Trip to Estonia and Latvia

After my last exam (Development and Armed Conflict) and saying goodbye to all the friends I made in Uppsala (which was quite hard!) I went on a holiday for a week.

On sunday the 18th I went with Maaike, Susi and Hannah by boat to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. The boattrip lasted 15 hours, which was quite long. The boat was huge and everything was gold inside. Although we were on the Baltic See and there were quite big waves, I slept good.

At 10 o'clock in the morning we arrived in Tallinn. After a short walk to our hostel, we decided to do a sightseeing. Tallinn is really a cute city. It's really small for a capital city (400.000 inhabitants). The houses were really colourful and streets were really cosy.

We lunched at a really nice pancake restaurant (we were tipped by Susi's guide about Estonia), which immediately became our favourite eating place in Tallinn.

In the afternoon we brought a visit at the History museum, which told us that Estonia was for some time from Sweden and that the Russian had been there until 1991, which really surprised me. I didn't think it was that long! But everywhere you see the Russian influence (for example the nice cathedraal) and also 30% of the estonian inhabitants is russian.

Of course we did some fika at a place called Olde Hansa, which was kind of medieval with medieval food and music...

Next day we visited some churches, the parlement, the summerpalace, a monument for a ship that sunk and walked on the beach. After a small fika to get warm again, we visited the occupation museum. It was very new and interesting. Later we cooked some dinner and tried to pack our stuff in the bags.

On wednesday we had to leave early to catch the train to Tartu, the university city of Estonia. It's kind of typical that there is mostly one bus or train driving each day, and that one is only very early in the morning. Taking the train in Estonia was better than I expected. It was a little bit shaking, but at least we were on time and you can't say that about Dutch trains ;)

At 10 am we arrived in Tartu, where we had to walk quite a long time with all our stuff and we didn't know exactly were the hostel was. It turned out to be a house from a student who was renting the other rooms for tourists and he was sleeping himself in some kind of cupboard (reminds me of harry potter .. haha) After dumping our stuff, we took some sightseeing and the leaning house, the angel's and devil's brigde and the statue of the kissing students. We also visited the KGB-cells.

Next morning we had to wake up sooo early to catch the bus to Riga, the capital of Latvia. It was maybe 5 o'clock... terrible... After 4 hours in a bus with a busdriver who maybe had drunk 10 litres of wodka (he was driving too dangerous) and a lot of scary snorring russians.. we arrived in Riga. I really like this city! It has 750.000 inhabitants (which is almost as twice as big as Tallinn) and you feel it in the atmosphere. Riga really has a lot of culture and architecture, which I really like.. so great times for me! We had a really nice hostel: very modern, clean, middle of the city, and only for 10 euros.. how is that possible? Like in Estonia, you can see the russian influence. It's in the atmosphere, the behaviour of the people and the buildings. Later we cooked some nice dinner and watched a movie in our private cinema..

On Friday I visited the Design Museum (which was nice), the Architecture Museum (which was dissapointing, so I left after 5 minutes :P) and the Photograph Museum (which was small, but nice). Later I made a Jugendstill and Art Nouveau tour in the city. There is an area in Riga which is only built in the Jugendstill-style and all in 10 years or something. It was really nice.. I was all the time looking up and so I nearly bumped in some people :P Maaike and Susi were to some nature park and Hannah was doing some shopping.

Saturday we moved to some other hostel (which was very close to the train station) and went on a tower of a church to see Riga from above. We walked around and had fika (of course). Later we ate dinner at some restaurant and spent our last money. All the currencies in the different countries made our minds sometimes spinning. It's so confusing, why can't everybody have the euro?? haha..

Sunday Maaike and I went to the airport to fly home. It was quite stupid that I had to pay 2 extra bustickets for my big suitcase.. but I only had 1 kg overweight in my suitcase, which was really nice. I really thought it would be more... I also threw a lot of things away and ate all my food, so maybe that helped too.

That was the end of our nice trip and my semester in Sweden.

Done, Seen, Experienced, Learned a lot...

It was GREAT! :)

This was my last blog for now. Maybe there will be more in the future (you will never know)

I hope you enjoyed reading my stories; it was realy good to share it with you !!

Goodbye, Brenda