Category — Estonia

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.

Three hours later I woke up and made my ferry reservation to Estonia. Tiina had sent me an email telling me which was the cheapest company, so I booked that for roughly 20€. Then I went back to sleep a little bit more. I got up at quarter past seven and tooka shower and packed my bags. I had said goodbye to Serkan the previous night, so I quietly left the house when I was ready around 8:15.

I made my way to the ferry terminal and arrived there at 8:50, right in time for checkin which started at 9:00.I got my ticket and proceeded to the boarding area where I had to wait until I could board. I fell asleep of course, but that was just convenient as there was absolutely nothing to do in the boarding area (I didn’t have any euro’s left besides the few I was going to use for breakfast). When I woke up, boarding had just opened and I proceeded to board the ferry.

The boat ride was going to take 3,5 hours, so I proceeded to the panorama deck on one of the top floors thinking that there would be a nice and quiet place to sit and work on the laptop. I was wrong! This panorama lounge had a stage where some awful folk music was performed that was only watched by a bunch of old people. To make matters worse, after that they started playing bingo. I ignored my way through all this and watched some desperate housewives (yes, I am gay ) with my headphones on.

After I was out of stuff to watch, I fled the place looking for a cheap café on board the ship to spend my last few euro’s on a breakfast. I bought a nice shrimp salad sandwich and a coke. After eating it, I went back to my backpack I had left in the lounge. I sat next to it and just slept through the rest of the journey as I had only slept 3 hours the previous night.

I woke up 20 minutes before arriving in Tallinn, just enough to see the city from a distance. It looked very beautiful, with a beautiful old part on a hill and a more modern part a bit further away. I got off the boat when it docked and walked into the city. I was very nicely surprised by the beauty of Tallinn!

I love coming to a new country: new money, new simple words and phrases to learn, a whole new culture to learn with all it’s customs. I arrived in Estonia with an empty wallet (I had to get rid of my last euro’s) and an empty mind. Since Helsinki had been one of my goals and my next goal, being Thailand, was gone I now felt completely free to do whatever I wanted. An awesome feeling!

Since I didn’t have a map, the tourist information was closed and I had to drag around my backpack, I chose to spend the rest of the afternoon in a coffee place where there was wireless internet. I catched up on stuff (I am doing that a lot these days, constantly being behind on everything) and around 19.00 I left for my host’s place.

I took a bus from the spot where they had advised me to take it from and listened very carefully to the names of the stops the driver was announcing. In cases like this, when I am traveling in public transport in the dark, I never sit down because that means the risk that I fall asleep is high. I could feel that I was at high alert: paying a lot of attention to everyone around me and everything that happened. I find that for some reason, traveling in the dark alone makes everybody become a potential robber or criminal. It is a very unpleasant feeling and a little bit scary. Then something happened that unfortunately did not make this feeling get any less in the future…

I got off the bus, followed the directions my hosts had given me but felt a little lost. I (thought I) had learned that asking never hurts. Boy was I wrong! I asked some guy that was knocking on a window of one of the apartment buildings, figuring that he probably lived there and would know where to go. He only spoke Russian and since my Russian is pretty basic (all I can say is “excuse me, do you speak english” and “I don’t understand Russian”) he was obviously not of much help. I tried to thank him and make it clear that I would ask someone else, but he wouldn’t listen and kept speaking Russian to me.

I walked away because I saw some younger kids who would probably speak English. They did and they told me I was very close. I walked in the direction they said it was (I was basically standing 20 meters from the street. Now all I needed was to find the right building. The Russian guy however kept following me and treid top convince me that the street I was looking for was in another direction. Luckily the young kids saw that and pointed in another direction. I started to be suspicious about the Russian guy and walked away from him. He however kept following me and kept talking to me.

I asked a taxi driver that happened to pass by for the right building (again, I was standing right in front of it but it was dark so I couldn’t see.). I walked to the door now clearly feeling that the Russian guy was up to no good. I tried ringing the bell, but the calling mechanism was not very obvious plus I was getting nervo… BAM! He punched me in my face and went into battle stance. Since I was carrying a backpack and my daypack with my laptop in it, I was in no position to fight back (also, my last fight was in primary school :)) so I chose the other obvious course of action: attract attention. I started shouting and that made the guy so nervous that he walked away when a lady with a dog came in my direction.

My nose was bleeding heavily and the lady obviously did not really know what to do. I convinced her that I needed to be at number 39 and she rang the door bell for me. Covering my bleeding nose with two hands I headed inside. The door opened: “Hi, I’m walter. I just got punched in the face by some crazy guy”. Johnny looked at me a little flabbergasted. He pointed me towards the bathroom and gave me some cotton balls to stop the bleeding. I looked in the mirror and assessed the damage: a nose that hurts like hell (nothing broken) and two busted lips. Great! I cleaned up and then explained the whole story to Johnny. He told me that this was not the best neighbourhood but that this has never happened. Guess I was just unlucky to ask the wrong guy

I guess this was one of those things I knew would happen eventually. Still, they always come unexpected. I tried to not let it get to me and tell myself that this was not really a big problem as nothing got stolen. It was kind of hard, but I guess that is one of the lesser sides of traveling.

After I had calmed down from the shock a little bit, Johnny made me dinner. He had been at home the whole day because he was feeling sick. Lena was still at her mom’s place. I talked with Johnny for a while and it turned out that he was also a computer programmer, albeit more oriented towards web programming. Him and Lena have started a company (http://rural.travelage.eu) not long ago for promoting rural tourism in Europe, quite interesting.

After a while Lena got home and she was equally surprised about what happened. She told me that previous guest had been offered the use of a mobile phone when they were lost and asked someone for directions.

We all worked for a while and talked in between about all kinds of things. I noticed that their internet connection was very fast and they told me that Estonia is actually one of the most wired countries in the world (to my surprise). After a while I decided to go to bed early since I was very tired. Lena and Johnny both had to get up early the next day, so we all went to bed.