The last Ban Bus stop before Oslo was Stockholm. Local campaigners organised a public action where they blocked a central street with red and white ribbons and threw cluster duds on the ground to attract the attention of the public to the problems caused by cluster munitions. The photo exhibition of the Ban Bus attracted many visitors, who stopped to talk to campaigners and sign the People’s Treaty.
The Ban Bus visited rainy Helsinki from 26-27 November. To the disappointment of campaigners, Finland had announced a few weeks earlier that they would not sign the Convention in Oslo but has left the door open to reviewing its decision to sign next year. The Peace Union of Finland organised a press conference on arrival of the Ban Bus and in the afternoon, a lie down action took place in the heart of Helsinki which got very good media coverage criticising Finland’s decision not to sign the Convention.
From 24-25 November the Ban Bus stopped in Tallinn, Estonia and on arrival a snowstorm took the team by surprise. Nobody turned up for the press conference at the Irish embassy as most media were busy covering the storm. The team parked the Ban Bus in a public park and distributed leaflets and talked to the public, including a youth group that offered to distribute leaflets and other campaign materials through their networks.
On 20 November the Ban Bus arrived in Riga. The team gave a presentation at the Law School of the University of Riga and met representatives from the local NGO platform LAPAS who were very interested in the Ban Bus project and the issue of cluster munitions and considered the CCM a great opportunity for Latvia to play a positive role in the world.
The Ban Bus stopped in Vilnius, Lithuania from 17-18 November and the Irish embassy organized a press conference on arrival of the bus. The Ban Bus was set up in a public square where Mette handed out information materials to the public while fighting freezing temperatures, and the ice forming under the magnetic signs causing them to fall off. Visitors stopped constantly, asking questions and commenting on the photo exhibition.