Posts from — October 2007

Just updated the gallery. head on over to see pics of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Enjoy!

The next morning I woke up early as I was sleeping on an airbed that was leaking and I had been sleeping on the ground since 4am. That, in combination with my back still hurting from the day before was not a good sleeping place I took my laptop and my sleeping bag and made myself comfortable in the comfy chair in the kitchen. I worked on responding to my email and writing my blog. Then I slept some more and when I woke up from pain I went back into the bedroom. I lay down on my camping mattress and blogged a bit more. Suddenly I heard someone knocking on the front door. I was a bit weary of opening it, since Lauris had told me about a homeless guy living in the stairwell and I was the only one awake at the time. I couldn’t identify the person, whoever it was.

When the knocking kept going, I decided to man up and open the door anyway. Lo and behold, it was Ash, the lost surfer. Ash was actually supposed to arrive the night before but never showed up. This happens sometimes in couchsurfing and it sucks: you open your house to someone and they never show up, even without giving you any explanation sometimes. He quickly explained the situation though: he had fallen off a rooftop in St. Petersburg the day before and damaged his back badly enough to want to take a bus instead of hitchhiking. The bus however was only going to Riga during the night so that’s why he showed up now instead of the day before. I woke up Lauris and we talked with Ash for a while. We cooked some breakfast (yes, we actually cooked ) and talked some more.

After breakfast we decided to go explore one of the glass rooftops we could see on the building on the other side. It turned out to be the top of the stairwell/elevator shaft so we walked up the stairs to the top floor and climbed through a fence shielding a stairway up to a platform on top of the elevator shaft. Someone had obviously been living there a while ago. We found a box of completely unharmed longdrink glasses and took them back to the apartment after climbing down.

After the stairwell adventure we walked through the city back to the apartment we had been to the day before (the one with the nice rooftop). This time we climbed up there with six people and we talked a lot. Well, actually they talked a lot and I slept a lot. Ah well, I guess sleeping on rooftops is a new experience as well When we all got cold we went back down and walked to the harbor area where later that day the film festival thing would start.

Lauris knew a bunch of people there so we first said hi to them. They gave us a shitload of leftover porridge and when we were full, Lauris decided to take us to an abandoned ship wreck that was close by. We climbed all over it while I couldn’t help suppressing some thoughts about asbestos and various chemicals (It wasn’t the best looking ship wreck ever, so to speak ). Then Ash started the association game. Basically you sit in a circle and say a word. The next person says the first thing that comes to their mind and so on. Quite funny to see what people’s associations are sometimes.

After a while we got sick of it (or was it secretly the ship that made us sick? :P) and decided to head back to the film festival area. There we just hung out until the movies started. I sat through the first batch of movies without falling asleep! What an achievement! Some of them were quite good (especially for French movies) and some of them had a high what-the-fuck-factor (even for French movies). The second batch of movies I was a bit less lucky, I saw part of the first one and part of the last one and some fragments in between.

During the second break we were a bit bored so Lauris and me decided to go home and Ash decided to stay there. Just before we left I saw part of a Russian movie about a farm family who sold their beautiful daughter to a rich city guy. Quite realistic, impressive and depressing at the same time.

When we got home it was just him and me, the rest of the guys were out somewhere. Lauris wanted to write a letter to an ex-girlfriend and I needed to catch up on email and couchsurfing business, so we both worked quietly for a while. Around 1:15 I fell asleep on the couch which also happens to be Lauris’ bed and instead of him waking me up he slept on the floor (so I found out the next morning ).

When I woke up at 7 the next day I could hear the rain pouring on the rooftop of the hostel. I decided that was a good reason to go back to sleep and sleep as long as possible before getting out of the room (checkout was at noon). I slept and watched TV shows until 11:30, when it really started to be time to get up

I got up and took a shower, but when I got out of the shower I strained my back badly. This was not very good to say the least With a painful back I packed my bag and ooh-ing and ah-ing I went downstairs. At the front desk I saw that the internet computer was free and since I was hurting so much I couldn’t walk far anyway, so I decided to sit down and check my e-mail.

Much to my surprise I found a host, Lauris, willing to host me for my remaining time in Riga! I sent him a message saying that I would wait for him at 14:00 at the ground floor restaurant of the department store next to central station. I couldn’t actually wait for an answer since someone else wanted to use the computer. Now there was only one problem: I actually had to walk there with a 20Kg backpack!

I walked there really slowly and it was extremely painful. I sat down and bought some breakfast and a magazine to kill the time as it was only 13:00 and this was not a place I felt secure taking the laptop out (besides the fact that that was physically impossible ). When Lauris arrived at 14:00 he was like a whirlwind: talking and talking, asking questions, telling me all kinds of things, talking travel stories and asking for some in return. I told him about my back but he had apparently forgotten after 5 minutes which forced me to keep up with him almost running through the city. I guess it was good for me because it made me forget about my back and it actually hurt a bit less.

We walked for 20 minutes to his house which was an old sovjet-style apartment building. The apartment he and his friends were living in had no hot water, no shower and central heating hadn’t been turned on yet. He and his friends were extremely friendly though, so I immediately felt very comfortable. One thing that bothered me were my own thoughts: elitist westernized thoughts kept shooting through my mind, thoughts that I didn’t want to have and was actually ashamed of thinking. Actually this was food for more thought about my own thoughts :).

Lauris and his friends are freegans, which means that basically they live as cheap as possible enjoying everything free in this world: dumpster diving, hitchhiking etc. Luckily for me this was not my first encounter to this lifestyle, so it was easier to get used to. It is actually a lifestyle that I could see myself doing if I wasn’t so damn brainwashed by western societies

Lauris had to deliver some posters for an upcoming event to the hostel he worked for (not the one I was staying in ), so we decided to go there by bike. Yippiee, I hadn’t been riding a bicycle since I left Holland and it felt very good, even despite the fact that the thing had no breaks, my back was still hurting and riding a bike in Riga is a ‘bit’ more dangerous than in Holland :). We were driving fast through the streets of Riga, delivering the posters to the hostel. Then I was hungry and Lauris took me to a place to eat. Some nice domestic food and I treated him to some of it. An example of Freegan lifestyle: when we sat down, he walked over to the next table and took the leftovers from that table. Something that when you think of it, is not strange at all. We saw the people leave and their food was as good as fresh. Still, in western society this is completely not done for reasons unknown to me. Anyway, I didn’t mind at all and it just meant we had a little more food

After dinner we went to the top floor of one of the highest hotels in the city to enjoy the view. We were up there for half an hour just enjoying the view and talking. Then we had to get back down as our bicycles were locked but unattended. Lauris decided we would visit a friend’s house toi climb her rooftop and see what they were up to. We went there, made tea and climbed up to the rooftop. It was beautiful, as most rooftops have just about the same height you can see quite far in every direction. We watched a beautiful sunset and when it started raining and we got cold we went back down.

We took a quick bicycle ride to an area in the harbor where there was a cultural area that was used by the young people of Riga for all kinds of cultural events. Lauris told me about a film festival that would take place here the next day and kind of convinced me to stay for the weekend to go there. Anyway, the area was really nice, almost like a squat except for the fact that it was legal.

We drove back home to cook dinner as we had most of the pots and pans with us that Lauris had taken to his friends’ apartment a few days earlier for a big picknick there. Before we could cook dinner we had to go shopping first. We went to buy some food and when we came back, I helped preparing dinner. Everyone in the house was vegetarian but I don’t mind as long as it’s only for a couple of days

We all ate together: the guys living there and all guests, it was really nice. After dinner two of Lauris’ friends came over and we looked at the pictures of my travels up to then and I told some of my travel stories. After that we watched a few episodes of Green Wing, another British comedy show that I had never heard of but it is pretty funny actually. After that it was late already and we fell asleep. One of the girls stayed over as well.

The next morning we got up at 7:00. We had a quick breakfast and I packed my bag. I notice that I am getting faster and faster at packing that thing. I know exactly what goes where and how. Actually, I woke up a little later than 7, so I had to skip shower which was not a real problem since I wouldn’t feel comfortable in taking a shower in a bathroom without a door anyway. Instead I just figured I would take one later that day in Riga.

I left the apartment together with Krista. We got on a bus as her school was in the same direction as my bus stop at the end of town. We said goodbye on the bus and she told me where to go for a good hitchhiking spot. I was so grateful for her saving me from sleeping in a hostel this night!

As it was still halfdark I figured it might be a bit early to start hitchhiking, so I looked to see if the same coffee place from last night was still open so I could sit there and look for a place to sleep in Riga (I still had no couch). Unfortunately it was closed so I decided to start hitchhiking anyway.

I took the bus she had told me to get and looked for the football stadium she had told me to look for. It took a long time before I saw a football field with some benches next to it and figured this would be my stop. The name of the stop also sounded like the name she had told me. When I got off the bus I saw that this was indeed the right place to be. As it was still dark, I walked a little and made my sign for Riga. After a while it started to rain, which if it doesn’t come in too large portions can be a good thing for a hitchhiker.

After a while I was picked up by a Latvian truck driver driving from Finland all the way to Kaunas in Lithuania. This was exactly the direction I was going in a few days later and for a moment I was tempted to stay in this truck all the way there. Then I however realized that I was not doing some race to get as far as possible as quickly as possible, I am here to actually see the countries I am in

When we neared the border to Latvia I was a little confused as communicating with the driver was hard and he stopped at a place before the border. I had never crossed a guarded border before, and definitely not while hitchhiking in a truck. Confused I got out and followed the truck driver who entered a building. I couldn’t find him inside so I quickly went to the toilet (I thought that might be where he was) but he wasn’t there. I waited back outside and when he returned it turned out that he had just been exchanging money at the exchange office (the building didn’t have sign on it indicating it was here and from the inside it was just a bunch of corridors, very strange).

We proceeded to the real border and the driver gave the border guard my passport along with all the papers for him and his truck. Everything was fine and we were let into Latvia, yay! This is the 16^th country I have visited in my life. The counter is going up!

The driver took me almost all the way to Riga but dropped me about 15 km before as he wasn’t going all the way there. I got out and realized I was staning along the Baltic highway where cars drive really fast and there is no goo spot to start hitchhiking. Luckily there was a bus stop, so I started there. I actually wanted to take a bus, but I didn’t have any Latvian money. Before starting to hitchhike again I went into a small shop on the other side of the highway but as I had no Latvian money on me and they didn’t accept Estonian money, I couldn’t buy anything. It was only 10:50 and I was already almost in Riga. I love hitchhiking in these countries!

I got a ride pretty fast from a nice woman who turned out to be a film director. She was not working at the moment however as she had just had a baby 5 months ago. She was on her way to see her old colleagues for a few hours in Riga. She told me some general things about Latvia and when we got to the place she worked at (right in the center of the city!) she showed me where to find an ATM and told me some general directions for the city center. I got some money (again, I guessed the amount as I had forgotten to check the exchange rate again ) from the ATM and then went looking for a place with wireless internet.

Within minutes I saw a double coffee (this is a chain of coffee places in the Baltics) and hoped there would be wifi there. Unfortunately there was only paid wifi, but there was no way to pay by credit card and my Estonian phone number did not allow me to send a message to a special number like this one. I got a bite to eat and a glass of milk as I had only little breakfast. While waiting I wrote some blog posts. After eating I left the place as the pressure of finding a couch for the night was getting bigger and bigger and time was running out.

I walked around a bit more in the beautiful Riga and after a while I found another double coffee. I checked for wifi connections on my phone and found a couple outside, so I went inside. Unfortunately the walls of the building were apparently blocking the signal, since there was none inside. Because I had already gotten the laptop out, I had to order something and decided a cup of tea would be cheap. Unfortunately the waitress brought me a whole pot of tea (selling tactics?), so I drank a few cups and then left that place.

I walked around some more looking for a wireless connection, now getting pretty anxious to find one soon. I walked past an irish pub and noticed the wifi sticker on the window. I went inside and ordered a Latvian beer. Then I set up my laptop only to find out that it was the same paid network that I had run into in the first double coffee. This time, I asked the guy at the next table if he would send the text message for me and I would give him one lat for it. He agreed and I finally had a connection. I immediately started sending out text messages through skype and from my Estonian sim, not knowing yet that I could not receive messages on this number. A lot of people contacted for nothing as would turn out later!

I also added one guy on skype as his profile showed him to be online and just as my hour of access was finishing, he responded. I quickly asked the bartender to do the same for me as the other guy had done and got another hour of access. I talked for a bit with the skype guy and he gave me the number for a friend of his who would be able to help me. I called the guy and he asked me to call back after six and he would help me. I was very happy as I thought I had a place to sleep.

I wrapped things up at the Irish pub and walked around the city for another hour before sitting down at stockmann’s (a big expensive department store) in the restaurant on the top floor, figuring that would be a safe place to take out my laptop. I took it out and pretended I was working while actually falling asleep. I dozed until it was six (almost 45 minutes without ordering or being bothered, yay ) and called the guy back. He now told me that he was too busy and that I would have to find a place to sleep by myself. Fuck! I didn’t see that one coming! I was frustrated, depressed and felt sick (had been feeling sick for a few days now, probably traveling catching up with me).

I was absolutely in no mood for people or much hassle anymore, so I decided to go to the hostel at the back of the central train station. My first night in a hostel had finally arrived! As I was walking to the hostel I felt insecure because of the dark area with dark alleys that were almost deserted (during the day this was a busy market place, now it was just creepy). I found the hostel and when I entered I saw only shabby people who were drunk and quarreling. It turned out this was not the hostel but the public cheap restaurant below it. I went up one floor and there it was much nicer.

I sat down at the desk and booked a room. It turned out to be 13€ per person per night and because I felt so sick I booked a double room (no single rooms available) paying for both the beds to make sure I had the room for myself. It felt a bit posh (as far as you can be posh in a hostel ), but I really needed some privacy and was not up for anyone stumbling into my room in the middle of the night.

I went up to the room and unexpectedly it looked very clean and nice! I dropped my bags and fell into the bed. I tried to sleep but was too depressed still. I decided to take a nice hour long shower and just sit down, thinking about things as they were going right now. After an hour I felt a lot better (although still pretty sick) and got out of the shower. I did some things that had to be done: I prepared my laundry (figuring there had to be some laundry room in the hostel), I looked for a wifi network (found one but it was secured) and I reorganized my backpack. I went downstairs to the restaurant but it was already closed. I didn’t really mind as I felt like shit anyway. I bought some drinks at the front desk of the hostel and asked the guy for the wireless passcode. He gave me one that he said might be the one I needed.

I went back to my room and tried the password. It didn’t work. I decided to watch some shows on my laptop and after that I went to bed. I was very tired form an eventful day. For the first time I felt a little bit happy to not be couchsurfing as that means you have to stay up and pay attention to people. That is usually fine, but tonight I was more happy here in the hostel.

The next day I got up before Johnny and Lena again to not disturb them in their morning rhythm. After I had my shower I slept a bit more until Johnny and Lena were ready for breakfast. We had a nice breakfast together. Since Johnny is a programmer, he has very flexible hours so he can start his day at 10 if he wants to (of course this means working late, but that’s a small price to pay). After breakfast I started sending out text messages to hospitality club hosts in Parnu as I still did not have a host for that night. Due to the way HC profiles are set up, a lot of people leave their phone number which can be very handy in case of last minute requests.

I also took some pictures of Johnny and Lena and their lovely cat that looks so much like Doerak (I miss you!) in front of their super cool living room world map. Then I left the apartment with Johnny who happened to go in the same direction as me. We took a bus to the center and Johnny explained to me how to get to a good place to start hitchhiking. I double checked the information at the bus station, bought a ticket and took the bus. I fell asleep of course and woke up just as the bus was at the end of the line (which was where I needed to be).

This was my first time hitchhiking out of Scandinavia and I was a bit nervous, probably partly due to what had happened a couple of days ago. Even though Baltic people don’t like to be called eastern Europeans, the country sure looks like an eastern European one from time to time. I didn’t quite know if this was a good place to start hitchhiking, but I started anyway. After about half an hour I was picked up by a nice Finnish driver who spoke a little german. He took me all the way straight to Parnu. All right, I felt much better!

Whjen we got to Parnu, he insisted to buy me some coffee (or in my case, a cola) and would not let me pay for it. Very nice of him! We talked a bit more and then he had to leave as he was there for work. I stayed and got out the laptop as I had seen more people with laptops which probably meant there was free wireless there. I was right. I still didn’t have a place to sleep for the night so I started sending out more text messages. In total I sent out 8 CS requests, 1 HC request and 12 text messages. I have never before had to do some much to get a couch.

At some point I thought I wouldn’t find a host at all and I called a hostel to ask them if they had some place for me to sleep. Luckily, shortly after that, someone responded that she couldn’t host me, but had found her sister prepared to pick me up and host me. By that time it was 19.00 however and dark outside. I still had to wait until 21.00 before I would be picked up however. I spent that time having dinner and reading email and watching some tv show to get the stress of this day out of me. Parnu is probably an interesting little town, but at this point I hadn’t seen more than a coffee place by light

At 21.00 the sister, called Krista, picked me up and we walked to her apartment that was right on the sea side. It was a nice walk after sitting inside the whole day. Krista told me about Parnu on the way home. This was one of the biggest summer towns (much like Renesse in Holland): very busy in the summer and almost dead in the winter. Tourism was booming here, plans for building expensive apartments all along the coast line are continuously being made (and approved, to much regret of the locals).

Krista’s apartment was really small but cosy. It had a really weird layout though: in the kitchen, there was an open bathroom. That meant that when someone was in the bathroom, either taking a crap or a shower, the other people in the apartment would either have to stay in the bedroom or living room or in the kitchen. I had no problems with it for a night, though.

Krista told me she had a 16 year old son that was sleeping in the bedroom (which would be my room for this night) and she was sleeping in the living room. I put my bags down and then we walked the dog. Krista lives around 150m from the coast line in an old apartment building so we walked along the beach. Here I could clearly see the results from the earlier mentioned summer tourism: a boulevard that had all fountains turned off since it was not summer anymore (who cares about the locals ?!) and a few expensive resorts with a tropical swimming paradise. Apartments are mostly being bought by rich Finns as a nice apartment with a view to the sea costs roughly 100.000€, which is not much for people with a western salary (but a lot for average locals). A solid investment as I see it, since this town had explosive growth written all over it.

Krista told me that by daylight I would have been able to see the sea from the windows of her apartment, but as it was pitch black that was not the case now When we got home Krista gave me some delicious bread with fish as a late night snack (I wasn’t really hungry but couldn’t convince her ) I then spent some time looking for a couch for Riga. I noticed again that although living conditions were sub-optimal (but still pretty good) the internet was lightning fast. I like Estonia :). After that I went to bed as we had to get up early the next morning (Krista is a teacher at a school for mentally challenged children so she cannot be late for work which starts at 8).

Johnny and Lena had requested that I take a shower before they woke up and since I don’t have a problem with getting up early I got up at 7:30 and took a nice warm shower. After that I read some email while Johnny and Lena were getting up and going through their morning routines. We had breakfast together and then all left the house.

Lena gave me a lift into the city since she had to go there for a Spanish class anyway. She dropped me off right at the edge of old town. I walked back to the tourist information office to get a map (I was there the previous day when they were closed so it was easy to find). I walked around the beautifully preserved old town (it is so well preserved that it is on UNESCO’s world heritage list) for a while and was then lured into a cellar restaurant by a traditionally dressed man. I had a nice breakfast there and wrote the story about my fight the night before to get rid of some frustration.

After that I walked around the old town for a couple of hours, visiting an orthodox church and finally walking to the newer part of town. I bought an Estonian prepaid simcard while walking around that cost me very little and would be much cheaper than using my dutch number. When I was tired of wandering around I sat down in the restaurant of a big department store to use some internet facilities (I saw someone else with a laptop there which is usually a good sign that there is wireless internet ).

I went back home around 17:00 because I was really not looking forward to walking alone in that neighborhood again in the dark. Luckily Lena was there and she let me in. She was still working though, so I sat down quietly and worked on finding accommodation for Parnu and Riga. I still didn’t have a couch for Parnu and I was going there the next day! The one single small downside of couchsurfing is that it takes a lot of time to find couches sometimes. You have to write personal messages to many people sometimes and then wait for responses.

Lena and me fixed dinner together while talking about a bunch of stuff. When Johnny came home around 20.00, we were just done cooking dinner, so we could go to eat it immediately. After dinner we stayed at the table drinking tea and having some more conversations.

I worked a bit more on the laptop after that and we talked about my plans for the coming months. It feels like they are changing constantly over the last few months. This is exactly why I didn’t make any plans when I was still at home and it turns out to be one of the better decisions of my trip! I just let life and the world surprise me every day :). One of the reasons I couldn’t stop talking about my plans was that Johnny and Lena’s house is full of maps on the walls. Their masterpiece is a map of 4 by 2,5 meter covering their whole living room wall. I could easily stare at it for hours Eventually I got tired though and decided to go to bed.