Baltic states
as I told you recently, I went to 2 baltic states and helsinki during the spring break!
voilà, our little (klein aber fein) travel-group:
me, Mathej (slowenian), Thibault (french), Kerstin (austrian), Marc (austrian), Isabell (german) and Ulli (austrian)
we stayed more or less 2 days in each city which allowed us to visit the city centers on the first day and to go somewhere out of the town on the second day, as the cities aren't that big!
I joined the others, who had visited vilnius and it's surroundings during the weekend, in Riga on monday.
nice old town with nice nightlife!
even though the sun was shining, it was quite cold - compared to the warm spring temperatures in warszawa...
after a long walk in the city center on tuesday we went to jurmala - THE beach in the baltic states - on wednesday.
not only the weather - slightly raining (I even saw a bit of snow...) - but also the renovation works (due to the fact, that the peak season didn't start yet) and the fact, that there were hardly any people, made that the place appear quite freaky...
(the jump-photo above was made on the beach of jurmala)
on thursday we moved on to tallinn by bus.
like riga, tallinn is also a nice little town with a beautiful old town.
as usual we were walking around in the town, looking at all sights, buying (much too expensive) postcards, entering every souvenir-shop and making plenty of photos... as tourists should ;)
on friday we wanted to go to keila-joa, but as we weren't able to read the guide properly ("wer lesen kann ist klar im vorteil", isabell would say) we went to keila (not keila-joa) by train. and as we didn't want to continue further by bus to keila-joa, we eventually went to paldiski - a place described with the nice words "welcome to the hell" in our lonely-planet guide...
in this city was a marine station in soviet times. also the fact that radioactive waste is stored somewhere on paldiskis coastline, didn't give us a real comfortable feeling...
but it was nice to see more than just the rich city centers of the capitals. but even though there are only many huge apartment houses and many children the city (city??) appears quite empty and ghosty...
on saturday at the unhealthy time of 7:00 we went by ferry to helsinki and left the baltic states.
coming from these newly rich little cities into a big western european capital was a huge change...
we were lucky that thibaults friend pauline - a girl from his school in rheims passing her erasmus-semester in helsinki - let us all sleep in her appartment for 2 nights! amazing! merci encore une fois!
we ended our first day after sightseeing and walking around in the 'lux', a far too expensive nightclub - but everything in helsinki is far too expensive (a beer in the supermarket: € 2,60, a zucchini: € 2,50!!). and as we all were already quite dead, we didn't party that much anymore...
on sunday - the last day of our journey - we took a ferry to go to the little island suommenlinna on the coastline of helsinki, where we visited the fortress.
facit: the trip was worth it even though really exhausting... sometimes people need doors to close behind them and we definitely missed some doors from one time to another...
voilà, our little (klein aber fein) travel-group:
me, Mathej (slowenian), Thibault (french), Kerstin (austrian), Marc (austrian), Isabell (german) and Ulli (austrian)
we stayed more or less 2 days in each city which allowed us to visit the city centers on the first day and to go somewhere out of the town on the second day, as the cities aren't that big!
I joined the others, who had visited vilnius and it's surroundings during the weekend, in Riga on monday.
nice old town with nice nightlife!
even though the sun was shining, it was quite cold - compared to the warm spring temperatures in warszawa...
after a long walk in the city center on tuesday we went to jurmala - THE beach in the baltic states - on wednesday.
not only the weather - slightly raining (I even saw a bit of snow...) - but also the renovation works (due to the fact, that the peak season didn't start yet) and the fact, that there were hardly any people, made that the place appear quite freaky...
(the jump-photo above was made on the beach of jurmala)
on thursday we moved on to tallinn by bus.
like riga, tallinn is also a nice little town with a beautiful old town.
as usual we were walking around in the town, looking at all sights, buying (much too expensive) postcards, entering every souvenir-shop and making plenty of photos... as tourists should ;)
on friday we wanted to go to keila-joa, but as we weren't able to read the guide properly ("wer lesen kann ist klar im vorteil", isabell would say) we went to keila (not keila-joa) by train. and as we didn't want to continue further by bus to keila-joa, we eventually went to paldiski - a place described with the nice words "welcome to the hell" in our lonely-planet guide...
in this city was a marine station in soviet times. also the fact that radioactive waste is stored somewhere on paldiskis coastline, didn't give us a real comfortable feeling...
but it was nice to see more than just the rich city centers of the capitals. but even though there are only many huge apartment houses and many children the city (city??) appears quite empty and ghosty...
on saturday at the unhealthy time of 7:00 we went by ferry to helsinki and left the baltic states.
coming from these newly rich little cities into a big western european capital was a huge change...
we were lucky that thibaults friend pauline - a girl from his school in rheims passing her erasmus-semester in helsinki - let us all sleep in her appartment for 2 nights! amazing! merci encore une fois!
we ended our first day after sightseeing and walking around in the 'lux', a far too expensive nightclub - but everything in helsinki is far too expensive (a beer in the supermarket: € 2,60, a zucchini: € 2,50!!). and as we all were already quite dead, we didn't party that much anymore...
on sunday - the last day of our journey - we took a ferry to go to the little island suommenlinna on the coastline of helsinki, where we visited the fortress.
facit: the trip was worth it even though really exhausting... sometimes people need doors to close behind them and we definitely missed some doors from one time to another...
lanya - 9. Mai, 21:51
