Winter – I’m coming!

It has now been almost one year since I went away to Finland and it has been over half a year since I came back. I am looking back to an exciting year, a lot of (mostly ;-)) great experiences and many wonderful people that I met during this time. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet had the chance to meet many of my friends again.

In the last few days I finally wrote the missing articles and uploaded the missing pictures for Moscow and Warsaw. This will likely be the last post on this blog. I am planning to leave this blog online for an indefinite time to document my experiences in Finland for myself and for others.

If you are reading this and have any questions about my exchange feel free to send me an email to blog@alexander-beckmann.de

I left Warsaw by train to Berlin. From Berlin I took a regional train to get to Magdeburg where I met two of my friends from Finland (greetings to Iva and Henning 😉 ).

After the weekend in Magdeburg I went on by train to Karlsruhe in the south-west of Germany to help at one of my student organization’s job fair. I am a member of a student organization („bonding“) which organizes events to get students into contact with companies. For me it was a great opportunity to meet some old German friends. As a bonus bonding paid for my train ticket from Magdeburg to Karlsruhe and back to Cologne 🙂

My last foreign destination on my way back was the Polish capital Warsaw. I stayed there for about 1 1/2 days to have a quick look around the city and to get some rest. On my first day I joined 2 guided tours, 1 walking tour around the city and in the evening a so called „crime tour“ which showed us places where famous crimes took place.

On the next morning I visited the Łazienki park and the main building of the Warsaw University of Technology before taking the train back to Germany.

Since coming to Vilnius I didn’t really have to opportunity to write another blog article. Partly because I lost my tablet (lost and found didn’t have it 🙁 ), partly because I met a lot of cool people and spent time with them. Right now I’m sitting on the bus from Vilnius to Warsaw and using the free Wi-Fi and my laptop to upload some photos from the last days.

On my first day in Vilnius I went by train to Kaunas. Kaunas is the second biggest city of Lithuania and about 1:15h from Vilnius. I met a friend there that I know from my students‘ organization who is currently doing his exchange there. We met for lunch and he showed me some parts of the city. After going back to Vilnius I spent the afternoon walking around the city and going to the viewpoints over the city with an American girl who had just checked in at my hostel.

Yesterday, I took part in the free city walking tour. Once again this tour proved to be very interesting and a good opportunity to meet people, with whom I spent the rest of the day. Today, I visited the museum of genocide victims in the former KGB headquarter of Vilnius.

Today I took the train from Klaipeda to Vilnius. I made a break in Siauliai to visit the Hill of Crosses. This hill is a few kilometers out of the city and is covered by several thousand crosses, the current estimation is around 200,000. Some of the crosses are a few meters high while others are very small and are hanging on a small rope from a bigger cross.

The tradition of putting crosses in this place is also connected to Lithuanian independence, because the Soviets destroyed the place several times but every time new crosses appeared.

Since the weather was nice I decided to go there by bike. Busses are not going there very often. I got a bike from the tourist information which was incredibly cheap: the first hour is free, after that it is 1€ per hour.

Unfortunately, I left my tablet in the first train. I hope that they found it so I can get it back. It seems like it has been too long since I last lost something 🙁

My main reason to come to Klaipeda was to visit the Curonian Spit. This is a peninsular of about 100km length and only between 400m and 4km width. It is connected to the land close to Kaliningrad and separated by about 300m of water at Klaipeda. Half of the peninsular is Russian and half of it is Lithuanian, both parts are national parks.

I rented a bike at my hostel and went on a ferry to bring me to Nida which is the last village on the Lithuanian part of the peninsular. From there, I went by bike back to the northern end and with a very short ferry trip back to Klaipeda.

The whole trip by bike was about 60km, but it was surprisingly easy so I think I had tailwind most of the time. Of course, I was still exhausted in the end because I’m not used to biking that much anymore. The weather was not that great unfortunately. At least it didn’t rain, but most of the time it was grey and a bit cold. The nature in the national park was still very beautiful!

Today I took the bus from Riga to Klaipeda. It was a small bus with only 20 places and unfortunately it was quite crowded. The trip took about 4 1/2h and the roads were in a considerably better shape than in northern Latvia. My hostel in Klaipeda is very small but cozy and very close to bus and train station, although about 2km from the city center. Tomorrow, I will go by ship to Nida, which is the last Lithuanian city on the Curonian Spit. I will take a bicycle with me to ride along the Curonian Spit (about 50km).

Right now I’m already on the bus from Riga to Klaipeda so I have some time to write about yesterday’s trip to Jurmala. Jurmala is a suburb of Riga and used to be one of the most popular resort places in the Soviet Union. Today it is still very popular especially among Russians and the predominant language that I heard was Russian.

Jurmala consists of three major roads which span for around 30km along the coast of the Golf of Riga which forms the norther border. The southern border is formed by a river that flows
parallel to the Baltic Sea. The streets are lined with lots of beautiful houses, some of them quite old and run-down, some very new and luxurious or still under construction. The beach is separated by a narrow strip of pine forest, spans the entire length and has beautifully fine sand.

The easiest way to get to Jurmala is a regional train which takes 30min to the center of Jurmala and only costs 1,40€. After arrival I rented a bike to go to one of the ends and back. To get back to Riga I took a small river boat which went along the river and a canal linking this river to the river going through Riga.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work to send the photos from my camera right now so I will have to wait until my hostel in Klaipeda…

Today I visited Gauja national park together with my Latvian friend, her sister, her sister’s boyfriend and another of her friends. Her sister’s boyfriend grew up in that area so he knows quite a lot about it and he showed us some of the places where the local young people like to go in the park.

Today I spent another day in Riga. I started by doing the other free walking tour, this time the one around the old town. It’s funny that I met one group of people who had already been there yesterday.

For lunch I went to a small bistro in the central market. After that I went to the top of the building of the Science Academy. This is a stalinistic building which looks a lot like the 7 Stalin skyscrapers in Moscow.

Then I visited the fleamarket which is also in the Russian quarter. This was a really strange place. The stuff on sale ranged from really old household equipment over car radios to old Nazi artifacts. I have to say that it was a bit creepy to see daggers with the SS-motto „Meine Ehre heißt Treue“ on sale…

I also did a short walk to the building of the national library which is very new and quite impressive. Unfortunately it is closed right now, because Latvia has the presidency of the European Council right now and the building is used for a lot of events.

In the evening I went with a lot of people from my hostel to a big traditional Latvian Folk club to have dinner. There was also a Latvian Folk Dance event tonight but this turned out to be quite complicated 😀

Most of the other people are still going to another club, but I’m meeting my Latvian friend tomorrow to go to the Gauja national park so I have to be fit 😉