The Baltics, a job and no more hitching :'(

How is life everyone?

Since we last spread our news like pesticide over ravaged crops, we have been to 4 more countries, so there's a lot to tell so im gonna do some summing up. We hitched from Warsaw fairly early on the monday before last, after an interesting skype interview about our Korean jobs, our destination Kaunas (Lithuania's 2nd city). After one short wait, we then had 2.5 hours in our first freezing cold conditions besides a road. It was pretty horrible, and as the days are getting short we were worried. But another set of miracles meant we arrived in style in a huge gasoline pulling truck right by our host Alburtus' place in Kaunas. We spent a day with him and his family (who have definitely left an impression of Lithuania...) and then hitched up to Riga.

This time we had one lift, and waited 15 mins for it. We were pretty knackered that night so gorged on a pre roasted chicken in the hostel we were staying (friendly franks fun backpackers). After more wandering around the next day, we went on a bar crawl with our hostel, for us it was also a celebration as we found out the day before we have our jobs in Korea, with an unmissable deal: 7 Lats (about 9 quid) for 5 drinks in 5 different bars. The other ppl from the hostel all turned out to be brits too, and I think that the over familiarity of the situation (after a month of pretty much not drinking/speaking proper english) meant that we were wasted and regretted it the next day (Lauren spent a considerable time looking down the toilet :D).

We again had a hefty wait in the cold, but we made it again in good time to Tallinn, where we were staying directly in the 'old town' with our host Ade. The city, and the house were incredible, relics of 300 years ago. It felt like wed stepped back in time that first night, with 'monks' selling roasted nuts in the street. But, the weather was to much, so we decided getting to Tallinn was enough, it was time for public transport. We had a couple of days in the city, then took a night bus to ST Petersburg.

Going over the border, and a kilometer of armed security was an experience. IT took an hour, and involved a lot of checking of passports and general disruption of sleep. But we made it! Russia!

We've been here 4 days, and got our tickets for almost all of Russia now. We're heading for Irkutsk, where the biggest lake in the world is, which I'm hoping will be frozen over so we can go on it in snow mobiles....

BUt anyways, that is enough for now

Hope everyone's smiling, at least a bit. I can guarantee you the weather over here is worse than there!

xxxxxxxxxxx

written by  harripix on October 28, 2010 from Saint Petersburg, Russia
from the travel blog: harripix's Travel Blog
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