Poland - Sailing in the Mazury lakes

10th May

Had 1432 train to catch, so had a farewell lunch with a group of my closer friends from Oulu (I mean the exchange students). It was a simple lunch in Julinia. I insisted on Julinia since we had our welcome lunch in Julinia, and I believe that what begins there, ends there. Just to complete things a 'lil. Took photos with all that came, and thanks to all of you guys for gracing the occasion again.

Nima and Hanka then accompanied me to the train station, where we met up with Jules, who was coming back from her tour of Scandinavia (I think). Bade a tearful farewell (at least for Nima, he was tearing, I didn't expect that!) and then I was off, to a strange land, to a trip on which I didn't know anyone besides Emma.

Stayed with Ivan for the night in Leppävaara.

11th - 17th May

Went to Viking Line terminal to get ferry to Tallinn. Boarded the 1230 ferry. Met a extremely friendly Finnish girl, (wow extremely rare too!) Paula Teresa Nuorteva. We chatted for all the way, and in Tallinn when we were delayed for 3 hours (cos of one girl who couldn't read instructions properly and was waiting at the wrong place DUH!, but anyway it was for the better), we decided to have dinner at a pizza place in the Old Town. Tallinn was become much more vibrant in spring and more charming as well. Pics to prove my point!

Old Town.
Me with "Estonian milkmaids". Courtesy of Paula.

And so after a 3 hour delay, and some vodka and cider and beer, we set off on our bus tour to Wegorzewo marina in Poland (bussing from 1930 FI time to 1030 Polish time). Poland is one hour behind Finland. Passed Tallinn, Riga and Lithuania (I dunno which parts of Lithuania). After an exhausting 14 hour ride, we finally reached the marina, where we were separated into our boats and assigned to our captains.

My group consisted of:
1.Tomasz (captain, Poland)
2. Emma (NZ)
3. Erika (Canada)
4. Pin (China)
5. Sébastien (France)
6. Jonathan (Mexico)
7. Irina (Germany)
8. Me

After getting groceries (and beer, duh!) for 2 days, we started to sail at 1300hrs! YIPPEE! My first time sailing!

Unloading groceries onto our Janmor 28 sailing boat. Wegorzewo marina.
Me chilling on the boat. One of our sailing boats. Mine looks almost like that.

Sunny weather! Real good weather for sailing. Sailing on our boat. I was in front, legs hanging over the side. Great way to sail.

First day, we went north of our starting point. Some kilometres away, don't know how many, but we were sailing from 1pm till around 8 or 9pm and it was nice and sunny and windy too. Many times amateur sailors get sunburned cos they don't feel the hot sun on their skin cos of the cold wind. So I put so much sunblock on. Still I am really black already (after 5 days of sailing of course). Tried many times to anchor without success for many times cos the waters were too shallow for the boats to anchor near shore. First night we put at one of the wetland areas, where there was a nice marsh (yuck!) and also a open area for BBQ.

And then there was the amazing sunset, which lasted longer than what we were used to. So after watching it for half an hour, I decided to do other stuff.

For the next few days, it was sailing and more sailing, with rather disappointing weather for some of the other days even. It rained 2 of the days! =S Anyway some pictures which are worthy of showing.

Breakfast on the third day at a nice Polish restaurant.Irina (from Germany) and Paula.

The nice restaurant. Great interior. But the food was er.. not too good, though as usual if it's a buffet I eat my money's worth (unless it's that bad of course).

Me and the interior of the boat. Sleeps 8. Imagine how nice and tight we got to sleep. =PWe had to lower our masts while sailing past bridges in canals. Canals are man made water channels, often built to connect different bodies of water together. In this case, canals were made to join almost 9300 lakes in the Mazury sailing district. They are often shallower than the lakes themselves, so we need to be careful.

At first setting and laying the mast was really complicated, but after everyone knew what the procedure was, the next few times were much faster and less of a hassle.

Great scenery on the way. Green grass and yellow dandelions. Rustic looking house to top it all. Life.

Blue sea and blue sky. What a perfect combination.

Mikołajki (pronounced Miko-wai-ki) marina.

Mikołajki town. Didn't take too many photos of the town area. Waiting for others to give me their photos.

Another Polish restaurant at Mikołajki town. The waitresses were amazingly organized. They remembered each of our bills INDIVIDUALLY! That was without us telling them our names or whatever! Really impressed.

I am thinking really hard...about whether I should drink the orange juice or not?

These Europeans drink so much!

Aleksi, one of the tour organizers. Apparently they're (he and Piotr) not making any money out of this tour, only enough for them to get the trip free themselves. And anyway they were spending so much on alcohol I couldn't imagine they could save anything at all. By the way, don't look at the way he drinks, he's a law student!

Paula with a yellow wooden flower. LOL!

When we saw that the Paula's boat having this wonderful breakfast, eating merrily in the sun, making faces at us...*GRRRR*

...we had to respond in kind. Wonderful competition.

Next day we went off and settled at Galindia where we would spend the night. A charming island with a theme. Something like cannibalistic theme. I bring u PICTURES!

Guards at the Galindia island entrance.

I help the guard hold his spear for a while. It must be pretty boring to stand guard days and nights.

Landscaping. Totally mesmerising. Like, totally.

And the ruler of the island is...

the Singaporean. Conquering new lands in his free time. Yeah!

"You over there! Come here and serve me tea!" Hmm, I think I make a pretty good ruler. "Eh come scrub my feet! La!"

My house with my guards. Actually it's a restaurant cum hotel. Wanna live in there? Prepare to PAP (pay and pay).

Nice BBQ pit to roast some human meat. The rest of the fresh (living) meat will be stored in the cage. Good idea eh?

Chill dude.

Hmm... this incident I have to narrate in full. Then the picture.

Tomasz came back to the back one night totally drunk. Like he does every night on the boat. And day too. Always with a beer in his hand. His idea of breakfast, in his own words, "Mazury breakfast", is a beer and a cigarette. Healthy living. OK, it's not totally my policy to care about others, but this particular night, I finally understood the others' complaints about him making a lot of noise when he came back from partying every night (when we were all supposed to be sleeping; I usually was in a deep slumber for some reason, usually I am a light sleeper!)

But this particular night in Galindia, I heard the heaviest footsteps on the boat (it sounded like a group of people coming on board, and there was Tomasz with a spear in his hands. "HI GUYS! I GOT THIS SPEAR!" Er, the spear couldn't really fit into the boat, but this drunk dodo just forced it in. For memory's sake, he said. A stolen spear. Right. Never mind, I don't care. But he goes on to explain, in a very drunken state, why he needs the spear in his garden. "I hate my neighbours, so I want this spear in my garden." Er, no link for me, but then, he continues to repeat himself. Now, if this were another time I would definitely entertain him, but it was 3am, no less. He left after 20 minutes (then I fell asleep, with Pin sniggering beside me), but returned later and rammed the spear into Erika's head, switched the music full blast and went to sleep. (I didn't hear any of this cos I was asleep.)

So the next day Erika and Emma decided to let out some frustration and to have some fun and this is the result.

Never mess with girls and never step on their toes. Or stab their heads with a spear and not murder them totally. Cos they come back with a vengeance.

I'm the captain of the boat (for a while at least) with the rudder. Ahoj! Aloha!

OK now I am shagged and I will post about the Krakow trip we had in another post. Hope that was enough to make your mouths go WAAAA. Believe me, Krakow is nicer! Tata!