My favorite country on our luxury cruise of the Baltic in August aboard the Regent Seven Seas line's Voyager? It's not an easy choice. In 10 days, my wife, Kay, and I visited Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Germany and Denmark. But my choice as top spot would be Finland, and not just because of what's billed as the world's purest drinking water, clean air and woodsy scenery. It's the folks. These just may be my people. By the way, Finnish is pronounced exactly as it's spelled. Which may not be much help when you're at the corner of Tarkkampujank and Kasarmikatu in downtown Helsinki, Finland's capital. It might seem awkward when you're talking to a Finn, said Maarit Liljendahl, the entertaining tour guide on our bus trip around Helsinki. She explained that while you're speaking, the Finnish person will stand there listening, not saying jack. In Finland, it's considered rude to interrupt. So the Finnish will just wait for you to finish before they say anything. Apparently Finland doesn't pick up Fox News. Liljendahl added that Finns will go out of their way to avoid chatting. They have peepholes on their apartment doors, so they can check the hall in the morning to make sure the coast is clear -- and they won't have to talk to anyone on the elevator. They're also dour, apparently. As we rode past Helsinki's main train station, we saw a large statuary of scowling men, holding gigantic lightbulbs. 'Look at the faces on the men,' Liljendahl said. 'This is the typical look of Finnish men when they are happy. I know. I'm married to one. Poor me.' She was joking. Sort of. Coming in last in the hit parade? Russia, which may have escaped the yoke of the Soviet system but is still not what you could call loosey-goosey. Not that Russia was all bad, though. In the gift shop the tour guide herded us into in St. Petersburg, they give customers free shots of vodka. This stems from a custom started by Peter the Great, the Russian ruler who built St. Petersburg as a showcase to dazzle the western world. When he created the city's first museums, he gave away free shots of vodka. Russians back then were unaccustomed to museums, since they'd never had them before. So when Peter the Great needed a way to pack 'em in, he used vodka. Smart. No wonder they called him 'The Great.' The free shots in the gift shop were pretty skimpy, though, so I took two shots and poured them into one shot glass and downed it. Sufficiently lubricated, I then bought a T-shirt that had a likeness of Lenin on the front with the McDonald's golden arches rising over his head. On the back of the shirt is a red star decorated with the hammer and sickle, along with the message, 'The Party Is Over.' We spent three days in St. Petersburg following various tour guides who were carrying numbered signs, so their flocks wouldn't get separated from the tour. St. Petersburg is a beautiful city. On a boat ride through St. Petersburg's canals, we saw a lot of colorful, ancient buildings, including the palace where the crazed monk Rasputin was murdered by shooting, poisoning and eventually drowning. We also got a look at a yellow hospital building that in the 1800s was the city's mental institution, known as 'The Yellow House.' Apparently, you didn't want to go to the Yellow House. The Baltic countries are lousy with street musicians. In Riga, Latvia, a fairy tale of a city, there was the guy playing 'Summertime' on a wood flute while a pigeon sat on the flute. The pigeon, which was right in the guy's face, stayed on the flute throughout the whole song. Obviously it was a trick pigeon. Then there was the flautist in one of Riga's town squares, who regaled us with the theme music from 'Dr. Zhivago' as we had lunch at a restaurant called India Raja. Kay commented on how idyllic it was to be enjoying lunch with flute music in the background at such a peaceful cobblestoned setting. Not so fast, Kay. 'She plays the same four songs every day,' our waitress, in her 20s, complained. 'Which ones?' I asked. 'That one -- and three others,' the waitress crabbed. 'Every day. All summer.' 'That will drive you straight to the Yellow House,' Kay observed. After lunch, I walked over and asked the flautist if she knew any Jethro Tull. She just shrugged. She didn't know what I was talking about. Maybe I should have requested 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown.' Baltic markets are full of nesting dolls, those little dolls that when you open up the first one, a smaller one is inside, and when you open that one, there's an even smaller one, and so on. I saw nesting dolls for Obama, bin Laden, Steven Tyler, Pink Floyd, Putin, you name it. A nesting doll vendor in an outdoor market in Riga asked me where I was from. I told him Texas. 'In Texas you have many cowboys, yeah?' he asked. I told him we did. I didn't have the heart to tell him we have even more IT guys. We had a fun adventure in Poland. After we got off the ship in Gdynia, a shipping port without much scenery, we were walking around the streets, bored, when we saw a man, probably 58, with a young woman in her 20s. He was toting a small Yorkie, with a little red bow on its head. Nothing breaks the ice like a cute dog. The man and the gal spoke great English (not sure about the dog). We told them we had a Yorkie at home named Ziggy and asked them directions to nearby shops. They said their dog was named Max. Max's owner, Marek Domagala, a ship captain, and the young woman, Magdelena, his daughter, who had just finished her studies in communications in Holland, explained there wasn't much to look at in Gdynia. But they were on their way to the next town over, a seaside town named Sopot, to collect some special salt water out of a fountain to pickle cucumbers. This magic water, they said, could pickle a cucumber in three days, instead of the usual three weeks. Did we want to go along? Next thing we knew, Kay and I were climbing into the back seat of their car headed for Sopot, Poland, a Baltic Coast beach vacation spot with a boardwalk, a street performer in a black hooded robe from the movie 'Scream' who was working for change and a fountain that puts out salty pickling water. Magdelena took two plastic jugs and filled them up. Later she gave us a bag of pickles. The day was a blast. How many American tourists can say they got in the back seat of a car in Poland with strangers to go get water to pickle cucumbers? Not too darn many, I'll wager. If you go Cruises similar to the Kelsos' are scheduled on the Seven Seas Voyager next summer. For more information, visit rssc.com. John Kelso writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: jkelso@statesman.com. 