The 10-kr. “joy flight” over Stockholm, mentioned in an earlier chapter, is a mere appetizer for this air classic to Finland and Esthonia. Your pilot taxis the big seaplane into the wind, rushes over the water, skims the wavelets with swift rat-tat-tat, rises decisively and — you're off! Over the garden city, the civilized suburbs, the lush inner skerries, the bleak outer skerries, and finally a fifteen-minute dash over the open Baltic, and then appear the myriad dots and dashes which are the outer isles of Finland.
Each passenger is provided with descriptive folders of the trip, a clear large-scale map, and (to wet flying whistles) a free bottle of mineral water. The only comfort which is denied is that of the smoking weed, for severe signs state not only Rökning Förbjuden but Tupakkaan Poltto Kielletty, which is the crisp Finnish warning against smoking.
Two and a half hours after quitting Stockholm you seem to be settling down upon a pine forest, but the plane slides just over the tree tops and settles as gracefully as a silver gull in the haven of Åbo, Finland's western port. It is but an hour thence across "The Land of Forty Thousand Lakes” (the more enthusiastic brochures say sixty thousand) to the bright capital of Finland, known in that nationalistic country as Helsinki, though its more limpid Swedish name, Helsingfors, refuses to die out.
