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Published: September 19th 2015
After documenting our life histories on various lengthy forms, a trip to London to provide fingerprints for the Russians and a slightly tense wait, we were finally on board the Eurostar to France with our Russian and Chinese Visas in hand. Our rough plan for this last leg of our world trip is to head overland through Europe to St Petersburg, cross Russia and Mongolia by train over a month or so and end up in Beijing. From there we will spend a month in China and then hopefully hop over to Japan, New Zealand and Australia before finally heading home, perhaps via Indonesia.
Our first stop on our overland trip to Russia was Lille in France, where we had rented possibly the smallest apartment imaginable through AirBnB. Despite its size (your knees prevented you from closing the door in the bathroom and our bed was suspended only a couple of feet from the ceiling) our flat was ideally located for exploring Lille’s old town and impressive central square. As this was to be our one and only stop in France, we spent quite a lot of our time enjoying all things French and tasty, such as coffee and croissants,
cheese and wine and particularly enjoyable for Ross, the Northern French White Beer.
Waving goodbye to France, we caught a series of trains and eventually landed in the Belgium city of Ghent. Our original plan had been to stay in Bruges, but after checking the price of accommodation in both Ghent and Bruges, we chose to rent an entire (this time very spacious) apartment in Ghent for less than the price of two dorm beds in Bruges. We certainly felt we’d made the right decision whilst relaxing with a Belgium beer on our sunny balcony. From Ghent, which is itself a very pretty city, we were able to take the train to Bruges for the day, so spent a full day wandering around the canals and cobbled streets of Bruges and explored Ghent the following day.
Our next destination was Cologne in Germany, so we jumped on a train to Brussels where we spent a couple of hours before catching a bus and checking into our next rented apartment in Cologne. Unfortunately our one day in the city coincided with the one rainy day in the week, so we spent the day dodging the heavier showers with strategic
coffee and bratwurst stops.
From Cologne we jumped on an eleven hour bus to Berlin. Although the thought of eleven hours on a Eurolines bus was not something either of us looked forward to, the bus was so much cheaper than the train, we couldn’t justify not taking it. Our fellow passengers, who appeared to be on the bus for the long haul (to the Baltic States) made the best of the journey by steadily working their way through bagful’s of booze. Needless to say, we were pleased to finally pull into Berlin’s bus station.
During our time travelling through Europe the temperatures had been steadily increasing, but it was only in Berlin that we realised we were in the middle of a serious heatwave. The temperature on our second day in the city reached only 0.1°C below the hottest temperature ever recorded in the city, which made sightseeing a little tiring. The hot temperatures didn’t however detract us from enjoying the Berlin Annual International Beer Festival that just happened to coincide with our visit. The festival featured 2.2 km of beer stalls, which even Ross could not do justice. Despite the heat, we really enjoyed our time
in Berlin and found it a very interesting city, one which we would definitely return to in the future.
After our stay in Berlin, we followed the heatwave to Poznan, in Poland, on board the Polski Bus (this is the actual name of the bus company). After finally convincing the very severe security guard that we were allowed into the apartment we had rented, we set out to explore the city, but rather slowly, as by this time temperatures had reached such heights in Poland that Ikea stores were forced to take meatballs off their menus (as people don’t eat meatballs in hot weather perhaps?). Poznan is a relaxed and pretty city with a large square and small historic centre.
Our second stop in Poland was the capital city Warsaw. Not having very high expectations for Warsaw (we imagined everything to be grey and gloomy), we were surprised by how pretty and colourful the old town was. We spent an interesting couple of days wandering about the old town and seeing the main sights, such as the Palace of Culture and Science, a towering building commissioned by Stalin as a “gift” to the Polish people and inspired, strangely,
by the Empire State Building; the church where Chopin’s heart is supposedly kept preserved in a jar of cognac and a very grand park and palace complex, home to Poland’s last monarch. We left Poland after our couple days in Warsaw, hoping to see more of the country, particularly the mountains in the south one day.
The next week or so of our trip across Europe was to be spent in the Baltic States. We decided to spend the majority of our time in Estonia (mainly as it is the furthest away), so we spent a couple of days in both Vilnius, Lithuania and Riga, Latvia on our way to the Estonian capital of Tallinn. Both cities were really pretty and definitely worth visiting. Liz particularly enjoyed Vilnius as we took a day trip to the lakeside town of Trakai, where we hired a pedalo and, after weeks of very hot weather, she could finally submerge herself in cool water. Ross enjoyed lounging on the dolphin shaped pedalo, admiring views of the spectacular castle and dipping his feet in the cool water.
So after our dash through the Baltic capital cities, we arrived in Tallinn ready to check
into our rented apartment. Unfortunately, just as we were about to board the local bus to take us there, we received a text message cancelling our reservation. Thankfully, we were not too perturbed by this and were luckily able to find a last minute deal for a room in a lovely guesthouse for the first night, the owner of which then organised an empty room in a student flat for our remaining two nights in the city. As we got all our money back for the cancelled apartment and sizeable compensation for our distress, we actually made a profit during our stay in Tallinn – thank you AirBnb! After sorting out our accommodation headache, we explored the ancient city streets and wandered along the sea front to the beach.
We had decided to rent a car to explore some of Estonia’s less accessible regions, so after our couple of days of exploring Tallinn’s beautiful old town, we picked up our Toyota Yaris and headed west. After a quick consultation of the map, we decided to spend most of our time on two of Estonia’s largest islands, Hiiumaa and Saaremaa, which are both popular holiday destinations for the Scandinavians and
Germans but were completely unknown to us. Our first destination was Hiiumaa, the more sparsely populated and less developed of the two islands. We spent a couple of nights on the small, mainly forest covered island, exploring the coastline, finding the perfect spot for Liz to swim in the Baltic, unsuccessfully moose spotting and enjoying the peace, serenity, fresh air and late summer sun.
After a lovely couple of days on Hiiumaa, we hopped aboard the ferry to take us to the larger island of Saaremaa. Saaremaa is the better known and more developed island, with more arable and open countryside. The island was off limits during the Soviet-era due to a radar and rocket system being based here, which has fortunately limited industrial growth and enabled the island to maintain its culture. We started in the north of the island and drove slowly around the island spending a couple of nights on the most southerly part, the Sorve Peninsula. It was on this peninsula that we found an incredibly remote and idyllic spot in a forest glade to spend a couple of nights, complete with charismatic owner Juri. Juri gave us a basket of apples, proudly showed us
his potato patch (protected from the wild boars by an electric fence) and came out with a plate of pancakes one morning (much to Liz’s delight).
All too soon our time on the Estonian islands came to an end and so we headed back to the mainland, stopping for one night by the north-west coast in another “camping house” in the forest. We spent our last evening wandering along a white sand beach enjoying the last rays of the sun. The next day the weather had turned decidedly autumnal, so after a very quick stop for lunch on a windswept beach, we headed back to Tallinn to bid farewell to our trusty Yaris and prepare for the next and more adventurous leg of our journey, through Russia.
Things we’ve learnt on our travels through Europe:
- On a hot weekend in Ghent, Belgium, the popular past time seems to be floating down the city canal in or on anything inflatable. We didn’t fancy it.
- Those born on the island of Hiiumaa in Estonia are said to be descendants of fairies and elves, although it’s best not to discuss this point with the islanders.
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It is possible to circumnavigate Hiiumaa and not see any people at all.
- Finding food on the Estonian Islands, slightly out of season, is a challenge. There’s only so long you can live on pot-pastas and cheese sandwiches.
- Bears, wolves, lynx, flying squirrels, moose, wild boar and raccoon dogs live in the wild in Estonia.
- There is such a thing as a raccoon dog.
- Oddly enough, the Baltic Sea is rather cold.
- Travelling through Europe has been refreshingly easy, wonderfully varied and surprisingly good value. Despite just getting a taste for a number of the countries we visited on this trip, it’s great to know we can return so easily. We’re already planning where we would go on a second trip to Estonia in search of the elusive moose…
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Many lives in many miles
What a wonderful trip you are having and many, many more miles to come. For some it would take many lives to dream...to even possibly achieve. The best is you can do it together. The stories and memories you will be able to share for many years to come...priceless!