GraemeB

After four hours on a train from Salzburg, I arrived in the far north of Slovenia. Although the country is quite small (about the same size as Wales), there seems to be a great variety of natural sights, many of which are very reminiscent of neighbouring Italy. In some of the tourist offices they have a leaflet “How to see Slovenia in 3 days” - it may be small, but I don't think 3 days would suffice to see the many wonders of this compact country. I began my week in Slovenia in the picturesque town of Bled, on the outskirts of the country's only national park, Triglav. Bled is truly a beautiful town, built around Lake Bled and overlooked by Bled Castle which sits upon a cliff jutting out into the lake. Bled was packed ... read more

I've had a few bad travelling experiences in my life, but none remotely compare to the journey from Wroclaw to Berlin. First of all, the train for which I had a ticket turned out to not exist, even though the timetables said it did and no-one knew why the timetables had changed. An hour later and another train was scheduled to leave – this was when the real problems started. Wroclaw station is being renovated at the moment so everyone has to wait outside – the streets were absolutely packed with hundreds, probably thousands of people with large backpacks and tents – I had no clue where they were going. I learnt soon enough, when everyone poured onto the platform I wanted. The train, when it arrived, was already full beyond limits, but we all just ... read more

Lublin, which is the largest city in South-east Poland, turned out to be far from the highlight of my time in Poland. I only stayed one night, which was fortunate, as I really didn't like the city at all. It's main draw is its medieval old town, but as Lublin has been made the European Capital of Culture 2016 (as banners everywhere inform visitors), most of the major buildings were covered in scaffolding and undergoing some sort of restoration, so there really wasn't that much to see. If I had known this, I probably would have knocked Lublin off my itinerary. Anyway, that's enough about Lublin. From there, I took a minibus to Krakow, the historic capital of Poland and current third city. I had high expectations for Krakow, and it really didn't disappoint. Without question ... read more

After Estonia and Latvia, I arrived in the final Baltic state of Lithuania. I was heading to the country’s small coastline and Lithuania’s third largest city, Klaipéda, but I stopped along the way at the fourth city, Siaulai (more or less pronounced Shoo-lay). This industrial city doesn’t really have anything to detain the visitor for that long, but 10km outside Siaulai is what has been described as the most “awe inspiring sight in Lithuania”, namely Siaulai’s Hill of Crosses. Essentially there are 2 small hills which, over many years, Lithuanians have taken to putting crosses in. There are more than 200,000 crosses there now, of all sizes. I was amazed at how many people were actually at the site when I visited – I assumed something so obscure and essentially in the middle of nowhere would ... read more

From Helsinki, it was a simple 3 hour ferry crossing to the Estonian capital Tallinn. The crossing wasn’t the best in the world (how can a ferry not have enough seats on board for all of the passengers?), worsened by the amount of drunk people on board (this was a 9am sailing). This did sort of set the scene for Tallinn though. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the city. On the one hand, the old town is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve seen – it has the best preserved medieval city walls in the world, with 1.8 of the original 4.2km still remaining, as well as 26 of the original 50 towers. The city is divided into the lower town, where the merchants lived, and the upper town (known as Toompea), ... read more