Bring on the Cheese!

I hadn’t really planned what I was going to do after travelling through Italy, and at the last minute I decided to go to Switzerland in search of snow, and to begin my treck towards Paris, where I will be just before Christmas. So the morning after the Cinque Terre adventure, Carmen and I parted ways at the train station, her to Rome and I was heading to Zurich.

Eight train-filled hours later I was there. My first mission was to get to a town about twenty-five minutes out of Zurich called Winterthur where I would meet my host, Lia. Finding the train was the easy part, finding an ATM to withdraw Swiss franks was not so easy. Finally I figured this out and soon I was travelling north to Winterthur where I found Lia waiting for me.

That first night we did not do a lot, we were both tired and had decided to have an earlyish night so she could show me around Zurich thee following day. In the morning we ate and then headed into Zurich, there was much to do! Unfortunately it was raining, but this was not to stop us. First of all we headed out of the train station and down the main street, appropriately named Bahnofstrasse. This was a street filled with expensive clothing and watch stores, intermingled with douzens of different banks promoting private bank accounts. On the way down this street we stopped to check out various churches.

Church clock tower

We ate roasted chestnuts, talked and took numerous photos of Zurich dressed in it’s best Christmas attire.

Christmas pinecones

We then passed the Zurich lake and headed towards a secondhand bookshop which we both wanted to check out. The English section was not so large, but I managed to find Catcher In The Rye and Dracula for 3 franks which is a damned good deal. Lia bought a collection of 13 huge photography books that she would have to collect later as they were much too heavy to carry around.

But before we hit the bookstore, we stopped by:

Google office Zurich

This was pretty cool to see. Apparantly the inside of the building is amazingly well equipped with meditation rooms, aquariums, a gym, and much more. Outside the office was parked this Google bike! I hear that the staff are given them to use.

Google bike

After we left the bookshop, we headed back towards the centre of town, where we crossed the river and checked out another church.

Zurich's riverside

Twin church towers

And now was the exciting part! We decided to head up the local tall mountain of which I forget the name and climb the view tower. We took the train and when we arrived I was thouroughly excited to see a snowy path leading to the top. I could barely contain myself and was running around like an over excited child.

Snowy path

When we got to the top we headed up the tower and found the view of the alps in all directions. It was amazing!

View over Zurich

The sun started to set so we headed back down the the tower and began to construct a small snowman on a park bench which I was actaully able to pick up and carry around with me until I picked him up off of a chair and he lost his balance, his head falling off.

Snowman!

By this time it was getting pretty late and we had a dinner date with 100 other CouchSurfers out in the countryside. This event was run by the Zurich CouchSurfing group and was basically 100+ people in a big cottage in the countryside eating over 20kgs of cheese fondue and drinking too much wine. It was a whole heap of fun! There were heaps of Swiss people and many others from all over the world there too. One guy I talked to had even cycled from Belgium to Serbia in 4 months, crazy!

the CHEESE

This went on ’till the early hours of the morning and when Lia decided that she has drunk far too much, we headed home.

The next day the weather was terrible, it was raining something atrocious, so instead of checking out any more outdoor sights we planned a scenic train trip. This would be from Luzern to Interluken. So we got on the train and headed for Luzern. When we got there we had some time to kill, so went for a short walk in the city, over the famous bridge:

Some old bridge

and past some very cool decorated buildings:

Decorated house

Soon it was time to get on the train, so we headed back to the station, boarded the train and we were off. In no time you could feel the pull of the train heading upwards and soon enough we were engulfed in snowy forest and paddocks. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before! We opened the window of the train at one point when it stopped to get some photos and the woman sitting infront of us ended up covered in snow! It was snowing like I’ve never experienced.

Lotsa snow!

In what seemed like no time at all, the night fell and we were headed back to Zurich to meet the CouchSurfers again for their monthly meeting which just ended up being a number of people drinking in a bar. It was good to see some of the people again from last night and meet more new people. I can’t keep track of all the people I’m meeting everywhere, there are too many!

That was my final night in Zurich, it really felt like it had gone much too fast but it was definitely a great time. In the morning I was off to Bern.

At last, warmth.

Off the plane I stepped onto Athenian soil, a balmy 18 degrees. The plan was simple enough. I was to make my way to the CouchSurfing meeting at the Barrio Cafe in the centre of Athens and act out the character of the traveller with the lost documents, appealing to the CS Ambassadors.

When I stepped off the metro in Athens Central, I got lost. All the tiny streets going in every which direction, disorientated me rather badly and I ended up wandering around in the night looking for streets which I was supposed to turn up. I sat Wedown on a wall to try and reorganise myself when I was approached by Mike, a Canadian and fellow CouchSurfer. He told me that he had been in Athens for about a week and also the year prior, offering to help me find where I needed to go. Unfortunately, he was just about as useless as the map I was using and it ended up being me who found the Cafe in the end. It was good to have someone to talk to, though – you never know how dangerous these places are at night.

Arriving at the cafe, I staged my act to the first ambassador I saw, Lena. She was much less stressed than I had hoped and the joke kind of faded into nothing. Basically she said that I could sort it all out in the morning. When she found out it was a joke, she kicked me repeatedly in the leg yelling “LIAR!!”. Soon afterwards, I found my host for the first two nights in Athens, Vanessa, and later we headed back to her place, a huge apartment about seven metro stops out of central Athens.

The following day I had agreed to meet up with Mike to check out some of the sights. The first stop was the western world’s most prominent historical place, the Acropolis. We began to walk up the hill and came to a place which had a pretty good view over the city.

View over Athens

Further up we walked, I had an arguement with the ticket office lady over my student ID which has no expiry date on it, and after paying more than I wanted to, we were inside the complex. The main structure which everyone comes to see in the Acropolis is the Panthenon, a huge columned building which was covered in scafholding, my new pet hate. I thought that maybe I had come in a bad time, being winter, but later found out that the scafholding had been on there for 25 years and they were nowhere near ready to take it down. This was confirmed through seeing a number of photos of the Acropolis which all seemed to have been taken in the late 70s.

Panthenon

Down below the Panthenon is the Theatre of Dionysus.

Theatre of Dionysus

After seeing these two amazing sights, we walked back down the hill and checked out some more crazy ruins which I can’t remember the name of.

Lunch was had, then Mike decided that he should probably get back to his hostel and start packing as he was going to head back to Israel (where he was working or attending school or something) that evening. So we parted ways and I decided that I was going to walk up to the top of the Filopappou Hill.

On the way up I passed the Jail of Socrates.

Socrates Jail

Soon I made it to the top. The temple was less impressive than it had looked from a distance (though still cool) but the view of the Acropolis was pretty amazing.

Filopappou Monument

View of the Acropolis

On the way back I walked down through Pynx and past the Ancient Agora, but unfortunately it was closed. That was first on the agenda for the following day. I headed back to Vanessa’s place and that night we hung out, chatting about classic cars (she drove in a Citroen 2CV rally across europe) and good music and such.

Vanessa had friends coming to stay for the next few days, so this meant I had to leave the following morning. But it was ok, I had arranged to stay with Lena, the woman who was kicking me, and her seven year old son, Angelos, so I headed out to her place which was on the opposite side of Athens. Once set up there, I headed back into the centre as the Ancient Agora was calling me. There I met a Chinese American guy who was also travelling alone. Once again I was asked for directions in a city I know very little about, but this time I knew where I was going as he was going to the same place.

We hung out, walking around the ancient ruins, with the most impressive part definitely being the Temple of Hephaistos and Athena.

Temple of Hephaistos and Athena

From here I wandered down towards my last ancient site, the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

Temple of Olympian Zeus

The following day I visited the Museum of Archeology which was pretty amazing, although you can really see only so many marble statues, no matter how impressive they are. They also had a pretty good Egyptian collection and a gallery of Greek vases, none of which I recognised from my 7th form Classics class. After this was my time to check out all the crazy markets and shops which Athens has to offer. A jersey and backgammon set were bought, then I headed home.

The night Lena, her son, and I attended a CouchSurfing meeting in a local park which included crazy games, moonlight backgammon, and a small party at Lena’s upon return. Wine was served from 1.5 litre plastic bottles which looked like they should have contained meths. I thought the Grecians would have more pride in their wine considering ethey had a god devoted entirely to it.

The next day it was time to leave, I was heading for Rome but the mission was long. At first I was ripped off by a taxi driver, not by much, to get to the correct bus station to leave for Patras. On top of my fair he charged me for luggage and for the fact that I called him to come!! At the bus station I ran around like crazy with not much time to spare, only finding my bus at the last minute.

After a three hour bus ride, I arrived in Patras, with enough time to get myself on the Superfast ferry to Bari in Italy. Now this was an ordeal. Firstly, I went to the cabin which my ticket stated. There were two guys in there who started yelling at me about “reception! Reception!”. I so went to the reception to find that my ticket was wrong (like everybody’s) and got given a new cabin. I was alone in a 4 bed cabin which was nice, until aout 1:30 am which a bunch of children busted in and woke me up. The guard then made me get up, pack my stuff and go back to the reception again, to which they sent me back to the room. Now around 2am, I was back in the cabin with no children, but had gained the loudest snoarer in history. I managed to get back to sleep, only to be woken two hours early by the other guy in my cabin going on about us almost being at Bari.

Two hours later we were at Bari. I got off the ferry, became comfused for a while, then took a taxi to the train station, but not after being accosted by a random guy who wanted to take me there for five Euro – not in your random car!

In Bari I had a few hours to kill, so I headed to the tourist information centre, got a map and decided to check out the Old Town. There were town walls which you could walk upon.

Bari City Walls

And a large church.They also had a castle which was pretty cool and had been rebuilt and extended many times over the years.

Bari Castle

Soon it was time for the train to Rome, so off I headed and by that evening, I was ready to sleep!

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.