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Published: August 6th 2007
KGB hospitality
Come stay in our lovely padded cells... don't expect a minibar!In the last week and a half I've been through Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. I've said "Arrr" to a drink with a real-life Sweedish pirate in Riga, "ahh..." to some incredibly hot 'dancers' in Tallin, "uhh??" to ticket sales and collection people pretty much everywhere, and most importantly "aha!" finally finding Shane sleeping in a backpackers in the far north of mainland Europe.
Right now we're on a 21h journey back to Wroclaw for a final two days of freedom before I have to fly to Scotland and begin to again make a worthwhile contribution to society.
It's been an interesting way to spend my last couple of weeks to say the least! It certainly gave me a taste of a completely different fast and furious style of travel. It's worked out well, it's good to do something different now, but I wouldn't say it's mine or Shane's kettle of fish.. more a necessary evil. To top things off he's had a cold this last week - but in true Hantler Style has been going strong despite.
People often lump the three Baltic countries together. Of course they're all different, different languages, currencies (for now), culture, history,
and even appearance... but for me, on this trip, I saw fuck all of any of them - really just the "Old town" tourist district of their capital cities... and from this perspective they all have a few things in common.. they're all beautiful, clean, wel maintained, catering for rich tourists, and located within big, modern, prosperous cities. I know it's far from representative of the whole of the countries, but on the face of it these people are saying to the rest of the world "Russians? were there Russians here?? We're doing quite well by ourselves thankyou very much."
Generally these days have been a blur of bad beer and wine, good clubs, and short days. For me, the highlights include:
- Taking part as 3 grown men scare themselves witless in a dark Estonian "ghost town" while searching for an abandoned soviet submarine base.
- the gorgeous girls
- drinking seemingly endless bottles of red wine with an awesome ex-flatmate
- the amazing river-cobbled streets of old town Tallin
- the beautiful girls
- 48hours on 6 separate transports without any serious hiccoughs
- possibly the best meal, spiced beer,
and handmade spirits in a medieval Tallin restaraunt
- our 'enthusiastic and informative' waitress in a medieval Tallin restaraunt
- Visiting the former KGB headquartersin Vilnius and getting yet another lesson on how inhumane anc cold-blooded Russians could be in occupied lands
- Meeting a real-life pirate who's sold all his worldly posessions and moved accross the sea with nothing but his "...guitar and my pirate clothes"
And that's about it, we should be in Wroclaw in a couple of hours... exhausted, but it'll be good to be back in familiar surroundings for a couple of days to errr... relax?? ..or not 😊
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