Backpacking through Europe in 1994

Day 71 • November 16, 1994
Last day in Helsinki, traveling Back to Turku with Siru

Turku, Finland, on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Exactly seven weeks earlier, less than 25 miles from this spot, just after midnight on September 28, the MS Estonia ferry sank in rough waters and 852 people perished.

My Photographs from today
in Helsinki and Turku, FInland

DAY 71 / 11-16-94
Last day in Helsinki, traveling to back to Turku with Siru

I slept in until noon, then spent the next 2.5 hours packing, showering & writing. I left Annele’s apartment at 2:30 and met Siru downtown an hour later. We went to a café & had coffee & cinnamon rolls called Korvapuusti.

At 4:45 we walked to the train station, where Annele gave me a quick backrub. It was the hardest to so far to say bye to her, probably because I got to spend so little time with her – just 2 evenings. But I know we’ll meet again.

The train ride to Turku was uneventful save for the fact Siru was with me. It’s the first time I’ve had a traveling companion in, well, 71 days. A student from Brazil, Luiz, picked us up from the train station & took us home.

Siru’s family has a nice house right on the edge of the ocean. She said when the Estonia sank*, it was only about 40 kilometers [25 miles] south of her house and they could hear the rescue helicopters flying right overhead.

After eating and watching some pathetically terrible reject American TV show called “Dangerous Curves”, I got to experience a true SAUNA for the first time with Luiz and Siru. It was awesome, but hotter than an well-digger’s ass in July.

The temperature gauge said 80 degrees – Celsius. (Can’t do the math? It’s 176 degrees Fahrenheit). But it was extremely relaxing.

After Luiz & Siru went to bed, I stayed up & watched two movies on tape: “Dead Poet’s Society” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. It made me anxious to get back to my movies! I finally went to bed at 5 am.

* Note from Todd in 2024:

Seeing the photos I took 30 years ago at the edge of the water where, less than 25 miles away, the Estonia tragedy took place, brings back all the feelings I felt that day. Exactly seven weeks earlier, just after midnight on September 28, the MS Estonia ferry sank in rough waters and 852 people perished.

However, just now, today, 30 years later, looking on the internet, I found several pictures of the Estonia and all the news stories about what happened that night.

Up until this moment I had never seen a photo of the MS Estonia before.

At this moment I am filled with overwhelming shock and grief and sadness and confusion and a feeling of “there but for the grace of God go I” when I see that the MS Estonia looks almost IDENTICAL to the Silja Scandinavia ship I was on 10 days earlier. This makes this tragedy even more real and terrifying to me today, even though it happened more than 30 years ago.

The MS Estonia in the Stockholm Archipelago on September 12, 1994, sixteen days before it sank. Photo by Par Henrik Sjostrom.

The bow of this style of ferry could raise so that cars could drive on. One of the theories I remember hearing is that this didn’t shut properly and although not a lot of water got in, enough did that in the heavy waves the water sloshed to one side and that weight led to the ship capsizing and sinking.

• Note from Todd in 2024:

I watched this movie in the theater when it was released in 1989 as a senior in high school, and watched it dozens of times with my Dome Brothers during college. It remains one of my all-time favorites to this day.

There were themes in this movie that inspired me to go on my backpacking trip, including “Carpe Diem” - Latin for “Seize the Day”; discovering life and romance and love through the great poets in history; and perhaps, most important then and now, the impact suicide has on those who knew the person.

When one of the students in this movie commits suicide, it, of course, massively impacted his fictional friends, along with the real-life audience who watched the movie. I’m sure I speak for nearly everyone who saw this movie when I say “I didn’t see that one coming.”

What makes this tale truly tragic is that in 2014, Robin Willams committed suicide, affecting millions of people around the globe who had followed his career for decades and had grown to love him. The world was stunned. No one saw that coming.

I know as I watched “Dead Poets Society” in Siru’s house in Turku, Finland, that November night two weeks after my 23rd birthday, seven weeks after the Estonia tragedy, I was humbled, and grateful, and gave thanks to God that I survived my suicide attempt in April of 1994. I prayed, thanking God that I was alive, that I was seizing the day, and I that was sucking the marrow out of life on this grand adventure through Europe with my camera.