Category — Call of the North

For those interested, some logistic details of the northern trip, never know when they can be useful. Accomodation I stayed in hostels, with 2 exceptions, when I reserved lastminute and didnt find any beds in hostels. Most reservations were made through hostelworld.com, one through booking.com and one through hotels.com. I recommend reserving beforehand. If not [...]

8/9 august Maybe it’s better that I missed the train. It would have been an 18 hours ride, no sleeping wagon. Would have gone mad. Nevertheless, at the moment I was very frustrated. Had thought the train is at 22:54, but it was 22:45. I checked on the way to the train station, at  22:44. [...]

7 august I had thought of various titles for this post, but after being there I felt there is no room for any metaphor, or any subtlety. Yes, we all know the story. Nazis killed ~6 million Jews and other nationalities in concentration camps during world war 2. Problem is, we cannot think in numbers. [...]

Aug 7th, 2008 In the movie “The Terminal”, Tom Hanks plays a Polish man who gets blocked in an airport terminal because in his country a separatist group declares independence of the “Republic of Krakozhia”, with guns and turbulences. I still don’t get it. Is it a joke on the Polacks? If it is, I [...]

Aug 5th, 2008 Expectations and “first contact” were pretty grey, but changed radically as soon as I left the hostel. I had no idea where I was, so I went to the right, where the Medias-fan at the hostel told me that i would find tourist info. And up the street it was – wow. [...]

Aug 5, 2008 Scandinavia is no adventure. Not even the Baltix are an adventure. Arriving at 6am, after a torturing night in the bus, to an unknown place, suburb-looking, where almost everything is closed, nobody speaks any language you might understand, the local language has nothing to do with anything that might sound familiar, you [...]

Aug 4th 2008, 09:00 I’m in the Eurolines bus Riga-Vilnius, and have wireless internet. I can’t imagine how that works, but it works. I have no idea what to expect in/from Vilnius. I have heard nothing about the town, except for the football team Jalghiris Vilnius, which sounds like something industrial, i picture “grey”. The [...]

Aug 3 First impressions of Latvia were Finlandlike: lakes and forests. At least that’s as much I could see from the bus, when waking up just before arriving in Riga. First surprise, in the bus station – i can’t draw money, from 2 different cash machines. Hm. It’s raining. Maybe that’s why people on streets [...]

Aug 2 The day started leftfooted. Couldnt fall asleep last night, so woke up late, credit card machine at the hotel didnt work, so i lost 10 vital minutes, ultimately i reached the harbor at 7:31, the boat was at 7:30.  So I had to wait for the boat at 9am to finally cross the [...]

August 1 The 1000 lakes are actually more than 180000 (one hundred and eighty thousand!), and this morning i didnt know what to do with them. There i was in the middle of Karelia, the Lake District, and i wndt have liked to leave without checking them out, at least a little. One option was [...]