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.