush hours bicycles are never allowed to board a train at
Stockholm Central station or at Arlanda Airport station (i.e. the two
most obvious and convenient stations for somebody bringing a bicycle
in out of the country). Which meant I had to first complete an
unfamiliar ride from the harbour to the nearest non-central station on
a suitable line, and it was nice to know that I was in absolutely no
rush for this part.
The majority of the ride to the station was possible using nice wide
segregated bike lanes, which was exactly what I had come to expect.
The final leg, though, involved the kind of bike lane which is more or
less the only kind that exists in places like Australia and New
Zealand, which is a 50cm narrow strip on the side of the road with no
actual separation beyond a dotted white line painted on the road.
This was kind of a surprise, and I don't recall *ever* seeing a single
instance of this kind of lane in Finland, although I never wandered
around Helsinki specifically looking for them. I chickened out of
this part and walked my bike along the sidewalk, admittedly feeling
like a bit of a coward watching very non-intrepid looking locals of
all ages happily riding in the lane in question. I presume the
drivers in Sweden have orders of magnitude more awareness and
consideration for those lanes than is common back home, so maybe I
shouldn't been so afraid.
I found my station, locked up my bike and killed nearly two hours in a
cafe waiting for 0900 so I'd be allowed on. At which point I unlocked
my bike and rolled up to the station door only to have my heart sink
when I spotted, from a distance, a "no bicycles" sign on the door. I
was *certain* all the official information said bikes should have been
allowed at this station. Up close enough to read the sign, things
became a bit clearer - bikes were allowed but had to use an
alternative station entrance on such-and-such street (no map
offered!), not the nice, big, obvious first-class entrance that Google
Maps knows about. But I eventually found my entrance, and got to use
two separate elevators (one of which may technically have been a
funicular, but I won't swear to it) to get down to the platforms.
From this point on the rest of the journey was straightforward and
boring.
Ultimately, I'm incredibly thankful that it's *possible*, and also
extremely affordable, to move a bike internationally without a car in
this part of the world. But it wasn't as easy or as convenient as I
had hoped it would be, particularly with regards to the trains.
That's quite a shame, because in the summer time I'd *love* to take
my bike to the Åland islands, or even to somewhere like Estonia or
Latvia, for some light touring. Oh, well. The move is now complete,
and winter is proving *so* mild this year that I don't think I even
need to wait to start riding around my new home. Certainly no need
for winter tyres.
