This trip has been several years in the planning. Originally, I had planned to make the trip with Richard and Rasmus, but a couple of weeks before we were to depart… Richard had an accident so we decided to delay by one year. The next year, Richard was still not fit enough for such a long trip so we delayed it again. After talking to my son Alex, we decided we would try it out on our own… and I got down to planning for Summer 2020.
By April 2020, I had planned out all routes, booked accommodations (mostly Hytten) and all of the major Ferries (Travemunde-Helsinki, Moskenes-Bodø, Oslo-Kiel) for our 28 day trip.
Unfortunately, like so many others we were confronted with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Norway and Finnland closed their borders… and only shortly before we were originally planned to start (July 11, 2020), did they open their borders for travel. The problem was that, due to the cancellation policies of all those pre-paid Ferries and Accommodations I had to shift everything by one year. So by the time they opened the borders, almost everything had been rebooked. Needless to say, but if we would have risked losing our pre-paid bookings and waited… it would have worked out in 2020.
Much to everyones surprise, we were still in the pandemic in 2021. I was constantly following the pandemic restrictions of Norway and Finnland. Many of the Ferry companies started to suggest that we shift our travel plans again. However Alex said that he did not want to put it off again another year… and if we lost our money… then we lost it… so we took the risk of and did not shift.
Luckily it paid off and on July 10 we could start.
