Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen got off to a great start when my train from Sweden was delayed about one and a half hours, which really meant that I purchased too much junk food in the train station. It was really just the beginning of the poor dietary choices on this trip.
 I met a really nice Finnish woman on the train who was also an linguist studying Slavic languages. Her concentration was Czech and Bulgarian. We chatted/geeked out for a good hour before trying to sleep. She was also traveling on an Interrail pass (the European variant of the Eurail pass) so she was able to answer some questions for me.

One of the things one has to deal with with when arriving in a city for the first time with just a poorly scaled google map is getting lost. A lot. From the rail station I managed to find the major downtown shopping street just fine, but after that, everything I saw was really just happy, dumb luck. When I was looking for the palace, I managed to accidentally Kastellet and The Little Mermaid (actually really little, who knew?). Either way, I managed to find everything I wanted to and then some.
Denmark is another one of those countries with just absolutely horrible exchange rates to the dollar and everything is ridiculously expensive. I had wanted to spend no more than $20 that day; I ended up spending closer to $30 or $35. Whoops. Thankfully, Denmark was the last in the string of 3 hellishly expensive countries.

Back to getting lost. Copenhagen doesn't have that big of a city center but the for half of it the streets are on a grid, and the other half the streets are all sorts of crooked. Transitioning between the two sections makes for confusing times. Copenhagen is really just a nice city to walk around. Beautiful buildings, surrounded by water/canals, nice people.

One of the interesting things I saw in Copenhagen was Christiana. Christiana is a breakaway neighborhood which was established by a group of squatters. What it's known for is the free dealing of marijuana and hash. Because of this, and the legal status of such substances in Copenhagen, photography inside the community is forbidden. There are only a couple of walking streets lined with kiosks, but the 'compound' is larger than I thought. You wouldn't believe the amount of pot these people have. First, almost everybody in there is smoking something. Second, there were some kiosks with probably pounds of marijuana stacked in piles. Because it was a community with lots of druggies, there was plenty of drug-induced graffiti. Awesome.

So what if I only ate pastries today?

Stockholm, Sweden

Nightmare on a Boat
From Riga to Stockholm, I took an overnight ferry/cruise liner and being the frugal person that I am, I chose to purchase the cheapest tickets. Poor choice. They happened to be located on the lowest possible deck; the car garages were higher up than I was. Also, I got the pleasure of having a roommate. He was a Russian making his way back to Sweden where he had a job. From the first minute, it was very noticeable that he was three sheets to the wind. It started with small talk, then proceeded to invitations to the on-board banya, and then to the bar, and then to go talk with ladies, and then to go get food. Honestly, I just wanted to sleep. He, however, just kept drinking. One beer down. Two beers down. Three cans later he, again, asks me to accompany him to the banya, or to the bar, or to the banya. I'm trying to sleep at this point, and I try to make it clear that I plan to go to sleep, and not wake up until we're in Stockholm. Defeated, he leaves the room. I finally start getting some sleep.

That's the backpack bty

And then we hit actual open water. Holy crap winter seas are choppy. Had I been drinking, I would have gone all Linda Blair on that room. The boat seemed to lunge up at least 30 feet every 30 seconds or so. The nausea sets in. I put in my MP3 player and rode it out.
Cut to an hour later. It's now about 3:30am. Roommate comes back, even drunker. The booze plus the waves are making it impossible for him to stand. He crashes into the bathroom and proceeds to paint the walls, and probably himself, with puke. He eventually makes his way back to the beds. I'm now glad I chose an upper bunk. He spends the rest of the night sitting, holding his head, weeping softly.
This is karma for something, I just know it.
After a few more hours of sleep, I leave the room with all my things, and move to one of the decks for some pretty amazing views.

Traveling to Stockholm by boat is definitely something I'd recommend. The last 45 minutes of the journey take you through some narrow waterways with small, cute houses lining the shores.

I spent most of my time in Stockholm on the central island Gamala Stan. The island itself is comprised mostly of narrow, weaving streets and cute little shops. The streets are so narrow, you wouldn't expect cars to drive down them, but I guess occasionally that happens. I think the thing I liked most about Stockholm was how the city is a series of islands, and how open that makes the city feel. Except in Gamala Stan, the city is really open and you get to see lots of sky. It's also surprisingly quiet.

Later in the day, I tried catching the free IKEA bus to have some 'real Swedish food', but I was there on a Monday and the bus does not run them. I wasn't the only one disappointed; there were about 5 people waiting. After that I made my way to the island to the south of Gamala Stan. It was already dark, so I just walked. It seemed like a cool place to be; lots of little stores, restaurants, interesting (read:drunk) people walking around. In the distance you see the world's largest dome at the end of the street. I wish I had time to get closer, but at night they project different colored lights on the outside. Looks awesome. The water around the islands, plus the architecture, plus all the lights make Stockholm a really beautiful place at night.

Banda Tompten

Stockholm marks the beginning of the Eurail portion of the trip. I had purchased the 15 day, 22 country ticket and I needed to activate it. Luckily, the lady at the counter validated it wrong, marking it for one day ahead of when it officially should have been. So, I ended up getting 16 days out of the ticket #winning.
Biggest Surprise out of Stockholm? The Trains. They look kinda old, kinda sketchy from the inside, but they are really comfortable and about 100x faster than Russian trains. It took me awhile to get adjust to the speed when we first left station. Also, every seat has it's own outlet so I got to charge my camera batteries on the way to Copenhagen.

FUDS!!!!
EXOTIC ORANGE FANTA-- It tastes like gay. Not the 'rejection, heartache, loneliness, surrounded-by-crazy' gay, but the 'glitter, sparkles, ABBA, brunch-everyday' gay. YUMMY

Riga, Latvia

Or, "How Chris Learned About Exchange Rates"

$10 worth of fun!!!

 So to be honest, Riga wasn't really an important part of the things I wanted to accomplish on this trip. It started out as the way I'd get to Stockholm. By the end of my time in Riga, I was glad I went.

I arrived in Riga somewhat late; I had just enough time to find the hostel before it got dark out. The hostel I stayed at was 9 euros a night, which was a pretty good deal. Again with the slow off season tourism, I only had one roommate. He was a Frechman by the name of *insert something French here*. I don't remember. Either way, he also spoke Basque which we talked about for quite some time. If you didn't know, Basque shows up regularly in linguistic coursework. For dinner, I found some Bacon Ramen in a grocery store. Sounds like the most amazing food on the planet, right? Wrong. It was gray water with funky noodles. Poor Form, Latvia, Poor form.

The next day, I woke up bright and early. By the way, for some reason I completely forgot that it was Christmas day and it took me by total surprise that the streets were empty for the better part of the day. There's something fantastic about walking around in empty streets. It felt as though the city were mine. I could move around the streets without paying attention to traffic lights or crowds.
I found my skyscraper, the Latvian Academy of Sciences, and after that I made my closer to the center. The map I printed out had a few sites marked on it, but I definitely didn't research enough. Unfortunately, because it was Xmas, the ONE museum I wanted to see was closed. I, however, would get a chance to visit the Occupation Museum later in my trip.

Fish, mayo, potatoes, cheese, apple, beets...YUM

I managed to visit all the marked sites within a couple hours, leaving me the rest of the day to do whatever. This early on in the trip, I was still strictly budgeting. The thing about Latvia is that the Lat is one of the worlds most highly valued currencies. It's pegged somewhere around .53 lats to the dollar. So when you walk past a McDonald's and see what looks to be a $4 Big&Tasty (sadly, my favorite McDonald's sandwich), it's not really a $4 sandwich--it's an almost $8 sandwich. Sad Day. Around lunch time I felt the need to find an open grocery store. I managed to find one on the other side of the river and there I had a glorious lunch of white chocolate, bread, and a tub of Herring in a Fur Coat, my favorite salad. And all of that cost just $3!


You should know that I also collect coins, usually 1 of each type from each place I have been. With Latvia, there was no problem finding all the coins, The problem from how much money it was. Every coin amounts to almost $9! That, and as I was boarding the boat, I noticed that I had a lot of extra change left. I figured out that one of the more fun things to do was to see if I could spend all of whatever remaining change there was. Didn't matter on what, just so that I didn't have anything I didn't need. That's how the Lion Bar happened. A lion bar is the love-child of a Kit-Kat and Paula Dean. Take a kit-kat, roll it in caramel, toss it in puffed rice, add more caramel, then chocolate and you've got it.

Tallinn, Estonia

My first destination was just a simple overnight bus ride to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. For some reason, most likely strained relations between Russia and ex-Soviet states, there is no longer a train going from St. Petersburg to Tallinn despite the short distance. The bus route takes you through some back roads, most unpaved, which are probably not fit to have a top heavy bus on them. There were multiple times during the short journey where I was jarred awake by that darned inner ear.

One of my least favorite things in the world is border control. This one was not that bad. The Russian side of things is pretty normal. They take your documents (Passport, Visa, Migration Card, Registration), give you some dirty looks, stamp a bunch of things, and hand you back your passport, visa, and sometimes your registration which is useless at this point. The border control on the Estonian is just fantastically convenient. The border guard comes on the bus, takes your documents, and returns them with stamps. You can practically sleep through it. Also there are castles at the Narva border crossing. It's quite the cool welcome.

I arrived in Tallinn probably around 6AM which meant I got old town to myself for a couple hours. Well that's not exactly true; there were a few drunks still puttering about.

Regardless, Old Town Tallinn is quaint as hell. Narrow cobblestone paths and streets, lots of interesting buildings, lost of interesting shops, definitely completely different from Russia. It was simply enough to walk around. The nice people offering me spiced nuts made Tallinn feel kinda like Disneyland. That, and everyone spoke English. It was kinda disappointing.

Tallinn has, allegedly, one of the best Christmas markets in Europe. I was impressed. There were all sorts of booths, most selling some handmade crafts and some form of mulled wine. Because I have never tried that wine before, I decided to buy some of the non-alcoholic kind. The sign said "non-alcoholic" but what it really should have said was "Lots of added cognac". And that's how I got tipsy at noon and almost got lost finding the hostel. 

Like wine, but tastes even grosser

Hostel Shenanigans
Being the off-season, I was one of 3 people in the hostel. Within 15 minutes of arrival, I began to hear something reminiscent of an Herbal Essences commercial coming from the room next door. Then, while I was making myself some tea in the kitchen, a half-Indian, quarter-British, quarter-Dutch man comes in all a flutter, complaining about his stolen luggage from the last hostel he was staying in. He says, "I had 30 pieces of clothing in that bag, plus a smart phone, and a brand-new dildo. I didn't even get to USE it yet".
Well, Good to know.

So I finally have a Backpacking across Europe Story

So before coming to Russia, I got this crazy idea in my mind that because I would be over here, it would only be convenient to do some traveling. Initial brainstorming sessions resulted in a rough plan visiting somewhere between 13-14 countries. The final result? 19 Countries in 33 days.

I managed to plan about half of it before my break began, but after that I ended up adding a couple destinations. All throughout the planning process, I got a lot of "Oh My, you won't have time to do anything", or "You'll be going too fast". Well, yes. Fast was the goal. While I was traveling I realized that many people go on vacation and either spend a lot of time in the hotel or do dumb things like lay on a beach all day. Since I was essentially going to spend a month being homeless, I decided to take the time most people waste and put it toward seeing cities.

The entire trip was solo travel out of a school backpack. For most of the destinations, my phone was non-functioning and save for a few hostels, I was almost completely off the grid.

Part of the planning process included finding out what I wanted to see or get out of each location. I printed out some maps so that I would at least have a rudimentary way to know where I was.
For the most part, I am very satisfied with my trip. Of course there are places I feel I should return to someday, but I think I spent a decent amount of time in each place to get a feel for the city.

Map Below: The various colors are pretty much meaningless. I think they originally started out as marking all the different currencies I'd be dealing with.


View Eurail Trip in a larger map

Sausages are nice!

I would like to send my sincerest apologies to my avid readers (so, Mom I guess) as I have not updated nor opened this website in over a month. And while I am sure you are all curious as to what food I have been eating and whatnot, I have been up to even more fun things.

Things I should probably tell you about:
-I now have a 'book-bagging across Europe' story
-More food
-New Students
-Harder Classes

All this and more!!

I'll probably try harder to get everything uploaded, but no promises.

Adventures in Russian food #9

While in Kazan, I got the opportunity to try something truly unusual. Pinecone jelly.

According to Galia, if you pick pinecones while they are still green and soft, you can boil them in a sugar solution and then preserve them.

They taste pretty much as you'd expect: pine-y, mildly sweet. The texture is similar to undercooked bamboo or ginger, it's pretty woody and fibrous. The interesting thing about it is that there is still resin in the cone and when you eat it, if feels as if it coats the inside of your mouth. It's somewhat astringent feeling and your mouth feels tacky for some time afterward.