Ich bin ein Berliner

Well ive popped my head up again to give some kind of update of my travels; FYI im currently in Berlin, Germany, staying at a friends apartment for an as yet undetermined length of time... eventually this blog will catch up to where i ACTUALLY am!

Yes so despite all the delays in Warsaw i still managed to make it to my flight on time and jetted off to Tallinn, Estonia. Despite some trouble finding my direction in the city, i managed to find the ferry ticketing office and bought a ticket across to Finland, and then got directions to the port of Tallinn. I missed the boat i wanted to catch to Helsinki, so had to catch a later, more expensive ferry :0( Also i later found out that on the boat that i missed were a bunch of friends i was going to meet later on...

So i got into Helsinki and despite taking an hour or so to get my bearings (hehehehe) i found my hostel, Academica. It was a reaaaally nice place, the dorm rooms only had 3 people in them which was good, and they had a bathroom and kitchenette included! Also a nice fridge which had I known about, i could have brought some cheap beer from Estonia to put in it!
I didnt have other footbag players in my room but down the hall was some Swiss and German players and they kindly invited me in for dinner and beer just as i arrived! In fact one friend of mine was in the reception when i got to the hostel, and he helped carry my bags to my room heheheh thanks bell-boy Jan!

I spent the night at the hostel and then the following day, went to the event site for the 2005 World Footbag Championships. The first day or two was just Footbag net preliminary rounds, so i spent the day catching up with some friends i had met at other tournaments, and playing some hack. Alot of what went on in Helsinki will be boring for most of you so i wont go into much detail about it.

Helsinki itself is a pretty pleasant city to be in, although there isnt really that much that is remarkable about it. Its quite clean and most things are close together, so its easy to get around to places. the transport system is also quite adequate. The city provides bikes in the summer which you can rent like a shopping trolley (get your money back when you return it to the bike stand). I took one out for half a day and rode around the city, to the harbour and some churches and to the big park in town, Kaivopuisto park. It looks out over the harbour and the ocean towards Tallinn.
Actually i did alot of miles on that bike, or so it felt, and it was reaaaaally uncomfortable!
The rest of my week in Finland was spent playing footbag and partying alot, although the parties werent as good as in Poland the weeks beforehand. The beer was more expensive and the music was often a bit crap, and with everyone spread out in accomodation across the city, it was hard to know what was going on and to get everyone together to party.
In the competition i did really badly as expected, but better than the previous comp so that was ok i guess.

So after many long days and late nights, it was time to leave Helsinki, so i took a ferry back to Tallinn with some other footbaggers, and then spent an evening with two of them in Tallinn. We spent ages phoning all the hostels in Tallinn trying to get a room and eventually found one in a rather poor area of the city. The manager was this funny little old lady who was very very nice to us and set us up with a real nice room at a real nice price! The breakfast the following morning was quite funny, it felt like being in her home or something and she fussed over us no end!
The night we arrived there we spent sitting on a balcony on a high part of the city looking out onto the place, having a few beers with a couple of local footbaggers and one from America who was in Helsinki but we randomly bumped into him in Tallinn. We had a nice meal at an African restaurant that was really chilled.

The following day we went our separate ways, and i tramped back across Tallinn and took my flight back to Warsaw. I didnt really want to go back there as ive seen it and it wasnt that nice, but i wasnt able to change my return destination on the ticket so i had no choice. I was actually more worried about how i would get from Warsaw to Prague, as when i bought the ticket i thought 'yeh no worries, ill just get night train across, shell be right'. Since then though id read and heard about all kinds of nasty stuff on these trains and didnt really want to risk going 8 hours through Poland at night, by myself. So i woosed out and took a 10 hour bus ride. At first finding the international ticket desk at the train station was a challenge, until a fellow Aussie turned up and together we found out where to go! :0)
Its no joke, there really are Aussies absolutely everywhere you go!

So the busride was relatively painless, and i arrived at about 8am in Prague the next day. Proceeded to get lost in Prague trying to find this hostel, and 1 hour later i arrived to find i could only stay one night then id have to find another place. Fortunately there was another cheaper hostel up the road, so i booked in there aswell but still spent the night at the first one. In my room were a bunch of UK lads about my age who were pretty friendly, so we headed out that night for beers and stuff along with this hot Canadian girl and some other people. We went to the Palac Acropolis which is one of the most popular clubs in Prague, open 24 hours. In Prague you can get a 0.5L beer in a bar for AU$0.80!!

I spent the next day with these guys too, wandering around Prague, visiting the Erotica Museum (hahahahah this was a very male thing to do, and complete waste of time and money as it turned out... just a little too bizarre i think) but soon started to feel a little 'held back' by staying with them. Obviously NOTHING against them, but they were at the end of their holiday and just mucking around a bit, spending money and stuff, whereas i had to see some stuff, so i started to go my own way around town.

Prague is such a beautiful city. The riverside location, the huge old town area and awesome architecture, so many people around, its really great. Its quite cheap if avoid the touristy places also. I visited the Prague castle and climbed the cathedral tower to take a look out across the whole city. Its really quite big when you see it like this, as on ground level you can mistakenly feel youve seen it all. I wandered around the Jewish quarter and the Small Quarter, and randomly walked through this little door in a wall on the side of the road and found this massive courtyard and garden which i guess was part of the castle grounds.
For laughs i also went to a Spider and Scorpion museum which was quite disappointing and low quality but they had some awesome spiders in there.
The city centre is very touristy and can be quite packed and uncomfortable in places, but generally it wasnt bad at all. I also fortunately had no problem with pickpockets or anything, but heard from other people at our hostel that its definitely a problem.
Oh on the night we went out for beers we went to this small pub that served some traditional Czech food, i think. I had smoked ham and sauerkraut, and dumplings! It was really quite good, and cheap too.
I spent another day checking out the sites, finding some locations that were famous from footbag videos heheheh, and then hanging out with the guys from the hostel and playing some drinking games hehehe This was at the new hostel, which in the winter is a school but they convert it to a hostel in summer, so the rooms are actually kids classrooms with pictures on the walls and blackboards etc... its weird! Naturally there was an Australian who was in our room too lol

My 3 days in Prague soon finished up, so i left the hostel for a bus station outside Prague, to join a bunch of footbaggers for a little trip to Croatia...

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