Long Vacation "Standouts"

Well, gosh. Where to begin.

Our 9-day journey through Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia was not only marvelous, but jam-packed. And, not wanting to write lengthy descriptions about everything I saw and did in that time(which I highly suspect won't break anyone's heart), I'm going to organize this in a different way. Not chronologically but, rather, grouping things together into what I've deemed were the trip's overall "standouts." We'll see how this goes:

(These are in random order. Numbering is just for organizational purposes.)

SO #1 - Conquering the transit systems in each of the 4 cities we visited.
Well, "conquering" may be a bit of a stretch--we spent notable amounts of time being lost and confused in each of the cities. But all of our abilities to navigate around large cities have definitely been improved. Especially mine, since I think I came to Russia w/ the most room for improvement in that area.

The incredibly clean (and expensive) metro in Stockholm:


SO #2 - Struggling to figure out the conversion rates in each city.
Every city we were in used a different currency: euros in Finland, krona in Sweden, lats in Latvia, kroon ("eeks") in Estonia. Unfortunately, we sometimes miscalculated the conversion rates, which got some of us into trouble. Luckily, the worst shopping incident I had b/c of this was buying a candy bar that I unknowingly paid over 5 dollars for. Nothing tragic.

SO #3 - Riding on a cruiseliner for the first time.

Got a bit sea-sick the first night. But you can't beat the view... wow. And it was pretty fun getting to use lines from Titanic everywhere we went.

SO # 4 - Purchasing a brand new, very cute pair of jeans for 7 dollars.
Yes.

SO # 5 - Learning that, sometimes, travel sites make things look a bit cooler than they really are.
The gigantic-looking clock we were expecting:


The disappointingly small and unimpressive one that is really there.

More like the "Lame-o Clock" I'd say! Ha, ha. :)

The clock displays the name of Riga's famous chocolate factory (whose name is quite fitting, since "laima" means "happiness" in Latvian).

Which brings me to my next "Standout"...

SO # 6 - Eating delectable FOOD.
For several reasons, I really hate spending money on food when I travel. Therefore, a good chunk of my caloric intake the past week came from cheap fruit and candy bars. Not the healthiest thing to do, perhaps, but much less harmful to one's mental health than spending hundreds of dollars on food in one week would be.

One great benefit of my less-than-ideal eating situation was that when I did eat real food, it tasted very, very delicious.

My top 3 food moments:

#1 "Worthy elk soup" in Tallinn (only $1.20-ish!)

Inside a dimly-lit tavern-looking thing. Which, yes, was very touristy--the people were all dressed up and everything--but we totally bought into it.

#2 This gluten-free, Irish-creme tasting, no-baked cookie-like thing.

Okay, maybe this one doesn't fit into the "real food" category. But so darn good.

#3 Stuffed baked-potato in Tallinn.
I've had a lot of fun the last few weeks trying out the odd things people outside the U.S. like to throw onto baked potatoes. Mashed pumpkin, for instance. This one was herring and cottage-cheese filled:

And quite delicious.

SO #7 - Staying in hostels for the first time.
While hotels offer more privacy and are usually much more, well, hygienic, the hostels we stayed in were run by super helpful people, had decently-comfortable bunkbeds for us to sleep in, and (best of all) were dirt cheap--less than 10 bucks a night. Hurrah for hostels!

SO #8 - Admiring some amazing architecture.
While we love the onion-domes of Russia, it was greatly refreshing to see some other types of beautiful architecture. A few of my favorites:

The Riddarholmen Church in Stockholm:

Burial place for Swedish monarchs. Said "Church of the Order of the Seraphim" on the outside, which sounded straight out of a Dan Brown book, to me.

Apartment buildings in Stockholm:

I will live here one day.

The Freedom Monument in Riga:

(Our "Welcome to Riga" pose.)

The wall that surrounded Tallinn's old town:


SO #9 - Enduring the 16-hour train ride home.
You don't really appreciate how long 16 hours is until you've spent it riding on a smelly, soviet-era train in a C-class open compartment with 7 Russians and one of your friends, the latter of which you have to share a 1x5 ft board to sleep on. Oy.

Our initial train-ride to St. Petersburg, though, was pretty fun. In our beds:


A classic shot down the aisle:


SO # 10 - Hearing some great lore.
Tallinn, in particular, was full of crazy, superstitious tales. This one was my favorite (I tried to just find a good link w/ the story, but I didn't like any of them):

First, notice the well and the out-of-place window in the top lefthand corner of the building.


Apparently, "350 odd years ago," a lone man walked into this inn and asked for a room, and was given one upstairs. Later that night, the innkeeper heard what sounded like hundreds of people dancing coming from upstairs. Since he only had one tenant that night, he was a bit alarmed, and therefore sent his bellboy up to see what was going on. An hour passed--the bellboy never came back down. So up goes the receptionist to check things out--she never came back down, either. Finally, a bit spooked, the innkeeper tiptoed up the stairs and peered through the keyhole where, evidently, he saw the devil and his wedding celebration.

So frightened, the innkeeper fled the place and ran through the streets yelling "the devil is here! The devil is here!" The next morning, 3/4 of the water in all of the wells was (apparently) gone (the wedding guests got thirsty, I guess?). All of this really freaked out Tallin's residents--so much so that half of the town's population packed up and left.

Since the people who remained in Tallinn were still pretty shaken up about the fact that the devil himself had been partying at the local inn, someone brilliant decided that drowning all of the city's cats in the well right outside would somehow "appease the devil" and fix things. So the cats were all rounded up and tossed in, where they all died from hunger, thirst and/or exposure.

Not surprisingly, hundreds of dead cats in a well connected to all of the other wells in Tallinn contaminated the city's water supply. Which meant that residents had to trek 30 km to get water for the next 6 month. Since killing all of the felines obviously wasn't the solution to their devil problem, the people then decided they needed to make amends with the understandably miffed spirits of the cats they murdered. Which is why there are now cat statues all over Tallinn.

Like this one:


After his announcement that the devil had been in his inn, the town council had the room's outside window and door boarded up, and made it illegal for anyone to enter the room again (which law still stands and is obeyed today). Word quickly got out about all of this, though, and so whenever someone would come into town looking for a place to stay, they'd avoid the one with the boarded-up, top-floor window with the well in front of it. So the innkeeper painted a fake one on the outside. Which, is still there.

SO #11 - Hitting up several top-notch museums.

While we got a little museum-ed out near the end, the ones we did visit really enhanced the trip. The best one was the Finland National Museum, which was full of very beautiful and often quite humorous pieces of artwork from medieval times.

Like this one. A converted St. Olaf symbolically stomping upon his old, heathen ways:


Other notable mentions in the museum deparatment were the "Kiek in de Kok" museum in Tallinn, the Latvian War Museum (pictured above) and the Estonian Maritime Museum.

SO #12 - Saying the word for "hello" in Sweden.
The word is "hej," pronounced "hey," which may not seem too exciting of a word to say when greeting someone. It was, though, because it made it seem like you were old buddies with every store clerk and museum ticket-guy you met. Everyone was so friendly, too--especially in Scandinavia. While I love Russians, and many of them here have been quite nice, it took me off guard having strangers smile at me on the street as I walked by. That doesn't happen in Moscow.

SO #13 - Taking first place in the karaoke contest on Deck 13.
Okay, well, there wasn't really a contest. But if there had been, our stirring rendition of Bon Jovi's "Livin on a Prayer" would have taken the trophy--no contest.

Our hardcore get-ups.


As my mid knee-slap indicates, we had a lot of fun:


SO #14 - Gluten-free EVERYTHING!
I feel like I talk about this gluten-free business a lot on my blog. Travelling, though, makes this much more difficult, and therefore forces me to think about it much more. Since GF stuff kind of seems to pop-up around health-oriented types of places, and Scandinavian people seem to be super health-conscious (see my paragraph below about runners), gluten-free stuff was everywhere. Even our hotel's complimentary breakfast in Sweden had GF stuff, because of which I got to enjoy traditional Scandinavian lingonberry jam on, yes, a piece of bread. Just like a normal person... almost.

SO #15 - Enjoying the water.
While the busy cities and gated old towns we walked around were wonderful, there's definitely something about the water scenes that strikes a cord with me, I guess. My favorite sight-seeing moments involved walking along the ocean, or the rivers and/or canals in the cities. Some of the best pictures:

The Daugava River in Riga:


Between Helsinki and Stockholm:


Stockholm (yep, I took this one too):


An old-looking ship hanging out in Stockholm:


Stockholm at night:


SO #16 - Runners!
In Russia, I've run 4-5 days a week. Pretty normal thing to do in the States. However, in all of my time here in Russia, I have only seen one other runner. ONE. And he was probably some American tourist. Since running is so odd here, I'd started worrying that I was crazy. Much to my relief, though, Scandinavia was FULL of runners... and bicyclists... and sidewalk skiers... ?

I'd never seen this sort of thing before. Quite intriguing.

SO #17 - Gaining a greater appreciation for toilets upon which one can sit.

At a train station in Moscow. Awkward.

A FEW LAST PICTURES:

Apparently, the Christmas tree ever was first used in Estonia in 1510. Making this the 500th anniversary of the Christmas tree. So they had this temporary monument up for it.


The fall leaves in Sweden were gorgeous. I'm kind of proud of this awesome picture I took:

The leaves really looked like this, too--no Photo Shop color-enhancing stuff goin on here. Whitney's face is awesome here, too.

A statue my roommates thought I resemble when my eyes swell up:


THE END