So Berlin was a huge chill out session, amazing place full of art, culture, history, music and easy going people ( and currywurst- sorry david I never bought a McRib!). We fell in love with Berlin. So leaving Berlin was an emotional time, Olaf our host was great too, so we decided an extra day was a must!

Eventually we decided to leave and head for krakow in Poland. We were kind of adopted my Polish Lorry drivers for the day, each driver used his radio to find the next hitch and we were passed on. We also experienced maybe one of the worse motorways in Europe! The bumps were soo big the lorry nearly took off into the air. Our last hitch of the day didn't speak a word of English and we couldn't even figure out his name. He also dropped us off further out of the city than expected, but luckily our couch surfing host had a car and found us hiding from the cold in a huge spar. Krakow, known as the new prague, is maybe a hen/stag night heaven. It has over 200,000 students, so theres more of a night life than a day life. We decided to escape to the country side for a couple of days and went to Zakopane near the Tatra Mountains and stay in a hostel.. woop! Its the first time I've properly met other travellers on this trip and it was nice to swop stories; and I've realised how different our trip is to the usual... mainly because of the budget - 15 euro a day. Anyways in the tatra mountains we climbed up Kasprowy Wierch 1987m, and saw our first snow. The sights were beautiful, but we were a bit careless about the time and it ended up getting dark on the way down. Thankfully we had a torch on our phone.. which saved us! We're still aching from this venture.. 4 days later.

Back in Krakow we decided to stay in a hostel again - Dizzy daisy. But when we arrived they had already given away our beds! Grr! And yes , I stood up to them, Nana would be proud, and managed to get us 2 sofas to sleep on for just under 4 pounds, included washing and breakfast :)

We then took only hitches to Warsaw. A lot more going on here than Krakow. We are also staying with a very cool host and slept in until 11.. luxury. But its now winter, and its gonna get a lot colder from now on! And we have our Korean interviews tomorrow eek.

Speak soon.

Lots of Love

Lauren and Harri xxxx

written by  harripix on October 17, 2010 from Warsaw, Poland
from the travel blog: harripix's Travel Blog
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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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Hows everyone doing? Has it snowed yet?

We're been in Russia now for just over a week and survived Moscow and St Petersburg. We arrived very early after our over night bus journey to Moscow, confused and slightly overwhelmed, since Im suppose to know a bit of the language. We managed to navigate ourselves into the centre and leave our bags somewhere which was a big relief! Next mission- find food! It turns out most food is terrible but we are bias as we have mostly eaten street food, but there's also not much choice in the supermarkets either. Although, we did find an old soviet style coffee shop which sold coffee with condensed milk and donuts :P

Our first day there the snow was pouring down and we thought this was the beginning of winter, apparently still autumn. We visited the Red square, St Basils cathedral and Nevsky Prospekt on the first day and then went to find our CS. We stayed with a woman called Zhenya who taught English at the university and also translated so didnt have too much time for us. Also, inside every russian building its about 30 degrees! We weren't too late to bed after our disrupted bus sleep. The following days we were up early with our host, managed to buy the rest of our russian train tickets to Irkutsk, registered our visa ( which you have to do in every city you are in over 72 hours.. but we haven't been checked once!) and saw the standard st Petersburg sights - vodka museum, which was a one room tour and a gift shop. The Hermitage was a life saver, it is one of the biggest museums ever and apparently takes 11 years to look at everything in detail. But it was free for students and warm. Our last day we visited Pushkin and a palace, but it was quite over priced and we were getting a little bored of the gold! Our final night before our train we met up with lots of CSers in the area for drinks. It was quite cool to meet real people who could tell us about russia.

I was a little worried about what we had let ourselves into buying third class tickets all the way across russian, Harri's already done this in India so its nothing compared to that. We had a carriage that was made of doorless compartment each containing 3 pairs of bunkbeds. We had 2 upper bunks which is slightly annoying as you cant sit up. But the journey went quickly and we arrived more prepared in St Petersburg.

Our host, Ilya met us for lunch and helped us buy a russian sim card- so much cheaper than uk. He lived in another Communist style block and only had 2 rooms. Its very expensive to live in Moscow. We lazily spent the rest of the day planning our time there. In Moscow we visited all the sights.. just write 10 ten things in Moscow and we propably saw them. Some of the building are so big and impressive it gives the city alot of attitude. Our host had a party the second night we stayed, but not one drop of vodka was drank! It was a little surreal with all the russian being spoken, broken English, lots of singing, guitar playing and twister! And lots of cake and fruit! We fell asleep before the end only at 4 am. In the morning they took us up to the roof which turned out to be a pretty nice day. Russia doesn't look as grey in the sun. We spend that day walking around the parks and Olympic grounds, which was one of our best days and its not even in the guide book. We visited Sergiev Posad which is a holy place in Russia, our guide book said it was worth a visit even if your all churched out.. we found out we are officially all churched out! Our final day we went to the university as guest of our hosts Mum, Mia, to talk to the son of the dean, but he got stuck in traffic jam, so we just chatted and had coffee with Mia. It was nice to talk about the UK and life.

We prepare ourselves for our 24 hour journey by stocking up on add water noodles and mashed potato. The train departed at 3pm and we got on and spent a good half hour trying to explain who we were and where we were going to the people on the carriage. Then everyone went to sleep! It was funny during the stops to see babushkas selling food at the stops along the way. But Harri's paying for it now, no further comment.

We are now in Perm, the last European city staying with Guzal and Max, cat and puppy. We were treated to a Banya last night too, its the cleanest Ive been the whole trip! The real russian experience.

Very sorry for the length again.. if its too boring just look up banya and have a laugh!

Lots of love, missing home a little now, Lauren and Harri xx

written by  harripix on November 4, 2010 from Perm', Russia
from the travel blog: harripix's Travel Blog
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