Originally Posted by
LSunbury
It did briefly cross my mind that I would really enjoy going up through Sweden and back down Finland to the ferry at Helsinki, but that would probably take far too long.
The brutalist theme also suggests eastern europe rather than scandinavia I guess.
Thanks for the tip on Eurostar. Some people are very organised!
I am hoping they offer checkpoints compatible with a Scandinavian routing, similar to the Italian-trains-and-ferry / eastern European buses flavours that were possible on the Albanian connection. A mandatory stop in Germany, then an optional one in Stockholm, could do it. I like the idea of sailing Stockholm to Tallinn, and I
really like the idea of chaining several ferries to take in the Aland Islands and Finland too.
A pure rail itinerary across mainland Europe has some risks: although you can do Warsaw - Vilnius - Riga - Tallinn by train, each of those has only a single daily departure. And the Riga-Tallinn one leaves 17 minutes after the service from Riga arrives! These last two are so cheap, even in first class, that they're not worth committing a rail pass day to.