I booked this trip in the one-way version, as I could easily do it over a weekend.

For accommodation, as usual, I opted for the cheapest, single use outboard cabin – in this case a 4-berth cabin, which costs €63 on top of the standard inside cabin.

There are also outboard cabins with a queen-size bed, as well as luxury cabins and suites.

Finnlines also sells single berths in shared inboard/outboard cabins and during summer, you can also book a simple deck passage, but this isn’t permitted in winter.

You can add special touches such as champagne and chocolates delivered to your cabin, as well as more mundane extras such as WIFI (€29.00 for the entire cruise). Use of the gym and sauna is free for all passengers. 

To try out the restaurants on board, I bought the meal package, which is a good deal at €79 for brunch, dinner and breakfast, and €14 cheaper than buying it on board. Soft drinks, beer and wine are included with dinner.  

Finnlines’ booking tool is easy to use, but you can’t access the well-designed information pages about accommodation, meals and life on board during the booking process, so navigate there separately.

I ended up with a bill of €421.68 for 30 hours at sea with full board. I booked that well in advance in October 2023 for January 2024 which is right in the off season. Prices for the same trip in summer are closer to €600 one way, so Finnlines is by no means cheap.

Finnlines also offers a ‘mini-cruise’, for €665 for three days at sea, including all meals, It’s basically just a modified return ticket, as the stopover in Helsinki is only five hours, which is short considering that Vuossari Port is quite far from the centre of Helsinki.

The company does provide up to date information on their ship’s journeys – unfortunately tucked away in the cargo-related section of their webpage.

Checking those a few days before my sailing proved to be quite nerve-wracking as the Finnstar was overdue to return to service from a stay on the shipyard over Christmas. The date got pushed back day by day. First, the ferry was supposed to depart Helsinki with a few hours delay but in the end she didn’t even make that and sailed directly from the shipyard in Gdansk to Travemünde, missing half of her journey altogether. While this was good news for me, but I felt very sorry for whose trip got cancelled.

En Route

Loading cargo and cars beginns after foot passengers have been driven on board, so there is plenty of time to watch the busy port from the outer decks.

As the weather was nasty with gusts of cold rain and temperatures hovering around zero, I soon headed into the cosy environments of deck 11 for a nightcap and then retired to my cabin.

Departure was sheduled at 03:00 board time, which is an hour ahead of German time (and equals Finish time on arrival). That came and went and so I drifted off, missing the departure altogether.

I slept exceptionally well and woke up late around 09:30 as Finnlines thankfully refrains from making any announcements on the mornings of sea days.

Those of us who slept in didn’t miss much as the view ouside was grey-themed and you could feel the wind and waves picking up. This continued throughout the morning with wind up to gusts of 21 m/s which is a fresh gale (Beaufort 8).

The wind came from almost every direction of the compass rose. With the waves mostly coming from astern, the ride wasn’t too uncomfortable.

The rogh weather followed us into the early afternoon and to the island of Bornholm. After leaving Bornholm behind, the weather calmed down and became quite sunny.

We met Finnstar’s sister ship Finnlady en-route to Travemünde, working hard against the oncoming waves. Strangely, I didn’t notice any nautical greeting between the ships.

The air became crisp and cool and everyone enjoyed the sunny afternoon taking in the glittering Baltic Sea and cargo ships and fising boats accompanying our ferry.

After a quiet night with a calm sea and a moonlit sky I woke up at around 07:45. It was still dark outside with lights from the Finish coastal towns glittering on the horizon. About half an hour later patches of ice appeared on the water and thickened. It was impressive to watch the Finnstar ploughing through patches of “crushed ice” and small ice floes making good use of her reinforced hull.  

The ice didn’t delay the final stage of the trip and we soon berthed in Vuossari Port. Mooring was finished bang on time at 10:00. A few minutes later a gangway was moved to deck 7 and foot passengers invited to disembark.

Passengers are bussed to the Hansaterminali where there are random passport checks (solo middle-aged male travellers always get pulled over).

Ship and Operating Company

Finnlines is part of the Grimaldi Group which also operates Minoan Lines, with whom I took my very first ferry cruise from Livorno to Tanger MED in 2015.

The company was founded in 1947 and started services to Travemünde in 1962. For 29 years it operated the legendary Finnjet express ferry which covered the distance between Travemünde and Helsinki in 22 hours (10 hours faster than today’s ferries).

Today Finnlines operates five combined fright/passenger services as well as 11 cargo relationsand is the the most important operator between Germany and Finland with three ferries shuttling back and force between Travemünde and Helsinki, offering daily departures both ways.

These “Star Class” ferries, the Finnstar, Finnlady, and Finnmaid are almost identical. My ride was, naturally, on the type ship, the Finnstar (IMO Number 9319442) which was completed in 2006 by Fincantieri yards in Italy.

She has an overall length of 218.8 metres and a capacity of 4200 lane metres and 500 passenger berths. Four Wärtsilä diesels provide up to power 48000 kW of power with a maximum speed of 23 knots (approx.  46 km/h). Her hull is classified as 1A super Finish ice class.

Exhaust gas scrubbers were added in 2015.

On Board

Cabin

Standard booking on my ferry-cruises is the cheapest outboard cabin, which is usually a 4-berth cabin on one of the lower passenger decks.

Finnstar was no exception here, however, I did get a cabin facing the bow which was a first.

Those accommodations tend to be quite similar no matter on which ship you travel on and Finnlines doesn’t spoil you either but at least offers quite spacious surroundings. The second lower berth was even set up as a sofa, which I always find more inviting than an empty bed. 

A big plus was the heating/aircon unit, which controlled the temperature in the cabin very well, which isn’t always the case on other ships.

Facilities and Public Areas

I couldn’t help to take a profound liking of this ferry from the moment I stepped on board. The reserved friendliness of the Finnish crew resonated well with me, as did the cosy interior and the compact and easy to navigate layout of the public areas.

Most of the public facilities congregate on deck 11 with a buffet restaurant, café, bar, outside bar in summer, shop, conference room, lounge, children’s play area, and vending and gaming machines. The only other public areas are on deck 7 (reception), and 12. The reception is only open on departure and arrival days.

The ship also ticked box after box on the “little things on a ferry cruise”-list, such as having a moving map channel using nautical maps, and a live feed of the ship’s anemometer on the TVs channel, as well as accessible outdoor areas, including the topmost deck with a 360ºview.

The on-board feeling was charmingly Finnish with the saunas open until 3 am, passengers downing huge mugs of coffee around the clock and strange polka tunes playing in the bar.  

Facilities stay open late on departure night. After that Finnlines doesn’t put on any entertainment and sends its passengers to bed early. The bar closed at 23:00 on the second day which was a little austere considerung that the arrival isn’t untill ten on the next morning.

There is a small shop with the usual fare of perfumes and alcohol as well as a large range of clothing. There was also a shelf of Moomin-themed merchandise.

I was very pleased to see a full shelf of Finnlines’ own merch as I often miss opportunities to buy souvenirs on other ferries. The offerings again where very Finish, with a cutting board for meat and a branded daylight lamp, which probably comes in handy during the long Nordic nights.

Bars and Restaurants

Finnstar is one of the smaller ferries with only one main restaurant, bar and snack-bar.

All meals of my package were served in the Mare Balticum buffet restaurant. The deal includes brunch and dinner on the sea day, and breakfast on the morning of arrival.

Brunch commences at 10:30 and can be attended twice. The kitchen crew adds lunch items around noon.

The restaurant is spacious and well layed out. I liked that you got your own table for the whole cruise, and there even was a Capitain’s table (I didn’t see anyone sitting there though).

The restaurant staff were friendly and attentive throughout.

While the restarant and crew wre top notch, the food itself was only so-so. While everything was perfectly edible and nicely presented, most dishes where chewy and probably have been sitting in a freezer for some time.

The egg dishes for breakfast where all goopy and watery, and the graved salmon had a strange taste to as well as way too much dill on it.
The Karelian pierogi were an utter disgrace.
On the plus side there was fresh fruit, yoghurt, nice bacon, blueberry juice and nice pastries. The coffee was excellent (it is a Finnish ship after all)

The lunch stuff added later, was meat-heavv, potatoe-based bland and again: chewy.

A self-proclaimed “Superiour Dinner” is served from 18:00-20:00, which is early, considering that the arrival on the next morning isn’t untill 10:00. The food was a little better than lunch with nice appetizers, fresh salads, and shrimps. Stews where up for mains together with cuts of beef and lamb and a few vegetarian options. All in all rustic comfort food which isn’t a bad thing but could have been executed better.

Beer and wine from a tap are included and there was a nice range of cakes and a pavlova-style dessert to fin(n)ish off the meal.

Pre-arrival breakfast is served from 08:00 untill 09:30 so you find sustenance almost untill the ship docks. The food was similar to the breakfast part of the sea day brunch.

There is also a supper on the first night, which is not included in the meal package. It is nicely laid out near the bar. I din’t try it, but it looked OK for €11.00.

Crew and Fellow Passengers

As you would expected in the middle of the off-season the passenger load was light with some 60 foot passengers and drivers.

It was a relaxed bunch of travellers that tackled this winter crossing with a chill school group from Hamburg on their way to an exchange week in Finnland and several couples on holiday.

Ferries sometimes attract an odd clientele. This trip featured: A guy looking like Inspector Gadget (trench coat and hat and all) and one of my all-time favorites, The Peculiar Elderly Man Making Strange Sounds and Noises. Honestly, I have never heard anyone eating an apple with such earth-shattering noises.

Getting to the Port in Travemünde

Searching for public transport will often return connections to Lübeck-Skandinavienkai railway station, which is misleading, as this DB station is some distance from the terminal and there is no walkway.

Taking a bus to Skandinavienkai Terminal is the better option – you can board at Lübeck’s central bus station (ZOB) ner the central station.

There are also connection from Lübeck-Kökeritz rail station, which is conveniently timed and the bus ride (Line #30) to the terminal is only for stops. The bus leaves from the roadside bus-stop opposite the small station building. You need to get a an additional ticket, if you just have a DB rail fare.

However, the satation is in the middle of nowhere, so the ZOB is a better option, if you are a nervous traveller.

The buses will drop you off right in front of the Hafenhaus terminal. This crescent-shaped building houses both passenger and cargo facilities for several shipping companies such as TT-Line, Finnlines, and Stena Lines. Before heading inside, make sure you take in the view of the harbour left of the building.

The Finnlines passenger check-in is on the left.  

A friendly lady took care of my paperwork there and quickly printed my boarding pass/cabin key and meal voucher. She then directed me to the downstairs departure lounge, where a shuttle bus would pick up passengers around 22:30.

This was a nice enough place to wait for boarding, if a little deserted at this time of the night.

There is a pompously named* bottle shop going by “Weincontor Berner”, targeted at Scandinavian travellers stocking up on cheap booze, Haribo candy, and chocolates. As prizes in Germany are cheaper than in Sweden or Finland, there was also an amazing range of Nordic sweets, liquorice, crisps, and candy. The prizes are indeed moderate for a travel shop, but higher than in a regular German supermarket.

*When Germans want to go posh, they call a shop a Kontor. When they want to go posher, they exchange the ‘K’ for a ‘C’.

Hafenhaus bistro offers a daily lunch and a nice range of snacks but closes at 14:00 already.

They have vending machines for drinks and snacks. I had a cheese sandwich for 3.00 € which was substantial but not very tasty.

Just don’t sit on their seats after hours ;-)

There is also a nice outside terrace with great harbour views.

Embarkment/Disembarkment

Boarding was done in a laid-back fashion with friendly drivers calling the departures. It was nice to have a chat with our escort, who told me about Finnstar’s lengthy overhaul in Gdansk where new exhaust scrubbers had been installed. The shipyard just left the old ones sitting on the deck, which apparently did not amuse the Travemünde dockers.

Being driven through Travemünde Port was a special treat. Most of the ferries operating there are ro/pax ships – or working ferries, as I like to call them – which take on a lot of cargo, mainly in the form of trailers driven on board. The vast staging areas with thousands of trailers are quite impressive. 

We were dropped off on deck 7 where the purser and reception crew greeted everyone. All the cabins where ready which was nice, given the late hour, and apparently doesn’t always work out on busy summer departures.

In Vuossari passengers disembark via a walkway and are driven to the Hansaterminali in a coach where there are random passport checks (single, middle-aged, male travellers always get pulled over).

Onward travel in Heslinki (Vuossari)

A taxi rank is right in front of the terminal and so I was on my merry way to Vantaa Airport within 22 minutes of disembarking.

The taxi ride to the airport costs about €40 (there is a surcharge at night and on Sundays).

There is also a, complicated, bus connection that takes about 1:20 hours and involves several changes and walks inbetween stopps, so I wouldn’t recommend that.

To get to downtown Helsinki take the #90 bus from Hansaterminali to Vuossari and walk from there to Vuossari Metro station. The subway from there takes 21 minutes and the whole trip is about 35-40 minutes.

All things considered…

it was well worth taking this ferry-cruise in the dead of winter. The frozen Baltic Sea made the trip special and so did the weather en-route with warm sunny spells, sharp winds and foamy waves. Finnstar is a trustworthy ship and a cosy place to spend a couple of winter night at sea. Next time, however, I am probably going to self-cater, as the food was nothing to write home about.