Mincing in the Baltic Nations

[Jake]

Bonjour. Richie et moi just got back from a 10 day trip which saw us Visit 5 cities across 3 countries. This is the order;

Tallinn, Estonia (The Capital)

Riga, Latvia (The Capital)

Vilnius, Lithuania (The Capital)

Elektrenai, Lithuania (The only park on the trip is here, so you'll have to wait for CREDS)

Kaunas, Lithuania


We flew with Sleasyjet to Tallinn, Estonia (the most northern country).

The first noticable thing was the HUGE piles of snow at the side of the road, which is crazy for easter, for us. They're used to it, though;

The park didn't look very inviting, TBH:

All the cities in this area have an 'old town' area, and then a 'new town' area. It's kind of like the Arab world, but, European. The Old town in tallinn had a wall all the way around it.


The Main Square in old town;

We noticed a few of these around the city. Estonia's answer to banksy, perhaps?

This is FAB;

From old town you can see the contrasting new city. Tallinn, although extremely small for a capital city, had some cool buildings;

I like this one, coz the trams fit perfectly <3...

The hostel was a proppa' stoner place...

Bit of acid...

Free BJ to the first person who can tell me which film we're watching?...

The next day we wandered around some more, with slightly better weather. It was still FREEZING though...

Sunny old town!

I swear this is stolen from outside Duel...

Cuteeee

More cuteness!

The turrets are part of the walls, meaning we're now out of old town...

and heading towards.....

SNOW!

This was supposed to be a shortcut, but, it backfired;

see how deep the bottle is...

We ended up on the other side of the city, spite!

The next day, we got on our bus to Riga, Latvia. Part 2 to follow.

 

[marc]

All the way there to watch the Corpes Bride lol.

Great report and pics so far.

 

[Jake]

^ Correct! But, don't tell Mark

It was pissing it down and there were hardly any films, and I'd never seen it. It was fab <3.

 

[marc]

^I will donate it to the flaffle at GF lol.

Looking forward to the next part

 

[Ben]

It was pissing it down and there were hardly any films, and I'd never seen it. It was fab <3.

Bellatrix is the voice of the Corpse Bride <3

 

[Jake]

^ I thought so! I can recognise the voice of god anywhere .

Soo... part 2, Riga, Latvia


When we got off the coach we knew Latvia wouldn't be quite so nice...

Luckily, the Hostel was in quite a nice street in Old Town;

This clock reminds you where you are!

Tree-spite

The random woman meant I had to take this photo again, but i'm posting this one because her face is fab <3

This resturaunt is 2 creds, not 1!

I'm glad I'm not disabled in Latvia... although, this IS such a cred!

Bridgeeee

Weird building.... and, we see the tower on the left has a LIFT going up it, so we go and check it out...

The lift was putridddd

But, the views were cool!

I look slightly disabled here but heh

Our hostel is to the right of that church-y building

GaGa is in Latvia <3

Cool projection... dunno what it's about though!

Hostel...

This upset us, cus we really wanted to spitroast a prozzie in a room with 12 other people in...

The LG building was pretty post-apocalyptic...

I like this tower.

and this, which we called 'the empire state building thingie';

There were another couple of photos, but they seem to have dissapeared. ah well, Lithuania coming soon...

 

[Pokemaniac]

Snow is uncommon for you in the Easter? Wow. Over here, Easter and snow are synonymous. We had thirty centimetres of the stuff falling down in the Easter week alone.

Great TR, though! I've always thought of the Balticum as a semi-Sovietic, depressing place, but upon reading this, I guess I should challenge my views a little more. If it's anything like Kracow (which it slightly resembles), it should be awesome.

Looking forward to see more!

 

[Jake]

^ It is pretty depressing. Estonia seemed more colourful and developed, wheras the other two, paticularly Latvia, were extremely grim. The people were VERY rude and unhelpful too...

 

[Gavin]

^ I was going to say it looks a bit grim actually. I don't know, I'm usually up for trying anywhere new, but I'm not being sold at the moment.

 

[thx]

Great TR! nice to see what yoiu thought about Riga, Tallinn, as I've been to them a few times.

^^ I would agree, (although never been to Lithuania). Estonia has also been close of adopting the Euro for a few years, will probably get it in 2012 though, which also shows a bit more of their 'development'. Would be interested to know how much of their economy is built on finns going there for buying cheep booze (takes 1.5hrs-3hrs from Talliinn to Helsinki, depending on ferry)though :lol:

Interestingly enough, Riga was pointed out as being the most dangerous, yeah you heard that right, place for finns to go to in the world, last July from the department of foreign connections? which seems very strange, apparently lots of people had been subjected to credit card frauds, there are like 8 bars in town, who regularly cheat tourists, and then some people have been talking with 'ladies' who then have told like to go their place, and the well often men have been attacked, robbed by a group etc. Though if you pay attention, know which places to avoid and rather use cash, don't get massively drunk and walk/crawl alone in town, then you should be quite ok.

Still, I'd say that if you're travelling in eastern europe, or maybe Finland and not too far from the Baltics, it's worth a look (oh, and the languages are funny), but not really a trip on its own.

 

[Jake]

Part 3 of 3 - Lithuania

So... after leaving the gorgeous city of Riga we headed to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

The church of the holy spirit or sommat'

This pipe is also used in the GAY colonic irrigation clinic;

So many photos on this trip are spited by BRAM lines...

Classy!

The tallest building in all 3 of these countries...

Ew...

Blurry church photo

No photos of the Hostel here, so i'll just jump straight to the next day. We thought this church was cuteeee

Looking the other way from the church, up to the town hall

There were some crosses up a hill. We walked up to see them.

The steps;

The view was cool, but the sunglare was a bit spiteful;

Btw, I HAVE shaved now. Not shaving on trips is a sort of tradition

The crosses on the cleverly named 'hill of three crosses'

We then went over to 'Uzupis', a freetown area of the city that claims independance, with it's own 'passports' and government. It's basically a load of crazy artists, and they celebrate their independance on april fools day, so who knows if it's actually serious or not.

The 'city centre' of Uzupis

It was a bit of a dump if i'm being honest!

It's seperated from the rest of the city by the river (for the most part, as it's on a meander), with many bridges connecting the two. People like putting padlocks on the fences of the bridges, apparently!

A different bridge!

Someone in a kayak loving life

Another main entrance

Strange.

The entrance to the theatre creeped us out.

Richie was obsessed with the 'thing with a crown on' so I took a photo.

Food.

On the way to Kaunas, we stopped off at Elektrenai, home to the only CRED in all 3 countries. We expected it to be closed, and we were right. The park doesn't look like it's been open for a while, but there were still vehicles inside... which is worrying, as it's a right state!

The most ghetto ferris wheel on planet earth. Even that one near Chernobyl is probably in better condition

This is as close as we could get to the Schwarz <////3

Anyone played social city? This reminds me of the apartment building on it!

Aside from this building, this town was VERY grim. Everyone couldn't stop looking at what we were wearing, and when we spoke english they seemed to be amazed. Nobody spoke a word.

So, we got to Kaunas and had a night there before flying back to Stanspite. I got pictures of our apartment, which was an EFFORT to find because I forgot the information for it. I didn't get any other pictures because the camera died and I cba to charge it!

It was only a tenner each <3

So, that concludes the report. Thanks for reading! <3

 

[Richie]

Yayyyy! I loved the trip report jake!
You captured the trip very well.

This trip was absolutely amazing. I loved every minute of it (apart from when i basically got tonsillitis), but even that was funny looking back.

I secretly loved it when you got smacked outside a bar as well <3 Hahahahaha how desperate were they?! Loved ittt

Oh, and the photo of me at the top of the Latvia tower is FOUL. It makes me want to actually be sick.

 

[Ian]

A great read as always, Jacob!

Although you shoudl really post these in Life Outside.

Shame you didn't get the cred. Spite.

 

[Inverse]

I'm glad I'm not disabled in Latvia... although, this IS such a cred!

To be fair to the Latvians, I've seen these in Germany, bloody lethal looking things.

 

[furie]

Superb report Jake, cheers! Loved it, I like quick fire reports like this that capture the essence of the place.

I've had no compulsion to visit any of these places, and have less compulsion now though :lol:

 

[Jake]

^ Haha, I wouldn't say DON'T go to anyone... just DON'T expect much if you do, and like us, you won't be disappointed!

Oh, and Ian, it's in the coaster secksh because it has a cred in it. Lets say I go to the Isle of Wight and visit Blackgang Chine, but the cred it shut. I don't visit the other credit on the island. Does that mean I can't post it in this forum?

 

[Nic]

The Baltic nations look fab <3.