I got a real travel fever when my school was finished in the end of March, and since my budget was very limited, I intended to go to Baltian countries. My boyfriend Oskari was very willing to travel with me, so after few days of planning, we booked hotels and tickets for train, ferry, bus and air plane. The whole travel would cost about 300 euros and take 4 days. Our destinations would be Tallinn in Estonia and Riga in Latvia. Because we wanted to see as much as we could in 4 days, we travelled to Latvia by land using a local bus company, so that we could see the Estonian and Latvian countryside as well.
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| "Cut your budget, forget the backyard"- must be the strategy of the owner of the hotel where we stayed overnight. This is what I saw when I looked out of the window, and the hotel was quite fancy (4 stars). |
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| Oskari is happy the get his expensive dinner. Look how warm it is in mid-April! |
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| The beauty of silent Tallinn. No tourists. Yay. |
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| This place is so full of tourists at summer that you can hardly walk. Not this time. The main square. |
The journey began 4 o clock in the morning in Seinäjoki train station, when we travelled by train to Helsinki, walked to the harbour and took a ferry to Tallinn. Tallinn is usually full of tourists, but this time it wasn't a tourist season, so we happened to see the real life. The old town is really beautiful and you get the feeling like you're in the Middle Ages, especially when the narrow streets aren't full of tourists. Instead of that they were almost empty, except some locals. I had been in Estonia for about 10 times before, but I've never spent a lot of time in the capital, I've just travelled through it to some smaller towns. It was quiet and nice, and the weather was just perfect, even it was an early spring. The hotel was in the middle of the old district, and because it wasn't a tourist season, we got a really neat hotel at the price of 29€. Our dinner in the restaurant costed almost as much, but it was the tastiest salmon I've ever tried.
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| Some 800 years old church in Riga. |
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| Pärnu and the Baltic Sea. |
Next morning we had to walk to the bus station. We thought we would save money by walking over 2km. And so we did, but after walking 2km I noticed I had left my phone to the hotel, and so we had to return. The walk to the bus station takes over 20 minutes, and we had only 15 minutes left, so we had to take a taxi. We found one old taxi close to our hotel and told to the driver where to go. It seemed like the driver didn't speak English nor Finnish or even Estonian, only Russian. Luckily we had a map so he took as to the right place in about 5 minutes and that costed just 3 euros, so my tip to everyone who travels in Estonia: take a Russian taxi instead of walking!
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| I love the contrast between run-down and new buildings in Riga. |
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| The statue of liberty. Latvia isn't older than me, but they are proud for their little nation. |
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| Oskari is enjoying the early summer in the park. |
The journey to Latvia took about 5 hours, and especially the Latvian countryside was really interesting to see. Since the country has been independent for less than 20 years, you could easily see the influence of Russia, even more than in Estonia. I wonder how anyone can live in such run-down houses! The traffic was impossible, it took 15 minutes to get through a single traffic circle. In Riga we were left in a different place than my map showed, but we didn't figure that out until we were almost lost. The map was horrible and language incomprehensible. We walked along the river and soon realised where we are. Still, it took almost an hour to find the hotel. After all, the hotel was just about 100m from the place where the bus left us, and we walked for 3km. The old district was beautiful just like the one in Tallinn, but still it differred a lot. Churches where huge as a highrise building, and weather even more beautiful. We went to eat to restaurant that was recommended as a cheap but good restaurant. The food should have cost something between 3 to 7 lats (about 5 to 10 euros), but the cheapest food was 7 lats, and others costed up to 20 lats. Then we used the happy hour in our hotel, when you get two cocktails (price about 2 lats = 2.8€) at the price of one. A local beer, Cēsu, costed just about 1 lat, that is 1/4 of the Finnish price. Even the language has nothing in common with any language I know, I managed to learn one sentence: "Sveik! Vienas alus, paldies!", which means "Hi! One beer, thanks!". The language didn't cause much difficulties, since people in restaurants spoke usually English. Also in Riga it was nice that there wasn't many tourists, except some "must" German tourist groups that are literally everywhere. Oskari's notification was that particularly the cars in Riga are extremely neat, I didn't pay that much attention on that. The biggest failure was that I wasn't let in to a night club since I'm afraid of carrying my passport with me. Polices are really apathetic in Latvia, it seems like they occur only so that people would believe that they are safe. They looked down and weren't interested in what is happening around them.
The next day we did some shopping and sunbathed in a beautiful park by the river. It was a really warm day, probably closer to 20 degrees. We didn't have any maps, but we accidentally found some tourist destinations, like the Statue of Liberty and a bridge that is full of padlocks. Married people have put a padlock to the bridge that has their names and wedding day etched on it, and dropped the key to the river. This time we really wanted to find a cheap place to eat, so the only definite place is a fast food restaurant. But finding a fast food restaurant wasn't easy, we didn't even know what is restaurant and what is just a place to drink coffee. We didn't know, that
"Kafejnīca" is actually a place to eat, not to drink coffee. We walked like 2 hours after we found a McDonalds, that was actually only few hundred meters from our hotel. So we finally ate cheaply, but next time we'll choose
"Kafejnīca". The rest of the day we spent in the city, walking along the narrow streets or sipping beer in a terrace. In the evening we wen't to the night club we planned to go the day before, and it wasn't actually as neat as it looked like. Then we tried to go to a local pub, but they didn't let us in, since we were "too young". Finally we found a nice bar, where the barkeeper taught as to say
Sveiks!
The last day we finished the successfull journey by flying back to Finland using Ryanair. It was very interesting, I'm quite sure that the flight attendant didn't know himself what language he is speaking, but still, he was very excited. When he said "We are proud to tell you that almost 90% of Ryanair flights have arrived in time" it sounded like "We are proud to tell you that almost 90% of Ryanair flights have arrived". Next time I want to see Lithuainia and Poland - Eastern European countries are far more exotic and interesting than the others!
our feet were dead. Now we wanted a German beer, but finding a potential pub proved a bit tricky. Finally we ate one pizza, delicious one, and green lemon- beers, that my friends Minttu and Maija were really suspicious about. Actually a beer with lemon is really a good combination. Next we wanted to find a sports bar where to watch Finland vs. Germany- ice hockey game, and followed the others to an irish pub called Paddy's. Paddy's became our hangout. I took few local beers from Bremen - Beck's - and when the game started, we made a deal - one shot for each goal! The shots were really funny named: slippery nipples, blow job, sperm bomb, brain damage etc... First Finland made a goal, and we took slippery nipples, which was really good. Then we tried the others, that were also okay. Finland won the game, and we sang the national anthem - Germans were a bit ashamed :-) At last we took our last shot, called "Red Liner", which had tabasco on it, that we didn't know. We burned our mouths and it took half an hour to recover. The last tram had already took off, so we had to take a taxi. Some of us were brave enough to walk back to the hostel that was over 5km away.
The idea was just to drink the beers and go to sleep earlier than yesterday, but someone had heard about a fancy club called "Stubu Musikkellar" where's a lady's night on Thursday, and so I pretty much had to join. First we went to Paddy's and took an Irish Flag shot, and then to Stubu. The others couldn't go to Stubu since they were too young, but me, Minttu, Maija and Risto were let in. Stubu was awesome!! I've never seen such atmosphere in any night club. People were dancing some German dance songs, drinks were cheap and people nice and social. Time flew and it was quite late before we even noticed. It was raining so bad outside, we were all wet. We went to tram and had fun trying to speak German with some locals. I can't even tell how much we laughed!! We ran to our hostel in a downpour, and noticed no one had keys. Some man came to open the door, and being very tired I fell asleep immidiately.
12.5
our feet were dead. Now we wanted a German beer, but finding a potential pub proved a bit tricky. Finally we ate one pizza, delicious one, and green lemon- beers, that my friends Minttu and Maija were really suspicious about. Actually a beer with lemon is really a good combination. Next we wanted to find a sports bar where to watch Finland vs. Germany- ice hockey game, and followed the others to an irish pub called Paddy's. Paddy's became our hangout. I took few local beers from Bremen - Beck's - and when the game started, we made a deal - one shot for each goal! The shots were really funny named: slippery nipples, blow job, sperm bomb, brain damage etc... First Finland made a goal, and we took slippery nipples, which was really good. Then we tried the others, that were also okay. Finland won the game, and we sang the national anthem - Germans were a bit ashamed :-) At last we took our last shot, called "Red Liner", which had tabasco on it, that we didn't know. We burned our mouths and it took half an hour to recover. The last tram had already took off, so we had to take a taxi. Some of us were brave enough to walk back to the hostel that was over 5km away.
The idea was just to drink the beers and go to sleep earlier than yesterday, but someone had heard about a fancy club called "Stubu Musikkellar" where's a lady's night on Thursday, and so I pretty much had to join. First we went to Paddy's and took an Irish Flag shot, and then to Stubu. The others couldn't go to Stubu since they were too young, but me, Minttu, Maija and Risto were let in. Stubu was awesome!! I've never seen such atmosphere in any night club. People were dancing some German dance songs, drinks were cheap and people nice and social. Time flew and it was quite late before we even noticed. It was raining so bad outside, we were all wet. We went to tram and had fun trying to speak German with some locals. I can't even tell how much we laughed!! We ran to our hostel in a downpour, and noticed no one had keys. Some man came to open the door, and being very tired I fell asleep immidiately.
12.5
