Swedish Cultural Experience #97 (the Viking Line booze cruise to Finland)
Just returned from the annual footy trip to Finland.
The Stockholm Australian Football League have it every year on the infamous Viking Line cruise from Stockholm to Finland and back.
This boat is supposedly pretty dodgy at the best of times (it’s basically a floating duty free shop, which means the booze onboard is VERY cheap compared with in Stockholm), but fill it with a bunch of Aussie and Swedish AFL players, and it can ugly.
Over the past few weeks we’ve been entertained at training sessions with stories of past cruises.
About the young Aussie guy that got locked up in the hold on three out of his four trips (one particular incarceration for trying to climb the smoke-stacks on top of the ship…).
About the not-so-classy dancing and pick-up attempts on the not-so-classy dancefloor.
About the fact that you’re pretty much guaranteed to be playing the game (oh yeah, the trip is, supposedly, mainly about the annual game between Stockholm Dynamite and the Finland Icebreakers…) the next morning very, very hungover.
So with great joy we boarded the boat on Friday arvo ready to get stuck into another cultural experience.
About 15 of us made the trip, with a scarily large proportion of the group being young Aussie males. Not a good sign.
Within 10 minutes of being onboard, I was standing outside the Duty Free shop with our assistant coach/former male model, Ryan “Hollywood” Kinsgley.
He set a great example for the rest of the team by proceeding to buy three cartons of warm beer (which cost the same as three cold beers at a bar in Stureplan) and taking them up onto the sundeck for the team to enjoy.
Drinking games and a spontaneous game of Deck Footy ensued. By the time the sun had set some time after 10pm, we were all well ready to hit up the “Entertainment Floors”.
And then, from Stuey’s official match report on AussieRules.se:
“After this the players dispersed again some hitting the black jack tables and some heading to the dance floor and the band with the 3 movers and shakers [guilty] from the footy trip clearing the dance floor in a matter of minutes thanks to some magnificent dance moves and sending more beer on the floor then down their throats [after our performance the band singer said, quite sarcastically "Thanks guys, you've ruined it for everyone." lol]. This was followed up with a progression to the club where the boys were not sure of what to expect after the average age of the people getting on the boat was 63.7″
Not sure when I got to bed, but was rudely awaken at 7am being told it was time to disembark.
So with everyone fresh and in great spirits, our fearless leader Jordo thought it’d be a great idea to wander aimlessly for half an hour looking for a breakfast cafe.
We were relieved to find a nice little spot by the water, only to realise they sold nothing but dodgy sandwiches and overpriced water, and would only take Euros (which practically none of us had).
So the rest of us slept in the park nearby as we waited for the bus.
On the way to the footy ground we made a brief stop for supplies, with an impromptu game of Servo Footy breaking out while we were there.
We finally made it to the ground.
It was the first almost-full-sized ground I’d seen in over a year. The Finns were extremely well prepared, and each of them looked as though they’d had as much sleep as our entire team combined.
Hence, the game can pretty much be summed up as: Us three men short, Them not hungover.
If the dehydration wasn’t already bad enough, Finland decided to turn on the nicest day of summer. So we were running around in blazing 32 degree heat for 80 minutes.
Given our condition, it wasn’t surprising that a few men went down. Hollywood twisted his ankle, Striker almost broke his, Shane wound up with three broken ribs, and I had a corked hip so bad that Stuey took great joy in making me laugh all the way home (after realising just how much pain such an act would cause me).
So the return leg of the cruise wasn’t AS lively as the first, at least not until about midnight when the booze from the all you can eat/drink buffet had kicked in.
So another night was spent on the dodgy dancefloor, with me getting a lesson in the Russian language courtesy of three nice young girls from out that way, Stuey dancing with more energy than any of us had put into our game of footy, and young Shadow scoring Best on Ground honours for hooking up with some girl who was sharing the cruise with her mother and brother. Beautiful work.
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Now it’s Sunday night, I haven’t had a rest in the past 10 days, and I start my six-hours-per-day, extra intensive Swedish lessons in the morning. Ouch.
