I spent the first week at my grandmother’s house in my village, reconnecting with the streets, mountains, family and friends. Leisure; strolling through the forest, fixing up a mountain bike, jogging, mowing my grandmother’s 8 hectares of lawn, biking from one grandmother’s house to the other. I didn’t talk to anyone my age until the weekend when I called Damian, an old childhood friend. Whenever we get together we paint the town red. Our three-day streak ended with me coming home at 8am, to my grandmother’s great disappointment, yelling and screaming. Theref [View Full Entry]

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We tenderly disembarked the Emerald at 8am and wove our way through Copenhagen via taxi, metro and bus to Tine’s neighborhood, which we quickly decided was a most livable section of the city due to its close proximity to two kebab joints, a grocery store, the bus stop and the University. Tine, a first year nursing student, welcomed us to CPH, helped us pick out what sites we should check out, planned out what we will do at night and gave us the keys to two bicycles, the preferred transportation in the city. Being a pedestrian in CPH is strange, everyone [View Full Entry]

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I must admit that we were sluggish in exploring Oslo due to our conditions caused by various exploits of the nights before. It was cold, dreary and we were feeling glum but managed to get a solid morning of exploration in. It was the first time we cut the exploration short, too. The best part of the day was sitting near a sweet circular fountain, people watching, chatting, reflecting. Another highlight included Jenn pretending to shoot cannonballs at the Emerald Princess, our beloved ship. Soundtrack for the day: Yeasayer- Sunrise King Creosote- Coast On By James Blunt- 1973 Bei [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Poland two days before the 20th anniversary of Solidarnosc and the tri-city was all a-flutter with nationalistic activity. So our boat actually docked in Gdynia, the port town of the tri-city, which consists of Gdynia (industrial town), Sopot (resort town), and Gdansk (historic town). We had to take the bus from the port to the train station and a train from Gdynia to Gdansk, which was a 30-minute ride. The central station in Gdansk is surprisingly beautiful. Gdansk was completely destroyed in the Second World War and Westerplatte, a naval base a few kilometers away, was th [View Full Entry]

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As we only had half a day in Tallinn, Jenn and I rented bikes to tour the city. I got a sweet brown citybike that rode like a charm, while Jenn opted for a smaller mountain bike. This was before we learned that the old town of Tallinn was completely covered in cobblestone! The city is absolutely charming, reminds me of York. Both are medieval towns with cobblestone streets, bowing buildings, gates, city walls, etc. We visited most of the major sites and churches and I even think I ran into the Estonian president as he was pulling into the Royal [View Full Entry]

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I have been waiting to visit Russia for a long, long time. My grandmother’s stories of traveling to the Ukraine and Russia during the 60s, 70s and 80s have always fascinated me; she set up a sort of trade route between Poland and those two countries when times were rough and merchandise in Poland was lacking. She even sent my father and his sister to Budapest via train to pick up supplies when he was just thirteen years old. She’s crazy. When I’m in PL, she makes me take a shot of Limoncello for breakfast. The other part of my fascination [View Full Entry]

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It was a triumph of a day as Jenn and I managed to tour all of Helsinki and eat a reindeer lunch for a grand sum of 6 euro, respectively. We bought a 6,80 euro all day transportation pass for 2,50 euro and nixed the excessive kilometers of rambling. We visited: the Temppeliaukio Rock Church (looks like a UFO!), the Senate Square and Lutheran St. Nicholas Cathedral (looks like a cake!), the red-tented market square, Russian Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral, walked the Esplanade, and then made our way up to the Sibellus park. As mentioned before, we ate reindeer casserole for lunch [View Full Entry]

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It was raining in Stockholm when we pulled into port; dreary yet picturesque- perhaps, it even more so because of the murkiness. Stockholm is niched amongst thousands of islands, an archipelago-city, city-archipelago. Water, water all around. In the sky, on the ground, left and right. Jenn and I started our self-propelled tour off by visiting the Gamla Stan- the old part of the city. We saw the Royal Palace, an adjacent church, meandered through the cobblestone streets. Just rambling the entire day as the weather cleared up. We crossed over one of the hundreds of bridges onto another isl [View Full Entry]

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Time to start this blog up again, as I'll many fantastical tales of Scandinavian fjords, Baltic/Carpathian retreats, and general Euro debauchery to tell in the next few months. In proper fashion, I will provide a quick run-down of places I have been to in the past 2 weeks since I graduated (for there have been many). After three days of watching gooseberries grow in my backyard (everyday the diameter would expand by approximately .47mm) I drove down to Baltimore to search for housing. Baltimore is crazy fun; there is no better way to describe it. After two wild days, I found [View Full Entry]

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Always crazy times in Wrocław. The flight over from Barcelona was a blur as the three of us (Jenn, my brother, and I) were working on roundabout 7 fancy shots and no sleep. Flew into Poznan, took a bus to the city centre, and a train (3 hours) to Wroclaw. I used the 60 złote that I had been stealthily hiding from my last Poland trip in November. When we made it to Wrocław it was a bit crazy because all three of our phones were dead and we wanted my cousin Malwina to meet us at the PKP station (train). [View Full Entry]

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