The Ferry

The entire orchestra was looking pretty beat on the buses as we left for the ferry yesterday morning (to go from Poland to Sweden). I don’t let many people see me in my glasses with no makeup on, so I consider these people privileged! Most of the orchestra and staff had partied all night…but my group definitely had the best stories :-)

I slept on the bus transfer to the port, and was getting cranky as we had to wait for what felt like a very long time before boarding the ship. Everyone had a cabin, and my 3 roommates and I went directly to bed as soon as we entered the room. I think most of the orchestra slept until lunch time at 12:30. We had a classic Ferry-buffet lunch, and everyone was looking much better than they had the few hours before. At 2pm we had to meet outside on the deck to take a group photo (there is a photographer that is on tour with us, it’s pretty crazy! And he’s literally everywhere…paparazzi!)

When the photo session was over, we all stayed outside to enjoy the sun and the water. Then, a few of the cruise employees dressed up as pirates came out to entertain us, and people started drinking again! It was like we were in the Caribbean, not the Baltic! I had intended to go back to sleep, but I stayed outside and had a blast all afternoon! I was forced to hula dance, and Wictor, being the nice guy he is, bought a few of us gals a girly drink. Once we were tired of being out on the deck, we went to do some Duty Free shopping. We spend almost an hour looking/smelling all of the perfumes, and then bought some treats. Johan and Wictor thought it would be funny to have a “party” in their room…which was the size of a closet! Regardless, about 8 of us ended up cramming in the room to hang out.

The Ferry docked in Sweden at about 7:30pm. We were herded outside and into 2 buses for a 4 hour drive to Copenhagen. Leann, Eline, and I chose the top of the double-decker bus. We weren’t cool enough to sit on the bottom floor, because that was the “party bus”. They literally drank the entire trip! I’m too old for that! I ended up doing a little writing and cuddling up to my cymbal bag for a short nap. Haha :-)

We got to Copenhagen at about 11pm, and were assigned to our hostel rooms. Unfortunately the hostel is really crappy. Our room smelled of rotten cheese and fart. We opened the windows and the door, and I used up about half of my perfume bottle. It helped…sort of. The bathrooms were disgusting, but the beds themselves weren’t too bad. I just told myself to suck it up for two nights…and hoped my suitcase wouldn’t adopt the nasty stench.