Final fragments

We've now been back in England nearly two weeks - and it's taken this long to get over the feeling of disorientation and to start sorting out the jumble of impressions and memories of the last three months. It really was the most incredible experience, and I can assure everyone who is asking that we did have a brilliant time. I don't want to call it the trip of a lifetime, because hopefully it is the first of many, although possibly this, my first proper travelling experience of any length of time, will always be a bit unique. It's a part of the world I definitely want to go back to. Turkey fascinated me, and I really want to go back to explore parts of it outside Istanbul, such as Ephesus, Ankara and Cappadocia. I'd love to go back on a retreat to the Rila monastery in Bulgaria - just stay there for a couple of nights completely removed from the rest of the world up in the mountains. Romania also is an intruiging country: it would be great to go hiking in Trannsylvania in the summer, but also to explore more of the northern part of the country - Marmures - which is still very untouched, as well as to visit the city of revolutions: Timisoara. Budapest, of course, I would go back to in a flash for more opera, baths, cake and Danube romance. Little Olomouc in the Czech Republic definitely warrants another visit in the perfect Poet's Hostel (best one we visited I think). And I just fell in love with Poland as a whole - such incredible spirit and rejuvenation. The trip also made us both want to visit slightly more far-flung places such as the Ukraine and Molodova. Belarus looks interesting too, but perhaps when it ceases to be run by a communist dicatator whose KGB is still bugging most of the country.

And we didn't quite make it to the country which has had the greatest influence on this region in the last hundred years - Russia. All through the trip, it has felt as if it is looming in the background like a rather sinister but fascinating shadow. We stopped just on the border with Estonia, tantalisingly close to St Petersburg, which many other travellers in Tallinn were going on to. Apparently the Estonian border isn't the best place to cross because of the strained relations between Russia and Estonia, and we heard a couple of horror stories from other travellers about being stopped at the border and questioned for hours by border guards before paying them substantial bribes. In the hostel in Tallinn, I found a book on the last of the Romanovs and got hooked - it seemed a very appropriate final book to read on the trip, in a city where the Tsars came on holiday in the summer. The armadillo and the tortoise will one day team up again to explore Russia - it's a promise!

Twenty years on from the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, what can I say about our impressions of post-communist Eastern Europe? Firstly, it's really no longer possible to group together this part of the world under one name. There is such an amazing variety between the countries, as well as huge diversity within the countries themselves. A tiny Bulgarian village in the middle of nowhere has nothing in common with the bustling beauty of Prague. The difference in language alone is extraordinary - to go from Turkish, to Cyrillic Bulgarian, to Frenchified Romanian to bizarre Magyarian Hungarian is quite an experience.

But as a summing up makes generalisation inevitable, I would say that the overwhelming common feeling is that of rejuvenation - an incredible bounce-back spirit of survival in so many beautiful countries which have spent much of their history under Imperial occupation of one sort or another, then underwent Nazi occupation with all the horrors of World War Two and the concentration camps, then Soviet occupation which lasted for nearly fifty years. Cities such as Warsaw and Dresden which were almost totally destroyed have been lovingly rebuilt, and in most places there is a feeling of buzzing new life and new opportunities. Of course it wasn't all rosy. The real poverty we experienced in Bulgaria and Romania was pretty shocking - especially when you consider that these countries are now in the EU. Hopefully the financial help resulting from membership will be a big help. The huge prejudice towards the Roma in these countries, along with Slovakia, was also unpleasant to encounter, as was of course the massive social problems within the Roma communities themselves. And perhaps nastiest of all for a region with such a troubled Jewish history were the remaining traces of anti-Semitism which we found. Don't get me wrong - it's only traces, and we were also struck by the thousands of people under the Nazis who did take in and protect their Jewish neighbours. But nevertheless the occasional bits of anti-Jewish graffiti with swastikas, the dubious monument at the Hill of Crosses and the stations of the cross in a cathedral in Olomouc and again in Tallinn with anti-Semitic caricatures, struck an undeniably uncomfortable note. Some old wounds haven't quite healed up - especially in the former Sudetenland, as we found when we were in Liberec where the story of the evicted German community still isn't acknowledged. As we went on, it struck us more and more just how recent this is. For our generation, who learnt what little we know about this area in history lessons, after the Tudors, it was a striking realisation. In the Baltics of course, 1989 wasn't the end of occupation - there were still Russian tanks killing Latvian citizens in Riga in 1991, which was when they finally regained their independence.

So much still to see and still to learn. We have come home with lists of books, films and artists we need to investigate. I'm going to start by reading A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to get an idea of the gulags to which so many people in Eastern Europe were sent. Wish me luck....

This will be my last post so goodbye and thank you for reading this blog. I hope it's been interesting to read and I'm sorry there were sometimes long gaps between postings - getting reliable internet access was sometimes rather difficult! We're both really glad we wrote it, as otherwise I think we'd have forgotten a lot of our adventures. To finish, I can only say again that this is not going to be the last of our adventures. Where to next? Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, the former Yugoslavia, the Dalmatian coast, or maybe further afield to South America or India? But that, in the words of Kipling, will have to be another story.

News Flash

Our special correspondent in London is please to report that Sarah and Lucy arrived safely back on British soil last night and were taken away by their respective families to be fed fish and chips, washed and put into bed. They are said to be glad to be back home, although some what confused: it is alleged that Lucy thanked the ticket collector on the Stansted Express in Estonian, although this story has not been confirmed. It is hoped that reflections on the end of the trip will be posted in the next day or so, and that being the case, regular readers of this blog are encouraged to stay around for a little while longer, if they feel so inclined.

Another day, another country

You would think that the last day of an incredibly busy three months would be spent relaxing in the sunshine, possibly with a beer and reminiscing about days gone by. However, we decided to take in one more country by travelling to Finland and back. Varro kindly gave us a lift to the ferry terminal in the morning and helped us with the tickets and check in and we were soon on the rather impressive katamaran which was taking us to country number thirteen. I was very excited about the sea crossing, Sarah rather less so, but we both agreed it was great fun to arrive in the heart of a capital city by boat. We got out right on to the main Esplanada, a lovely boulevard of Art Nouveau buildings and incredibly posh shops and cafes. Our day in Helsinki was absolutely lovely. We explored the Orthodox and Lutheran cathedrals (the latter is much more impressive on the outside than the inside), wandered round the docks admiring the beautiful yachts and wandered in bookshops which had whole sections devoted to the Moomins.

Perhaps the highlight was visiting the Atheneum Art Gallery, which had a special exhibition on the Kalevala: the Finnish legendary cycle about the folk hero Vaininaimen (sp?). The original poems are ancient, but the cycle itself is a 19th century construction built up when Finnish nationalism and independence from Russian rule became hot topics. It was a wonderful exhibition, and really exciting to encounter a mythology with which we were completely unfamiliar. Lots of strange monsters, creation and rebirth legends, quests, nymphs, water giants, healing bees, the river of the dead....so many overlaps and also differences with other mythologies. I think it was actually a good way to encounter the legends, as the rooms took you through it motif by motif rather than as a continual story: probably a more authentic first experience of how the stories were told and understood. It left us both wanting to read the Kalevala....though possibly not in Finnish, as it's one of the most unusual languages in the world and apparently fiendishly difficult to learn.

We arrived back from Helsinki around nine at night absolutely exhausted and stuffed ourselves with a final meal of....you guessed it...pasta and pesto before tumbling into bed. A really memorable last day, which has left us with all sorts of new interests and questions. The best way to finish a trip which has been one new experience after another.

Eurovision, Baltic style

We arrived in Tallin in the afternoon and were rather impressed at our ability to navigate the tram system to the Old Town. Tragically, this sense of direction didn't last, and we spent an awfully long time searching up and down the medieval streets trying to find the hostel which had moved location since our guidebooks were published. Eventually, we found where we were supposed to be and dumped our bags for the final time on this trip.

Tallin is an interesting last place to stop as for many people, it is where they begin their trip and so the hostel was full of people beginning their journeys, and Lucy and I were quite sad to realise it was all over for us. A guy called Jonathan was staying in our dorm and was doing a very similar trip to us except in reverse and taking in Belarus and Ukraine, so we spent a lot of time sharing tips of Romania and Bulgaria with him. He also let us know that all museums in Tallin were open and free until midnight tonight, so after dinner we headed to the City Musuem. It was quite a bizarre museum, with a huge section on men's clothing, which we didn't really understand, but was nevertheless quite entertaining.

After a coffee in the Main Square, we headed back to the hostel to watch the end of Eurovision, a first for me. It was amazing to see how seriously it is taken here, proper cause for national pride! After complaining bitterly about the unfair voting, we headed to bed.

The following morning, we headed to the Cathedral for mass, a small and beautifully simple building just down the road from us. After joining in with the hymns in our best Estonian, we headed up to the Lutheran Cathedral, a very German building with lots of coats of arms and white-washed walls. We had lunch in a little artisan's cafe before heading to Kadriog, a district of Tallin with beautiful parks and a couple of art museums in the old summer palaces of the Tsars. By far the most interesting museum for me was the modern art gellery which took you through Estonian art chronologically and was a great way of seeing how historical events had been interpreted artistically. The park is very beautiful, and a wonderful place to just wander round and soak up the atmosphere. This district also houses the Song Bowl, where the Estonian song festivals are held. It is the biggest ampitheatre-type place I have ever seen. Song in Estonia, as elsewhere in the Baltics, played a huge role in the emerging national consciousness and later in the fight against Soviet oppression. A lovely evening spent at the Hostel, chatting with everyone about their travels, including one guy's experience of con men on the Russian border, which made me very glad that we chose not to go to Russia.

On Monday morning we said goodbye to Jonathan, who was heading to Tartu, and spent the morning exploring Tallin's Old Town and updating the blog. In the afternoon, we met up with Varro and his lovely family who are friends of Lucy's aunt and uncle. They gave us a really interesting tour of Tallin, including the school that Varro's mum founded in the 1980s as a counter to Soviet education which has lots of attached artisan's workshops. Varro also took us to see the Stalinist area, which was used to house the huge number of Russians who were moved here under the communist regime. That evening, we had a lovely dinner with them and their friends and had a great time playing Narnia with their children. A really lovely family.

Reliving our student days

Between the capitals of Latvia and Estonia, we stopped off for two nights at Tartu - a university town in Estonia about three hours on the road from Tallinn. It's a loveable little town which has an atmosphere very like Durham or Cambridge as there are lots of students around, sitting around in cafes having deep conversations. There must have been something in the air, as Sarah and I started having terribly meaningful conversations, not mentioning train times or bowel movements once. I think we covered the nature of language, contemporary art, the origins of the novel and feminist theology. Not bad for one afternoon.

There isn't a huge amount to do in Tartu if you aren't a student, so we just spent the day exploring the old town, wandering in the botanical gardens and parks, and drinking coffee. The town has some great quirks though: the main statue of the town square isn't the ubiquitous Man on Horse but two lovers kissing under an umbrella while water spouts over the top of them. And there is all sorts of evidence of student pranks over the town, such as the granite bridge topped with an arc: apparently a necessary step before graduation is to walk over the arc, hopefully not falling into the river below.

In the evening we plummeted from our intellectual heights when we watched an extraordinarily silly film called Superbad with the guys at the hostel on a projector screen. The title says it all really. The following morning we feasted royally on pancakes for breakfast before catching a bus on to Tallinn.

The traditional seaside trip...

Freezing water? Check
Strong winds? Check
Slightly dodgy weather? Check

It is a relief to discover that at the same lines of latitude some things remain the same and our day trip to 'The Baltic Riviera' had just enough of the English seaside resort to make us nostalgic. Nevertheless, you don't get stiletto heels and designer sunglasses to quite the same extent in Bognor Regis. The resort of Jurmala is full of stunning summer homes and nice restaurants and we had a lovely lunch overlooking the beach, before doing our best windswept impression on a long walk up the beach. Heading back to the hostel, we had a very decadent evening of Poirot, which got me too scared to walk down the corridor alone...

The following day, we wanted to head to the National Park area of Sigulda, but missed the train by one minute, so had to wait for 2 hours for the next one. This gave us a great opportunity to explore Riga's covered market - the largest in Europe which is absolutely full of meat and fish and in which, it is incredibly easy to get lost. We finally made it to Sigulda and walked to the castle, where we had a picnic of sardines, bread and apples. After a further wander, we took a cable car across the gorge to a little village called Kirmulda. We went for a scramble through the woods there, humming 'We're going on a bear hunt' as we went. Returning to Riga, we headed back to the hostel for tea of bacon, eggs and cabbage (a surprisingly yummy combination) and watched more Poirot, with the light off, which was a mistake...

Our final day in Riga was spent doing important things like laundry and buying a fish. Seeing how big a part of our stay the fish tank had been, we decided to buy Karlis a fish on the proviso it was called Bob. Thus Bob the fish was bought and entered the House Hostel fish tank. At the time of writing, he was still alive.

After a late lunch of Russian dumplings, we headed to the station to catch the bus to Tartu and enter country number 12.

On Fish

Feeling much better, we headed to Riga the following morning and arrived at the House Hostel for lunch. Unfortunately there had been a death in the house; the beauty of the fish tank, an enormous angel fish had slipped off this mortal coil and it was a time for grief for Karlis, the guy who owned the hostel. After a suitable period of mourning (approx 5 mins), the discussion took a more philosophical bent and it was decided that in the long run, the death was fish karma for it being so mean to the rest of the inhabitants of the tank...

This set the tone for our stay in House, a whole lot of random conversations and a chance to really chill in a place which felt more like a friend's flat than a hostel. After settling in and having lunch, we wandered round the Old Town in an attempt to find a church for evening mass. We managed to spot a priest and after a restoring cappucinio headed in to a beautiful little church, with lots of Art Nouveau decoration. After mass we wandered back to the hostel through the park and got to see the Freedom Monument, which marked the fight for Latvian independance in 1919. During the Soviet occupation, putting flowers at the base of this monument carried the penalty of being exiled to Siberia. We returned to a super of Spaghetti Bolognase and a Beatles CD, which made us feel very hip.

On Monday morning, Karlis made us a breakfast sandwich which made a lovely change to our usual fare of nutella, bread and bananas. After a leisurely breakfast, we headed to the Art Nouveau district, a stunning area of Riga, with beautiful buildings from the turn of the century which was when Riga was primarily extended. It is full of 'beautiful people', classy restaurants and cafes and it was lovely to just sit outside and soak it all in. Afterwards we headed through the parks to the Musuem of the Occupation of Latvia, which takes you through life for ordinary Latvians during both the Nazi and the Soviet occupation. It was an excellent museum, with particularly good sections on the lives of deportees and intellectuals in exile. Again, we were struck by just how difficult it was to be in this region in the twentieth century.

That evening, Karlis (who used to be a chef) cooked us a delicious stirfry and we sat and drank wine and discussed more 'fish' issues. Afterwards, we introduced him to the hilarity of Michael McIntyre, which I think he greatly appreciated.

The Hill of Crosses

Our last stopping point in Lithuania was Siauliai, a sleepy little place near the Latvian border which is, somewhat surprisingly, the country's fourth biggest city. The reason we had come was to see the Hill of Crosses, which is about 12km outside the town in the countryside. This is a couple of mounds which, since the middle ages, have been the place where local people put crosses: as signs of devotion, to commemorate loved ones who have died, or to mark a prayer answered. In the Soviet era it became a great symbol of spiritual and national identity. The hill was bulldozed many times by the communist regime but overnight the crosses would all reappear again as local people risked their freedom, and even their lives, to creep to the out of the way spot surrounded by barbed wire to plant their crosses. Many of the crosses commemorate people who were deported to Siberia.

It's an eerie, slightly surreal place to visit. Situated right out in the middle of nowhere, there is no sound but the tinkling of the thousands of rosaries moving in the wind and the slight creaking of some of the bigger crosses. The crosses have overflowed from the mounds and now spread out over the surrounding area. Some of them are very new, planted for people who have died recently, and lots have been put there by pilgrims as a mark of respect and support for the Lithuanian spirit which refused to be destroyed by so many years of hostile occupation. It can't but be an impressive place when you understand its history - it makes you want to plant a cross there, just because you now can. But it is, and perhaps this makes me a very shallow person, a spooky place to be. It's as if the ghosts of a thousand past struggles are still there, haunting the empty field while the rest of the world has moved on. Also, there was one thing which struck a jarring note: a large sign in German, which I think was commemorating all the people killed in the Holocaust, but at the same time calling for all the Jewish people to recognise the true Messiah and convert to Christianity immediately. It was in the shape of a Star of David topped and dominated by a large cross: not the most comfortable of things to see there. Of course my German is a little rusty: let's hope it was just commemorating the dead rather than paving the way for future conflict.

While visiting the Hill, we had what we have decided was a post-communist experience (this sounds better than being conned by a taxi man again). There are no buses out to the Hill on weekends and so we had to take a taxi. The taxi driver charged us the cost of our accommodation that night to take us there and back: a distance of 24km, and wait for us for 20 minutes. There was nothing we could do about it but pay up. We thought that this was quite a good symbol of post communism. You can visit a previously banned site of national and spiritual pride; you can pray there; you can plant a cross there; and you can then be hugely conned by a mafia-esque taxi driver covered in gold jewellry blaring western pop music into your ears all the way there and back!

There isn't much reason to visit Siauliai other than the Hill of Crosses as we found there was absolutely nothing to do there once we'd seen the ornamental sun dial and had a refreshing peek at "Small Statue on High Street" (as the tourist brochure described it). On a Saturday afternoon at 4pm all the shops were closed on the high street, the tourist information office was closed, the one internet cafe in the town was closed and there was just one place to eat and drink open in the whole place. So much for the 4th largest city in Lithuania. We ended up however staying here 24 hours longer than we had intended as we both got a touch of food poisoning - nothing serious but enough to warrant a day in bed. I won't go into details but shall leave it up to your lurid imaginations. And we were so smug that we'd been travelling for three months and hadn't eaten anything dodgy......pride goes before a fall. By Sunday morning however, we were well enough to hit the road again and catch the 9:30 bus to Riga.

Herrings and Heaven TV

Two other things of significance happened to us in Nida: I was introduced to pickled herring, which was surprisingly tasty, and we discovered a slightly scary evangelical Christian American TV channel (there's only so much BBC World News you can take) called Heaven TV. We got strangely addicted to this, as a series of elderly male preachers exhorted us to invite Jesus into our lives now, or, as they assured us with twinkly smiles, we would burn in hell. The whole thing was a bizarre and slightly addictive cocktail of hellfire sermons, descriptions of poverty stricken people in South America who were helped only when they converted to this particular brand of so-called Christianity, shiny television reconstructions of near death experiences in which people met God, and a nauseating children's programme in which unnaturally clean looking children sang songs about forgiveness. Perhaps the best moment was when they urged their viewers to donate money so that they could preach the message of Christ to Europe. Thanks, but we have had Christianity here for quite a while-just the last 2000 years or so. I'd love to see them trying to preach to the Poles......

All of which added up to one of the more surreal moments of the trip: sitting in an incredibly obscure Lithuanian village, eating pickled herring out of the jar and being thanked for our role in helping Heaven TV preach Christ and populate heaven. Perhaps it's time we started to think about coming home?

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

On Monday night, as we packed up to leave Vilnius the next morning, we gradually realised that we had got a day out in our schedule and were in fact supposed to be in Kaunas. Earlier in the trip this of course wouldn't have mattered, as we constantly made changes to the plan and revelled in being semi-spontaneous. Now however, we have so little time left that we have to be ruthless. Kaunas had to go. We'll have to save the only Devil Museum in Europe for another time. So we went straight on to Nida where we had three nights booked in a terribly respectable sounding guesthouse. Nida is a little fishing village on the Curonian Spit, a load of sand dunes and pine forests which protrudes from Kaliningrad (a random little bit of Russia in between Poland and Lithuania), but most of it actually runs parallel to Lithuania, just a few hundred metres away across the Curonian lagoon. So Russia and Lithuania have split it and Nida is right at the end of the Lithuanian bit - the closest to Russia we technically get on the trip!


We bussed to Klaipeda, a gritty and unattractive industrial port, and took a ferry across the lagoon to the Spit. I was expecting a hearty sea voyage of, say, about an hour or so, but in reality we were on the boat about five minutes before we had reached the other side. You could practically swim it - in fact, I bet people do in warmer weather. From the landing place at a village called Smiltyne we took a rattling little bus along the Spit to Nida, about an hour away.

The Spit is very beautiful: lots of colourful wooden houses set among pine forests leading right down to the sea, which is smooth and languid on the lagoon side and crashing and wild on the Baltic side. You can cross from one side of the Spit to the other very quickly: it's only around 4km and in some places you can almost see the sea on both sides of you through the woods. What Nida is particularly famous for is its sand dunes, which are indeed stunning: they make you feel as if you are in the Sahara...only slightly colder and wetter.

Having had beautiful sunny weather for well over a month, I had predicted that it would rain when we finally got to a beach. And such proved to be the case. Our first day in Nida it poured down from beginning to end with a nice cold wind into the bargain. In true British spirit, we refused to be deterred from our seaside holiday and wrapped up in cagoules and boots to go for a walk on the beach. The Lithuanian cleaner in the guesthouse wished us good luck in sepulchral tones, doubtless wondering what kind of lunatics she had staying in her house. We however thoroughly enjoyed our....bracing...walk along the sea front and even made it up to the top of the dunes for a quick look over to Russia before deciding that Honour, that demanding female, was satisfied and we could now retreat to the one cafe open in Nida for hot chocolate (Nida is pretty dead at this time of year - apparently it livens up in July and August). We later wondered whether we had accidentally stumbled into Russia, as it's not very clear which country the sand dunes actually belong to, but were assured that we couldn't have done, as we'd have been beset by large angry Russian men with large angry dogs not to speak of lots of barbed wire. Shame, it would have made a good story, but at least it's an excuse for another trip.....

Our second day in Nida was much improved: plenty of sunshine and a clear sky, so we rented bikes and cycled along the Spit through the well marked cycle path which goes alternately right along the sea front and through forests. On the way back, we turned off the main path to explore the less trodden paths of the woods and made our way through gorgeous swathes of dappled sunshine to the other side of the Spit where we fulfilled a longheld ambition of the trip by paddling in the Baltic. It was too cold to swim, even for Brits, but we loved the beach: great expanses of golden sand almost totally empty, and somewhere over the water in the distance, England.

Messing about in boats...

After a leisurely breakfast out in the sunshine, Lucy went to mass and Rob and I had a wander round the city, before we all met up again for lunch. Our afternoon was spent on what the Lonely Planet called 'the perfect day trip', heading out to a park called Trakai, a collection of lakes complete with a fairytale castle on an island and lots of lovely little cafes and ice cream. We hired out a pedalo to do a bit of further exploration, and it was here that I discovered Lucy's sailing skills which are normally very well hidden. It is fair to say that I am not a natural, even in a pedalo, and Lucy and Rob had a great time mocking my attempts at both steering and pedaling. After a super afternoon messing about in boats, we headed back toVilnius for a yummy meal.

The following day we walked up to the Three Crosses on a hill overlooking the city, which marks where several monks (numbers range from 3 to 14) were crucified. It was really interesting to get a birds-eye view of the city; the Baroque architecture isn't overpowering at ground level, but from above you can see more clearly why it has the reputation of being a Baroque capital. After a final ice cream, it was time for Rob to head back to the airport and for Lucy and I to get ready to head to Kaunas the following day. Or so we thought...

Vilnius vibes

We spent a lovely long weekend in Vilnius. After such a stressful journey, the thing Lucy and I most wanted in the world was a G & T and Rob thankfully obliged. Dumping our bags at the hostel, we headed out to explore Vilnius and find somewhere to eat, before heading back for a well deserved night's sleep.

The first thing to say about Vilnius is that it doesn't feel like a capital city at all. We were staying on a quiet road next to a stream which was only a 10 minute walk from the centre and yet it felt like we were out in the country. It's Baroque churches are what makes Vilnius famous, but what makes it so cool for me is the atmosphere; where else would you get a district declaring itself a republic and forming its own constitution with such gems as "Everyone has the right to die, but this is not a requirement"? Our first full day was spent exploring this district, called Uzupiz, before heading up to explore some of the Baroque centre. The plan to do much exploring was thwarted by the fact that it was Labour Day and so there were a huge procession going on. (At this point we were terribly English, and despite not having a clue what was going on, clapped very politely and tried to join in with the singing, somewhat unsuccessfully.) There was also a massive Taize convention, so we had to keep an eye out whenever we went into any of the churches to check we weren't about to end up in the middle of a service.

After the beauty of the centre of town, it was rather a sudden shift to go to the KGB museum, but it came highly recommended as something one must see and I suppose there is never a good time to see something which is so upsetting. It is a museum based in the old KGB headquarters, where people were sent for anything remotely constituting 'anti-Soviet' behaviour and has a large section on the fate of those transported to Siberia and other areas of Russia. What you realise is that whole families were sent, often without any charges being confirmed and that until these settlements had established themselves, the chances of the children surviving the vastly different temperatures was minimal. Another very moving collection was the embroidery with various messages about their homeland and the fight for independence and a rosary made out of bread. The bottom floor of the museum has been maintained as the prison it was when still the KGB headquarters. The isolation cells and execution cell are obviously pretty horrendous, but it was the padded cell which really threw all of us, which is where they put prisoners after torture. It was certainly well worth seeing, although I do worry that on this trip Lucy and I are perhaps becoming a bit numb to such horrors; so much inhumanity happened here in the 20th century, that I'm almost expecting to discover it in every new place that we see.

St Weronika, Patron of Hapless Travellers

Leaving Poland proved to be a more difficult task than we had thought. After saying goodbye to Helena on Thursday morning, we were next due to meet Rob in Vilnius on Friday afternoon, so had over 24 hours to get from Poland to Lithuania. An easy task, you might think. Our initial plan was to take the overnight bus from Gdansk to Vilnius - a ten hour stint, but attractively cheap and with no changes - but we found out that this only ran alternate nights, and of course, not the night that we needed to travel. So we decided to travel 5 hours back to Warsaw and take the overnight bus from Warsaw to Vilnius. Here too we were thwarted. That bus also only runs alternate nights - and not the night we needed. You would think that it would be organised so that there was always a bus running overnight from Poland, either from Warsaw or Gdansk....but that would just make too much sense. With the aid of the Thomas Cook railway book (the Bible of the road), we worked out that we could get to Vilnius by Friday evening if we caught the 7.25 from Warsaw and changed at Sestokai, just over the Lithuanian border. However, this left us stranded in Warsaw for the night.

And so it was that Weronika received yet another phone call from Damsels in Distress and came one step nearer to canonization by having soup and pasta waiting for us when we arrived at 10pm. It was a short but, we hope, sweet visit, as we were off again at 6.30 the next morning to get to Warsaw Centralna. We were a little early (alright, half an hour) but we were absolutely determined not to miss that train, as there probably wouldn't have been another one for several months. Once we were on the train, we thought that the drama had ended. No such luck. We then had to decipher Polish announcements about which part of the train to sit on depending on where you wanted to go. Cue much heaving of bags up and down the train and general confusion. The train then proceeded to run half an hour late, meaning that we would miss the one connection that day from Sestokai to Vilnius. Stress levels had reached fever pitch when we arrived at Sestokai and raced over to the other platform where the train was about to leave.

I have never been so relieved to arrive at a place in my life. Vilnius certainly likes to be elusive. Odd for the biggest capital of the Baltics but I suppose it keeps out all but the most determined travellers. Here endeth the Saga of the Two Maidens and the Polish Public Transport System.

The Polish tour continues

We decided to break the journey from Warsaw to Gdansk at Torun, a medieval university town famous for gingerbread and Copernicus. In fact you can buy a gingerbread Copernicus there, which admittedly was chiefly what we went to Torun to do. It's a beautiful town with the characteristic main square with a magnificent town hall in the middle and lots of places to sit out in the sunshine and drink beer. We chose a cafe next to a statue of a violinist surrounded by frogs (the Polish version of the Pied Piper story) and whiled away a couple of hours until our connection to Gdansk very happily.

The train (approved by Helena for its Poirot-esque compartment carriages) got us into Gdansk at 9pm and we took a rackety taxi to the hostel which looked like a ruin from the outside but inside was very cosy and clean, and a great base to explore the city centre, as it was just a ten minute walk away. I think we were all pleasantly surprised by Gdansk the next morning. I for one had been thinking of heavy industry, shipyards, revolutions....all of which are certainly important in Gdansk, but it is also remodelling itself into a very attractive tourist town to rival Krakow with a completely restored main street and square and a lovely river front lined with restaurants and amber shops. But it manages to keep its own unique character and is fiercely proud of its recent history. However, it has to be said that it was something of a disappointment to Sarah as it is not in fact on the sea, despite the deceptive appearance on maps. Helena had been gently hinting as much for the last three days but to no avail. So the dreams of fish and chips on the beach will have to wait for the time being.

We spent the morning mainly wandering through the Old Town and buying amber, at which Helena proved herself to be remarkably decisive, and I to be quite the opposite. After a beer and a highly dodgy hot dog, we headed for the Roads to Freedom Exhibition which is about Solidarity and the end of the communist regime in Poland. It's an excellent exhibition, very inspiring, and it made our subsequent visit to the shipyards much more meaningful. Seeing the soaring monument to the fallen shipyard workers was very moving when you realise just how much it meant to have successfully erected it. The famous gates of the shipyard, where many of the demonstrations were staged, are still covered in Solidarity posters, crosses and pictures of John Paul II (as well as one of the current pope). But it is also very much still a functioning place; as we arrived the workers were leaving for the day and casting curious looks at the girls taking pictures through the gates. What struck us all was how incredibly recent all of this is - we seem to be catching up with ourselves time-wise as this trip goes on.

The day finished with a fish supper sitting on the waterfront and surveying the mix of tourist and industrial boats that line the river: quite indicative I suppose of the point that Gdansk is at. It was sad to realise that this was our last night in Poland. Or so we thought......

Chopin's fingers

The following day we decided to head over the river to Praga, the only district of Warsaw not completely destroyed post the Uprising. It was apparently the area used in the filming of The Pianist and it certainly seems much more crumbly than the Old Town; you can still see bullet holes in buildings and everything looks much more run down. It is cool primarily because there are absolutely no tourists there (the nudist we passed we assume was a local) and so you get to see a bit of Warsaw life by just wandering round without bumping into someone else taking a picture.

After a coffee in a local cafe, we headed back to the Old Town to find somewhere nice to eat and found a lovely restaurant overlooking the Main Square. Lucy and I have found that it is a distinct advantage having people come out to see us, because we can justify having a beer or eating out far more than we would otherwise! After a very lazy lunch, we walked along the Royal Way and found an English bookshop to restore Lucy's ever-depleting supply of reading material. A quick pop into two churches, one of which is the resting place for Chopin's heart*, before heading to meet Damian.

Damian is Lucy's Aunt's friend (I think I got the connection right), who agreed to show us round the Lazienkowski Park, and absolutely stunning park with a beautiful Palace on the lake, lots of peacocks and a beautiful open air Chopin theatre. We spent a lovely few hours chatting about everything from politics to Warsaw before heading back to Weronika's for pasta and pesto. It was more successful than the veggie stirfry, but this might have more to do with the delicious Moravian red rather than any improved cooking ability. Another enjoyable evening spent chatting to Weronika, before we packed up and got ready for yet another early start.

A massive thanks at this point to Weronika and her grandmother who made us feel so incredibly welcome. It was lovely to actually stay in a home rather than in yet another hostel and to be able to get some real local insight, so hope Weronika sees this and that the red wine is helping with the exams xxx

*Given the ongoing fight between France and Poland about who can claim Chopin, we've come to the decision that the deciding factor should be who owns his fingers...does anyone know which country does?

Well I would walk 500 miles....

To our amazement, Lucy did make the 8 am mass and looked ridiculously cheerful for that time in the morning. Helena too was an early riser, so I was left holding the flag for the people that can't think straight until at least 9 am. We had a leisurely breakfast with Weronika before heading out on the metro to the Old Town. Our first port of call was the Warsaw Uprising Monument, a collection of sculptures of people emerging from the rubble. It was right outside what we assumed were the courts, a strikingly modern complex of buildings, which framed the sculptures beautifully and was, I think, a fitting tribute.

After that, our wander took us through lots of little winding streets to the Old Town Square, complete with a fountain with a mermaid on it which is the symbol of Warsaw for some reason. The buildings were of course largely destroyed after the Uprising but have been beautifully restored, so that they look very like the old pictures you see of this area on postcards. The old centre was absolutely heaving with people, especially families who were indulging in the most amazingly tall ice cream cones you have ever seen and given that an important aspect of this trip is immersing oneself in the local culture, we decided to follow suit.
Following our 'immersion in culture', we headed into the Royal Palace to explore. Again it was completely devastated during the war and wasn't rebuilt for decades afterwards. It houses a beautiful mirrored room where concerts are held, as well as a series of rooms that depicted different eras of the royalty of Poland. It was interesting to see just how many of the portraits were either the same as or relations of the portraits we had seen in Vienna. You get a sense of just how inter-related the royal families of Europe were.

We lunched in one of the many beautiful parks in Warsaw, the Saxon Gardens, watching all the people out for a Sunday stroll. Warsaw feels very family centred, as well as incredibly safe and was definitely a city which was stealing our hearts. We could have stayed sat in the sunshine for the rest of the afternoon, but instead had madly decided to walk to the Uprising Museum, out in the business district.

It has been a failing of ours on this trip, that we have sometimes failed to acknowledge the fact that distances on the map, even when you know the scale, can look much smaller than they are. This was our mistake trying to get to the museum; it took hours and as 4 o'clock came around and it just came into view, we had the awful premonition that we were about to discover that Poland operates early closing times on Sunday. Thankfully it didn't and we got a couple of hours to explore what turned out to be an amazing museum.

The museum itself works chronologically through the beginning of war to the aftermath of the Uprising. It is brilliantly done with lots of visual and auditory aids. Particularly moving for me was the section about the Home Army, the men and women who fought against the Nazis and were prominent in the Uprising itself. After the war, the Soviets (who incidentally had refused to come to the civilians of Warsaw's aid, despite being just the other side of the Vistula) tried to undermine the significance of the Uprising and the importance of the role of the Home Army in a spectacular retelling of history in which it had been a pointless sacrifice of civilian life by the thoughtless ruling class. It was only after the fall of communism that the musuem was able to come into existence. Also deeply moving was the role children, particularly Scouts made to the Uprising, carrying messages and equipment to the Army. Most of those who survived were sent to camps afterwards, when Hitler ordered that the city be destroyed.

Knowing what a long walk back it was to the centre of Warsaw, we attempted to catch a tram, but not realising how to get tickets, we had to jump off and walk the several miles back. We felt that after this we probably deserved a beer and sat in the early evening sunshine, looking out towards the Palace of Culture and Science. Feeling refreshed, we headed back to Weronika's who was most amused at our catastrophic attempt at veggie stirfry, which managed to fill her entire house with the smell of burnt broccoli, not our finest culinary moment...