From Desert to Snow

G’day all,

Well she’s been a busy week of travelling this past week heading from the desert in Africa to the snow of the Arctic in just a number of days. I first flew into London and stayed with my cousin Dave for a couple of days to adjust and get some cold weather gear together before heading north. It was good to see Dave again and we went out to the famous “Walkabout” pub in Sheppard’s Bush to get me back into the rhythm of London life. I found it really hard going from the cheapness of Egypt to the high prices of London but the relief of not being hassled was a nice change. On Tuesday I flew to Helsinki in Finland where I stayed in a hostel inside the Olympic stadium which was pretty cool. There seemed to be nobody to speak English to there so I just went off strolling around Helsinki myself. Helsinki is a nice place but it’s probably a bit bland I’d have to say. It was also quite expensive so I had to stick to my London ways and try not to spend any money. The weather was freezing cold and it was snowing so I pretty much stayed in the shopping malls walking around Helsinki and even indulged in some traditional Finnish food…..McDonalds. I was expecting Finnish people to be friendly but I found myself being ignored by the locals when asking for directions on the street and when ordering my McDonalds meal the girl yelled at me and said ‘Wait a minute will ya’. On Wednesday I caught the ferry to Tallinn in Estonia and have been there for the past 4 nights. Tallinn is the capital of Estonia and is a big party town on the Baltic Sea. I fell in love with Tallinn the moment I got into the old town area and saw the beautiful cobble stoned streets and ancient architecture. I stayed at the Tallinn Backpackers hostel right in the middle of the old town and soon realized how friendly Estonians are and how much they loved to party. We had a great mixture of people staying at the hostel and I clicked with everyone really well once I sat down and said hi. Before I knew it I was in my party clothes and had a beer in my hand. The one crazy thing I found about Tallinn was that every single girl looks like a supermodel. There are no fat people, no ugly people, and nobody seems to have any imperfections. On my first night we went to a popular club here called “Hollywood” and I felt like the ugliest person in there as everyone looked like models. The next 3 days after that feel like a bit of a blur as all we did was head out each night and sleep in each day. I did get to have a nice look around Tallinn at the end though and walked around the town in amazement at how awesome everything looked and how nice it was walking around in the snow. I had a funny moment when I walked down to the lake which was frozen and watched ducks trying to walk on the ice as they looked like Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk. Yesterday I took a bus to another town in Estonia called Tartu which is a big university party town. Everyone seems to be so nice here and if you ask for directions they seem to walk you to where you want to go rather than point in the direction. I think I’m sick of partying now but I’ll have to see how long I can last before heading to Riga in Latvia.

Hung-over again,

Woodsy