Shopping and Sightseeing in Tampere
Not only do the bike shops of Finland close early, they also open kind of late in the morning. In the center of Tampere at least 10 a. m. seems to be the canonical opening hour. Well, I took it as an excuse to have a slow morning and enjoy the breakfast at my hotel for longer than usual.
I picked one of the bicycle stores in the city center because their website listed Kona bikes, an indicator that they know their work. Eighty Euros for a Conti folding tire and two inner tubes seems a bit much however given that the tire is listed at around fourty Euros elsewhere. Anyways, with a replacement tire I could stop worrying about another puncture cutting short my trip in the final kilometers.
Thus I went to finally have a look around Tampere. I tried as much as possible to ride along the rapids from which the city got its name. Unfortunately extensive construction work was blocking much of the bike path so I couldn't ride the entire length from lake to lake. Even so I got to appreciate just how amazing the location of Tampere really is. Historically the town has been called "Finland's Manchester" but that epithet hasn't mapped to reality in a long while. Perhaps the tourist office could start a campaign to popularize "Finland's Interlaken" instead? That name would fit nicely. Tampere's industrial past shines through most strongly in the architectural style which differs from other places I've visited in Finland in its preference for brick buildings. That applies not just to the stock of old, long repurposed factory buildings; more recent constructions too are made of brick or at least adopted the brick optics.
The Final Ride
Tampere's cycling network is not as developed as the one in Oulu but still I got around fine and without getting stressed out by car traffic. Making my way out of town the continuous bike paths seem to end somewhere around fifteen kilometers outside the center which is still decent.
The first half of today's route was surprisingly lumpy. To exit Tampere I was confronted with a series of short, steep climbs featuring gradients that I hadn't experienced ever since I left Norway through the road from Kirkenes.
Moreover the wind had picked up again as well, blowing sharply from the southwest for most of the afternoon. Which for me meant a steep headwind and with it a noticeable drop in average speed. Where during the past days I usually rolled leisurely at 25 to 27 km/h, I now barely managed to stay above 22 km/h for most of the time. Due to these conditions I soon gave up on my hope of reaching the evening ferry to Stockholm. Apart from the wind however it was quite pleasant today: after two days with rain I welcomed the the blue, cloudless sky over southwest Finland. It almost appeared as though the weather gods were scheming to make me stay in Finland a little longer.
The road to Turku was fairly unspectacular. About the the most noteworthy thing to report was that I finally crossed the demarcation line between elks and roe deer warning signs on the roadside. Let's call it the "Elkquator". After half a day of riding through a region that is littered with them it looks like the roe deer signs of the south seem to function just the same as the elk ones: wherever there's such a sign you're guaranteed to never see the depicted animal.
Turku
The sun had already set when I arrived in Turku about half past nine Finland time. Most of the town was brightly lit so I almost didn't notice to the point that I forgot I was still wearing sunglasses until I had reached the port.
Turku has a very different feel from Oulu and Tampere. Less calm than the former and less business-like than the latter. A bit more pompous perhaps than both, with metropolitan aspirations. Notably the buildings in its center rise taller, and the entire town gives the impression of being unusually compact and dense for a Finnish town. (In fact its population density is twice that of Tampere.)
Down at the Aura river I got a slice of Turku's nightlife much of which seems to happen on historical boats with fancy lighting. The port area is located near the mouth of the river so I went there to scout where the ferry would be departing in the morning. Next to the fenced off port there is a museum of naval and military history; some of its main exhibits are free to view outdoors, moored at the pier: most notably a WWII era cruiser and a three-mast sailboat.
There is no campsite in Turku proper, unfortunately. Since I wanted to take shower before boarding the ferry my options for the night were pretty much down to taking a hotel in town so I booked one with what appeared to be a 24 hour reception. Turns out it was yet another of those places with automated check-in via PIN, but this time with the additional harassment of requiring photos of ID and a selfie (what the heck?!) before providing that PIN. Naturally, their upload portal (pretenting to perfom identity verification lol) was peak web design and thus would only work in Chrome, not Firefox. Which on top of being embarrassing is frankly insane as they're charging up front for a service (accommodation) that one may be prevented from using after all because the morons in charge of running the upload portal wouldn't know valid HTML if it hit them in the face with an angle bracket.
gps tracks
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