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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Super Facts 