Melissa’s 50th...

Two days after we returned from Croatia, the girls flew out to California to spend two weeks with my parents. The following evening, Jimmy and I flew to Stockholm for Eurohash 2013, which featured hashing in three countries in three days. The next day was my 50th birthday. We celebrated with lunch at our favorite restaurant, Hermans, a wonderful vegetarian buffet with amazing views.

Later that afternoon, we headed to the port to catch an overnight ferry to Helsinki for the kick off of Eurohash. This was the fanciest ship we’d ever been on; much more like a cruise ship than a ferry. We took a tour of the bridge, which was very interesting. I didn’t bring my camera on this trip, so we only have a few photos from the weekend.

We stood at the back of the ship as we left Stockholm and traveled around the large number of Swedish archipelago islands, which was a beautiful journey.

Jimmy had arranged a surprise for my birthday: a 50-bun salute! Definitely not a pretty view, but a hilarious way to start the hash weekend. When we arrived in Helsinki, we had a few hours to explore before heading to the venue. We hashed around downtown Helsinki, ending at the port for a short ferry ride over to Tallinn, Estonia. We stayed in the overflow hotel, which used to house KGB Headquarters. We had a nice dinner on our own, then met up with some hashers for a pub crawl. After breakfast the next morning, we were bussed to the start of the trails. Jimmy was thrilled to be able to go through an old Soviet training grounds on the long run; I had to stop running because my heel was acting up, so stuck with the medium trail which mostly went through the woods. After the hash, we headed to the port to get on yet another overnight ferry, this time back to Stockholm. That evening was a big party with a viking theme, which was great fun. The next day we did the walker’s trail, then hung out at the venue until it was time to head to the airport. It was an amazingly well organized weekend and we had a blast! Definitely the perfect way to celebrate the big 5-0!