21 June 2004 ---JOURNAL ENTRY THIRTY-SIX---
Okay, I'm don't want to sound tooOOooo European but I'm watching Switzerland play France in the Euro2004 Soccer Championships. Everyone around me everywhere is crazy about it and I guess since I got no Lakers (booo), Dodgers (yeah!) and Rams (yeah?), I've had to supplement by sports life with soccer. Hey, it happens to the best of us. But anyway, we've got more important things to discuss, like my big 30th birthday present to myself that manifested itself into 16 days to Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It began a bit like this...
Maya from Norway and I met at the train station at 9am for the fast train to take us to Frankfurt. We were drinking a beer (hey, we were on holiday!) when we met other people going to the wedding. They were German and Russian, and one girl from Uzebekistan. Oh yeah, my friends Gregg and Marsha were getting married in Ukraine, that's why I was going there. They met in Freiburg about 4 years ago at the Goethe Institute (a language school) and I guess the rest is history, except for my part of the trip...We took the train, and finally got onto our plane from Dneiproavia State Aviation through the ass! I'd never done that before but there would be more 'firsts' before the trip was over. We got to Dniepropetrovs'k, Ukraine about an hour late, and another hour to go through customs, god what an ordeal but then a bus was there to meet us and drive us an hour to Marsha's town of Zaporizhzhya. It was dark when we got there so we didn't do much, but enjoyed the wedding party pretty plastered. Apparently they had expected us an hour or two earlier and couldn't wait for us! We had some dinner in our hotel and by 1am was in bed.
Speeding it all up now, we woke up the next day and Maya, Patrick and I had a translator while we went shopping. We took different kinds of transportation, including the seemingly deadly mini-bus but it only cost 10cents for a ride so we had to go for it, right? We couldn't really do anything without the translator. She was a teacher and said she made about 5euros a day. I was afraid to tell her that sometimes I make 45 euros in 90 minutes, and while I'm drinking beer with students! That night we all went to dinner and then to the strip club in our hotel. Oh, didn't I tell you there was a strip club in the hotel? There were about 5 of us, girls and guys down there trying to enjoy ourselves without getting too involved. The next day was the wedding, it was interesting, with one of the translators having to translator every sentence the justice of the peace was saying. Quite surreal. Then we had a couple of hours to chill and then came the wedding celebration in a nice restaurant across the river. There was a ton of food, vodka, cognac and beer set out on each table. These people know how to celebrate. The party ended at 2am and we had an interesting ride back to the hotel. The next day was the second day of the wedding. We went to a "Cossack Theater" show. The Cossacks are a 17th century group of Ukrainian warriors. They did some dancing with spears, and then whipped leaves off of branches from 8 meters away (25 feet!), then made the groom and best man drink glasses of vodka that were resting on swords that were in the hands of the men. Crazy! We sat a long table with the rest of the wedding party eating and drinking more and they kept singing wedding songs, encouraging us to sing something, us being the Westerners. We were pathetic, singing "Yesterday" by the Beatles, "Country Rose" or something by John Denver and some other song. The best man tried to keep up drinking vodka with the Russians and he got wrecked. He was passed out on the bus ride back, which was impossible for me because one of the guys was busy spilling cognac on me while watching the wine spill on the ground. He was successful holding the vodka but why none of the bottles didn't have a lid was beyond me. A couple of hours later I was taken a taxi to the train station and then a night train to Kiev. I spent an afternoon in Kiev with the help of a girl who met me at the train station. Without her I could not have spoken to anyone, no one spoke English really, only people who were selling stuff on the streets, it was quite amazing. A large beer cost 80 cents in a bar in Ukraine
Then I flew to Tallinn, Estonia. I spent 3 days there at the hostel, meeting up with a local guy named Lehari who showed me a damn good time. I took a ton of pictures, learned some about the city and enjoyed photography museum. The town is unbelievably pretty, fairy tale like, and apparently overrun with Finnish tourists because it's a cheap boatride for them and the prices are dirt cheap. After 3 days I went to Tartu and planned to stay with a guy and his girlfriend but they left for St. Petersburg, Russia that night but still let me stay at their apartment. I thought perhaps I would get a quiet night sleep until the roommate and his buddy came home at 4am speaking Russian and insisting I drink vodka and beer with them until 5:30 when they let me go back to bed, though I could still hear them until 7:00! I took a bus in the morning to Valga, Estonia and crossed the border by foot to Valka, Latvia. A beer in Estonia cost about 1.75-2bucks.
Latvia was a whirlwind with an eye in the storm. I got to the bus station in Riga about 6pm and was told that I was going out celebrating that night with 5 girls and another guy. I learned a dangerous Latvian word that night: Schnyabis. Translation: vodka! These people loved vodka! Needless to say I was a bit rough the next morning but the girl Ediite who was hosting me said we were going to her family beachhouse for a couple of days. Sounded perfect and it was. It was in a little village about 100 meters from the beach. I saw a couple of sunsets there, and had an interesting night when the mom's two best friends came over and about 6 people sat and drank and talked and laughed in Latvian while I sat there soaking it in. The mom was wearing a cowboy shirt (in Latvia of all places) and I traded her a necklace I bought in Ukraine for it. I love it and it fits great. We visited a museum/mansion the next day, saw some interesting artefacts, and also visited a small village and I took some pictures of something that became "Latvia" to me, the dilapidated buildings that could be great film, we'll see. After a night with more young Latvians at the beach house, they were in the sauna, drinking vodka until 3am, (thank god I was more mellow that night), the mom gave me and Uldis (the next guy hosting me) into Riga. I took a nap in Uldis' apartment while he went to work and then I explored the old town of Riga for a few hours. It's a cosmopolitan place, with a real nightlife that I found the first night there (remember Schnyabis?). I went to the mall where Uldis worked and it tripped me out because the tram stop was in the "ghetto", serious crackville and I had to walk through it a couple hundred meters to the mall. I bought a pair of shoes because Uldis worked at a shoestore and he got me a 40% discount, that was nice of him. We went out the next two nights in varying degrees of intensity but not too bad and the last night there I watched Latvia/Czech Republic play soccer on TV with a bunch of Latvian fans so that was cool. My last morning I went into town about 8am, checked internet and the guy next to me was watching porn at his computer, unbelievable. Then I took a bus to Lithuania.
Vilnius was tough for me at first. I was ready to come home. I was thinking about home but I was also really excited to check out the city. Asta met me at the bus station and showed me around all afternoon until Andrius could meet us. He would be my last host for the trip. I was sleeping on his couch in the kitchen right in the old town, perfect location. He took me to a brewery for a beer and then to a crazy alternative neighborhood in Vilnius that had its own flag and constitution. I ate a delicious salmon and avocado salad with lemon chunks for 2 bucks. The next day I was up and out by 8am. I walked all around the town, took a ton of pictures and in the afternoon Asta and I visited the KGB museum, basically an old KGB jail that was quite intense, even in its stark emptiness, you could feel the lives that had been ruined here. I watched England/Switzerland soccer in a bar with Asta and another girl and was home by 10pm. With any luck I would be flying home the next day. Andrius helped me take the right bus to the airport. I was flying stand by. It was cold and rainy, I had 2 hours to wait. I met a French guy who lived in Chile and had a paragliding school there. He told me stories of crossing the border to Bolivia and if you let go of your passport at customs, they would make you pay them to get it back! I went and talked to the girls at the ticket sales office again, telling them that if they let me onto the plane, I would promise to take my girlfriend out to eat that night. And that's what I did. So, the trip could have lasted two days longer but as you can see enough had already happened. That's the story, more or less, I've left lots out because I was too lazy to get it all in there but you can email me and I can send you a link to a website that has every digital picture from the trip. They aren't labelled well but by country only, but it's better than nothing, right? Okay, ya'll chill, I have to get a good night sleep, I gotta teach at 7:30 tomorrow morning! ciao!
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