The beach fortress!

The train ride from Kolo to Wladyslawowo was an endurance test for sure. The train from Kolo was a good 20 minutes late and it was a rush in exchange in Kutno to find a seat on the train. An hour into the train ride, we were informed that the train would be breaking apart in Bydgoszcz and we were in the wrong train. We needed to switch compartments and found ourselves shuffling between compartments packed like sardines with all of the other confused travellers. After a few short tense moments with Chad worrying about the smokers in the compartment, we found our way to a few seats that would carry us the rest of the way to Gdynia, where we would again have to change trains for another hour and a half trip, making the total journey a cool 9 hours (for 320 km)! The first night we found the rented apartment and stopped in at the local sklep (store) and stocked up for the night and morning with the necessary supplies (beer, vodka, eggs bread and yogurt!!). That night, Mike came up for a visit, but Justyna was exhausted from a long day with Lily. We managed to keep Mike hostage for most of the night, retiring all of the liquor we had stocked up on and necessitating another trip to Mike’s house to tap into their reserves to ensure we had enough lubrication for the conversation of the evening. It was a great night catching up with Mike and an even better night full of English for Mike, as being a non Polish speaking Canadian on vacation for 6 weeks in Poland with a Polish family, it can get a bit tough to carry on always trying to understand and not having the opportunity to actually speak your mind.

Mike Jakeman and Lily!

Chad, Mike and Marcin!

Day three was pretty relaxed, we said our goodbyes to Mike, Justyna and Lily and went to get our train tickets and buy some salmon sausage. Mike introduced us to this little delicacy the day before. It is literally sausage filled with smoked salmon. It is a real treat! In the evening we headed into town to get a delicious meal of fish and potatoes on the coast. The fish here is amazing, all caught fresh and everything you can imagine is available for cheap. We had Halibut and Salmon with potatoes and salad and it was only 46 zlotes, a little less than 20 dollars. After our meal, we walked around again to take in the sights of Wladyslawowo. This town is Poland’s version of a small vacation town, with all of the carnival trimmings. There are shops set up on all the streets, people driving around in go-carts everywhere, theme parks, carnival rides and so much more! Poland is well known for amber and this area is the capital production area of amber. The Amber is either mined, or can be found washing up on the beach after a storm. It is made of sap from trees millions of years old and is a polish jem. Ewa managed to find a nice piece of amber for a necklace and now has a Polish amulet J. That night, it was more of the same as the night before, some relaxing, a few card games, packing and getting ready for the next day, back to Warsaw!

Ewa and Fish dinner in Wladyslawowo

The ugly mole on Warsaw (AKA Palace of Culture)

We decided to stay a bit longer in Warsaw to make sure we had enough time to relax a little bit, see the sights and see the family and friends we wanted to visit with. We stayed for a week and even then it wasn’t enough time to see and visit with everyone.

We spent a lot of time walking around the streets of Warsaw trying to breathe in the city. We stayed at the same hostel as we did the last time, which is a pretty central location right near the Copernicus monument on Nowy Swiat. Yes Copernicus was Polish! It was only a short 10 minute walk to the centre of Warsaw along some of the nicer(est) streets in Warsaw.

During our walks around the city, Ewa decided that it would be fun to take Chad to some of the places she liked to hang out in when she lived here. One among them is a little café called Miedzy Nami which translates to ‘between us.’ We had a really nice lunch and even saw a Polish celebrity! He was on the Polish version of dancing with the stars (the only way Ewa new this is because she saw him in a trashy celebrity magazine that she bought for the train ride to Warsaw).

We visited the palace of Culture and Science which is called a gift from Stalin to Poland. There are eight of these palaces all over Moscow and they have been nicknamed the eight daughters of Stalin. The one in Warsaw is similar to the ones built in Moscow. We took the elevator to the 32nd floor and there is a 360 degree view of Warsaw. There was also a little exhibit of the human body that was going on. There were a number of interactive exhibits. One of them was a stepping machine, well, rather a counter that timed how long you could step up and down a single stair. The trick is you have to keep time with the computer and it speeds up! After 4 months of no exercise it was quite the little workout!

The Family!! (most of them)

We also visited the huge Royal Lazieki Park a couple of times. The park is in the middle of the city and was the summer residence of the last King of Poland. During WWII it was used by the Nazis and therefore was not destroyed. There are vast underground tunnels that led out and into the Royal Palace which before the wars was used for the servants to bring goods into the palace grounds as well as so that they were not seen. On each Sunday in the summer there is a Chopin concert by the Chopin memorial for free, so of course we went with Teresa, Asia, Ela, Matilda and Igus on our last Sunday in Warsaw to chill for a bit listening to yet another famous polish intillectual…you guessed it – Chopin! We love Chopin.

Poster from the Warsaw uprising museum

We walked around the old town and also made a visit to the Warsaw uprising museum. This museum is dedicated to telling the story of how the Warsaw inhabitants stood up and started fighting against the Nazis at the end of WWII. They had no guns, very little provisions and basically made their own weapons and decided to fight. Many germans were taken prisoner and through the fight the Poles took their weapons and also made the prisoners work for them; engineers made guns, soldiers were forced to start cleaning up the rubble that their bombs had caused etc. It was a very modern museum with many installations that were very interesting. There was a huge steel wall right in the middle when you walked in which had bullet holes in it, you could put your ear up to each bullet hole and you would hear different sounds of the war, bullet sounds or Polish people singing war songs. On top of that from the wall came the sound of a beating heart, to never forget the lives that were lost during the uprising.

After visiting the Warsaw museum we headed back to the Berlitz center where Ewa worked when she lived in Poland in 2001-2002. Although we didn’t run into any of her old coworkers while we were there, it was a nice trip down memory lane for us both. Afterwards, we treated ourselves to sushi for the first time since starting the trip, it was soooo good!

Chad, Matilda and Igus

We spent a day with Ewa’s cousin Ela, and her children Matilda and Igus. In the morning she took us to Radzikow, the town where Ewa grew up. We saw the old appartment block, checked out Andrzejs and Marinas work at the insitute of IHAR. In the afternoon we went to the forest to pick mushrooms outside of Warsaw where Ela and her kids live. We were very lucky because Igus is a master at finding mushrooms, he even drew us a map before we left the house where we would find these mushrooms! He’s pretty smart for a 6 year old. Ela treated us to several meals including the freshly picked mushrooms! In the evening we went to Teresas and Wlodeks spent the evening relaxing catching up and sharing some delicious food and drinks!

Teresa, Wlodek, Asia

We also got a chance to meet up with Maggie and Adrian who just had their first adorable baby Alexander. Ewa used to teach English at Berlitz with Maggie and Adrian. We spent the afternoon catching up and walking around their neighborhood. Later in the week, Jusyna and Mike came down to Warsaw before heading back to Canada. We were able to meet up for dinner and a few drinks, to also be joined by Maggie, Adrian and Connall yet another former teacher at Berlitz. That night we partied together until 4am, our first night out in bar in months. It was so nice to catch up with everyone!

Warsaw old town square

The Brandenburg Tor

Ich bin ein Berliner! This is what everyone would say if they have ever visited this amazing city. We planned to stay for 4 nights but then we found out that Ms. Natalia Nieradka would be in Bydgoszcz visiting her mom so we decided to cancel the last night and meet up with her instead. It is too bad that we didn’t have more time because we really enjoyed the city.

The Berlin man! Famous street sign man who tells you when to cross the street!

Berlin is not a kind city for Chad. The first time that he was in the city in 2003, he ended up in the hospital for 4 days. This time around, again suffering from some minor illness issues, some of the activities that were planned had to be called off, and we spent at least one day just lounging around and taking it easy. However, we've decided that we will give Berlin one more chance before we give up on it for good!

The Liquidrome! No pics allowed inside (German FKK rules apply... ie no swimsuits neccessary)

Ewa, Nattie and Grace! (and a small child)

Bydgoszcz!
We left Berlin Early to meet up with Natalia and her Mom Grace in Grace’s home town. We were welcomed with open arms and it was amazing to see good friends from home. The stop-over was to be short but a lot of fun! We spent just a couple of hours at Grace’s home in Bydgoszcz, before we met up with some of Natalia’s childhood friends and were off in the car for a visit to the county side for a BBQ, a night of good conversation and many drinks! The farm that they live on was a nice break from all the cities that we have seen. We got chance to play with a few puppies and some kittens too! In the morning, nursing our heads, we found it all too quick that we had to get on the train again, but looking forward to Kolo, and meeting up with family again! See you in Vietnam Nattie!

Nattie and Grace!

Swedish flag..

We arrived in Stockholm after a short one and a half hour trip with Ryan air from Krakow. We got a steal of a deal too! 260 Zlotes for the both of us and our bags, that’s about 100 dollars Canadian. There was a small mix up when we dropped off our baggage; Ewa got the luggage tracking tag for someone else’s bag as the ticket agents were using the same printer for both a flight to Bergamo as well as Stockholm. We noticed about 2 minutes after getting the tags (because duh you should look at them!) and went back to the ticket agent where he very politely reassured us that yes they noticed as well and already changed the ticket on the bag and are now reprinting the portion that the passenger gets…yes of course it will get there, no worries, all is good in the Ryan Air world, we never loose luggage ever compared to other airlines. As we were on the flight Ewa read the statistics ( she never liked statistics class..) and Ryan Air (according to them) only have a 0.36% of lost baggage…well good for you Ryan Air. Not bitter, not bitter. You all can guess as to what happened when we got off the flight, Ewa did not get her bag. The big metal gates to the squeaky baggage belt came crashing down ending all hope that maybe just maybe it would appear. What did appear though was a nice Italian suitcase, with Ewa’s name on the luggage tag, go figure. Maybe it’s because we have been talking badly about Italy that this happened; noted, don’t piss off the Italians. Karma decided that if we didn’t like Italy so much then maybe Ewa’s bag should go there and when it returns we will have acquired maybe not a love for Italy but at least an appreciation, who knows, the world works in mysterious ways. After spending an hour trying to fill out the lost baggage report, we finally left the airport to meet up with Chad’s friend Chris back from the U of Calgary Engineering days.

Chris and Camilla and us in Stockholm

But we learned some valuable lessons from this experience. 1. Put a TAG on your bag with your name on it and while you’re at it, a phone number would be good too 2. If you will be travelling for a long time maybe it would be a good idea to document the things you have in your bag, in case you need to make a claim with your travel insurance people 3. You should also take pictures of the things you have in your pack because how are you going to prove to your insurance people that you actually owned this stuff if you don’t have receipts for all of these things? Huh? How? 4. The insurance policy you have probably has a lot of ‘small print’ that makes making a claim or getting any sort of reimbursements next to impossible, kind of like trying to talk to someone real from Ryan Air about where the hell your bag is.

Thankfully one day before we were to leave for St. Petersburg the Stockholm airport called at 8am and informed us that they found the bag! Yipeee! When Chris asked what happened to it, they of course didn’t know. Where was it? Not sure. Apparently it showed up in the middle of the night. Yippee!!
Of course we did not spend the whole time on the phone or shopping, we had a very nice weekend with Chris and Camilla, the newly engaged couple!

More of the view from just down the street from Chris's house

A few other things to note about Stockholm, the metro has excellent electric trains that are smooth and quiet. The engineer in Chad was pleasantly surprised and ranks these trains in the top 2 his ever ridden on. Not all Swedish are blond and tall (apparently those are the Finns that have migrated). However a great many of them are. The Swedish love their food in tubes or tube like encasements. Salmon paste, rice porridge, chili, sausage, many more things than you would expect can be found in a tube in Sweden. Ewa’s momma loves the kaviar tube you can get from Ikea ;)

The first night we were treated to a Swedish dinner by Chris and Camilla, and we wet to bed relatively early after the long emotional day. Thursday night, after a day wandering around the city we were off to a night out at the movies and for dinner on the town. On Friday we were able to meet up with Chad’s friend Hanna, who had spent a year in Canada in Innisfail on a high school exchange. That same day we met up with Ewa’s friend Agata, from Warsaw, now living in Stockholm. Although it was a short visit on both accounts, it was great to catch up and spend a few moments with each other. That night we ordered some take-out and just stayed in and chatted. We also found out that one of the movies Chad and Chris and some other engineer friends made is actually on the internet, Ewa thinks everyone should check it out! Pretty impressive! Just google UofC Mech engg 2003 video on Google video..tee hee.

The Vasa

Stockholm coast line

The winter palace in St. Petersburg.

We have arrived in Russia! Chad’s first time and Ewa’s second time. We were expecting to step off the plane to AK-47 armed police and a stiff set of questions at the customs office. However, there were only a few lazy looking officials on the tarmac, and we cruised through customs with hardly a flinch. We even managed to get a bargain on our bus ride from the airport, having only paid 50% of the cost we were supposed to. From the get-go we were fitting in fine! It took us a long time to find the hostel, and we even had the help of a kind Russian gentleman who tried to help us find the hostel. We gave him the address and showed him our map and he proceeded to walk with us for about 5 min and then point is in the direction of the hostel. After he left, we thought a little more and figured out he was pointing us in the wrong direction, but nonetheless he was very helpful. The hostel was practically empty the entire time that we were there, so we had a room to ourselves and the kitchen was always free. The hostel even had one of those new fancy spa showers with a ‘rain’ showerhead from on the top of the shower at a height of over 7 feet! Top this off with somehow only having to pay about 60% of our original quoted price for the rooms, even after a surcharge was added to the price for a fee to register us in the city.

The Saviour on Spilled blood by night.

Almost all of the sites that we visited can be seen with a short description on a website we found after leaving St. Petersburg. It is www.saint-petersburg.com/virtual-tour I would highly recommend sifting through the website, it’s a short glimpse at this wonderful city.

The second day in the city we were up and off to the Hermitage museum. This museum is housed in the former residential house of the Tsar’s. Now the palace has a huge collection of artefacts, sculptures, paintings and many other items. We spent nearly 5 hours wandering the halls of the Hermitage. The museum is certainly impressive. Compared to other major museums that we have visited, the Hermitage was practically empty. It could be the time of the year, or that perhaps Russia does not receive as many visitors as some of the other European cities. You are also allowed to take pictures all over the museum. Well, not so much allowed as the people who are in the rooms guarding the items really don’t care. You are supposed to pay to take pictures, but we soon found the gaps in the system and were snapping away. Also, the museum houses two treasure rooms, which you have to pay extra to visit. We were careful to never carry much money with us on the street, and to not carry excess credit cards when we weren’t planning on spending much money. SO, we didn’t have enough money to pay for the visit and as it turns out we didn’t have enough time or energy to see them on this day anyways. We did return on our last day in St. Petersburg to see the treasure rooms, but you are required to pay the full admission price and the price for the treasure rooms. So, rather than forking out again for the full tour, and the treasure rooms, we decided to wander more in the city. That night we tried to buy our tickets to Moscow. However, we learned our first lesson in ensuring to carry more money, or an ATM card as the ticket counters did not accept credit cards. There was an ATM there, but of course we didn’t have our card and we were only 600 rubles short (~22 dollars Cdn!) So after a few frustrating hours of trying to communicate and to buy tickets, we went home discouraged but with a plan for the morning.

The Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg.

The hassle at the ticket office slowed us down just enough so that we ended up being late for our walking tour. We thought that maybe if we hurry we could catch the tour wandering away from the meeting place. We found a group of young people and tried to catch up to them, for a few blocks we were on their tail and then when we got to them we realized that a) they are all speaking Russian and b) they were hammered and so not our walking tour at all. With the prospect of a guided walking tour of the city out of the picture, Chad pulled out the map, scoured for the sights and planned a walking tour of his own. For the next 5 hours, we walked around the city, trying to catch the major sights. We zigzagged North-South across Nevsky Prospect, moving from the far East side of downtown (at the Shestakovo cathedral) until we hit the Neva river on the West side of the town. We managed to take in almost all of the significant buildings within walking distance and we didn’t let the rain bother us one bit. We stumbled along the way into an amazing market that was selling fresh goods of all kinds imaginable. Fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood, honey and so much more. The market was one of the cleanest and freshest we have seen in any city around the world so far. It was also the first place Chad has had to experience “The Handshake”. While looking longingly at one of the food stalls, a vendor approached Chad and said “My friend” grabbed his hand and guided him closer. The trick is, he wouldn’t let go. Chad almost had to wrestle him to the ground in order to get away. The one encounter has been enough to remind us of the warnings that Chad’s best friend Dave gave us about ‘friendly’ vendors and the never ending handshake!

Our first impression of Russia is that the country is not as different from many other places we have visited. Many of the stereotypes portrayed by American movies either did not exist or are at least, not true of St. Petersburg in the modern era. There is a unique culture and unique customs, but the people live and behave in very similar ways to many other Eastern European people. Also, Russian accents, or the ones we have heard do not sound like how North America stereotypes them at all. Many people speak at least a little English, the people are generally nice and helpful, but not all. One interesting thing is that there are two sets of prices. There is a Russian price and a tourist price for entrance to all museums and for tickets to concerts / plays. This is a carry-over from the Communist Era, where it was a belief that the government helps to provide for the people of the country. The “true cost” is to be paid by foreigners, but the cost to be paid by citizens of the country is subsidized by the government. Although most things in St. Petersburg cost on-par with Europe, there are several things that are still unreasonably cheap. Metro tickets, vodka and cigarettes are all very cheap by comparison. A half litre of vodka is only $3 Canadian, a trip on the metro is less around $0.8 and a pack of cigarettes is only about $1.5 (all in Cdn dollars).

Inside the Saviour on Spilled blood

After our last walking trip we were off on the train to go and meet up with Ewa’s family Natalia and Kola in Moscow!

written by  ECRadventure on September 11, 2009 from Saint Petersburg, Russia
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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The family!

Our train ride from St. Petersburg to Moscow was quite nice and well deserved after the troubles we had getting the tickets, we even got two little packages with food for the ride, like an airplane meal. We arrived at 10 pm and were greeted by Ewa’s cousin Natalia and her father Kola (Ewa’s uncle). They were waiting on the platform with big smiles and flowers when the train got in and took us to one of Natalia’s apartments where we would be staying for the week. It was very close from the train station and smack in the middle of Moscow which is a good thing because the traffic even at night can get pretty bad. They took us to the apartment and there on the table was a welcoming present for Chad - his shoes had arrived from Kolo! Thank you again to everyone involved in the recovery! We really appreciate all the help.

Inside the Kremlin

Some nice stiff branches to whip yourself pure again!

Kola at the Banya

On Wednesday we were in for a treat; Natalia organized a Kremlin tour for us through her work. We arrived just in time because we got lost a little bit. When we got to the right entrance of the Kremlin we didn’t have tickets because they were waiting for us a the ticket office but since the Kremlin is where the Russian governments headquarters are you have to go through security and Chad had a backpack which obviously is not allowed inside. Find the coat check - hmm ok. So we are now running around outside of the Kremlin trying to find a coat check. There are no signs, there is nothing that looks remotely like a coat check. We see a woman running towards us. She asks if we are the people for the Kremlin tour from the bank (Natalia booked it through her work), yes we say totally out of breath. We explained what had happened and she took us to the coat check and whisked us back to the Kremlin, past the big line that had now formed and motioned us to go through. The guards asked her who we were and why we are jumping the line and she said : “they are guests of the museum!” Then she got us past all of the lines inside and provided us with an English speaking guide and disappeared.

The Saviour on spilled blood

One of Ewa's Grandpa's medals.

Moscow metro

Natalia and Kostia on our last night in Moscow

Novosibirsk train station

As the train leaves Moscow, we wave goodbye to Natalia and Kostya and set up our cozy 2 person cabin. We quickly made a friend, Clement from France. We have a couple beers and had a great first night sleep. The thought of spending 7 days on the train seems scary at first, what are we going to do the whole time? We had a TV in our cabin…which did not work. Luckily we brought a lot of books to keep our time occupied. We also had to change our sleep schedule to try to get shift ourselves the 5 hours ahead, which wasn't the easiest thing to do, but we managed. On the first leg of the train ride, we had most of the wagon to our selves. It was only at Irkutsk, where a large group of other people had booked on for the second half of the train ride, that the train filled up. Despite this the train stayed quite clean and the toilet was never dirty, nor did we have to wait very long for it to be free (that is other than the 15 minutes on either side of each stop, where the train attendants lock the bathroom doors).

Our compartment and our home for the next 7 days

We had so much food with us, that it seemed like we over did it a bit, but we prepared well just in case. We even boiled enough eggs for 2 breakfasts so that was taken care of. The train has a hot water boiler in each wagon, so that you can have coffee and tea whenever you want. We also brought a lot of cup of soup and instant mash potatoes so we wouldn’t go hungry. Dinners were a fancy affair in the restaurant car. We were hoping that the restaurant car would be an old school car, decorated in traditional Russian themes, however, the car must have been modernized in the past few years, as there were only a few touches of typical Russian decoration remaining. The restaurant car switched to a Chinese car at the boarder, but it, like the Russian car was only minimally decorated in Chinese styles. The food was a little expensive on the train (about $15-$20 Cdn per meal), and it was a bit cheaper on the Chinese side.

Ewa having some supper on the train!

More of Siberia... and SNOW

Lake Baikal

Random scenery somewhere in Siberia

The train, clean and shiny and new... well clean and shiny on the outside.

written by  ECRadventure on September 22, 2009 from Novosibirsk, Russia
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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