Pirita, Pirita, Pirita, Pirita, Pirita, Pirita, After Pritia!

Pirita is a suburb of Tallinn that sits properly on the sea. Tallinn has no real river running through it just the Pirita in the north, the Gulf of Tallinn which it sits on having proven miles more useful for trade then a river ever could. Pirita have a beach, a rather nice beach and it smells. The smell isn't always there but when it is...well it's like an open sewer mixed with fish. The view is very nice and I'd never discourage a Tallinn visitor from seeing it but you need a peg or something.

We walked out onto the harbor walls and watched some kids sail and windsurf. On the way back we got the wrong bus and ended getting an accidental guided tour of a couple of Tallinn's suburbs.

When we finally got back into town we attempted to go to a cafe that was situated in an old prison by the sea, it was fairly long walk, especially to discover that it wasn't open on Tuesdays.

On the night we went to an English pub for a Quiz. Winning was voluntary. We chose not to.

Estonia: Tallinn

Tallinn is in many ways similar to Riga, it's about the same size, has an old town that people rarely venture out of and is famous for stag nights. The stag night scene is kind of dead now, I haven't seen one since I've got to the Baltic.

Tallinn's old town is however very difficult to navigate. Most the maps we were given aren't proper maps rather cartoony ones that have actual buildings drawn one. The problem with most of these is that the top of the map often isn't north causing mass confusion. It impossible to navigate the place anyway, half of it's on a hill, many streets can't be seen from other streets and some don't have names on the maps.

We have carried one in much the same vein as Riga, done some light drinking, its not as cheap, wondered around getting stressed at banks, eating crap Russian dumplings and then decided to go to a water park. All pretty standard for us really.

Riga Part 3

Weather: Either constantly hot or constantly wet. The only real constant is a change between these two variables. The weather is so hard to predict that it can be a little painful. One night we had to shelter in the cinema in order to escape it. Money was also tight as we hadn't been to a bank. We saw Bruno, which was fine apart from the fact that the German bit had only Latvian and Russian subtitles.

Belle Epoque: Bad service, inappropriate music, Parisian theme, very cheap booze. Belle Epoque wins the best bar none bar award in Riga from us anyway.

National Park: On the last day we took a train to Sigulda. Sigulda is about an hour from Riga by train. It's nestled in a national park. It looked pretty posh when we arrived, a bit like traveling to KirkElla, but once we found the national parky bit it was gorgeous. However, the weather was very hot and this did make Helen a bit grumpy, this was also due to the fact that mosquitoes enjoy this kind of weather. Still, we persisted (as my many mosquito bites will testify) and saw some amazing scenery from big heights. After the scenery viewing, we made our way back down via a cable car which was pretty cool. Part of the exploration also involved a cave (which had some sort of legend/story behind it which is way too long winded and frankly boring to recite), this cave was a fairly generic cave, quite small and shady and generally cavey - but it had something unique...

I have recorded for all time, via the medium of film, the penny whistle musings of a crazy of Latvian man. is he paid for by the government? Was his hair really that white? Was his tunic made of pure crystal? Or was he simply imagined by an adoring cave visiting public?

I'll let you decide...

It Was the Coming of the Black Shuck...well Shucks

Riga is famous for a Black cat, well two really.

Legend has it that an old crazy man, versed in the metallurgic arts, was denied entry into either of Riga's merchants guilds (Named Big and Small respectively). In order to gain the entry he so dearly craved he fashioned to huge Black Cats out of iron. They had their back arched aggressively and sat on top of his house, were pointed directly at one guild each. The Guilds became bizarrely overly offended and granted him entry on the condition that the cats were turned to face another direction. This one done and now a yellow steak house has two cats on its roof that I'm sure they have no idea what to do with.

Legend over.

We are in Riga.

We are English.

We Drink.

The God of Stereotypes is appeased.

It easy to drink in Riga, if you go to the right places it can be about 90p a beer. Done. Its in a plastic glass like but maybe Haworth phoned ahead and said we were coming.

The days in Riga are a collection of museums, sandwiches that ultimatly involve cheese and pepporoni, and beer. Of course we have found another Milk Bar. My transformation in Alex is almost complete. From this milk bar I did actually purchase some milk, only to find that it was sour yogurt in a glass. Fucksticks. Anyway the food is good, cheap and priced by the Kg.

Event of Note = Market.

There is a market in Riga. It lurks behind the station, sweating and festering, it eats only Latvian produce old tramp ladies and backpackers foolish enough to go near the old ladies. It is comprised of five huts dedicated to Fruit & Veg, Fish, Meat, Cloth and something else that escapeds me. These huts, a tour guide relaiably informes us on our second visit, are roofed by old WWI german Zeplin hanger roofs. The Latvians had quietly confiscated these after the war. The tour guoide also showed us another market that sells old Communist and Nazi stuff, unfortunatly we couldn't go round it. Fucksticks MKII.

Expect some more on Riga and a bit on a mozzy infected national park soom.

Stay Tuned Kids...

Riga

We got to Riga in a thunderstorm.

The hostel basement had flooded. So no washing. We really really needed some washing done. To find some we went searching for another hostel, after we went to a few at had similar washing problems we found a place that let us have our own room, as well as some washing, for not much more Lats (The currency).

Note about the Lat: Its stronger than the Pound. My pride is still recovering. Apparently keeping it artificially high is killing the country so lets all still rejoice in Pax Britiania.

Good times.

We still stayed one night at the first place. It has a pretty cool bar attached which we indulged in. the local drink is a thing called Riga Black Balsam. its realistically a medicine that happens by fortunate chance to be about 45%. It kind of tastes like arse. i had it straight first and then with some coke. With coke it is a capable problem. If drunk warm with blackcurrant and cinnamon it is surposadly very nice. This needs to be proved.

We Riga me and Helen decided to stay a little longer. we'd been getting a bit bored with moving around all the time. In Riga we setteled.

The City is a very touristy Old Town combined witha fairly well sized City stuck on. Its all in all about the size of Leeds.

Im writing this as we are in the process of our last night. Therefore I've forgetten quite when things have happened. For the sake of ease on my part all happenings in Riga will be told as I remember them.

As I'm in an internet cafe and time is running out expect this update soon.

Coronian Spit

The spit is a massive sandbank that is about a 5 minute ferry from Kalpedia. Its similar to Spurn point but about 2 miles wide and runs all the way to the Russian controlled Karlingrad Territory.

when we got there it was fooking hot. I made the mistake of suggesting that we should go to Nida, right at the bottom of the Lithuanian part of the Spit. Its a nice place etc. but the problem was that the coacg took about 70 minutes to get there. Most of the journey the bus driver overfilled the coach so we had sweaty people stood in the isles as well as sweaty people sat down.

Nida itself offered great views of the Cornian sand dumes and some very cute and tiny beaches.

I walked out into the sea. It took about 15 minutes to even get the sea up to my waist. Kind of like pool harbour if anybody knows that particular Monty Python sketch.

Small note. i had a toffee flavoured ice cream called a Totally Brown. Good times.

Kalpedia

We showed up to Kalpedia about 2pm.

Its one of those places that isn't exactly easy for the backpacker. The bus/train station is out of town a bit. There are no real hostels etc. etc. We stayed in a hotel that was situated in Lenin's dream estate. It wasn't too bad really, lots of kids hanging around salvaged it really. It did lok pretty naff however. All tower blocks and concrete.

Kalpedia is much the same. Massive wide American style streets with a very small, reconstructed, German old town. Predictably it too has an Akropolis. (Where we incidently saw Harry Potter, good times)

The bed in the hotel was round and spungy, witha massive toy crocodile on it. This we can only assume is the Lithuanian norm. Helen bounced on it and I named the crocodile Crocodilius and gave him a greek-style backstory.

We watched a fuck load of Lithuanian TV, which basically involves endless parades of talentless retards miming along to Lithuanian versions of pop songs. At one point we watched Lithuanian Wheel of Fortune were the aged presented, inbetween various musical numbers, changes costumes. The best being a massive smock and wig that made him look like a white James Brown.

Vilnius

Rain Rain Rain.

It pissed it down. We tried to see as much of the city as we could but realistically it was to wet. The fact that its an old city made it worse because all the shambles style buildings find ingenious ways to convert normal rain water into something reminisant of a log flume.

We braved a walk to this part of town called Uzpais (or something) It was surposed to be an independant artists colony. I expected a rerunof the Mad Max episode in Warsaw. Non came. There was a supermarket and a statue. To be honest if you hadn't told me it was a 'crazy' hippy paradise I never would have noticed.

Helen salvaged the day by discovering that out in the suburbs there was a massive water part. As we were already wet this made a lot of sense to us.

The park was pretty cool it had slides and jacuzzi, waves machines etc. All themed around the south sea islands in an every so slightly racist way. Good fun was had by all.

On the way we tried to go to the Cinema in a building called the Akropolis. Basically it was a masiive shopping centre with oppressive lighting and an American accent. It was far more effective as an ubermall then anything we've ever tried to create in Hull. The film wasn't out. We marvelled at some more capitalism then went home.

Train Day

The trip to Kaunus was a little odd to say the least.

It was 6 hours by train, but that is of course if the train choses to stop there.

It didn't

We went to Vilnius.

Vilnius is an churchy sort of a place. Not much bigger then Hull it is far to religiously saturated. Every church, of which there are thousands, has a name like The Orthadox Chrurch of the Holy Ressurection According to Mark Part II Remix. They should all be said in Robin from Batman's voice for full effect.

We had a nice chinese meal in a resturant and then frankly went to bed. 8 hours on a train does that to you.

Bialystok

In Bialystok I stayed with Pawel. He is a nice, combat gear wearing kind of a guy. He has a quality ponytail and happen to be the first orthadox christian I have knowingly met.

He drove us to his house, which he shares with his sister, he cooked us tea and then looked pissed off when I accidently let three stay flies into the apartment.

Bialystok is the home of Zubr and Zubr beer. A Zubr is essentially a massive bison type thing, hence bisongrass wodka. They only exist in poland and only vary rarely in the wild. So we went to the zoo to meet one.

It was bit and mean and whooly, however I got some good mug shots next to it.

We went round Bialystok with a group of Pawel's assorted friends, some from CS but most of them hadn't met before.

We drank a strange white drink in a Cafe with raisens knocking about in it. I did impreesions of British accents for the guys, they went down well. I feel guilty about being centre of attention sometimes even though i seem to seek it out at every oppertunity.

I also killed some of the many plentyful mosquitos that infest Bialystok.

there revenge would be swift and itchy...

Moon etc. Part 3

Sad News.

I heard from Teresa that one of the guys Neal has been at EXIT festival with died there. He fell 150ft off a castle ramparts. God knows how Neal and Scott are coping with this. 

That's all the info I have on that at the moment.

Warsaw Part 3...

After the endless and stressful banking escapade we met Witek and Casper ladened with bikes and preceded to journey to Praga, the spooky wrong side of the tracks part of town. Helen couldn't really fit on the bike, one of those france style girls one where you kind of have to sit upright to ride them, this ended up causing her a bit of pain and causing me annoyance. The bikes where ok really though. 

The journey was much better.

We crossed the river and went to the older part of town, possibly the only bit not destroyed in the war. It is famously scummy, and it was. However some bit of it were genius. For instance we went to what was, up until last year at least, the biggest black market in Europe. You could buy guns and sex if you wanted Casper informs me. Its now going to be the side of a massive football stadium ready, apparently ready for Poland/Ukraine 2012. 

After that we went to an old vodka factory which is now an arty type place. When we entered a land rover clad in rigging and camera's was film some people of different coloured scooters. Kind of like a rubbish Polish italian job. This scene combined with loud heavy music and a delapadated environment put me in mind of a Mad Max or something equally apocalyptic. 

Witek's mother fed us the the point of destruction on the night with quality Polish food. She had done this the previous night so we at least knew what to expect. It was a five course meal. She likes people to eat and eat a lot. we bought her flowers for cooking for us.

We where all so shattered from the biking and the food that we went to a bar on the night but really just flaked out. I met a guy in there from Manchester who's best mate is a Rovers fan. Who knew.

Anyway its now onto Bialystok now. 

Tatty Bye

P.S. 

Spelling and grammer mistakes are everywhere in this but fear not I ain't simple, its just that I have to write them in a massive hurry most of the time.

Moon, Fire, Red...Part 2

I can't remember were I was now...

Ah yes last night. 

Last night we had no money, well like 6pound. This is however enough to drink with. We met up with Witek's lifelong friend Casper, a cool and strangely constantly wound up guy. He's a bit of a legend really, he's been on the Trans-Mongolian as well as spending a lot of time in Ulan Bator and Moscow. He also lives with a half Japanese half Polish girl called Hannah who decried my idea of visiting lots of different areas of Japan in favour of just seeing one of two cities properly. Bollocks to that, I've already bought the rail ticket. 

At the start of the night the Bankomat thingy knicked Karol's card so she went home. Humorously we rang the ATM people and they rebooted the ATM from a control centre somewhere in Poland. we then discovered that not only does this not give you your card back but it also demonstrates how Polish ATM's are operated by Windows XP.

Anyway we were taken to a park, a fucking rough park, at night. This park had a ridiculously over the top play park in it with a creation known simply as 'The Spider' We climbed said spider and went on some tire swings. More interestingly on the way back someone asked Casper for a light, ran off with it, lit some Poy (Spinning ball of fire things that are used by hippies and people in the circus), then preceded to be shit at Poy and set her arse on fire, People should witness this at least once in their life.

Oh yer that night was when we looked out of the window and it was bright red, really really bright red. Very odd indeed. I bet the Polish shepards were loving it. 

Morning After...

We went back to the trade centre. It was open but didn't change travelers Cheques anymore. getting there took an hour but we then had to go to a bank in the centre of town. People who complain about english banks are inexperienced in the ways of the continent. It took 5 separate women 50minutes to cash two cheques. Most of this time was spent watching them natter rubbish to each other. Caster says it can be worse than this...

The Night I was Born the Moon Turned a Fire Red (Hendrix)

Warsaw.

A brief explanation is required before I start rambling on about Warsaw. I've been here before, last year to be precise.

when me and Harry travelled Eastern europe last year we tried, mostly in vain, to get the website couchsurfing to provide us with hosts. Basically couchsurfing is like facebook etc. but designed for travelers to be hosted by each other for free. You usually get some pretty good hospitality thrown into the bargin. we only managed to make CS work in Berlin and Warsaw, with Warsaw being the far better experience. Last time our host, Ania a bisexual theatre promoter and general arty type, showed us the city with the help of her two friends Karol and Witek. We ended up drinking vodka on Witek's building's roof, great views, and drinking vodka in a massive disused communist open air swimming pool.

Now that the swimming pool has been ripped down and Ania has moved in with her girlfriend in central Warsaw, it made more sense for us to stay with Witek, his mum and his cancerous dog Nelson. The dog is also blind and smelly for good measure. 

Staying with them is a little like being swept up into their world. The day we landed we where shattered but still ended up going drinking on the night in little cafes and Vietnamese resturants. The Vietnamese are strangely everywhere in Poland. The best moment of that night was when Witek quietly unwrapped a gun from a bag to give to his friend Casper. This gun it turned out is similar to an air rifle but it still looked bloody real. 

After a much needed sleep we ended being shown Warsaw by Karol on Sunday morning. This involved a lot of walking, in a kind of a good way. We found the Warsaw Trade Tower to get our travelers cheques sorted with American Express, then we found it to be shut. No trading on Sundays for these guys, that'll hardly drag you out of a recession now will it. 

Anyway, we then went to one of best museums I've ever been to. It was new and free and dedicated to the Warsaw uprising. For the unenlightened this involved local Poles rising up against the Nazis around 1943 and then beating then up thoroughly until the Russians invaded and murdered all those same Poles. The museum was all made from brick and iron and looked as industrial as running a resistance movement probably could. They also had replicas of Warsaw's sewers for you to walk round, a Halifax bomber and an old working 1940's printing press.

After that we walked through a lot of park and around he town centre. karol showed us a Vietnamese place were we could get cheap food, not that everything isn't already cheap here anyway.  We had vietnamese food, a silly ice cream and then wandered back to Witek's apartment. 

End of Part 1...

The Off

In theory everything is done. I left it all the bit fine really.

I spent most of Sunday running up an enormous photo bill to ring the Russian embassy to get my passport back in time. To the point were I kicked a few walls in anger and wrote slurs about automated phones systems on the same walls with biro. I felt better for it though.

I left the packing up of my house too late as well but its got done. It always does in the end.

I'm sick and tired of having to move out now its getting to be a masive pain in the arse, you never feel setteled. I've still got to do it twice more this year, really really can't be arsed.

Anyway we fly from Donny airport tommorrow. We couldn't get a lift for a tun of different reasons. Public transport for the win.

We should be out the house by 6am and in warsaw by 4pm. This is the theory anyway.

Peace out to everybody who I'll miss whilst I'm away,

Tom (your man from The East...of Hull)