French Finale

My final train ride in France went without error. After leaving Alpe d’Huez at 7:30am, I arrived in Paris at around 1pm.

I was again CouchSurfing, but as it was a Friday my hosts had to work so we had arranged to meet at the Hoche metro station at 6:30. This gave me five and a half hours to kill and after wandering lost around the complex Gare du Lyon for about half an hour, I finally found the luggage check which turned out to be incredibly expensive. Welcome to Paris.

I checked my bags, checked the tourist information centre, then checked my new map. After ripping the map in half by mistake, I grabbed another which showed the routes which the tour busses take. I figured that I’d leave the main sites ’till the next day and so set off to find the French National Library. This, I gathered, is supposed to be a modern architectural centrepiece, and it was very cool. Four seperate buildings in L shapes donned the corners of the structure (in the middle was great public space and a large cluster of treess), the passage between them underground.

French National Library

After the library, I ventured back over the river via a bridge which I guess was specifically added when the library was built. On the otherside, opposite the library, was some kind of sports centre – a crazy geometric building covered in grass, skylights, and bright blue metal framing.

Sports Centre

This also appeared to be a popular youth hangout as it was crawling with teenagers who I thought should have been in school. I passed these kids and began to walk back towards the train station. I was walking along thhe river, under a bridge, when I spotted a very nice homeless set-up complete with tents, tables, chars, appliances (I’m not sure how they got power for them) and even a christmas tree!

Homeless setup

When I got back to the station I still had a lot of time until I had to head west on the metro so I began to walk towards Bastille, a very large and famous round-about.

Bastille

Now I had to make the decision. What to see. I decided on making a brief appearance at Notre Dame but trying not see too much of it. And after walking down a street which I thought was the right one for a while, getting lost, and then getting reorientated, I spotted the small island on which the cathedral was located.

Notre Dame

I then crossed on to the island, but kinda tried not to see too much of Notre Dame itself – I wanted to keep it until I had more time – so just passed by and went on my way. About an hour later I was back at the train station and ready to take the metro to Hoche.

This was crazy, it was rush hour and here I was trying to take the busiest metro in the world with two bags full of junk! I even had to change lines. But it was OK, I made it to Hoche faster than I thought (with enough time to take a little walk around) and soon met my CouchSurfing hosts, Clair and Francis (who was actually from a French owned island off the south-east coast of Madagascar called Reunion). We walked back to their place, had dinner, talked about all sorts of things and had a pretty good evening. Both Clair and Francis were amazingly hospitable and were offering me things left, right, and centre. It turned out that I was the first person that they had hosted!

From this point of my time in Paris, I must be honest, I was a bit lazy! I think I was just tired from all the partying I did in the alps. But I made sure I saw all the big sites. the next morning I got my self out of bed and headed back to Notre Dame to get a proper look. And after all the cathedrals that I had seen in this trip, I have to say I was a little disappointed. This one gets talked up by everyone, but in some ways it dosen’t even compare to many of the others I’ve seen, especially the Italian ones. Here is a picture of it anway:

Notre Dame

From here I headed towards the famous gallery, the Louvre. Again I was lazy, I decided not to go inside. Partly because of time (two days to see the whole thing!) and partly because of money. It’s becoming rather skint and I can’t afford 9 Euros to go to an art gallery, as much as I would have liked to. The buildings and the glass pyramid were especially impressive though! I hadn’t realised that it was so big.

The Louvre

From the Louvre I headed through the massive gardens which extend in front of it. At the other end of them was a small christmas fair with a pretty large ferris wheel. It was here that I caught my first glimpse of the famous Eiffel Tower, and it was then that I though “yeah, I’m really in Paris”.

It was beginning to get dark so I decided to head back. I was supposed to text Clair when I returned to the apartment block so that she could let me in. I was late and my phone had decided to run out of money and not let me top up the credit. So I headed to the apartment and snuck inside with another resident. I got up to level 7 and realised that it was the wrong building! So back down I went and over to the other building. There was no one to let me in so I just skulked around the entrance until a group of people opened it, not thinking twice about who I could be or what I was doing there. I then headed up to the right level 7 and Francis let me in. That night we were going to go out but in the end decided against it as Francis was sick, Clair was getting sick, none of their friends could make it and I was tired.

The following day Clair and Francis had said they would take me out to Versailles so around lunchtime (after a good sleep in) we got in the car and drove out there. The main attraction in Versailles is the palace which has been home to many a French king and queen.

Palace at Versailles

Inside the palace’s grounds and also inside the palace itself were a number of sculptural works from American artist Jeff Koons. The first one which I saw made for a pretty cool photo with the palace refelected in it.

Royal Reflection

The inside of the palace was pretty cool, but to be honest, for the price that you pay it was definitely not as good as the palace in Brussels which was free. There were many dark rooms with large numbers of paintings of past residents, historical beds and furniture, and a terrible audio guide which really didn’t tell you anything you couldn’t read on the signs. The highlight of this palace was the gardens which I hear are very popular and much more beautiful in the summer.

Gardens at Versailles

That evening was another quiet one. Apart from a trip to a street which houses a huge amount of electronics stores to get some things for Clair, we spent most of the night trying to get the French television system to allow us to watch a French film with English subtitles. This  did not end up working, so we began to watch 300 but soon all of us were pretty sleepy and we ended up turning it off and headed off to bed.

The next day was a Monday and Francis and Clair had to go off to work. It was time again for me to see some sights, so mid-morning I set off to make sure I didn’t miss the sights that Paris is known for. My first stop was the Arch de Triomphe, set in the middle of a huge round-about and extremely expensive to visit the inside of. I took a few photos  and then started to make my way towards the Eiffel Tower.

Arch de Triomphe

The Eiffel Tower is big. It was even bigger than I thought it was and it was very cool to finally see it in all it’s glory.

Eiffel Tower

I then headed down towards it. The metal framework is amazing and it made for some pretty cool silhouette photos.

Eiffel silhouette

After a little bit of decision making (time was running short), I decided to ascend the tower. The line took about 25 mintues which was a pretty good amount of time considering people queue for hours in the summer. I chose on of the legs which only offers the stairs and just under 400 stairs later I had made it to the first level. Over 200 stair more I was at the second level. The view was pretty cool from here although the day was rather overcast. This low cloud prevented me from spending further money and taking the lift all the way to the top (which was in fact in the clouds).

View from the Eiffel Tower

By the time I got back down it had started to rain so I got on the metro and began to head back to Hoche. That evening was an interesting dinner. I had told Francis that I had neve eated escargot before, so in no time he had whipped up an appertiser and I was eating some sort of pesto roasted snails – not bad at all really but I found it a bit hard to stomach them, something most probably psychological. After this we had hotdogs with salad and “French” dijon mustard which actaully almost killed me. I put way too much on thinking it was like American mustard and it felt like I was drinking vodka infused with chili peppers – I was crying and sniffing annd Francis thought it was funny!

The next morning I was off again. An early train to the airport and a flight for just over an hour saw me land in London. It was Christmas time!

Missioning to the Snow

What a freakin’ ordeal!! I thought the French train system was  supposed to be one of the best in the world!

The plan was to take the train from Cannes to Grenoble, then get on a bus to Alpe d’Huez to visit Adam once more (he’s now cheffing up there). This is a three hour journey.

After a series of untranslated French messages and a whole lot of waiting I was in Grenoble, five hours later than I had expected. The bus station had closed. Grenoble doesn’t have a youth hostel. The cheap hotels are not exactly cheap but I stayed in one anyway (after walking around a lot trying to find a cheapest one).

The next morning the bus didn’t come, and I had to wait and wait for even longer. And finally I made it to Alpe d’Huez, twenty-four hours later than I had expected!

The view was looking great!

View from Alpe d'Huez

Adam was living in an apartment with eight other people, all from the land of Britannia. They were all on contract from a company called SkiWorld, and along with nine others, they managed and ran a small hotel and a number of chalets in the town which catered to British skiing tourists.

I was here to catch up with Adam and to hopefully snowboard! Little did I realise that 1) the weather wasn’t all it cracked up to be, and 2) everyone who works here is in a constant state of boozing. They get up to be at work at 7am, work ’till 10am, ski or snowboard ’till 4pm, work again until around 10pm, then  go out drinking to 3am almost every night! So the first night I was there I was whisked off to various bars around the village and everyone ended up frightfully drunking pretty fast – even though the beer was very expensive. That night ended with everyone eating these horrible takeaway dishes called the Americana which is basically a foot long b agette stuffed with meat patties and covered in fries, which in turn covered the floor of the apartment. Filth!

The following morning we awoke and after work, Adam and I set out to fix the bindings on his board so I could ride it. This turned out to be a right mission. We wandered up to, perhaps, the only place that does Burton gear to find just a single screw – they didn’t have it. We were able to, though, get a cool view of the ski field which is amazingly huge!

Ski Field

Soon it had become 2 o’clock and it seemed like no one had the screw and it wasn’t going to be economically viable to buy a daily ski-pass for just two hours. So we flagged it and headed back to the apartment to hang out. And that’s about how it was for the rest of the evening. I spent it watching Peep Show on DVD and the others went to work. One guy got 2nd degree burns from picking up a hot pan, another had ruined his ankle on the slopes! Horray! Hopefully the next day I would be getting out there!

The next day came, the weather was marginal to say the least. This was Adam’ss day off, too, but we just spend it hanging around again. I guess that it is nice to have a break every so often though. Later that afternoon I was getting restless, so I decided to make a break for it and walk down to Huez, the town lower down the mountain.

After walking down and around about 5 corners of the Tour de France hillclimb, I made it.

Tour de France!

Huez was a tiny little old fashioned town. Unlike Alpe d’Huez all the buildings were small, close together and old. The roads were snow covered and icicles hung everywhere. I was sliding all over the place, but was happy. It was an amazing place to explore around.

Huez Town

On my way back up (as it had taken about an hour to get down), I decided to take a shorter route. Jumping off the road I began to follow a path I found in the snow. Surely if someone else had walked up here then I could also. It started off okay but got increasingly deeper and less predictable so soon I had to get out of it and back onto the road.

Snow path!

That night it was back to drinking again. And there was hundred of people out. The craziest part was being in one bar and going to get a drink, being swallowed into the crowd of people on the dance floor and suddenly realising they were all mimes! There was about 100 mimes in full costume dancing away – so very strange!

The next day was beautiful. I was adament that I would get out on the slopes, so I flagged trying to get Adam’s gear to work and rented a board and boots, bought a ski pass and set off up the mountain with one of the girls from the hotel, Alice, who had her day off. And WOW what a mountain. New Zealand has nothing like this at all, it’s huge and the runs are perfect. We skied and boarded for a few hours then met up with Adam who was on his midday break and also his other friend.

Skiing the Mount

We had a few marvelous runs, Adam pushing me way too far, and then headed for the top of the mountain. The view was absolutely amazing, although the wind was out of control. It was like being in the snow version of a desert sandstorm!

View from the top

This was the beginning of what I was told is the world’s longest pisted run. 16km of pure down hill (well, a little bit of annoying flat at the end). It just went on and on and on and it was oh so steep, but absolutely amazing! The weather was brilliant and once we got passed the windswept ice, the snow was lush!

Giving The Gogs a real sporting time

After this run we were all totally knackered and headed back to the apartment for another easy night of nothing. I sat around watching The Mighty Boosh, then the others came back and we watched No Country For Old Men. Then, amazingly, everyone went to bed.

The next morning I was up at 6:30am to catch the 7:30 bus back to Grenoble for I was off to Paris.

Goodbye Alpe d’Huez, I’ll miss you!

View of Alpe d'Huez

Berning Down the House!

From Zurich I made my way to Bern. I had intially planned to take the Luzern-Interluken route but since I had already done this the day before, it was just a one hour trip. I arrived in Bern at about midday to find my next host, Regula wandering around the station looking for me just as I was doing for her. Lucky for me that we found each other at that time, as my train was late and she was about to leave.

In an old house near the train staion which usually had a bar, cafe, womens area, theatre and holds frequent parties, a once a month flea market was being held. Here you could by almost everything you could think of from scooters and bikes to console games, candlesticks and tea. I had to hold myself back as I saw so much stuff that I would have liked to buy but unfortunately can’t carry around with me. We spent a few hours looking around the markets and then decided to head back to her place.

Crazy bicycle for sale

Regula lived in a very old house which was situated inside an industrial area in a town about half an hour out of Bern called Oberburg. This industrial area has a building right next to the house which begins some sort of extreme hammering each morning at seven o’clock which shakes the entire house, continuing until five in the evening. Asides from Regula living there, there was also Nicole and Dino, a suitably hippy couple, another girl whoes name I never found out, and one more guy and another couple who were away at the time. For me this was great as I was given my own room which included its own fireplace to keep me toasty warm in the freezing nights. That night Regula, Nicole, Dino and I just hung out, ate some amazing food cooked by Nicole (who should be a chef), and listened to music. I spent half the evening dashing up and down the stairs to keep my little fire going.

The old house

The next day I was to meet up with a girl called Flurina who has contacted me the previous night on CouchSurfing, asking if I’d like to be shown around Bern. So at around midday, I met her in the Bern station and we set out on our mission. The first place to visit was the house where I had been at the flea market the previous day. I had wanted to get a betting picture of  it.

Flea market location

Next we wandered down to one of Bern’s many bridges. Following this we made our way to the highest tower in Bern at the XXXXXXX church. It was many more stairs that I had predicted and after we fought our way up with a number of stops, we found the the view was totally worth it. Unfortunately over half of the tower was closed to it was next to impossible to get a decent view from the other side.

View from tower

After we headed back down, Flurina suggested that next on the agenda should be “bears and fountains”, so we went for a walk towards the Bern bears. For some reason or another, there is a pit in the middle of the city which for numerous years has held a number of bears. It’s a horrible concrete pit and many people oppose it. The bears look so sad in there, just sitting around waiting for food and most probably wishing that the winter would become cold enough to hibernate.

Bern's Bear

Next were the fountains. Not as amazing as many of the other fountains which I have seen on this trip, but pretty cool as a number of them (which run up the middle of the main pedestrian streets) are statues of folktales. The one which is the best and I think every one agrees with is this one of a man eating small (bad mannered) children – a tale parents would often tell to their kids to keep them in line!

Child eater!

A walk down the riverside followed lunch, and when we were about ten minutes down stream (which was 6.66 degrees by the way!) I spotted the zoo on the otherside of the river which Flurina seemed to think was free. So back we headed and over a bridge which we had passed. Then we just walked in! Past some ponies and mules, fluffy rabbits and then… RACOOONS! My god I just keep having child-like exciting moments! So mischevious looking and so cute at the same time.

Racooooooon :)

Onward we walked up the hill to find a pond full of pink flamingos. I find these birds hilarious, especially the way the walk around in the water. They would move around to find the sun in flocks, flapping their wings to gain all the sun they could get.

Flamingos

Our trip to the zoo was our last activity for the day, and as the sun was setting we headed back to the train station where I thanked Flurina for showing me around and then set off back to Oberburg for another evening of music and hanging out.

The following day Nicole had no work and so decided to come with me on a trip to Gruyères to visit the H.R. Giger museum. This is the guy who invented the alien from the film Alien. It was lucky that she came along as it involved 3 trains and a bus, plus numerous amounts of German and French speaking. On arrival we had about an hour to spare so we decided to have a look around Gruyères, a very quaint little medival town set on the edge of the Swiss Alps.

Gruyères

At 1pm the museum opened. This place was crazy, the mind of this man insane. There were so many amazing pictures of creatures that I could never dream of. Very dark and for some reason, also very erotic. They had this little “adults only” section which seemed pretty pointless as almost all of his work had some weird alien sexuality to it. Unfortunately you were not alowed to take photos inside, but this was on the outside:

Babies in a gun

And there was even a bar which he designed, indeed also crazy:

Giger bar

And soon it was time to make the long trek back to Oberburg. We were not back for long when Regula came in from work, covered in snow! “It’s snowing!” she called, and looking out the window, it definitely was. So after another beautiful dinner made by Nicole, she, Dino and I headed outside into the already 4-5″ snow to play around. Snow fights were not an option of choice, and I was amazed to find that you actaully can roll snow into huge balls, resulting in by far the best snowman I have ever built.

Snowman!

This went on for a few hours and by then we were all tired and soaked and ready to sleep, but not after more music and hanging out, though!

I had initially planned to leave the following day, but it took me a while to find a place to stay so I spent one more day in Bern. This day I used for doing nothing. I headed into Bern to get a train ticket and then just spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and watching the snow out the window. A quiet evening and my time in Bern was over, again going so fast!

The next morning I was off to Cannes!

Саинт Петерсбург (Saint Petersburg)

If Tom Cruise ever taught me anything, it’s that “sometimes you just gotta say ‘what the fuck’”.

My time in Estonia had given me a brief look into the eastern European culture and in particular the times of Soviet reign. This, coupled with meeting Ben, had swayed my decision about Russia and even though my tour was cancelled I decided to head there anyway – I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity that I might never have again. So upon leaving Estonia, I headed back to Helsinki for a few more days to rest up, sort out some visa issues, and most importantly board the train to St. Petersburg.

My train from Helsinki was at 7:30am and I was staying half an hour from the main train station so I decided to take the 6:05am bus in. Unfortunately it was some sort of public holiday and all the timetables were different, the bus never came, I started mildly stressing, but luckily a woman who was late to work helped me navigate several busses which deposited me at the central train station with about ten minutes to spare. Then off I was.

The change was not so subtle. Looking out the window, I noticed that all the signs surrounding the train line had changed from the latin to cyrillic alphabet. Next, a message came over the intercom system saying that the train was now entering the ‘border control zone’. I wasn’t too sure what that meant would happen untill about 10 guards jumped on the train and removed everyone’s passports from them. This worried me slightly as I didn’t want to lose my passport while staying in Russia on a visa which was gained from an invitation which was no longer valid. I didn’t even know the last name of the girl I was staying with so wrote the defunct tour’s name on the immigration forms and hoped for the best.

Half an hour passed with nothing, and then finally… I WAS IN! I had legally arrived in Russia!

The train arrived at Finland Station in St. Petersburg at two o’clock. I wasn’t to meet my CouchSurfing host, Ira, until seven, so after figuring out how the metro system worked in a place with very little English writing and speakers, I dumped my bags in the locker room at Vosstaniya Station (where I would meet Ira later on) and went for a wander. I headed down the main street, Nevskiy Prospekt, and what I saw was wonder. The buildings were amazing; colourful, magestic and grand. The writing everywhere was different, the cars were different, the people were different, it was all very much more different from anything I had ever seen, even Tallinn. I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the central city area, checking out the amazing buildings, churches, the seaside, oh and it was freezing!

At around seven I met Ira and we headed back to her apartment. This is when I began to understand what people mean when they say that the binary of wealth distribution in this country is expansive. Everything about the innercity was beautiful, and almost everything about the outskirts was the opposite. Ira was living about half an hour out of the central city by metro, the area was bland, dirty, the people seemed like they were barely making it through the day and the soviet architected apartment blocks stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction. In this country you either have money or you don’t, there is no middle ground. The poor people can’t afford the good stuff, but they can afford to indulge. In one supermarket I saw half a litre of vodka for $6.50NZD and a pack of cigarettes for around $1.10.

Ira had, that night, invited a bunch of her friends around to her flat for some drinks. So I spent the night drinking with Ira, Vlad, Pascha, Sascha, Stas, Nadya and a few more people who’s names I can’t rememeber. It was cool, their english wasn’t the best, but they were heaps of fun to party with and so it happened, the more they drank, the better their English got. My Russian on the other hand failed to improve in anyway.

Russian Beer

The next three days (Sunday, Monday and Tuesday) were Russian public holidays so Ira had some time to spend showing me around the sights. I had told Ira that I was interested in searching out some old Soviet Lomo cameras as I heard the authentic products could be picked up very cheap if you knew where to go. So off we went to a local flea market. This place was very intense. It sold everything that most people don’t need. Old computer parts, hats, badges, cell phones, memory cards, power tools, rusty bolts, old clothes, and happily, the camera. I was able to pick one up from a more ‘reputable’ camera dealer for 100 rubles which is around $6.5NZD. Pretty good find I must say. We spent a little while rummaging around the markets and then headed into town to meet up with Ira’s friends again. We ended up at a ludicriously expensive shisha bar where for some reason they gave us a pipe with no water. It was horrible! After this was pretty late so we all decided to call it a night, but not after I was invited to a poker night the following evening.

On the Monday Ira decided that she might show me some of the sights of the city. So after eating a breakfast of blini (russian stuffed pancakes), we set out into the centre of town. First stop was the local huge cathedral, St. Isaac’s. This building was huge, so big in fact that you had to cross a road and half a small park to even include the entire building in a photo.

St. Isaacs Cathedral

Next we headed over to the famous statue of the Bronze Horseman.

The Bronze Horseman

Afterwards we walked over to Spit of Vasilyevskiy Island to have a look around. Here we saw a russian wedding with the bride and groom throwing glasses of champagne over their shoulders into the sea, only both missed, one smashing on the ground, the other hitting a statue behind the groom’s head, projecting broken glass towards the bride! She fell to the ground covered in blood as a huge shared severed her jugular. To be honest, she was fine. Next we walked back towards the Winter Palace or Hermitage.

Winter Palace on the Sea

Past the Winter Palace was the Palace Square.

Palace Square

And just through the arches was a man with a monkey!

Monkey!

After checking out these main sights, Ira wanted to show me an interesting apartment block which contained a huge amount of crazy mosaics everywhere. Almost all of the walls were covered and the public sitting areas were made completely of mosaiced concrete.

Mosaic Apartments

Soon it was dark and time to head to Nadya’s place for the poker game which I didn’t do very well in at all. A nice Russian pork dinner was cooked by Nadya and then it was time to head home for sleep.

The following day, Pascha, Ira and I went to Pushkin which is a huge park south of the city. Inside this park is an enormous palace which was built for Catherine the Great. Unfortunately it was off-season so we could not go inside and none of the fountains were working, but it was still amazing to see.

Catherine the Great's Palace

In the summer this park splits into two parts. The part which the palace is inside becomes a tolled park, so you have to pay to hang out in there. The other part is free and increasingly more desheveled. Even though it was winter you could easily tell the difference between the two parts, the free part muddy and dirty and unkempt while the paid part was tidy and manicured.

Inside the free part we also found some interesting ruins.

Ruins at Pushkin

That night we decided to haev a quiet one and Ira and I watched an interesting Terry Gilliam film starring Robin Williams as a crazy homeless man.

The next day was Wednesday, my last day and time to head back to work for Ira. I decided to check out the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Peter and Paul Fortress

This place is an island in the middle of the harbour which is shaped in a star-like manner. It was built in the 18thC and up until the 1917 was used as a political prison. Even Dostoyevsky was housed here. The fortess even contains a beach were some crazy guy was swimming in Speedos. The water can’t have been more than 1 or 2 degrees! Inside the fortress was the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Peter and Paul Cathedral

From the fortress I walked past some sort of military weapons museum full of tanks and rocket launchers and more, and towards a frigate which I was advised to look at. On the way I walked past a pretty cool pirate-type ship as well. I walked on and on, the mission to get to another bridge to pass back onto the main land. Evening slowly fell with a beautiful sunset, my last day was almost over.

Saint Petersburg Sunset

That night it was time to leave. I was on the 1:20am night train to Moscow which I boarded after a few language barriers about passports and the like. The cabin was small and old, the train wobbled around a lot, but soon I fell asleep and woke up in Moscow.

P.S: Some how I forgot to mention the Saviour on the Blood church, but this place was amazing! We saw this after the monkey.

Saviour on the Blood

Traveling South to the East: Tallinn

On the Thursday morning I made my way to the Helsinki port, boarded the Tallink Star, sat around for two hours, and got off in the Estonian city of Tallinn.

Here I was staying with a girl called Triin, who at my time of landing was working, so I had half the day free to wander around the town before I had to meet her “in the square under the dragons” at 5:15pm. So I locked up my gear, got a map, and start walking towards the city. The map had twelve sights placed on it that were within the Old Town, so I figured that I’d check some of these out.

Walking through the (new) town, there was construction everywhere. It was blatently obvious that Tallinn was fast developing into a very Western city. The architecture was great, the streets were packed, and the people looked like they had taken all their style tips from those living in Berlin, Stockholm or Amsterdam (but probably Helsinki).

I entered the main town through the eastern gates.

Old Town Eastern Gates

To the left was a McDonalds, what an introduction to a well preserved medieval town. To the left, running along the city walls was some sort of knitwear market. These are everywhere. Every second shop is trying to sell you a knitted jersey or (and what I forgot to buy) one of those long woolen hat that you see people skiing with in cartoons.

Knitwear Market

As I ventured in, it became obvious that this was a town that would be overrun by tourists in the summer months. I keep hearing the word “touristic” being thrown around, I’m not sure if it’s even a proper word, but this is what I imagine it would be like. Similar to Brugge but with a more Eastern feel.

I began to follow the map around. It first led me up an old alley which was lined with ancient tablets from the old Tallinn.

Ancient Tablets

Once past this alley, I continued my way north within the town, and stumbled across St. Olaf’s Church, a huge white building with a tower which was once the tallest building in medieval Europe.

St Olaf's Tower

I walked inside and as the day was beautiful, I decided to climb the tower to the make shift viewing platform which they had built into the copper roof, 60m above the ground.

View from St. Olaf's Tower

From the tower I had spotted a huge building full of right and 45 degree angles, which looked to be made entirely out of concrete and left to rot. So I once I had decended the tower’s rickety stone staircase, I made my way further north towards the sea. What I found was a huge Soviet style building, purely in grey with huge staircases, graffiti and rubbish everywhere. Half the place was broken and it looked like no one had used it in 30 years. But it definitely had that Russian “for the people” feel to it.

Soviet Concert Hall

Later I found out that this place was built when Tallinn was under Soviet occuptaion, and amazingly, it is still in frequent use! You would never know it from seeing it, and even walking around on it. I was even on the roof to get some better photos, if I had known there might have been people inside I don’t think I’d be running around on the roof. It turns out that they can’t afford to renovate it, and they can’t afford to pull it down, and they don’t want to get rid of it because of it’s historical significance and architectural value.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the streets of the old town, through alleyways, pasts interesting shops and cafes, and at 5:15, I met Triin outside the town hall, but not after an interesting performance from a group of Hare Krishnas.

Hare Hare Krishna

We walked back to her apartment and hung out for a few hours, had dinner, then not long later, we were out again. One of the CouchSurfing hosts in town had moved into a new flat and was having a flat warming. There I met a number of the other CouchSurfing hosts in Tallinn and the people who were staying with them. There was Mattias from Italy, Ben (an Aussie) from Moscow, and Shigi (a Taiwanese guy) from Austria. We hung out and talked rubbish, listened to traditional Estonian music which they all know from their singing festivals (it turns out Estonians love to sing). Later, Shigi and I decided to meet up the following day at 12 and wander around the city together.

So at 12 the next day, we met outside the town hall.

Tallinn Town Hall

I ended up seeing a number of places that I’d seen the previous day, then I took Shigi to the concert hall. It appears that this is a place that no guide books talk about and no touists seem to know about, so I’m pretty happy thaat I found it on my own. Then we walked to the south end of the city, up into the highest part, past some crazy bird scultpures:

Me and the Bird

…the orthodox church:

Orthodox Church

and ended up climbing the town walls to spy on a crazy Russian wedding, complete with a guy with a megaphone ordering people about and “beautiful Russian women” who seemed a bit undressed for a wedding.

Russian Wedding

That afternnon Shigi and I decided to walk along  the waterfront towards the ruins of the Piirita Convent. This appeared to be a short distance on the map, but in fact took us about an hour and a half to walk. It was well worth it, though. This place was old, very old! There were floor foundations and sky reaching walls everywhere, and amoungst them were scattered gravestones and small underground passages. It was a beautiful place.

Piirita Convent Ruins

Later that night we met Triin and Shigi’s host, Christina, for dinner. Afterwards, they left and Shigi and I checked out a few bars.

The next day Christina and Triin wanted to show use a few more sights. First we headed into Kadrioru Park which was very close by to Triin’s apartment. Inside this park was the Tallinn art museum which was originally built as a Russian palace.

Art Gallery

Next we headed to a huge Soviet WWII monument which was built inside a massive park.  But before this we made a stop at the Estonian History Museum for a look around the ground, where we found a Lenin graveyard.

Lenin Graveyard

Soviet WWII Monument

Later on we visited a large park where these Estonian singing festivals are held.

Festival Park

That night it was the birthday of one of the Tallinn CS hosts. She had decided that she wanted a pirate party, so at about 8 o’clock, Triin, Christina, Shigi and I headed over to the home of Eva (who was hosting Ben the Russian Aussie). Everyone got dressed up in pirate regalia and we headed about 1 hour  out of town. The party was full of crazy Esotinans in priate gear, vodka, rum, and other assorted alcohols.

Pirates!

Later in the night it was time for me to finally experience the Finnish sauna which these people had in their house. So, basically, everyone got naked, went into a 60+ degree room, sat around for a while, and then went running around outside in the 3-4 degree night. Crazy, but very fun!

Finnish Sauna users!

The night was great and ended up with us all sleeping on the hardest floor I’ve ever experienced.

The next day it was time to go. I had decided to head back to Helsinki so I could sort out some visa issues, and I decided that even though my tour to Russia had been cancelled, after talking to Ben, I had decided to go anyway, I’m not going to miss that oppurtunity! So here I am, hanging out in Helsinki for a few days while I wait for my Russian visa to begin on the 1st of November.