Bad Travel Memories – Stream of Consciousness

Today is the fifth time I participate in Linda Hill’s streams of consciousness. To read about the rules and participate click here or here. To read my four previous entries (prompt was pre) click here “Prediction Failures and My Lucky Day from Hell”, or here “The Review Wars on Amazon – Stream of Consciousness”, or here, “Reindeer Hide Memories”, or here “25 Sweet Leonberger and Dog Photos”. I put this post on my Super-factful blog because it is factual, real events, and not related to Leonbergers. However, it is not a super fact.

The badge features a twig with rain drops and it says Stream of consciousness Saturday #SoCS
2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley!

Today’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday August 8, 2026, is “Travel”. Use it way you’d like. The first rule is: there should be minimal planning and no editing except typos. I did not edit but I did add a few pictures. I like adding pictures.

The first thing that came to my mind for this prompt was that I’ve travelled a lot. I’ve visited almost 50 countries, and 46 US states. I’ve been on business trips or worked in several countries. I’ve also lived in Sweden half my life and in the US during the other half of my life, and I’ve lived in five states. Most of my travel have been fun and interesting. However, not all my travel was pleasant. Below I am describing four unpleasant travel experiences.

The Salmonella Ferry

I grew up in a small town in northern Sweden in a working class family. We could not afford a lot of travel, but what we could afford was taking a trip on the ferries going from Sweden to Finland. These ferries had a car deck. You drove your car onto the car deck and then you went upstairs. The ferry between northern Sweden (Umeå or Örnsköldsvik) and Vaasa in Finland took four hours and you just stayed on the upper deck. However, the overnight ferry between Stockholm and Helsinki (or Tallin) took 15-20 hours and you stayed in small rooms underneath the upper deck. This time we took the ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki.

For dinner they had buffet with all kinds of Scandinavian dishes including dishes with eggs. Unfortunately, the eggs had a special feature and that was Salmonella. During the night more and more people started getting sick. People were vomiting and people got diarrhea. There were nearly a thousand people on the ferry and not enough bathrooms to accommodate everyone who had Salmonella. I did not get Salmonella, but I still needed to use the bathroom a couple of times. I remember people vomiting in toilets and people not able to go on time. It was an unpleasant disaster.

A large white ferry with the inscription ESTLINE. | Bad Travel Memories – Stream of Consciousness
MS Estonia in 1993/1994. Blahaaaaaaaa69420, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

However, in September 1994 something much worse happened to one of the ferries. I remember because I had just started working for a Robotics company after getting my PhD in Physics and Electrical Engineering, specialty Robotics, and two people at my workplace died. It was a ferry called MS Estonia going between Tallin and Stockholm. The ramp / door for the car deck, the so called bow visor, was leaking during a storm, letting in water and flooding the car deck making the ferry unstable. It finally tipped over very quickly. Nearly a thousand people died and not many survived.

Interrogated and Held at Gun Point in the Soviet Union

When I was a high school student, I joined a group of travelers to the Soviet Union from the church I was part of at the time. The year was 1980, before Glasnost, and the Soviet authorities had temporarily hardened their authority. We tried to smuggle unwanted literature such as Russian Bibles and other books, as well as printing machine equipment and supplies for the underground movement. We planned to travel with the Stockholm-Tallin ferry, but a strike forced us to take the train all around the Baltic Sea and back down to Helsinki and then East to Leningrad, now called St. Petersburg.

KGB Soviet Officer entering a train couple carrying an automatic gun.
I asked ChatGPT to draw me this. The tea cup in the picture happen to by chance look exactly like what we drank from.

Long story short, we were caught, at the Finland Station, and lined up at gun point, searched and interrogated in isolation one by one. While we were lined up, I said, in Swedish, “they are the cattle of dictatorship”, quoting a Swedish prime minister, who had said that about the Soviet Army. My friend Michael hit me in the stomach and said, “shut up Thomas, I am standing next to you”. I can add that a Sandinista who came there to learn guerrilla warfare was sitting with us and accidentally got caught up in our business.

After maybe 4-5 hours they let us go and they even let us into the Soviet Union. However, they gave us a guide from the KGB. She was watching us and making sure we did not misbehave but also giving us guided tours. She was nice and we got along with her. A note about history: The Finland Station was where Vladimir Lenin arrived in February 2017 setting the stage for the Russian Revolution.

Amnesia in Garmisch-Partenkirchen

When I was about 22 years old, I travelled with a group of friends from Sweden to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria, southern Germany, to ski. We were travelling by bus. As it turned out I had a pretty bad accident in a black diamond slope that was closed because of too icy conditions. Yes, I know, I ignored the sign and the rules. Long story short, I fell badly, hit my head, had a concussion, and a badly dislocated shoulder. As a bonus I lost my memory.

My memory was gone for about three days. It was caused by shock and not by brain injury and that kind of amnesia resolves itself within hours up to a few weeks. Amnesia caused by brain injury is much more difficult to recover from. There were other weird things happening on this trip. You can read more about this trip here.

Mountains in the background. The town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the foreground. | Bad Travel Memories – Stream of Consciousness
The town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Photo by op23 on Pexels.com

Our Hardest Goodbye (Don’t Read if you are Sensitive)

I’ve had ski accidents at other places as well, for example, Breckridge. One time I broke my finger and got some bruises in the Horseshoe Bowl in Breckenridge. However, the by far worst ski vacation I’ve ever had was not because of an accident. My oldest son and I went to Beaver Creek, Colorado, to ski, because that is what he wanted to do. My wife took the other two kids to Ohio because that is what they wanted to do.

While we were gone, we hired a dog sitter who was going to watch our four dogs, our Leonberger dog Bronco, our Labrador Baylor, our German Shepherd named Baby, and our Japanese Chin Ryu. The agreement was that she was supposed to come to our house a few times per day and then sleep over with the dogs.

However, after we had already left, she called us and told us she couldn’t do it as agreed because she was watching other dogs at her house, so she asked us if she could take our dogs to her house. Well, there was not really any choice. A few days later she called us and told us she could not find Baylor. He had been barking at night, so she put him out in the backyard. It turned out her fence was not secured and he had escaped. It was January and a cold even in Dallas, where we live. The next day he was found dead about halfway between her house and our house. He had been hit by a car, and the driver had just left him there. The kids cried and we were all traumatized. That was by far the worst vacation we’ve ever had. That was travel we will forever regret.

A labrador is walking across the rainbow bridge. The text says “You were our favorite Hello and our hardest Goodbye.”
We lost our beloved Baylor in a horrible way. Illustration by Naomi Rosenblatt.
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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

68 thoughts on “Bad Travel Memories – Stream of Consciousness”

  2. Wow, Thomas! I’m truly gob smacked by your experiences, which I enjoyed learning about, although many sound quite frightening. The salmonella ferry trip must’ve been awful with everyone being sick like that, and the MS Estonia disaster isn’t something I was aware of. I can’t believe that a staggering 1,000 people lost their lives; that’s so awful! Being lined up at gun point for hours and searched sounds like a terrifying experience; honestly, I’d have been having a panic attack if that was me. Thanks for sharing your life experiences of travel; it was a real eye-opener for those of us who tend to generally stay in our comfort zone (like me)!

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    1. Thank you Ada. Most of my travel has been pleasant but this was four bad ones, the last one from hell. About MS Estonia, I did not look up the number deaths while writing since it is a non-edit write-off. However, I looked it up now, and 852 people died and 137 survivors. Most passengers and victims were Swedish but there were also many Estonians and people from other countries.

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  3. Wow, Thomas your life has been both exciting, terrifying and sad however I’m sure amongst all that there has been some glorious moments…which I hope outweigh the rest…some scary times in this post held at gunpoint and that ferry accident must have been equally as scary…x

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    1. Thank you so much Carol. Yes, most of my travel has been pleasant but I thought I write about some bad ones to make it a bit different. The last one though traumatized the whole family. Losing a dog like that was too much. The Soviet adventure was scary. However, if they had done something worse, like putting us in jail or using violence, there would have been diplomatic consequences, which we knew. As bad as the Soviet Union was it was not North Korea. So, except for one guy who was really frightened, we were not that scared. The salmonella on the ferry was bad, but I should clarify I was not on the sinking ferry, that is just something very bad that happened to colleagues, but it certainly made us reluctant to get on those boats. I should say they fixed the design flaw in the bow visors making the ferries safer. They are still going and having a lot of customers.

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    1. Thank you Maggie. I should say that most of my travel has been good. I’ve been on dozens of ski vacations and only one with a really bad accident, even though I’ve had some minor bruises and broken fingers on a few more.

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  5. You were in the Soviet Union about 7 years after me. I traveled there with a college group in 1973, speaking Russian, learning culture. The tea cup is called a “pod stakani”–“under glass” (looks better in Cyrrilic). I bought a set exactly like your picture and still have them. I also met the Russian police but not to be arrested. I had a bunch of stuff stolen and they promised I would get them back. Didn’t!

    Interesting post as usual.

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    1. Thank you so much Jacqui. That is very interesting and I am impressed that you learned Russian. It is a difficult language to learn for both English and Swedish speakers. The people in Leningrad and Latvia, where we were tended not to speak English, but we were able to get by in German. We learned English and German in Swedish high school and I was bad at both. Anyway, thank you for telling me about the pod stakani. It is so funny. I did not say anything about a teacup when I described the drawing I wanted to ChatGPT. It just added it. I recognized it right away as what we drank from on the train. I am sorry you did get your stuff back. I guess stuff that westerners brought was often very sought after and the police may not have been helpful.

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    1. Thank you so much Kymber. The loss of Baylor traumatized us. The other three stories are just stories at this point but what happened to Baylor is a lifelong regret. Never hire a dog sitter you don’t really know well. Perhaps one of us should have instantly interupted the vacation, flown back home, and taken care of the dogs and refused to pay her for not being honest about what we had agreed on. But we did not expect her to screw up so bad.

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    1. Thank you so much Anneli. Never hire dog sitters you don’t really know well. The stakes are just too great. The other three stories are just stories at this point. What happened to Baylor was a shock that we have not recovered from and we never will.

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  9. I always have thought that “Home is where you keep your stuff. Travel is where you discover why you don’t need most of it.” But pets are truly that one big exception to my flawed philosophy. My heart goes out to you. 🌷

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    1. Thank you so much Chuckster for your very kind words. The other three stories are just stories at this point. What happened to Baylor we will never get over. Never hire dog sitters you don’t really know well. The stakes are just too great. 

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  10. Your story about the ferry tipping over is frightening and sad. I’ve only ever been in Ferries when we visited New Zealand in 2016. My husband and sons went by ferry from Obin in Scotland to Mull Island. The death of your dog is very sad.

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    1. Thank you so much Robbie. About the ferry 852 people died, 137 survived, most of the passengers were Swedes. I was not on that ferry (obviously) but salmonella ferry I was on was the same kind of ferry and it was a reminder that these ferries needed to be made better and safer, and after the accident they were. What happened to Baylor traumitzed us all.

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      1. It always takes a bad accident before things are improved. The salmonella incident sounds terrible. I remember the story of Baylor. It isn’t something I could forget. PS on a happier note. I saw two tiny hyena pups today. So adorable.

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        1. It was a whole bunch of conspiracy theories around the accident at first until they had pinned down the reason. People making up and spreading conspiracy theories like the attention, but it does not help. Once they figured out what was wrong they improved all ferries. The entire idea of bow visors that cars enter on and then you close the ramp like a big door is a risky one, but you can make it worse and better, and now they are better. Yes what happened to Baylor is difficult get over. It is great that you saw two tiny hyena pups today. Nature is beautiful.

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            1. Yes you are right, and they even linger after the truth has been established because of egos and people not being able to let go of anger. It is wonderful that saw a fish eagle in its nest as we were leaving the park today. Those experiences lift your mood.

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  11. Memory works in strange ways. Maybe that short term shock amnesia relieves the brain from dealing with memories of what caused the injury, but it has other strange effects, as you experienced.

    I remember reading in your book about your dog’s death while in the care of that pet sitter and thinking how awful it must have been for your family.

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    1. Yes I wondered what was going on. My short term memory vanished completely, as well as much of the long term memory, and all pain sensation was gone too. From what people told me I felt no pain at all as people tried to squeeze my arm back into the socket. I asked google AI which said this “Short-term memory loss after an accident is typically caused by a mild traumatic brain injury (concussion) that disrupts the hippocampus, or by an extreme psychological “fight-or-flight” stress response where a massive rush of adrenaline and cortisol temporarily impairs the brain’s ability to encode and store new details“. Yes the loss of Baylor was very traumatic for the whole family. Thank you so much Audrey.

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  12. 50 countries visited is so impressive 🙂 Just as impressive as your PhD, Thomas. Wow, these four stories are incredible. I think I feel the closest to your Russian adventure… I did not know that the Finland Station was where the Russian revolution started. We also had a dog sitter who proved unreliable, but as bad as yours. I am very sorry to hear that.

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    1. Thank you so much for your kind words Patricia. I have to admit I did not get the thing about that the Finland Station being where the Russian revolution started exactly right. But I did not look anything up when writing this (no edit) and I relied on memory. The Finland Station was where Vladimir Lenin arrived in February 2017 setting the stage for the Russian Revolution. However, the Russian Revolution started in the same city Leningrad / St. Petersburg / Petrograd. I will fix that soon when I get the time. Dog sitters can be great and also awful. Never hire dog sitters you don’t really know well. The stakes are just too great. We learned that lesson the hard way. It traumatized the whole family.

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        1. Thank you Patricia I updated/corrected the post now. It is difficult to find dog sitters you can trust, unless you know them well. Recommendation are often not good enough. However, we found a dog sitter who is willing to sleep over and stay with the dog most of the day, and she really does, and she happens to be a veterinary technician whom we’ve known for years. She is also a veterinary student. Now we can trust someone.

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  13. Wow. What adventures. Maybe you should write a book. 🙂

    I’d read about your skiing accident—how scary—and Baylor’s death before. Tears still come.

    Stay safe, my friend.

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    1. Thank you so much Lynette. What happened to Baylor traumtized the whole family. That we will never get over. However, the other three stories are just stories at this point and all the other good travel we’ve done or I’ve done make up for it. The loss of Baylor is something else.

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    1. Thank you so much Damyanti. Most of my travel experiences were good, and I love to travel, and except for the last one the bad ones are just stories at this point. However, the last one, the tragic loss of our Baylor, and the way it happened is something I will never get over. Well none of us will.

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  16. I’ve had a few unpleasant experiences while traveling but nothing that holds a candle to any of the stories you tell. I’m glad you weathered most of them well, though the last story about Baylor is especially sad. I’m really sorry that happened to him.

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    1. Thank you so much David. The three first stories are just stories at this point and most of my travel has been good. However, like you say, what happened to Baylor is something I cannot get over, well no one in the family can.

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    1. Ha ha thank you. Most of my travel have been great but a few not so much. The first three stories are just that at this point, stories to tell. The one that traumatized us and that we can’t get over is the last one, when we so tragically and cruelly lost Baylor.

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  18. What a collection of stories. The interrogation at the Finland Station in 1980 reads like a Cold War thriller — your friend hissing at you to shut up mid-quip made me laugh, even if it surely wasn’t funny in the moment. And a salmonella outbreak on an overnight ferry with a thousand people aboard is the stuff of true travel nightmares. I’m so sorry about Baylor, though; losing a dog that way while you were away is a grief that stays with you. Thank you for sharing the hard one alongside the wild ones.

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    1. Thank you so much thetravelingtaylorsofficial. Most of us were not too scared during the interrogation at the Finland station because it was not the first time this had happened with Swedish tourists and we knew the Soviets wanted to avoid diplomatic problems. We knew they would not go too far. Their shouting and threats were mostly for show. At this point the three first stories are just stories, interesting memories, but what happened to Baylor is a sadness we will all carry the rest of our lives.

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  19. What an extraordinary collection of travel memories some fascinating, some frightening, and some deeply heartbreaking. Your experiences are a powerful reminder that travel is not only about the places we visit, but also about the moments that stay with us for a lifetime. The story about Baylor was especially moving and difficult to read. Thank you for sharing these memories with such honesty and openness.

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    1. Thank you so much mihrankalaydjianblog. Yes the first three stories are just good stories at this point. They are interesting memories. However, the last one about Baylor is a heartbreak we have not gotten over. It traumatized us, especially the kids.

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    1. Thank you so much Cindy. I left out one story I forgot and that oue plane had to do an emergency landing on our way to Costa Rica because the fuel was leaking, but the post was plenty long already.

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  21. Thanks for the warning about the dog story. I chose not to read it as I have become more and more sensitive about those as I get older. The Soviet interrogation story is fascinating! It sounds like you were on a mission. I am intrigued by the KGB guide. That whole experience would make an interesting book/movie. You sure have lived an interesting life!

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    1. Thank you so much JoAnna. About the KGB guide. It was not the first time this happened and they did not want a diplomatic incident, so they chose to watch us instead of jailing us or kicking us out. They could do this with the help of a guide, who was watching us and guiding us at the same time. If it would end up in the Swedish newspapers it would not be so bad.

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  22. I travelled regularly from Helsinki to Stockholm and back on the ferry and quite often spend a couple of days on the Åland Islands on the way. I loved it. Fortunately, I never got sick on those journeys. But once I was invited to a family in Northern Sweden. The presented a very special delicacy, a herring that was buried in the ground for quite a while and eaten in a rotten stinking state. I survived it!
    Klausbernd 🙂

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    1. It is great you had no issues with the ferries. I should say they are much safer now. About the fermented herring you mention. Surströmming is a north Swedish specialty that I personally enjoy but it is well known to be “a very acquired taste” to put it mildly. The smell is off putting. It is not nice to serve that to a visitor without having something else less odd, like meat balls, or hot dogs or sausage.

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  23. Holy smokes Thomas, those were certainly memorable moments, and not in a good way. The salmonella ferry story was horrifying. Being held at gunpoint by KGB is also horrifying. You couldn’t give me a free ticket to go there. 🤣 Your amnesia story was scary and could have turned out worse! And I’m sorry about Baylor. 😘

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  24. Java Bean: “Ayyy, our Dada says that suddenly his six-hour flight in the aisle seat next to the lavatories with the big man encroaching on his space the whole time and the refreshments cart hitting his elbow twice doesn’t seem so bad anymore …”
    Lulu: “And we are still very upset with that dog sitter of yours!”

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    1. Yes, Java Bean, that sounds bad, but I think my four were still worse. I should say I could have written about a fifth one, but I forgot, and that was the emergency landing we did with American Airlines on our way to Costa Rica. We had a fuel leak and the captain said we may have to land on a field or a forest and then exit the emergency exits and use the yellow slides. Luckily, or perhaps disappointingly, we made it back to DFW where hundreds of fires trucks, ambulances and police cars were waiting for us. The kids were so disappointed that they did not get to use the yellow slides. Landing in a farmers field would have been cool, NOT!

      Thank you, Lulu. Yes, the cruel loss of Baylor we will never get over.

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  25. Somę cracking stories Thomas that, for better or for worse, show a life well-lived. I remember the amnesia story from another post. How fortunate that you escaped the salmonella! I have never had a gun pointed at me, I cannot imagine how I would’ve felt in that situation. Your hardest goodbye was a tough read, what a coward that driver was.

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    1. Thank you so much Leighton. I forgot to write about the time we had an emergency landing on our way to Costa Rica. The plane was leaking fuel. That was also pretty intense experience too. However, like you imply, they were all stressful situations but our hardest goodbye is the one story we cannot get over. We just talked about again today.

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