snake and rabbit hit the road

Apparently there are quite a lot of snakes in Turkey. Naturally they're not quite as nasty as the ones in Australia, but they're here nonetheless, and here in considerable numbers.

I was thinking about them today, as I was going home from the city centre by bus.

To be more specific: I was thinking about the fact that a lot of snakes have extremely good close-up vision, whereas their long-range vision is rubbish. It's sometimes said that, for these species, anything further than a metre away is just an incomprehensible blur.

This is one reason (it occurred to me) why snakes would make really crap bus drivers.

The other reason, of course, is that it would be very difficult for them to brake or accelerate, on account of their tragic lack of feet. So then, if a snake found him- or herself in possession of a bus (I wondered), what would he or she do?

My guess, as we hurtled madly along the road known as Eskişehir Yolu, was that he'd (or she'd)* probably try to enlist a partner.

Before I continue, please note that the following is a dramatic re-enactment. All participants are trained actors. Only one small rodent was hurt in the process, and he more or less deserved it.

--------

"Mow wisten wabba," says the snake to the rabbit in his (not her) mouth, "V ony reasn I din'n bite you jss now uz m'cos I nee yo helw'."

"Huh? What?"

The snake uses his impressive jaw muscles to roll the rabbit around, trying to find a grip that makes it possible to speak a bit more clearly.

"I said I need your help!"

"Huh? Why?"

"I've got a bus, but I can't drive it."

"What? Are you NUTS?"

"No. I've got a bus ... really! Look, I'm gonna let you go and explain ... but if you run, I'll bite you, Ok?"

"Ok. No running."

"Right then." [spit]

"So, I killed this bus driver, and so now his bus is mine."

"Fucking snakes ... always solving your problems with your fucking fangs." **

"NO! Look, it wasn't like that ... honestly! I was just sleeping on the shoulder of a road, and this guy pulled up right next to me in a bus. I guess he was gonna run into the bushes for a pee, but he stepped right on me and he was wearing heavy boots. It scared the crap out of me! So y'know, I just bit him."

"Ah-huh. And?"

"And so I crawled onto the bus, just to see if I could work it. Keys were still in the ignition. I managed to turn them, and I discovered that I could control the steering wheel quite nicely with my stomach muscles - but obviously I couldn't reach the pedals. So will you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Sit on the floor under the driver's seat, and brake or accelerate when I tell you to?"

"Oh, for f---"

"C'mooooon! Remember what I said about biting. I only had a small rodent for lunch."

Half an hour later, the snake is on the road, yelling "Go, rabbit!" and "Brake, rabbit!" at regular intervals.

The bus is more or less on a stable heading, but because the snake can only see a metre ahead, the rabbit is having to stop and start violently. Every time there's an obstruction on the road, the rabbit finds himself with only tenths-of-a-second to react, and the bus lurches to a terrible halt as he screams "Fuck-a-doodle!" at the top of his lungs. Luckily, there are no passengers on board to be flung up and down the aisle.

--------

So yeah ... I was thinking all of this as I was standing on the bus. Which in turn led to the following thought:

"You know, anyone who's spent time in Ankara, and used the public transport system here, knows more or less EXACTLY what it would be like to be driven around by a short-sighted snake who has coerced an expleting rabbit into working the foot pedals for him."

Then I got off, feeling jarred and slightly nauseous as per usual.

The $64 million question: how is it that I always seem to end up choosing countries where the people drive like utter maniacs, refusing to acknowledge anything that's more than a metre ahead of them?

Answer: no freaking idea.
Just terrible luck, I s'pose.


(* Sorry for doing the unwieldy 'be sure to cover both genders' thing with pronouns. I'll stop it now, and just assume the snake is a boy.)

(** Recent ground-breaking research has revealed a previously unknown fact about rabbits: namely that they're among the most foul-mouthed creatures in all of nature. Badgers actually have an expression, "rabbit mouth", to refer to one who makes frequent use of 'colourful' language.)

mosques and moggies (four days in istanbul)

Because of issues with documents, Yuliya and Timur couldn't depart for Turkey at the same time as me. By the time we finally had their docs sorted it was already October. Luckily, though, that coincided with the Islamic Bayram holiday, which meant that I got to head over to Istanbul, look around for a couple of days, and then meet them at the airport when they arrived.

So basically, two things to say about Istanbul. Thing the first: Holy Crap ... what a city! It's just mind-blowing. Huge in scale, packed with history and be-jewelled with architectural wonders, extraordinarily beautiful in many places, rundown and ugly in others, extremely energetic all over (and likely very dangerous if you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time). The locals are warm and welcoming, the cafe culture is enviable, and there are more charming little wine bars than you could visit in a decade of Friday evenings – not to mention a killer skyline. The reality of being there was, I found, almost overwhelming ... but in a good way :-)

And the second thing: two days is not nearly enough. I barely scratched the surface. Gotta go back some time and do some more scratching – hopefully soon. But for now, let me sketch out a few impressions.

I arrived on a Sunday night, travelling with an Irish friend called Bryan. The airport shuttle deposited us directly around the corner from Taksim Maydani (Taksim Square), where the demonstrations and riots took place this summer. I must say, it was not a very inspiring location in itself – just an enormous flat area of concreted nothing. But having been on Kyiv's Maidan Nezalezhnisti (Independence Square) just two months earlier, I was still excited: I kept thinking to myself "Cool ... from one Maidan to the other!" 

From Taksim, there's a main thoroughfare running down towards the area known as Galata. This place begins to acquaint you with Istanbul's bustling street life – there are people everywhere, leaping onto trams (both inside and out), watching buskers, buying roasted chestnuts and fresh pomegranate juice from street stalls, talking into their mobiles, or just wandering. Wedged in between glossy western boutiques and Turkish bakeries displaying huge halva sculptures in their windows, Bryan managed to spot the headquarters of the Turkish communist party. So from crass western commercialism to subversive politics, it's all happening here :-)

At night the area remains very crowded and can be quite rough. On our first night, Bryan and I sat for a couple of hours outside a little nargeli (water pipe) place just off the main street. In the relatively short time we were there, we saw a forcible arrest (one of those that involves a pursuit, lots of shouting, and ends with a person pinned to the ground), and a woman's handbag exploded nearby. I'm not exaggerating – she was walking about 20m from us, holding her handbag, and then suddenly there was a fireball on the end of her arm. I still have no idea what caused the blast, but she was obviously less surprised than we were. Basically she just kept on walking.

Heading further down into Galata itself, towards the waterfront, the road splits into several smaller, narrower streets. On our second day, Bryan and I met up with a Bulgarian woman, Irena, and we headed down a street that took us through the 'music shop district'. There you see windows full of unfamiliar instruments, little no-fuss restaurants serving local cuisine (a few with baffling displays like the one pictured), and men sitting outside drinking tea and discussing ... err, actually, I have no idea what they were discussing. Maybe music? Affairs of the day? Of the heart? Or possibly just the football results. But anyway, they're out there in their caps and waistcoats, doing a fine job of enhancing the neighbourhood charm.

When you get down to the waterfront, you're greeted with a stunning view of Istanbul's Eminönü port area, and of a skyline dominated by the Yeni Camii ('New Mosque'). It's panoramic, to say the least! The part of it you can see in the pic below is only a small portion. Everywhere you look there are domes, minarets, and old, slender houses seemingly piled on top of each other. It's just breathtaking. 

To get over to Eminönü you cross a traffic bridge crowded with fishermen (from where, on our last day, Yuliya spotted a dolphin messing about in the harbour – right in the centre of the city!). Then you encounter the New Mosque at full scale, and let me say, it's quite the encounter! The building is nothing short of epic, and it only gets better when you get inside.

We arrived during prayer time, which at many mosques is a time when visitors/tourists are not allowed in. But the Yani Camii is an exception, and so we were treated to the spectacle of hundreds of believers praying under suspended rings of electric candle-light, with huge vaulted ceilings towering over them. It was quite a beautiful sight.

During the service I noticed something interesting that hadn't crossed my mind before. The Qur'an is always recited in Arabic, because it's considered that part of its spiritual power lies in the specific tone of that language. So when the Imam was reading from it, he naturally spoke in Arabic ... whereas in the 'sermon-like' parts, he switched to Turkish.

A few weeks earlier, I was talking to a Kurdish guy and I asked him about this. Lots of Muslims memorise sections of Qur'an, but if Arabic isn't their native tongue, do they understand what they're memorising? He told me that mostly they have a general idea, though they may not understand every word.

In the mosque, during the Arabic parts of the the service, the mood seemed almost meditative. And it occurred to me then that hearing 'holy words' in a foreign tongue might have exactly this effect. Rather than focus on the meaning, people might focus on the rhythm, and it could become entrancing. I've certainly had that experience while listening to languages I don't know, including Turkish. The thought intrigued me ... almost as much as the gorgeous ceiling details of the mosque itself.

We also got a look at the famous Blue Mosque, seen here through the camera lens of my cheap-ass smart phone, which I'd purchased just a few days earlier and didn't really know how to use yet. And yeah ... once again, suitably blown away :-)

Just as striking as Istanbul's architecture, however, is its four-legged, furry street life. I don't think I've ever been to a city as catful as this one. There are moggies at the docks, there are tabbies in the shops (and incidentally, the Turkish word for "of course" is tabii, so if someone asks you "Do you like cats?", you can reply "Tabii, tabii!". Wordy nerdy amusement for all!) And if you go off the main thoroughfares and venture into the inner city back streets, there are moments when you'd be forgiven for thinking that Istanbul was a city nearly abandoned by humans and colonised by felines. Seriously ... it rocks!

So yeah ... thus were spent my first couple of days in Istanbul: wander around, go Ooooh! at the pretty architecture, sit down for a meal and go Mmmmm at the amazing cuisine, look down to see what's rubbing against your leg and go Awwww! at the local kitties. I also met up with my dear friend Juliet, who has been living in Istanbul for a while and who correctly characterised Turkey as country in which "You can't move for pistachios". But to deal with the pistachio thing would double the length of this entry. Best left for another time, I reck'n ...

Anyway, the next day my family arrived, and from then on we did mostly 'kid stuff'. Luckily this currently involves things like going to aquariums (Timur is obsessed with fish), so it was quite entertaining. Two days later, we all hopped on a plane to Ankara.

I've been told by colleagues here that there's something called 'Istanbul Syndrome', which occurs at universities in Ankara. It's where a teacher comes and starts a contract at one of these universities, then visits Istanbul for the first time, falls in love with the place, is unable to get it out of their mind, and ends up breaking their contract to move there.

After just a few days in the city, I can totally understand that. My first taste of Istanbul has left me hungry for more. I'll be back before long, I'm sure ...

See you :-)

the flying-in headrush

There are few things more exciting than flying in to a new country.

Actually, I should qualify that. Let’s start by adding the phrase “for me” in there somewhere. I mean, obviously people have different priorities. I've heard talk of houses, cars, job security … quite the range of things which people seem to be rather keen on. So yeah, for some of the folk who generate such talk, I imagine there are lots of experiences more exciting than flying into a new country. And fair enough too.

For me, though, it's one of the biggies. That’s the first qualification.

The second: there are definitely times when flying into a country isn't quite as exciting as my opening sentence would have it. It can happen in Europe, for example, that you fly out of a pretty green land with a patchwork of fields below you, dotted by forest-ringed villages, and fly into another one that looks … well, from the air, virtually identical.

I’m thinking more of the complete transitions that happen when you take off from a country like, say, Ukraine and land in one like Egypt, as I did in 2010. On those kinds of flights, you start with the pleasant eastern European landscapes, but then just a few hours later you’re suddenly descending onto a full-on freaking desert, jutting out dramatically into the Red Sea. The birch trees have been replaced by palms, the green fields by swirling sands, the cool spring breeze by impetuous gusts of hot air that buffet your aircraft around in the sky, and when you finally disembark and reach the airport terminal, all the signs around you have changed from Cyrillic script to Arabic.

Those are the ones that bring out the excited little boy in me, my eyes bulging and my mind racing as I stare through my little round window at the destination.

I'm thinking about this tonight because I've just enjoyed one of the most breathtaking landings of my life. Once again, the starting point was L'viv in Western Ukraine. This time, however, my plane set down at Sabina Gökchen airport, which serves the city of Istanbul.

As we approached the runway, the little-round-window view was enough to make me start muttering expletives under my breath. My heart quite literally started beating faster*. Precipitously steep hills surround the city, many of them covered to the last possible inch with pastille-coloured high-rise blocks or older, crumbling two-storey houses. Other hills remain mysteriously bare, affording glimpses of the rust-brown Turkish soil and the occasional dramatic rock formation. Everywhere you look, you see slender minarets pricking the sky, while traffic darts wildly in every possible direction, like the tentacles of a frustrated octopus trying to explain something to a dim-witted friend for the fourth or fifth time. It is, briefly put, a stunning sight.

So now I'm sitting in the airport, thanking Allah for the utter fabulousness of Turkish food and the titanic strength of Turkish tea, both of which are making my five-hour layover a lot more pleasant. Later tonight I'll fly to Ankara, where my new teaching contract will begin in a few days' time. 

This is my first time ever in Turkey, and hence quite a big risk: the contract is two years long, and I'll be dragging my family here with me once we get their documents sorted out. But right now, it all seems like it can't possibly go wrong. Why? Because a little bit of that flying-in headrush is still coursing through my system, and I'm just ridiculously excited about being here. 

I love this feeling. 

May it last until at least 2015, if not longer. 

:-)

(* Btw, I'm not one of those irritating people who use the word "literally" about things that clearly aren't literal at all. So yeah ... this actually did happen.)

kyiv me up, baby!

Decided to skip forward a bit, and omit mention of the last two days of my road trip (which ended safe and sound in Lviv, btw). That's mainly because there are other adventures afoot, and I haven't had time to sit down and write about everything.

Anyway ... most of you know that I've struggled to come to terms with life in western Ukraine. There have been some really great times (e.g. hanging out with my fabulous colleagues and friends at the International House Language School, where I used to work), times when I've wanted to throw grenades at lunatic drivers who've nearly run me over or shopkeepers who've hated on me for no reason, and long grey periods in between of "Yep, well, this is all ok I guess, but I clearly just don't belong here."

SLEEPY MOUNTAIN VILLAGE KINDA VIBE

Slavs'ko, Ukraine, 21.05.2013

Then in May, Yuliya, Timur and I moved up into the Carpathians and spent a month living in a small town / oversized village called Slavs'ko. As with any urban-to-rural move, being up there showed me a different side of the country. It definitely softened my opinion of Ukraine, because life in Slavs'ko was basically pleasant and relaxing, with fresh mountain air and a sleepy, unhurried vibe. And while it would be going slightly too far to say that people up there are 'nice', they're at least not rude, belligerent and deliberately obstructive. So stark was the difference that I started to wonder if my problem was actually with the high proportion of cranky people in suburban Lviv*, rather than with Ukraine as a whole.

Three months later, after an enjoyable but exhausting summer stint in Finland, I now find myself waiting for a Turkish visa in Kyiv – i.e., at the opposite end of Ukraine's urban-rural continuum.

When I found out that I'd have to come here, my overriding thought was "Oh no! There goes my newfound goodwill towards Ukraine." I envisioned the city as a kind of mini-Moscow, full of self-absorbed shiny people rushing about madly, determined to knock me over either

a) in the Metro underpass, or
b) in their ridiculous shiny supersized cars.

Having now been here for a week, I can happily report that I was completely wrong. I love Kyiv! Contrary to all expectations, it turns out to be a vibrant, friendly and (relatively) cosmopolitan capital, thoroughly deserving of one of those "Gosh, I am SO impressed!" rants that I embark upon from time to time. So now I'm going to write one :-)

My week started off in slightly shaky fashion, because after the first of many visits to the Turkish Embassy, I decided to go and see the Kyiv Pechersk-Lavra monastery. This had been recommended to me by several people, mainly due to the underground cave there lined with the skeletons of dead monks. Apparently, for fans of the strange and macabre, it's kind of a must-see.

Of course, rows of dead monks lining cave walls is not something I can pass up easily, but it turned out to be a lot less inspiring and a lot more annoying than I'd expected. Still, it wasn't a total waste; being a fan of the flying saucer fixation that seems to have gripped Soviet architects during the 1970s and 80s**, I did enjoy my encounter with this concrete mothership, which was getting ready for lift-off not far from my hotel and on the way to the monastery.

(Btw, it turns out to be the Ukrainian Institute of Scientific and Technological R& D, but I didn't know that until I checked afterwards on the internet. Nowadays it seems to host the occasional yoga class, but that's about all.)

When I got to Pechersk-Lavra, though, there were no holy bones to be seen; the caves had closed for the day, and I would have to come back. What I saw instead was an orgy of commercialism. I mean, I remember my dad fulminating about the gift shops inside cathedrals when we did our 'Big Europe tour' back in the day, and I kind of agreed with him. But this was just on a whole other level. Leading down to the cave entrance, for example, was a long tunnel full of semi-official monastery merchandise, on sale at exorbitant prices. I bought some nice-smelling soap for Yuliya, and nearly fell over when they charged me 103 hryvnia (about 13 dollars) for it! They explained, though, that it had been blessed by the monks ... so, y'know, obviously it's gonna get you a lot closer to heaven than just normal soap would. That makes sense, right?

I was still recovering from that little shock, and from seeing tons of water sprayed onto the lavish monastery gardens with a high-tech sprinkler system that Lord Yanukovych Himself would probably struggle to afford, when I came across what I can only describe as 'Holy Honey Alley'. Not a porn actor's euphemism for a fetishistic sex act, but rather a whole row of honey sellers offering blessed bee products, from propolis to honey wine and beeswax candles. And again, the prices were commensurate with the fact that the Lord God Almighty had blessed these little bees in person.

Same with the chocolates at the confectionary stall. Appalling.

And then there was this, outside the gates of the Pechersk-Lavra complex. I mean, really! Aside from making vomit sounds, what can you really say about the 'Angel Factory'?

(Incidentally, the correct answer is: "Nothing. Just make more vomit sounds.")

So yeah ... one full day into my Kyiv visit, I was feeling underwhelmed. But things vastly improved after that, to the point where I now find myself feeling rather melancholic about leaving tomorrow. I want more Kyiv, dammit!

One of the things I like so much about the capital is its street art. There are certain playful and unorthodox edges to it which other Ukrainian cities lack, and which seem to reflect the character of Kyivans themselves.

To try and explain that: I've periodically complained that all the street art in Lviv (supposedly an 'arty' city, if you listen to its residents) is dreary, sombre statuary, commemorating historical figures of the region with no hint of imagination or flair. I mean, historical statuary is fine, but if they're so keen to join 'Europe' over there, there should be room in the streets for less deadly serious stuff. Or at least, they should be able to cope with something a bit less standoffish and a bit more more personal in style.

This ballerina sculpture stands on in an inner city back street in Kyiv, immortalising a former resident and famous dancer who lived in the house behind. It (I want to say "she") is quite small, and her colours match those of the street so well that you can easily miss her. But having seen her once, she brings the street corner to life and adds an element of intrigue: as you look at her facial features, you wonder "Who was this woman? Why that expression? What kind of person was she?" and so on. And see, you won't find anything like that in Lviv or Odessa. It's definitely a Kyiv thing.

Likewise the 'Yozh Monument', celebrating the 1975 animated cartoon Hedgehog in The Fog (yozh being the Russian word for "hedgehog"). I actually love the cartoon – written for kids, and yet artful, shadowy and spooky, with a dreamlike orchestral score and beautiful backdrops, it's a true classic of the era; a little piece of Soviet entertainment history, you might say. The avi file sits on my computer desktop, and I watch it maybe once every year or two when the mood hits me. So of course I had to find the monument. I expected something larger – but here again, Kyiv doesn't always go for 'grand'. For such a big, sprawling city, the public spaces and the things you find in them have a surprisingly intimate feeling.

(You can watch 'Hedgehog in The Fog' with English subtitles here.)

Even Kyiv's street stalls emphasise the playful, not-taking-itself-too-seriously atmosphere of the capital. Outside metro stations and in city parks, you can find coffee and news stands with names like Kapitalist, and in recent times 'coffee snails' like this one have proliferated.

The snails do a pretty decent takeaway cappuccino (hard to find in other Ukrainian cities, where the whole takeaway concept often seems beyond the grasp of local businesses), and add an extra splash of colour and confection to a city which seems to enjoy both. If you're after something a bit stronger, they'll also serve you a mojito – something which seems to be an obsession among Kyivans. You can buy mojito almost anywhere here (even KFC has a non-alcoholic version), or just purchase some fresh mint in a metro underpass and make your own at home. I approve :-)

A little way out from dead centre, you discover what happens when Kyiv does decide to go grand and monumental. Not far from the parliament there's an extremely odd building called The House of Chimeras, perched atop a hill and draped with a devil's regiment of gargoyles and gothic monstrosities, along with a few fearsome real-world creatures like the crocodile guarding the front door.

Walking around the outside, you're left with the impression of a legion of mythical and/or über-primitive creatures writhing on the rooftops, from which they will eventually launch a murderous assault on the city. But in the meantime, there are some nice water features in the front garden, so summer visitors can enjoy the cool of the water spray while they await their inevitable enslavement to the beast hordes. It really is bizarre.

And then, finally, you get onto Khreshchatik street and Kyiv's Maidan Nezalezhnisti - the 'Square of Independence'.

This huge open area was the site of 2004's Orange Revolution, and after President Viktor Yanukovych was forced to admit election fraud and step down, his successor Viktor Yuschenko significantly took the presidential oath outside, in front of the crowds on the Maidan. But even before that, it was traditionally a venue for public protest and political gatherings.

In the early 1990s there were protests here against President Leonid Kuchma. The authorities cleverly chose that moment to begin construction on the huge glass dome in the middle of the square, sealing off most of the area with barricades – and thus leaving the protestors nowhere to stand. But it didn't keep them away for long, and 'to meet on the Maidan' has acquired a double meaning in Kyiv: it can signify just an everyday social meeting, but it can also mean 'to discuss and organise politically, so as to make your voice heard'. The square, in other words, symbolises the role of the citizenry in politics. If Eastern Europe had an Occupy Movement, this would certainly be an appropriate choice for 'Occupy HQ'.

The Maidan straddles both sides of Khreshchatik street. On one side you've got six avenues radiating out from the square, with a neoclassical building on each corner forming the dramatic ensemble you can see above, and the dome out in front. On the other side, there's the Hotel Ukraina, a bunch of fountains depicting Ukrainian heroes (which kids come to swim in during the summer), and an enormous column, at the top of which stands the figure of the Archangel Michael.

When you stay in Kyiv as a tourist, you find yourself on Maidan Nezalezhnisti quite a lot. But my most memorable visit was the day I 'met on the Maidan' with a friend called Oksana, a native Kyivan. She told me a little secret about her home town: namely, that it's actually Gotham City, and that the Archangel is its 'Batman'. Knowing this, some locals reason that Kyiv/Gotham is invulnerable to attack, because it has a super hero protecting it.

These are the things you really need to know about the places you visit :-)

As impressive as the Maidan is, however, the back streets of Central Kyiv are just as enjoyable to explore. Behind a huge ring-shaped market that comes off Khreshchatik, you find this intriguing piece of street art, advertising the entrance to the Pinchuk Art Centre. (Note the 'sushi' sign in the top right-hand corner, and the company mascot with the raw fish hairstyle.)

Pinchuk is currently hosting an exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art, which includes an incredible installation called '100 trees'. It is more or less what it sounds like – a room full of gnarled, ancient tree stumps which you walk through, while looking at black & white portraits of ordinary Chinese citizens around the walls. And it's stunning. (No cameras allowed, unfortunately.)

A bit further out, you get gems like this: a building maintained by the National Union of Ukrainian Theatre Artists, and simply signposted as "House of Actor". (Why spoil the mystery with a ton of useless detail, eh?) The huge facade sits on a quiet street, a few doors down from a traditional Uzbek chaikhana (tea house), looking almost as dilapidated – and almost as cosy and enticing – as the real deal in Uzbekistan. This is definitely a street that I could live on!



Possibly my favourite area of the city, though, is the amazing Peysazhna Alleja ('landscape alley'). This is a community arts project in the real sense: it turned a decrepit neighbourhood into an ocean of colour, and the local residents were so keen to see this happen that they collected part of the money for it themselves. Now they have the best back yard in Kyiv!

The alley is constructed over remains of Kyiv's medieval ramparts, which (according to some) had been zoned by the council as a site for building drab government offices. (As if Ukraine needs more of those!) Some local artists got there first, however, creating the beginnings of an eccentric sculpture park that has since been greatly extended.

As you walk into the alleja, you notice a change. Little fat birds are sitting atop high fences, watching over extensive playground areas. Further on, you have sculptures of feral-looking children balancing on piles of pillows, beckoning to passers-by.

As kids play on Alice in Wonderland-themed slides and climbing equipment (topped by a somewhat scary-looking Cheshire Cat, adults sit and relax on benches that are artworks in themselves. Some reference the area's medieval heritage; others the fact that this was a haunt for the homeless before it got its makeover; and others are just cute and silly attempts to liven up the neighbourhood in general.

While I was walking around this giant confection, it occurred to me that in its own way, Peysazhna is just as much a monument to the independence of the Ukrainian spirit as the Maidan is. The government is fully behind it now, and in fact according to TripAdvisor, it's become Kyiv's third largest attraction after the monasteries and so on. But at the start, it was just a locals' dream of creating a new kind of place to live in, spurred on by a few crazy artists with a vision.

The fact that this kind of vision was brought to fruition in a city like Kyiv seems to me quite inspiring. Kyiv drags an immense amount of historical weight around with it, being the home of the Kyivan Rus, acknowledged ancestors of all Russian slavs. It's also home to one branch of the Orthodox Church, it's been an important trading post since antiquity, and of course, it's the capital of mainland Europe's largest country. So it would be easy to turn this city into a tortuously dry, pompous and preachy monument to itself, such as you find in certain other capitals of ex-Soviet republics.

But instead, here we have a bunch of people who just decided to brighten up their community regardless of what the authorities said, and the result: a huge success :-)

So anyway, that was my week in the Ukrainian capital. Or at least, those were some of the things I did when not going backwards and forwards between the hotel and the Turkish Embassy, dotting 'i's and crossing 't's on a working visa application.

I now have one less free page in my passport, occupied by a brand new visa for the Republic of Turkey – so my work here is done. I'm heading back to Lviv for a few days to be with the family, before jetting off on a whole new adventure.

Really gonna miss this place, though. I hope to be back!


* I know some truly wonderful people in Lviv, and every time I say something negative about their city, I feel extremely guilty. But sadly, the overall atmosphere in Lviv is definitely a cranky one, and I'd say roughly half of the population participate in making it so. They're cranky at the rest of Ukraine for not being 'Ukrainian enough'; they're cranky at Russia on account of a bunch of historical stuff that hasn't been effectively dealt with in the public sphere; they're cranky with foreigners for being an inconvenience and not knowing their language; and they're cranky with each other just for, I d'know, existing. It's a shame, because the city has potential to be fantastic ... and as I said, I feel bad for saying all this stuff. But it's regrettably true :-(  

** You can see other 'Soviet flying saucers' here and here. I really recommend it – they're awesome!

day five: don't make me get my tank!

So ... after changing hotels this morning (the Soviet tower block was fully booked out for Monday night, apparently), I headed for the office of Velo-Vilnius, who organise city tours by bicycle.

I know some people feel that the 'grand city tour' is a bit silly, but depending on the city, I personally find them rather useful. You can get around to a lot of things in a short space of time, cross the boring bits off your list, and come back to the interesting parts later to do them at your own pace. I'm especially fond of bicycle tours, and for a number of reasons, the Baltics are definitely the place to do them. The bicycle tour of Tallinn, for example, is by far my pick of the many Tallinn tours available (and I've done most of them!).

Because of the hotel change, I was the last person to turn up for the tour, just a minute or two before it was supposed to leave. In fact, I got there just in time to be given a bicycle, a lovely basket and a special job. I would ride last in the tour group, wearing the fluorescent yellow safety vest. Throwing the vest on and trying not to visibly wince, I followed the group up through the Old Town.

Silly clothing aside, this was going to be great!

I won't give you a  blow-by-blow of Vilnius, because that would go on forever. Historically, it has that Baltic "pretty much everyone has ruled us at one time or another" thing, the result being a wonderful layer cake of styles accompanied by a treasury of stories. It also has the Baltic oddness that I love ... here and in the neighbouring countries, what you tend to get is 'Europe with a twist', which always makes Europe more fun than when it's straight up and twist-free.

I will, however, tell you some things I loved about the tour. 

Firstly, it started in what was once a very dodgy neighbourhood of central Vilnius, full of drug addicts, prostitutes and the inevitable inner city criminal element, but which is now a self-proclaimed independent state called the Republic of Užupis. 

The great thing about this particular political entity is that it's run entirely by artists. And they run it pretty much as you'd expect artists to govern a small country ... i.e. without much concern for everyday political realities, but with an awful lot of whimsy and flair and fun stuff like that. The parliament building is a pub (naturally), the entry visa is a smile, Independence Day falls on April 1st, there's a statue of a 'backpacker Jesus' in one of the main squares, there are four national flags (one for each season), the formerly twelve-strong army has been disbanded, and the constitution ... well, have a look and see what you think.

The Užupis constitution has been translated into 40 languages, all engraved on mirrors and displayed outdoors in a prominent street. In a few cases, the choice of which languages should be represented has been a political one. When the Autonomous Region of Tibet recognised Užupis, for example, the artists/governors responded by adding a Tibetan translation to their public collection. This annoyed the Chinese government, because there was no Chinese translation. And that suited the rulers of Užupis fine, since they weren't big fans of China's incursions into Tibet anyway. Thus Chinese is still conspicuously absent from the wall.

Mostly, though, the republic is more about personal politics than geopolitics, and they seem to care more about whether visitors have a 'favourite bit' than about whether or not they annoy far-off evilocrats. And rightly so, I reck'n.

(Incidentally, one of my favourite bits is not visible in this photo. It reads: "Everyone has the right to love and take care of a cat".)

In case you're interested, you can find the entire constitution here.

Another very pleasant discovery I made on this tour concerned the Mayor of Vilnius, Arturus Zuokas, a former independent journalist in Iraq. He is now, I would have to say, probably my favourite politican in Europe. For one thing, he has put a lot of green projects in place and made Vilnius extremely wi-fi friendly. He also has his police force zipping around the city on Segways (those machines that you stand on and drive), looking more bouncy and fun than any police force you've likely seen elsewhere.

Personally, though, I think Zuokas' most impressive mayoral exploit relates to the cycling lanes in Vilnius. He'd ordered these lanes to be put in all over the city, but they weren't working so well because motorists persisted in parking on them. To combat this, he simply borrowed a tank from the army, drove it downtown, found a car parked in one of the cycling lanes, and crushed it!

To drive the point home (so to speak), the Mayor's Office then produced stickers that said in Lithuanian "Don't Make Me Get My Tank!", and began distributing them around Vilnius. The cycle lanes now work brilliantly.

Give the guy a freaking Nobel Prize, I reck'n.

When myself and the others on the tour found out about this, we pleaded with our guide to ride with us to the Mayor's office and ask for some stickers. She said there probably wouldn't be any, because they've become collectors' items, but she reluctantly agreed to try. So off we rode to an anonymous-looking block where the mayoral action apparently all happens. She went inside, explained that the tank thing had inspired some foreign tourists she was with, and emerged 10 minutes later with a handful of little round adhesive masterpieces. We were thrilled! I now carry one with me everywhere, as a reminder that politics doesn't always have to be depressing :-)

One last thing about Zuokas: although he's a hit in his home town, on the national stage he sometimes makes people wonder if he isn't basically a loony. An example was his suggestion to the national parliament a few years ago that Lithuania buy a Greek island, both to enlarge its territory and also to help out a European neighbour in crisis. The scheme was more or less laughed out of parliament - and it's not entirely clear whether or not even he was serious about it. Still, you have to love the sheer eccentricity of the idea.

So there you go.

After the bicycle tour ended I headed immediately out of town, because there was something else I wanted to see. About 40kms from Vilnius, there's a place called Trakai which has been on my 'must go there' list for ages. So that's where I went.

Trakai is basically a little community that spreads across the mainland and a few islands in a natural lake. On one of the islands is a castle. Whenever you read about it on the internet or in the guidebooks, the reviews are all 'ohmigod' and so forth. I thought I was going to have my mind blown. Instead, I went out there, walked around the lake, went up to the castle and went "Um ... yeah. It's very nice.". So, y'know, a little less than I'd expected, but still pretty cool. After all the other stuff I'd seen, I guess my brain was just a tiny bit overloaded.

The following day I left Lietuva, feeling quite sad to be on my way out. The landscape I saw through the train window was pretty and green and punctuated with the occasional stork, all of which made me wish I could stay a bit longer.

Luckily, though, I was headed for Poland. So that helped. The prospect of being back in one of my most beloved European countries is a gigantic upside, whatever the situation :-)

As you know, I was planning to write a separate entry for each day of this journey. As things have turned out, though, there just hasn't been time. I've got some further adventures to tell you about, and they're going to be big. So for now ...

Byeeeeeee!!!

day four: as seen through a mist of fatigue

EPILOGUE: 
ruminating word nerd

As much as I enjoy the actual 'trip' parts of road tripping (at least some of the time), this one-day stopover in Vilnius was the part I'd been looking forward to most.

I actually have a long emotional connection to this city, though I've never been here before. Some time around the millennium I was in a band, and we decided to release a CD of poetry set to music. We found a beautiful poem called Frozen Forests, written by a Lithuanian poet and translated into English. Having contacted him and got his permission to use his words, I asked a little bit about his home town and did some looking on the internet. The immediate reaction was "Ooooh, so pretty!", repeated about a hundred times ... and of course I resolved that, whatever else happened in my life, I would go there.

I'm quite proud of my part in writing that song (it's unique and beautiful), and when I hear it, I often think of Vilnius. But that little songwriting escapade was over a decade ago.

Sometimes takes a while to follow through on these far-fetched schemes :-)

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PART 1: FATIGUEABLES

So yeah ... I woke up yesterday in a 'city of dreams'. Or at least a city of my dreams. Have to say, though, it wasn't one of my all-time best wake-ups. I felt mentally sluggish and physically exhausted, and my feet looked as though they'd been stricken with plague; the impressively painful blisters I'd developed had for some reason turned black and yellow. Walking more than a few metres on them was a real trial.

This was not the enthusiastic spring-out-of-bed which befits such an occasion.

Rather enjoyably, though, my hostel is one of those forlorn- and weary-looking tower blocks with which ex-Soviet Republics are packed silly. The room is spartan but has everything I need; the eighth-floor balcony is another matter. Held onto the side of the building with a combination of concrete and rusty iron brackets, it's missing a bit between the vertical 'wall' and the horizontal 'floor'. Every time I go out there for a cigarette, I can't help glancing through the gap and seeing the street far below. To halt the sickening swoon of vertigo that invariably results, I then sit down hurriedly on a tiny metal chair, trying not to look anywhere else but at my shoes.

Anyway ... by around 11am, I'd worked out what was wrong: basically, the summer had chosen today to catch up with me. I'd spent ten intensely enjoyable but extremely gruelling weeks in summer camp, sleeping far too little and working far too much. There had to be some kind of reckoning ... and here it was, apparently.

It was mid-afternoon by the time I managed to coax myself out of the room and into the slightly creepy wood-panelled lift. I pressed the black plastic button marked '1' (the ground floor is level 1 in most countries – this "G" thing seems to something of an English-speaking anomaly), and the button buried itself firmly in the wall panel as per usual. When I reached the ground floor (sorry, the first level), it popped back into its original position with an unbelievably loud "crack!".

It does that every time. Never fails to scare the shit out of me.

Out of the hotel, I headed towards the Old Town. According to the little itinerary I'd laid out for myself, I was meant to be leaving Vilnius tomorrow. So I would have basically this afternoon and this evening to see what I could see before moving on. Trudging along on two sets of blisters (the left set and the right set), I found myself thinking "Well, maybe it won't be that great. I mean, maybe a couple of hours' walking around will be all the Vilnius I need."

Yeah right, Anthony. That's exactly what will happen.

Idiot.

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PART 2: INTRIGUEABLES

It turns out that, in fact, Vilnius' Old Town is not only rather fabulous but also rather large.

The fabulousness comes partly from that classic Euro-mix of sunny, open squares and shaded little alleyways, with cafes and beer gardens tucked away down side streets and in leafy courtyards. Also, it's one of those wonderfully laid out cities where you can be walking down an ordinary road and suddenly spot the tower of a medieval citadel standing on a hilltop at the end of it. Soviet occupation has endowed the city with its fair share of brutalist statuary (my favourite kind), and from the look of things, the grand neo-classicism which dominated Eastern Europe and western Russia in late 19th/early 20thC must have flourished here too at around the same time.

Exiting at one end of the Old Town, the atmosphere changes immediately. The transition is marked by a red/brown block shaded by vines, with sunflowers at the entrance. If you head down the left side of that block, you find yourself in an alley next to a surviving section of the medieval wall.

Walking along outside the wall (as opposed to inside, where everything is well painted and pretty), you see an entirely different Vilnius. It's gritty and it's ancient, with crumbling facades and silent courtyards that you'd be more than a little nervous to enter. It's also well-nigh deserted – while the city's most lavishly-painted churches and grandest civic buildings stand literally metres away, there are more alley cats to be seen on this side of the wall than there are tourists.

Not sure how I always end up discovering the dingiest, most unkempt parts of the cities I visit. Occasionally I wonder if something in my personality compels me to seek them out ... but for what reason I don't know.

So I followed the wall around for about half a kilometre, where I came to a succession of crowded cobbled streets on one side, and vast open squares on the other.

In this part of town, people were generally doing the thing which distinguishes European cities from most others: they were having coffee, beer and ice cream outdoors. More specifically, they were doing this on large expanses of precious urban land that would be devoted to motor transport or zoned for retail development almost anywhere else in the world.

This, incidentally, is one reason why I will never, ever be 'over' Europe. On this continent, even urban planners (who often seem to be the biggest morons working in any field outside of national government or the software industry) are aware that the basic unit of society is neither the car nor the retail chain: it's the individual. To put that a slightly different way, Europeans nearly all seem to understand that an outdoor cafe brings far more to a city than a motorway or a shopping mall ever could. This is how it should work everywhere, and if it doesn't work that way where you are, you should be rioting right now instead of reading this.

Oops! Sorry for the off-topic rant there. Let's get back to Vilnius.

So yeah ... putting all these first impressions together, Vilnius struck me at first glance the way most of my favourite European cities tend to do. On the one hand, there were definite similarities to other places, and interesting comparisons to be made. On the other, there seemed to be a distinct atmosphere here, specific to this town, which had me feeling intrigued and excited as I wandered around.

Clearly, I was going to need an extra day ...

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EPILOGUE:
the word nerd is off again ... this time about langauge
(surprise!)

Something else that's always intrigued me is the way that countries, cities and peoples get different names in other languages. For example, the country known to its own people as Zhong Guo becomes "China" in English, "Ilestri" in Welsh, and so on. Likewise, Deutschland becomes Allemagne in French, from which I guess English somehow derived Germany, while the Finns call it Saksa. And speaking of the Finns, how the heck did Suomi (the actual name of the country) morph into 'Finland' ? And why do they call Russia Venäjä ?

Those are just a few random examples. Of course, I could go on about many others ... like the history of word 'njemets', which is fascinating. In Russian and several other Slavic languages, it means "German man", though its literal meaning is "man who has been struck dumb". The meaning change happened over centuries, and incorporated a stage where every foreigner in Russia was called 'njemets' ... because, not being able to speak Russian, they were for all intents and purposes without speech.

Sorry, I know this is an utterly off-topic ramble. I just think it's hilarious (and more than a little insulting) that in Russian, if you're talking to a guy who you think may be from Germany, and you want to check, you effectively ask "So, are you a man who has been struck dumb?". And if your guess is correct, the guy will answer "yes".

Blah blah.

The one I actually wanted to mention, though, was the word 'Lietuva'. This refers to an object which, in English, we call Lithuania. But the question is: why do we do that? Well, the standard answer is that all languages have processes of making foreign words 'fit', and English is no exception. I can see that in some instances ... but other times I think it's just lazy and/or silly.

So let me teach you how to say this word. There are just a few things you need to know.

To start with, the stress is on the first syllable.

Also, the i and e run together to form a sound very typical of Slavic languages. It sounds like "yes" without the s ... so 'ye', basically. (If you know Russian, just use an ordinary Russian 'e', and if you know Polish, use an ordinary 'ie'.) That gives you something like 'LYE'.

When you get to the 'u', make it short and round, like the oo in 'good'.

LYEtu.

Now the v. You need to soften this, so that it takes on some of the qualities of an /f/ sound and some of the qualities of a /w/. Try that. Then add the final a, which sounds like the last letter in umbrella.

Put that all together, and you've got LYEtu[w/v/f]a.

Now tell me ... isn't that a far lovelier word than 'Lithuania' ?

I certainly think so )))

day three: shao-lei and the smiling latvians

PART 1: GUANTANAMO, LATVIA

Day three of the road trip was a fairly intense one, involving some false starts and a bit of back-tracking as some of the transport connections I was relying on turned out to be fictitious. Those Baltic travel schedules turned out to be every bit as unreliable as I'd thought. In fact, there were times  when the only things that kept me going were the wonderfully warm smiles of Latvian women.

These, I have to say, are among Latvia's greatest natural assets ... and when I say that, I'm comparing said smiles to some other pretty darn impressive stuff.

Exampleoceros: it’s a little known fact that Latvia has recently been named the greenest country in Europe. Or at least, I think it's little-known – mainly because no-one has ever come up to me and said "Hey Anthony, did you hear that Latvia is Europe's greenest country?" So either nobody knows this, or nobody is telling me. I'm not sure which.

Either way, it's quite an accolade. Consider some of the competition: Finland is basically a few tens of thousands of lakes hidden inside a big forest, with only a handful of folk living in it, separating their recycling meticulously; Slovenia is 70% trees and about 15% mountains, with a population of around 40; Germany was so freaked out when it nearly lost the Black Forest to acid rain in the 1970s that it has entirely re-invented itself as a Green Society par excellence; and in Iceland, the buses run on hydrogen and nearly everything else is powered by moving water. So I don't know whether Latvians are proud of their 'green status' ... but if they aren't, then they freaking well should be :-)

Certainly flying over the country (as I did in May), the greenness of it was both extremely striking and extremely inviting. I had a powerful urge to get hold of a bicycle right away, and see this country properly, instead of transiting through Latvia as I always seem to do. I've promised myself that one day I will do that, hopefully with my family (and with Scott – we've been talking about it for ages). But not today, sadly.

The smiles, though ... well, they're absolutely world-class. I mean, forget London: if you're tired of being smiled at by Latvian women, you really are tired of life.

The early part of the day was also marked by a cavalcade of annoyances, which reached a deafening crescendo at around 8:30am. I was still in the waking-up process, and after asking for help from the staff and being met with utter indifference, I was sitting in the bar of my hostel and trying to make the wi-fi work. There were five guys in the bar dressed in faux medieval costume – tights, velvety waistcoats and so forth. I'd previously seen them on the steps outside when I went for a cigarette, drinking their 'breakfast beers'. (It's a common Eastern European thing to get tipsy at breakfast time. If you're Ukrainian or Russian, you do it on the way to work.)

Now they were inside, and on to their second round ... when all of a sudden, the beers were placed on coasters, musical instruments were produced from under tables, and latches were being loudly flipped open. A few seconds later they were tuning a bunch of guitars and lute-like things, before launching into a rendition of Guantanamera at ear-splitting volume … just as one expects first thing in the morning at a vaguely Irish-themed hostel in Latvia.

Like any sane person, I reacted by fleeing. No-one deserves Guantanamera* before 9am!  

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PART 2: 'SHAO-LEI'

At around 5:30 this afternoon, I rolled into Šiauliai in northern Lithuania. First impressions: drier than the other Baltics, more heavily cultivated, and a good deal more 'Soviet'. There were broken footpaths, shabby tower blocks, Moskvich cars and many other reminders that I'd arrived in one of the 15 former republics. But there were also cycle paths (very un-Soviet) and credit card machines that actually worked.

Being the 'language tourist' I am, I also noticed that the Lithuanian language is super weird and interesting. There are almost no prepositions (words like in, at, with, for, by, from etc.), and the pronunciation struck me as quite uncharacteristic of European languages. For example, the city I mentioned is spelled as you see it on the right, but pronounced 'shao-lei' ... which to me sounds more like a province in China than a town in Europe. So that was fun )))

I found the railway station without too much trouble, my wheelie bag bouncing over concrete blocks that had assumed all kinds of funny poses and angles. And a bit over an hour later, I boarded a train to Vilnius, and arrived there (sorry, here) a little after 10pm.

So ... success :-) I'm now approximately 1,045km into the journey, with about 1,200km to go. And I'm in Vilnius, of all places! How cool is that?

I'm also completely exhausted, so without further ado or adon't ...
good night :-)

('Guantanamera' = that horrible Cuban song that you've heard way more often than you should. It translates as 'woman from Guantanamo', and it's about unrequited love. According to one version of the story, the songwriter was at work one day when the woman he loved brought him a steak sandwich, and that little act of kindness inspired the song. Which is kind of cute I s'pose ... but why do we have to hear it over and over again, even in frikkin' Latvia?!?)

day two: straight on to the sketchy bits

PART 1: SETTING OUT

So … this is where it could all go wrong.

I’ve just boarded a 9am coach from Tallinn (which has lost none of its charm) to Tartu, Estonia’s biggest student town. From there, after a little wander around, I’ll bus it again to a place called Valga,
on the Latvian border. The Latvian railway website confidently informs me that there’s a train service from Valga to Riga, leaving at 5:30pm this afternoon.

The problem here is with this word “train”. The Baltics have never fully got it together rail-wise, and trains in this part of the world are notoriously sketchy and unreliable. Routes are often changed or discontinued, and information about the changes takes a while to propagate across the internet. So you can easily find yourself standing on a deserted railway station in an obscure town, with no choice but to stay the night. 

If you’re really lucky, you may be able to ‘coach hop’ to somewhere that’s vaguely on the map, because what these countries lack in train services, they almost make up for with long-distance coaches. But you still need some good fortune and a lot of patience. Oh, and even when the trains do run at the advertised time, anything that goes more than about 100kms on rails comes along incredibly infrequently. The Riga-Vilnius service, for example, only runs once in two days.

For all of the above-stated reasons, I'm skeptical about anything I read on a timetable in this part of the world. I guess we'll find out whether or not, and to what extent, that skepticism is justified.

Meanwhile, the coach I’m on now is super-modern and groovy, with in-seat displays that show you where you are on a map that updates itself every few seconds ... like the ones you get on aeroplanes. Admittedly, it's slightly disturbing that the picture of the bus is not to scale and can't change direction, 'cause it means that quite often you seem to be in an enormous 'superbus' that's heading straight into the sea! But I'll forgive this little technical detail.

The main thing is that the bus actually arrived, so I can get 160km closer to my final destination ... and see some lovely Estonian countryside along the way =)

I'll write more soon.

Bye )))

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PART 2: PEAR-SHAPING

So … as I mentioned, if something was going to go wrong on this trip, today is one of the days when it was most likely to happen.

All was going well until I hit Valga and saw the railway station there. That’s when I had to start drawing up a Plan B.

I’ve seen some pretty closed-looking railway stations in my time, but this definitely came across as one of the closedest. The whole building was covered in scaffolds, construction of the ticket counters hadn’t been finished, and the only humans around were a few workmen (unless you count the token town drunk and the two gossiping grannies in the park opposite).

I walked around behind the station and onto the platform, and couldn’t find a place to buy tickets. There was a train, though. Unfortunately it said “Tallinn” on the front, and looked more like a museum exhibit than a functioning means of transport. Inside one carriage, I could see a tangle of copper pipes, as if an alchemist had set up his laboratory in there.

Not looking good. 

Four hours earlier I'd arrived in Tartu during a heavy rain shower, but once that cleared up I found the town quite pleasant to explore. Nothing spectacular, but good to see, since while I was living in Tallinn several people had recommended it to me as a nice place to go for a weekend, and I'd never quite got there. 

Tartu was pretty quiet, but there were definite touches of that characteristic Baltic quirkiness. I enjoyed the 'Monument To The Meeting of Two Wildes', which depicts Oscar Wilde having tea and chit-chat with the Estonian poet Eduard Vilde. The odd thing about this is that it commemorates a meeting that never actually happened ... though it "easily could have" according to the Tourist Information brochure. In Tartu, that's apparently sufficient justification to warrant a monument.

I also liked the sign above the two Wildes that said area of wireless internet. Obviously wi-fi zones are hardly a rarity nowadays, but they're especially common in 'e-stonia'. They've gone all-out with the "e" stuff here; in fact Estonia is the second most online society in the world, after South Korea. 

(Short aside: some years back the Estonian govt. also invented a way of filling out your tax return online which takes less than ten minutes and involves zero stress, which ought to have every employee of the Australian Tax Office hanging themselves in their garage out of pure shame and embarrassment. Even Finland is still catching up with Estonian innovations in this area. Just thought someone out there might like to know :-)

Much better than Tartu, though, was the countryside of Central Southern Estonia. I'd never been to this part of the country before, and it was a treat for the eyes. Much hillier than the northern parts; forested ridges and steeply rolling farmlands were the dominant features. At one point, I saw a woman in a bridesmaid's dress leap out of a Land Rover and run into a field of wheat. (Now there's a moment when I wish I'd had my camera ready!) It was odd ... but then, its oddness is one of the things I like about Estonia. And the Baltics in general, come to that.

A little further on we entered a region of lakes which were dramatically studded with islands, some of them rising vertically out of the water. I was surprised, impressed ... and sadly, once again far too slow on the draw with my camera :-(

So yeah ... Estonia arguably had no need to confirm its rockingness, but it went ahead and did so anyway. 

Also, the Estonian language continues to bring on the cute words, my favourite for today being "Rokibaar" (Rock Bar). Maybe it's just me, but I love it )))

As I said, though, the fun turned not-so-fun in Valga ... which is not, incidentally, one of Estonia's prettier corners. A quick walk into town (dragging my 20kg wheelie bag behind me along crappy footpaths, since no railway station means no luggage lockers) was enough to establish why this town is not on the 'tourist route'. 

The only remotely interesting thing I found was this 'Locomotive Monument', commemorating the opening of the Pskov-Valga-Riga railway line in nineteen-something-or-other. And yes ... the mocking irony of it did annoy me.

I came back to the station at around 5pm, to find that the decrepit-looking train had gone. In its place was a much nicer one with Riga written on the front. Success!

I then made a little discovery: the station was not completely closed after all. At one side of the building there was a small sign above a door that said "Cargo Bus", and when I pushed the door, it opened.

Inside was a corridor, a toilet (yay!) and a small courier's office. My train was scheduled to leave at 5:29pm, and it was raining quite heavily outside, so I asked the courier lady if I could wait in the corridor until twenty past. (I set my alarm so that I wouldn’t miss it.) As soon as the alarm went off, I packed up my stuff and went outside. It was 5.22pm when I reached the gate leading directly to the platform – seven minutes till departure. You can imagine, then, how shocked I was when I saw the train pulling out and leaving!  

After standing pathetically at the gate for a minute or so, watching the train disappear, I went back inside to the courier's office.

“Excuse me. Something very strange just happened. Can train drivers leave early if they want to?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

“Ummm …”. I bashed around in my brain for words, in a 'wasp at a window pane' kind of way. For a period of time somewhere between five and ten seconds, the pane remained impenetrable.

I mean, delays I expect. Cancellations … well ok, they happen. But a train leaving almost ten minutes early, when it’s one of only three trains per day that can get people out of a dull-as-eggs little shithole like this one?

I just couldn’t believe it.

The woman behind the counter must have seen the disappointment written on my face (probably in arterial purple). I’d already paid a deposit for my accommodation in Riga, and the hostel had my credit card details, so if I was a ‘no-show’ they would just take the balance. And more importantly, I'd had pretty much all the Valga I could handle without becoming impolite.

Then she said “I can sell you a ticket on a coach from St Petersburg to Riga. It stops here at 7pm.”

Wow … amazing! I hadn 't even realised that this place was a booking office for coaches (there was no sign to indicate that), let alone that there would be one leaving in an hour and a half.  It was three times as expensive as the train, but obviously at that point, cost was more or less irrelevant. I paid up, and after a brief trip to a smelly little corner shop to buy ‘dinner’, I went to wait in the park right next to the bus stop. Rain or no rain, I was taking no chances with my ride-to-be.

But I still had one more trial to get through. I was passing the time semi-productively, writing up a blog entry, when the token drunk accosted me … and he was an elderly, filthy, and rather stinky one :-(

At first he asked me something in Estonian, and when I made 'don't understand' motions, used the word "tourist" (which seems nearly universal) and said "Ei osta eesti keelt" (I don't speak Estonian), he didn’t seem to get it.

A few attempts later, it finally sank in that this foreign traveller probably wasn't going to understand his Estonian, regardless of how loud he shouted. (I hate that ‘speak louder and the foreigner will understand’ thing.) So then he switched to Russian … which, thanks to the slurring, was only slightly more understandable.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

I should’ve said somewhere nearby like “Riga” or “Poland”. Instead, I stupidly said “Australia”.

I then heard the word “Australia” posed as an incredulous question about half a dozen times, getting a little louder and more ‘Oh my god, how unbelievable!’ with each repetition. Suddenly a thought (or half a thought, or the foggiest, most whisky-soaked outline of a thought) occurred to him:

“How do you know Russian?”

“I used to live in Kazakhstan.”

“In KAZAKHSTAN?!?”

And that was the next few minutes gone:

“AuSTRAlia … KAZakhstan?”

  [short pause]

“AuSTRAlia … KazakhSTAN?”

  [longer pause
  punctuated by some chuckling]

“AUSTRALIA? KAZAKHSTAN?”

... and so on.

A thought bubble appeared above my head, containing the following text:

"Yes, brains trust, that is what I said. And look, I’ll admit that I do quite like having a slightly unusual biography, but would you please get over it now? Oh, and it would also be great if you could just GO THE HELL AWAY. Do you think you could manage that?"

But despite my best attempts to communicate the contents of said bubble using facial expressions and body language, the drunk decided to persist in bothering this curious Australia/Kazakhstan man.

(Don't they always?)

After listening to some more of his slurring and dodging a little more spittle, I decide to venture a question:

“Do you live in Valga?”

"Frmblgrdlhrrrruuuu fuck-brrnnarrl ... huh?" 

“I said, do you live in Valga?”

"Wrdlyschvrrnvek Moscow-vrrr-grrr ... again?" 

On the third attempt he finally seemed to understand, and nodded “yes”.

“Is your house far from here?”

“No, not far. Not far. Not far.” 

For some reason, the second and third “not far”s were uttered with a slight air of melancholy. Ignoring that (because I couldn't care less whether or not he was melancholy, or indeed why), I then asked

“So why don’t you go home and rest for a while?”

Instead of answering verbally, the drunk reached into a shopping bag, pulled out a second bottle of whisky and brandished it at me, as if to say “Herein lie my evening plans” (except far less eloquently than that). Clearly he was settled in … and he was getting more shouty with every passing minute.

So again, back to the courier’s office I went, this time to get away from Spitface – except that when I tried to get in, I found it had closed. Arrgghh!!! The woman there had basically sold me a ticket and then buggered off, which is generally not a good sign :-(

There was a cleaner in the corridor, though, and she spoke great English. I asked if I could hide in the stairwell until my coach arrived, and she allowed it.

When 7pm finally rolled around, no coach arrived. The drunk was still ranting in the park, now with a fellow whisky-drinking bum for company. I was thinking “Oh my gods, I am stuck here after all … and this place sucks!” But about 15 minutes later the coach turned up, and I gratefully threw my bag into the luggage lockers underneath the cabin, then boarded. I was saved!

And that's really it. Everything else went off without incident. The ride through the Latvian countryside was picturesque, and the room at the hostel (or rather, the closet with a bed stuffed into it) was still available. I’d made it through Day Two.

Incidentally, that means 710kms down, 1,540 to go. 

Tomorrow I hit Lithuania. It’s the only Baltic country I haven’t visited before … pretty excited about that!

Good night )))