Behind the Iron Curtain

One of the main reasons that I am glad that I made this trip is that it gives me one inescapable bragging right over my parents. You see, my parents did their 10 years of hippy travels from about 1974 till 1983 - the astute of you may notice that the year that their travels ended coincides with my arrival - and yet in all that time they were never able to go beyond the Iron Curtain since this little thing called the Cold War was raging at the time. So, in travelling to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, this has been one small step for Paul, and one giant NYAH NYAH NYAH to my parentals.

In the nicest possible way, since I will be staying with them when I get home. (Remember Mum, if you could make my bed before I arrive home on the 10th, that would be great).

Ok, so what has happened since I posted last? Well, first of all - in posting this it is obvious that I survived the bus trip from Warsaw to Riga. 1000 kilometres in two legs. We left Warsaw at 11pm and got into Vilnius at around 8:45am the following morning. The original plan was to stay in Vilnius, but after looking about and not seeing anything much worth looking at, we decided to press on to Riga.

A further 5 hours of bus travel ensued, and we arrived at Riga at around 4pm, thoroughly shattered. At this point, we made our way to the House Hostel, which is undoubtedly the most bizarre place I have ever stayed at. What happened was that we got there and no-one was there. So we rang the number on the door and the guy who runs the place came over about 15 minutes later, let us in, took payment for 2 nights and then left - and we never saw him again the whole time we were there. In fact, we never saw another person at this hostel the whole time we were there. We wound up staying for 3 nights instead of 2, and got the second night for free. Essentially, it was like having our own private apartment, so we just boozed it up in the common room after coming back home from the clubs, and had the whole place to ourselves.

We followed that up by travelling up to Parnu in Estonia, and from there we went on a sort of detox/nature retreat. There is a national park just near Parnu and we decided to stay in this little cottage there. My old man would have loved it, being an old hunter-gatherer type himself. You had to chop your own wood, bring your own food, light your own fires and generally take care of yourself. The highlight was undoubtedly firing up a genuine Estonian sauna on the last night there.

The way it works is that you have a small wooden hut with a stove inside, with several rocks on top. This hut is at the end of a small jetty that extends into the river. Once the fire has been lit and the air temperature inside is at about 70 degrees, you go in (traditionalists say naked, we opted for board shorts) and then once inside, you dump water onto the rocks. Steam will come out off the rocks and superheat the air, causing sweat to roll off you in droves. The hardest part is the fact that the air you breathe is just as hot, meaning you feel as though you are suffocating as all this heat flows into your throat. Once you have had all the heat you can stand, you simply open the door, walk out and jump straight into the river. This has the effect of plunging your body into icy water, and causes your testicles to shrink to the size of peas. It also chills your body down, and then you climb out, jump into the sauna and go again. Normally this activity is accompanied by great liver-crippling draughts of vodka, but we didn't have any.

And so, following our little sidestep into the wilderness, we find ourselves back in Parnu again. The plan is that we stay here tonight, head up to Tallinn tomorrow, and spend the weekend in Tallinn before flying back into London on Sunday night.

Next blog will be from London, and will most likely contain photos as well.

Poland in detail

I've taken the liberty of deleting my original brief post about my time here in Poland since I'm now in a position to give a more detailed update as to what is going on. No photos as yet - that will have to wait until I am back in London on the 16th.

Greg, Christian and myself flew out from Gatwick airport on last Friday, the 31st, via Poland's "finest" airline Centralwings. The flight was cheap, as was the beer. 2 quid bought you 4 cans of Polish beer, so naturally we already had a fairly healthy glow by the time we touched down in Krakow, in Southern Poland.

Krakow is a great city to go to if you are seeking to have a good time. Unlike most of Poland, it was untouched by the Second World War, and as such, most of the buildings and monuments are all originals. There is a massive town square in the centre of town, which is packed with clubs, nightclubs, bars and all of which is in close walking distance of the hostel we were staying at. Frankly, the 4 nights we were in Krakow were all fairly debaucherous. The one moment of seriousness came on the Monday where we went out to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau which is located nearby.

Auschwitz itself doesn't actually resemble a death camp, and indeed it wasn't. Auschwitz already existed as a series of army barracks, comprising approximately 30 large brick buildings. The Germans converted these to prisons, and used Auschwitz solely as a work camp. While they did perform some exterminations at Auschwitz, these were mainly of an experimental nature, designed to test the nature of the Zyklon B agent used to in the extermination process. Auschwitz does however possess the sole surviving gas chamber and crematorium.

It was at nearby Birkenau that the great holocaust occurred - Birkenau is a much larger camp, and it was designed solely as an extermination camp. The camp is vast - several hundred cabins dot the interior, and the camp is dominated by a large brick structure underneath which passed a length of railway track. The brick structure came to be known as the Gate of Death, since all who passed under it in the trains would not survive. Upon arrival at Birkenau, the Jews on board the train would disembark, and be directed by SS doctors to either the camp or the showers. All the men and women who were fit to work went to the camp, and all other women, children and elderly went to the showers. The showers were of course the gas chambers in disguise, and what happened after that is well known. Suffice to say that at Auschwitz they have exhibits including a pile of 30000 pairs of spectacles, enough shoes to fill several rooms and 2 tonnes of human hair - this represented but a small fraction of the belongings looted from the dead after the gas chambers had done their work. All very sobering.

After Krakow we came to Warsaw where I am at the moment - we've been here for a few days and are leaving tonight for Riga by bus. 9 hour overnight bus trip. Should prove to be suitably shitty. We're spending the weekend in Riga, and then heading off to Tallinn in Estonia on the Monday. Once there we'll be spending the rest of our time in and around Estonia until we fly back on the Sunday.

On the whole it's been a pretty good trip so far - it's certainly been a completely different world to the usual stuff I've been up to in England.

Except for this bus trip. It's really going to suck.