Ok so where do I start other than another busy week crossing 3 countries and going from snow to 10 degrees and sunny. My time in
Tartu was an interesting one for me being from
Australia because it snowed for the whole 4 days I was there. Sure I’ve seen a little bit of snow before but I’ve never seen this much so it was pretty exciting for me. I loved just walking the streets and treading my way through this nice fluffy white foreign stuff but at the same time I kind of missed feeling a stable ground under my feet. The winter in
Estonia pretty much never came to the amazement off all the locals however it sure kicked in right in the thick of spring when I was there. The local Estonians were almost as excited as me about t
he snow as it had been a completely dry winter. I think many must have thought I was weird as instead of walking on the stamped down paths I often tended to head out in the knee deep snow and wad my way through it getting my jeans wet. Anyway that’s enough about the snow. I spent my first night in
Tartu staying at this really nifty new hostel which had just been opened but unfortunately they only had a bed for me for the first night. I was lucky though because I met the great guy on the bus Jaan who set me up with some fellow couchsurfers to stay for the next 3 nights. It was so nice because they were all Estonian students and lived in this really nice house with a sauna right in the town and we all got on really well. Due to the weather I didn’t actually see a great deal in
Tartu apart from the snow but it was a really nice safe town to be in. The one really cool thing I did was go to the University and look at the anatomy museum.
I’d never seen anything like this before and
it was so in your face and gruesome. There were walls and walls of bits of dead peoples bodies in jars from head to toe and had every disease and disorder you can imagine. There was more flesh in there than a strip joint and more bones than a catwalk model but the one thing that really shocked me was when I saw a mans full head with his scalp cut off in a jar. On my last day in
Tartu the guys took me for a sauna in their house. It was unlike an Australian sauna as this was a non clothing event and was almost 100 degrees Celsius. It was a bit embarrassing getting the kit off in public but hey when in
Estonia do as the Estonians do yeah. I couldn’t believe how hot it was in there and after a while I did the very Estonian thing of running outside and jumping in the snow nude. My skin was so boiling hot after the sauna that being naked in the snow was actually really nice and it didn’t feel too cold at all. The only real embarrassing thing was that I was in the public and anyone could have seen me especially the house full of girls next door. On my last nigh we decided to go out and party being the big night out in the week and the girls from next door came over for some drinks. They were all like models and I found it hard to look them in the eye after my naked rampage through the joined backyard just hours before. We had a great night and at 6:45am the next d
ay I had to drunkenly run for my bus to head to
Riga in
Latvia. I was sad to be leaving the nice, friendly and hospitable people of
Estonia but at this rate I wouldn’t see much of
Europe. I only spent 2 nights in
Riga to speed things up but I really enjoyed my time there.
Riga has a different feel to it compared to
Tallinn but it still has a nice charm about it even though it’s much larger. I found myself getting lost over and over again even with my map I didn’t know where I was half the time.
Riga was covered in snow when I arrived but by the end of the day it was half gone as the weather really warmed up. Snow was melting off all the rooftops and large chunks were hitting me from 5 stories up everywhere I walked. It was kind of cool though because I felt like was in a computer game trying to dodge all the falling snow and trying to keep my health at 100%. I hung out with some really nice people in
Riga and it was a good change having friends to do some sight
seeing with. On our last night we went up to the “sky bar” which overlooked the city and sunk some cocktails while watching the sunset. One cool thing in
Riga are these bridges where all the newlyweds attach an engraved padlock to them so there are thousands of padlocks everywhere. On Saturday I caught the bus to
Vilnius in
Lithuania where I’ve been for 2 nights so far. It does seem like a nice town too but there are a few sketchy people about and my friend got mugged on Saturday night so I’m very cautious walking around here now. Anyway I better go see some sights so I’ll have something to write about next time.
G'day all, 
and stayed indoors at night. It's quite a medieval town and has some really nice buildings and streets and this crazy area called Uzupis. Uzupis is a small area of only a few streets wide which sees itself as a separate country from 
ng I did was head out to this beautiful town called Trakai about an hour out of 
t of the city is quite plain. I went to this amazing museum all about the Polish resistance to the Nazi invasion and ended up spending hours there being blown away by the sheer scale of the War and how much was involved in it. 
nd the place you could still smell the death in the air and it had the eeriest feeling. The whole concentration camp has been made into an amazing museum where everything has been kept original but they added some gripping massive displays of the prisoners' shoes, clothes, hair, toothbrushes, prosthetic arms and legs, shaving brushes, and suitcases before they were executed. This was only a small selection of what they had left but every article including the hair took up a huge room each from the floor to the ceiling. I did a 3 hour tour which was the only way to see this huge place without getting lost and I thought it was brilliant in a sad way. I'd have to say that it is a must do for any 
ition and you can see almost exactly how it was during the war. Yesterday I went to see something that was also very interesting which was the "salt mine" in 
