Brontides

Two things: I was unfair to Vilnius here, and I never found out what happened to Matt the Australian. Oh, and I’d forgotten about the Navy SEAL guy! That night was so awesome. Oh, one last thing – Girls Aloud are still awesome. FACT.

So, since my last email, I’ve nearly been mugged, helped an Australian with his love-life, joined in a celebration of the overthrow of the Soviet Union and, for the first time since leaving England, lost something. Read on!

The reason why this update has been so delayed is because I wanted to do an overview of the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. As I leave this evening for Gdansk in Poland, this seems like as good a time as any to get that done.

The first stop on this leg of the tour was Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. Tallinn is a city that is basically schitzophrenic. In the centre is the Old Town, a perfectly-preseved monument to Estonia circa the fifteenth century. Preserved is perhaps not the right word; Tallinn’s Old Town is not really preserved at all, in as much as the crumbling walls and condemned derelicts are still very much in evidence. In many respects it felt to me more like the Spanish and Portugese towns that my dad took me to for family holidays when I was younger. My overwhelming memory of those towns was they they, too, were old and decaying; not so much through caustic neglect or malice, but just because the focus of the world had moved on to other places, and neither the time, nor the money, nor the inclination existed to stop the rot. But Tallinn shouldn’t really be subject to that reasoning. Since it seceded from the Soviet Union, sometime between 1989 and 1991, Tallinn has been a boom town, as is evidenced when you cross into New Town. The change is marked enough that it could be delineated by a line. On the other side you find the shopping malls, sky scrapers, the teams that made both Kazaa and Skype, and the hoards of financiers, innovators and tourist board officials that have given Estonia the fastest-growing economy in Europe. Personally, I like their approach. By seemingly choosing not to artificially extend the life of the Old Town, but concurrently refusing to overrun it with modern developments, Tallinn’s city planners have managed to retain a kind of authenticity that is utterly absent from, say, Paris or Brugge. On the other hand, this status quo won’t last forever, which is one reason why I feel fairly privileged to have seen Tallinn now. Which I suppose was the point.

But, yes, while I was there, Tallinn did end up with one thing in common with Paris – it was a city in which I nearly got mugged. As I was just entering a museum, a pair of skinhead yoot’s accosted me and asked me for some money. When I refused, the more articulate of the two said “Well, what if we rob you?” “What?” I said – because that’s always a good thing to say when you’re stalling for time – “What if we rob you!” he howled, while his friend behind him pulled a chain taut in his hands and waved it menacingly. I gave them my best look of scorn and derission – the raised eyebow, sneery mouth, the works – then just opened the door and went into the museum. What were they going to do, follow me in there? Or maybe pull me back out, bodily? They were absolutely the shittest muggers ever. They were only about 15 as well. Poor dears, I can believe that they didn’t even want the money for drugs, but rather just to boost their Pokemon card collection. They were rubbish.

While there, I randomly bumped into Matt, and Australian guy I had previously met in Stockholm. So I basically hung out with him and this other Canadian guy called Peter. One night we went out to a restaurant – a traditional Estonian restaurant – run by this guy who had done just about everything. He had been in the US special forces (his family fled Estonia for New York in the 50s), had written a book, was a prolific painter (Jimmy Carter had had one of his painting on the wall in the residence of the West Wing), and led his own band, covering fifties and sixties rock ‘n’ roll, which played most nights in this restaurant, which he owned, along with a farm outside of the city, which he tended to himself by hand. He was married to a ballett dancer. So we spent the evening chatting to him and at the end he gave us a CD of his music, whoch basically consisted of Estonian translations of Janis Joplin and the like. I still have it, purely because it contains an Estonian language cover of Gampie’s classic smash hit “Alice? Who the f*** is Alice?”, potentially sung by a bunch of old dudes on accoustic guitars. That would be hilarious.

Well, after a few days, Matt and I decided it was time to leave Tallinn. As we were both headed towards Riga (Latvia, yo) we decided to join forces and form a super-awesome coach-travelling rock team. A couple of words about Matt: he’s tall, Australian and had been in Tallinn for nearly ten days (I got bored after three) because he met a girl and didn’t want to leave. The most he got for his trouble was a ‘frenchie’ (as we used to say, classily, in high school), but she was apparently on the rebound and – hey, I didn’t really care about the details, I can’t believe you do either. I mention this only because it was all he talked about between Tallinn and Riga. That’s a five hour bus trip, so after about an hour I decided that the delecate vocal harmonies of Girls Aloud was probably preferable to any more talk of Tiine and suchlike. I’ve decided that What Will The Neighbours Say was actually a really good album, and should probably get Chemistry when I get back home. Pop-tastic!

Riga is the opposite of Tallinn. It is a city that makes no distinction between old and new whatsoever. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Riga is my least-favorite Baltic city, simply because it appears to have no identity of its own. It has precious few musea and art galleries, a below-par selection of historic buildings (although those that did remain were lovely), and an altogether too high incidence of English stag parties. I was, however, lucky enough to arrive in Riga just in time for Latvia’s Independence Day, which is held every year on Nov 18th, the day on which Latvia formally became independent of Imperial Russia in 1918, and became a republic for the first time (although the more recent independence, in 1991, also comes under the remit of the festivities). There were fireworks and parades and such, and generally a good atmosphere, in spite of Latvia having a 30% Russian population. So I hung around for that, but not much longer.

After Riga, Matt and I parted companies. It took me three or four days but I finally pursuaded him to go back to Tallinn and see if his ‘thing’ went anywhere. I did this for two reasons – firstly, because the romantic in me sincerely wishes for him to succeed, settle down in Estonia and raise a hoard of unnaturally tall half-Australian kids, and secondly because the cynic in me finds the entire situation to be utterly comical, and realises that the story would not make for a good anecdote unless he hurried back to declare his undying love. Does this make me a bad person? Not that I really care, I’d just like to be clear on the subject.

Sooo, I left Riga, and realised that I had LOST MY SCARF. This irritated me to no end as I really liked that new scarf, and had, contrary to all expectations (my own included!), failed to loose anything at all on the trip thus far. So I bought a new one. Uh, sorry, I guess that’s not interesting. Move on!

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and it’s a little bit like bacteria, in that it may seem unpleasant at first but then it grows on you. Unlike Tallinn and Riga it is resolutely un-modern; in fact, it seems to have progressed very little since the Soviet era, despite being the first of the three to overthrow the yoke. It is still very religious; on a Sunday, the streets are empty, apart from those housing one of the (many) Russian Orthodox churches, which are never large enough to house all those who want to get inside them. Strange to think that this was a country that once had an empire that stretched from the Baltics to the Black Sea. While I was here, I also went out to a town called Siailuai, near which is a monument called the Hill of Crosses. During the Soviet occupation, the Lithuanian peasants would leave crosses on this hill, commemorating the dead, deported and disappeared. Come the day, the Soviet forces would bulldoze the crosses, but at night the Lithuanians would come back, under the cover of darkness, and plant more. Since the end of the occupation, there has been no-one to bulldoze the crosses any more, but the Lithuanians still keep adding to the collection; now, the hill and surrounding countryside is covered in thousands upon thousands of crosses, dense-packed one atop the other. It’s unlike any other monument I’ve ever seen; there are no souvineer booths, no tickets, not even any toilets. To get there, you must travel three hours from Vilnius, then take an (irregular) local bus ten miles out of town, to this patch of rural farmland ungraced by either building or animal; THEN you have to walk for twenty minutes, and unless you’re driving, that walk in unavoidable. All this because it’s not an ‘attraction’, per se. It exists for the same reason as it always existed, for little old Lithuanian grandmothers to hobble along the path and leave a cross, remembering those who are gone – and, now, to be greatful that their sons and grandsons won’t be taken to someone else’s arbitrary war, that their husbands won’t be kidnapped for political dissent, and that they will probably have enough food to feed themselves in the morning. It is a humbling place, but it highlights the difference between Lithuania and the other two: it is still attatched to its past. While the other two have forgiven their history, and have modernised to meet the future, Lithuania is still busy mourning for its past.

I should point out that, while I have spent a lot of time in ‘Resistance’ musea over the last few days, I’m trying to avoid getting too indoctrinated in the anti-Soviet bias that historical documentary takes here – despite whatever the previous paragraph may suggest. It seems relatively certain that a great many atrocities took place, but alas, I’m not going to be able to make it into Russia – getting a visa is just too damn challenging – so I can’t really get any kind of balanced view on the subject. Lithuania has had a troubled past either way – it was historically very important, but has dwindled into utter obscurity, and t-shirts bearing the legend “I’ve been to Lithuania! … Where the f*** is Lithuania?” are sold with a touch of bitterness. Caught between Russia and Germany was never a comfortable place to be. It is a resolutely depressing place. I’m glad I came but will be equally glad to leave.

I suspect that I may have rambled long enough. As previously mentioned, Poland is the next port of call, and hopefully the next update will be delivered in a more timely fashion. Hope you’re all well, and look forward to hearing any news you may have.

Scandinavia was beginning to bore me?! Good lord, whatever next.

Well, it seems that the drizzle in one Baltic country is the same as the drizzle in any other Baltic country. The drenching I got in Oslo seems to think that it’s funny to follow me through Sweden, Finland and now even to Estonia, where the sky remains resolutely grey and morose.

But enough of that – I’m in Estonia! This is delightful for two reasons: firstly, Scandinavia was starting to bore me, I felt like I was getting bogged down, and wanted a change of scenery, ex-Soviet style; and secondly, I can get an all-you-can-eat lunch here for roughly one pound twenty. Hoorah, I can once more afford to eat!

So, what happened after my last email… I spent a couple of extra days in Stockholm, a city which I’ve decided to marry if ever it becomes legal to join oneself in holy matrimony to a metropolitan sprawl. I didn’t do much else, to be honest – took a couple of photos that had been previously denied to me when my last batch of films ran out, ate with people I met at the hostel, and generally relaxed and recuperated. On the evening of the second day I caught the ferry to Helsinki.

Now, I’m not a fan of boats at the best of times. Hell, truth be told, I have a peculiar aversion to most forms of long distance travel, but there’s something about boats, especially those massive ocean-going liners, that really strikes the dread into me. And this ship was BIG, let me tell you, rising as high as nine or ten stories out of the water, which itself was a reason for worry; I’m no marine architect, but I’m pretty sure that when something’s height exceeds its width by such a vast amount, its stability can basically go bye-bye, and even if that ISN’T the case, then surely it would need a bigger draw under the water to compensate? And how deep is the harbour, anyway? So it couldn’t have been THAT much… these, friends, were the thoughts that were going through my head as I boarded this monstrosity. They left as soon as I was on board, though. From the moment I got on board until the moment I left, I was thinking only about how I would escape in the event of a disaster, how much time I would have, and whether it was sensible to go to sleep or not. It was a 16 hour overnight journey, so the answer was definately “yes,” but in the event it was academic. My cabin (free, “thanks” to Interrail) was on Deck 2, the bottom deck – and, coincidentally, the deck on the exact level of the waterline against the prow of the ship. And, as my cabin was against the hull at the front, I heard every wave – and when a November wave in the Baltic Sea it’s the prow of a ship, it does not do so with a gentle little ‘swoosh,’ oh no. It goes: BANG, BANG, BANG, I WANT TO GET IN THERE AND MAKE YOU DROWNDED, BANG! So needless to say, sleep was not an issue for me that night, and very glad I was to see Helsinki the following morning as well.

Helsinki is a nice place. It reminds me a lot of Copenhagen – it’s slightly bigger, not quite as pretty, but probably more interesting at night. It does have a very interesting set of island fortresses protecting the harbour, built back in the day to protect against the oncoming Russians, but which are now marine training facilities and UNESCO listed Heritage sites. It also had some amazing buildings, displaying the range of its influences to the fullest extent. While there was an obvious degree of Soviet intervention in many of the buildings, there was also an interesting mix of modern Scandinavian and classical Slavic construction on display as well, and all arranged in a fashion that was quite unique. Interestingly, the city seemed to have grown around its docks, rather than its train station. Those with longer memories will remembered how upset I was that Brussels didn’t seem to have a river; cities, in my experience, tend to all observe certain rules, regardless of location and political affiliation, and one of them is that they are always built on water. Another, more modern one, is that the train station is always the oldest, and usually the poorest, part of town; it is here that you will find most of the people, but also the kebab shops, the sex shows, the slums. Not so Helsinki – this was a city defined by its docks, and the area around the train station was actually quite gentrified. While it was a nice place with a lot of charm and character, it didn’t have much by way of diversions, so I stayed there for a few nights then moved on.

As if to prove that I am a man who seeks to face down and conquer his fears, I took the boat from Helsinki to Tallinn, and while I did indeed fret for a lot of the way, the worst thing that happened to me was that I lost my lunch due to the choppy seas. Tallinn seems like a lot of fun, if slightly odd. In many respects, it feels like a mediterranian city – Spanish, maybe – and of all the cities I’ve seen, it most embraces its medieval, fortress past, while lurching brakeneck into the globalised, capitalist future. This is just a first impression, though. I shall see how it looks again in daylight.

Sister Sash tells me that the Ice Hotel is a no-goer, as it’s all booked up like whoa. This is a blow, for two reasons – firstly, for its own sake, as I was really looking forward to it; and secondly, because it means I miss out on Northern Scandinavia, which I had intended to do seperately when I came back. But such is life – I intent to return to Norway on a hiking excursion anyway, so I’ll get my opportunity, I’m sure. Now I just need to find something else to cash in my birthday credit for. Decisions decisions!

Right, gotta go eat. Keep well, and let me know your news!

This is another one of those “Josh was grouchy so he made a place sound worse than it was” posts. Ignore that guy; Bergen and Oslo are both wonderful places.

I have not had a good few days.

Let’s begin at the end – I’ve just spent the last 26 hours hanging around Oslo train station. The reasoning behind this is that the night train I was supposed to get on Saturday night was cancelled, and this saturday night also happened to be the night that some football cup final fell upon, so all the city’s hostels and cheap hotels were full of beered up Norwegians. So I got to Oslo at 6pm, took about seven hours to come to the conclusion that I was not going to be spending my night comfortably, and took stock. My Game Boy and iPod had both run out of batteries on the seven-hour train journey from Bergen, I didn’t want to withdraw cash as this was supposed to be my last hurrah in Norway, and my only book was The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevski, which I’m really enjoying but can be kinda dense after midnight has been and long since gone. The internet cafes all closed at midnight; I made use of them as much as I could before they did, for warmth as much as entertainment.

For those who are interested, the blue team beat the yellow team by a conclusive margin. I know this because I had to sit in the drizzle watching them do what football fans do at 3am, as the train station itself was closed between 1am and 6am. Yeah, that was amusing. Feh – I’ve had to sleep rough before, but never in a city I didn’t know, much less a city in a foreign country miles away from anyone I knew, and never in anywhere quite so fucking cold.

Still, I suppose the situation had a certain gloomy inevitability about it. And at least I know what to do next time it happens (i.e. get a night train to anywhere then get another train back in the morning – that’s what the Interrail pass is for, dipstick). Tonight I get the sleeper back to Stockholm, and I’ll probably spend a day and a night in Stockholm recharging batteries – Game Boy, iPod, and me.

So, back slightly further, to Bergen, where I ostensiably celebrated my birthday. Bergen’s indescribably beautiful and utterly dull. It is a city that hasn’t quite gotten over being a fishing village, which is admittedly part of its charm, but it’s no good whatsoever for celebrating a birthday in. Still, we got some hiking in (despite almost constant rain – I managed to get through three pairs of trousers in one day, which I think is some kind of record) – on the day of my birthday we actually went up into the hills for a good seven or eight hours, which was a lot of fun, although my knees are really feeling the benefit just now.

It isn’t all doom and gloom, though. For the train journey from Oslo to Bergen, we were blessed with good weather, and were thus able to get a good look at what is undoubtedly the most beautiful chunk of landscape in God’s creation. The train track wends its way 1,222 meters above sea level, through the cloud cover and up into the mountain peaks; the entire route is dominated by perfectly still mountain lakes, fast river rapids, tiny villages and even, at one point, a glacier so close that you could wind down the window in the train and hit it with a rock. The one problem with the whole experience was that I could only experience it from behind a sheet of glass, in a train. I wanted nothing more than to get out and get my boots dirty; run my hand through the water, climb the ice-carved rock peaks, and see how deep the snow really was between the trees. Watching it all through the window of a train was maybe slightly better than looking at a photograph, but not by much. Perhaps someday I shall have to come back, during the summer maybe, with some decent hiking boots and a tent. That would be something.

The city of Bergen itself has everything and nothing. It has a leper museum, which I went to for the simple reason that I will almost certainly never find another leper museum anywhere, but it was quite dull. It had a lot of old churches and buildings that you couldn’t go inside. It had a fish market that sold fish, and I didn’t want any fish, so I saw it through and left. I’d love to live there – despite the 300 days of rain per year – but it’s not a great town for touristing.

Oh, and Norway is HELLA expensive. I can’t wait to get to Estonia, which is hopefully where I will be by next weekend, and where I can probably live comfortably for a day on the price of a Norwegian cup of coffee.

OK, that’s enough bellyaching for now. The next update will be less bellicose, I promise! I shall go to Helsinki with a soul full of optimisim and a song in my heart. The song will probably be something like Unwell by Matchbox Twenty but it is the thought that counts!

Hope you are all well and happy.

I met some great people in Stockholm, including a bunch of Americans teaching English in France. Still one of my favourite places in Europe.

Two months in, woo!

Strange to think that I’ve been living like this for, um, one sixth of a year. Actually, no, that’s not weird at all, but time has been doing some funny things since I left. Belgium seems more recent than Berlin, for some reason, and Copenhagen seems like a decade ago. One thing that is in perspective, however, is London, which receedes a little more with each passing day

So, I’m now in Oslo, a city whose defining characteristic is drizzle. It is a good museum city, actually – partly because it has taken London’s lead and instituted the very sensible policy of making things free, and partly because they offer protection from drizzle, which becomes a very important factor after any length of time here. Today alone I visited no less than three museæ (+10 point correct pluralisation bonus SCORE) – the Modern Art museum, the Edvard Munch museum and the Nobel Peace Centre. Of the three, the first was probably (and surprisingly) the weakest – a couple of interesting bits and bobs, mainly installation and photography, but apart from tat just the usual morass of breasts and freshly culled deer’s blood. Edvard Munch, on the other hand, has long been one of my favorite artists. Not so much for “The Scream” or “The Kiss”, both of which suffer, inevitably, for over-exposure, but for paintings like “The Sun” :

and etchings like “The Sick Child” :

So that was also good to see.

The Nobel museum was also great. It was supermodern, which itself bamboozled the senses, but there was a ton of information there, so I spent a happy hour re-educating myself about the Middle East conflict, the collapse of Apartheid, the work of the Red Cross, the goings-on in Myanmar and Guatamala, and all those happy kinds of thing.

The Nobel Award has, naturally, been something of a theme for the past week or so, as Stockholm inevitably had its fair share of Nobel floorspace. I spent a good week in Stockholm. As mentioned in the last email, my ex gf, Katie, joined me for much of that week. What I was too polite to say last time was that I anticipated disaster, and while it wasn’t quite as bad as that it certainly wasn’t quite fun. The problem with Katie is that she’s both a sociopath and someone who is used to the finer things in life, so what she expected to get out of a youth hostelling trip (where people are plentiful and conditions are squalid) is beyond me. Her stay culminated in her dragging me to Ikea (who the fuck goes all the way to Stockholm to go to Ikea? It’s flat pack furniture for heaven’s sake) then ditching me in the foyer for two hours. I say two hours – I don’t know how long she left me there for because she actually disappeared without telling me, and got onto her flight back to England without so much as a goodbye and thanks-for-having-me.

So, I tolerated her BS, mainly because she was only there for a few days and I could always stay later and do my own thing, but it kinda put a crimp on the week. Couldn’t ruin it, hough, because Stockholm is possibly the nicest city I’ve been to so far – only Copenhagen can compete, really. Firstly, it’s undeniably stunningly gorgeous. Built on an archipelago, it has a certain Venician quality to it – all rivers and waterways, wending through neo-classical architecture and busy cobbled streets. But it also has modernity and energy; parts of the city felt almost Blade-Runner-esque, with streets running over and under each other beneath neon signs and vast, glowing monuments to god knows what. The people were uniformly freindly, if disappointingly unattractive. A rather amusing group of American people I met claimed that this was because winter in Sweden was a six-month hibernation period for sexy time, so only the ugly Swedes still walked the streets. I don’t kinow whether this is true or not, but I have also been informed that all Swedish men have shaved scrotæ (+10 more points, go me!), so it seems that the Swedes are gathering their own sexy mythology. And more speed to them!

Of intrest in Stockholm was the Vasamuseum, a vast museum dediated the the warship Vasa, which sunk mysteriously in the 16th Century and was only excavated 300 years later; the Nobel Museum, which I expected to be ruthlessly narcisistic but, fortunately, gave far more floorspace to the winners than the selectors, the Swedish Parliament, which is intresting but amusing (most of Swedens politicians are part-time, and seem more obsessed with making sure that the deomographics of the parliament match the demographics of the country exactly than, y’know, selecting he right person for the job – but then the population of Sweden is smaller than the populaton of London alone, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter); and, ohhh, a whole host of other things besides. Seriously, just stop reading this and go to Stockholm yourselves, You won’t regret it because it’s ace. Just don’t go in winter because winter is sexy time.

There.

Also, I took a night train from Stockholm to Oslo. It was actually quite good fun!

Right. Tomorrow morning I’m going to Bergen, which appartently has rain for 275 days of the year, and I’ll be there for three days. Following that, I will EITHER head north to Trondheim, Bødø and Tromsø, OR I shall head straight for Stockholm and take the ferry to Helsinki. There are two factors to this: 1, I am spending money at an unsustainable rate, and long to get to Estonia and Poland where I can live on 30p a day; and 2, I’ll be back in Sweden in December, as several of my more awesome family members have clubbed together to get me a night in the Ice Hotel ( http://www.icehotel.com/).

So. By now you must have had enough of my blather, so I shall leave you for another short while. I hope all is well in your collective lives and hope to hear from you all soon.

Much love.