Iain has been nagging me to write this entry for some
time, I can only apologise for its tardiness, but when you are spending you
days either cycling 70miles, searching out places to stay in obscure Lithuanian
towns, deciphering foreign rail schedules, planning routes according to weather
patterns, traipsing around exotic cities sourcing bike parts and lastly being a
tourist and backpacker and actually enjoying
yourself, things like the blog can get rather left by the wayside. As I pointed
out in a jocular manner to Iain, is it not enough you have your own privately
organised cycling tour of northern and eastern Europe, you demand a diary to
kept as well?!
But as it is I have a spare moment as Iain is napping
with his face in what looks like a very uncomfortable position on the train
from Sialuai to Vilnuis. Yes we are on a train, but for those of you accusing
us of cheating (I for one was always rather transparent about my intention to
take the train for this stretch, which is what I said when Iain made a pensive
face over the matter, when that didn’t do I had to say ‘OK well let’s put it
like this, I’m taking the train, you’re free to cycle to Vilnuis and I’ll meet
you there’) we are only taking the train to GET FURTHER AWAY from our course
home (also Vilnuis looks nice), look it up on the map if you must…
Right, now to business, I believe I left the story in
Parnu. When I had finished the last entry in Parnu, Parnu had not yet finished
with us.
The hostel had a distinctly creepy vibe, as we’ve
established, so I did my best to avoid talking to any of the other guest
[inmates]. However, there were times when we had to use the tiny Kitchen which
forced unwanted friendly proximity with
distinctly unfriendly and peculiar individuals. For example there was a tiny
old old old man who was entirely bald and had something of the insane hermit
about him (he was actually fairly harmless and quite polite so this feels
unfair…but still he was an odd fellow), who upon seeing me cook sausages in a
pan became agitated and spontaneously erupted into fits of ‘no no no’ (or some
other such outburst) and immediately produced a bottle of what I presumed (and
I hoped) was cooking oil proceeding to drench my frying sausage in obscene
volumes of the stuff, before scuttling off with satisfied demeanour of one who
had done a great public service.
Though, one happy time upon entering this kitchen of
bizarreness I encountered a young man who started talking to me in fluent
English with a strong Canadian accent, despite purporting to be German. This
was Max, who was a friendly man, quick to laugh and spread good cheer. However
the madness of the hostel wouldn’t quite let us be, the belly laughs of the
young had disturbed the small birdlike woman who sat close to the old TV
watching a bizarre menagerie of programmes. She intermittently interrupted our
conversation with statements such as ‘in the jungle the great apes, make big
noise at each other, only way they can get noticed’ when we politely tried to
continue conversation (I thought she was probably just lonely and wanted to
join in, and I’m sure Max, who seemed a decent sort of chap thought the same)
we were met with another surreal statement ‘Estonia has its first satellite
this year, I am not Estonian but (bangs chest)’ and upon this patriotic claim
she left us.
Max was travelling around the Baltic with his Canadian
friend Sam (they had met studying in Vancouver, hence his accent) who was a
fashion design student on Erasmus in Helsinki. The two of them made pleasant
companions to break from the grim loneliness and surreality of the hostel. They
told us of how they had been couch surfing and expounded on the virtues of the
website/club, they were planning to meet with two Estonian girls later they had
met on the website. We joined them as which took us to ‘Sweet Rosie’ (yet
another Irish bar). Sweet Rosie definitely had the craic in spades, with a live
band singing old Irish/British folk songs there was lively feel to the place
which seemed to be a favourite watering hole for the locals, as the pub was
packed out.
The two Estonian girls, were final year high school
students from the back of beyond outside of Parnu who wanted to travel. One in
particular wanted to see more of turkey, which she felt an especial affinity
for (waving her arms in the air and shouting ‘Turkey! Turkey! Turkey!’ with
some gusto). They were bubbly and affable girls, which seemed to make a direct
contrast to the dour faces and general unfriendliness of most Estonians we had
met. Drinks flowed, laughs were had (mainly at the unfortunate expense of the
drunkest woman in Parnu, who was dancing to the music with almost endless
stamina, despite falling down several times, managed to wrestle Max up for a
somewhat erotic slow dance, hilarity ensued). One of the girls seemed to take a
shining to Iain, loving his peculiarly British turn of phrase ‘bloody’, alas
though it was not meant to be. So we went to bed pleased to be staying in a
hostel, no matter how mad, as the night temperatures hit -3.
We cycled out of Parnu on a sunny morning with the wind
at our backs and prepared to blast down the coast to Riga. We did an easy 110
Kilometres to Tuja in Latvia along “motorways” which in England would barely
pass as a busy road, yet were paved like a cyclists dream and let us fly.
Upon crossing the border to Latvia I was immediately
‘attacked’ by a small dog which I had missed until it was within snapping
distance of my feet, between this and the potholes (which amusingly begin at
the instant you cross the border into Latvia, where evidently the road tax is
significantly lower than Estonia) I was madly swerving, Iain was in fits of
laughter, and to add insult to injury, the dog left him alone entirely and he
escaped unscathed.
The landscape was becoming less boggy, however the
countless horde of trees marched on relentlessly. The buildings were gradually
becoming less dilapidated and the villages we passed through looked more well
kept. The only architecture of any note though were a few giant chairs which
sat impressively at about 20 foot high by the side of the road, presumably
advertising for a furniture manufacturer or something more obscure.
We finally ran out of steam by about 6 o’clock and headed
to a campsite on the coast at Tuja. We were the first campers of the season (and
the only ones mad enough to be in a tent when the nights were predicted to be
hitting -2). It was probably amongst the most beautiful views I have ever
enjoyed from inside a tent, staring out at the sun tumbling down in the west to
the mirror smooth millpond of the Baltic.
The next morning the wind had picked up and though we
were still on the smooth roads (and intermittent cyclepaths) and had only 74km
to do the head winds made it a damn hard days riding to Riga.
Just outside the suburbs of Riga Iain’s pedal fell off.
The whole situation was resolved with some surprising calmness. I turned to
Iain to see why he had slowed, when he declared ‘Tom, my pedal has fallen
off’…’What?’ said I (we were in heavy traffic with winds so I assumed I must
have misheard him) ‘My pedal has come off. I’m going to head over there
(pointing to a bus stop), can you go and pick it up?’…’Oh I see.’ So off I
plodded along the slim hard shoulder to pick up Iain’s escapee pedal as cars
thundered by. To cut a long story short, the bearings were shot and it had spat
out a load of its crucial metal balls. Iain filled the sorry pedal with WD40
and got it into a semblance of working order as we limped on into Riga in rush
hour. (There was however for half of
this a nice cyclepath running parallel to a tram construction project, Iain, in
his professional capacity as a builder, was gobsmacked by the somewhat
lackadaisical attitude to health and safety around the dubiously fenced off
construction site, especially a worker lighting up a cigarette next to what
appeared to be a main gas pipe.)
After the plush suburbs there are endless run down soviet
apartment blocks which desperately need some TLC and the outskirts of the city
smacked of poverty, but the more we headed into Riga the more it became
apparent that this was a “proper” city, it was big with the atmosphere of busy
metropolis. Broad streets swept off in a grid of grandiose and charming Art
Nouveau buildings.
We soldiered on into the old town, and our hostel for two days ‘the naughty squirrel’
which was a similar establishment to the monks bunk; youthful, fun, lively and friendly.
After showering we were directed to a Latvian food buffet where we scoffed our
fill on potatoes and meat (I also had a salad, Iain just had two portions of
meat). Iain insisted we ate here both nights as this food didn’t give him the
shits.
As ever we made some friends. My favourite of these was
(I’m tempted by the clichéd prefix ‘spunky’, which, whilst clichéd is
none-the-less true in this instance) Spanish/Philipino girl who was studying in
Warsaw. She was in Riga to see some of the Baltic on her holidays. She went by
the name of Flor and was a pintsized powerful package of good cheer and bon
homie, and was quite frankly just cool with a streetwise attitude that I
couldn’t help be quite impressed by. We stayed happily chatting and drinking in
the hostel bar until a boisterous gang of Portuguese lads and a (I’ll
paraphrase Iain here) ‘really fucking fit’ (she was) Belgian girl decided it
was time to head out. We joined the party, but at 2:30am Flor and I decided we
were pooped and headed back to hostel. Iain was adamant that he wanted to
continue partying, I thought that the Portuguese lads were clearly in the mood
for being drunken idiots and I had no interest in seeing out whatever
debaucheries they had planned. So Iain went out out ‘out’ with them, I was
worried that if anything went wrong his mother would never forgive me for
leaving him alone, but I decided he’s a grown man and can surely make his own decisions.
I for one had a very pleasant “early” sleep.
The next morning we were sleeping in, like everybody else
in the dorm, except for a Spanish man who had been continually snoozing his
alarm for an hour, until the Australian on the bunk above him snapped; ‘Mate
are you getting up, or are you just fucking trying to piss me off?!’ and
suddenly we heard a load of ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’ from the Spanish man as he
scurried around turning off his alarm. If only this had been the end of the
episode, later whilst the Spanish man had slunk out to the shower a girl came
knocking at the door asking for him, the Australian declared to the room at
large ‘great even when he’s not here he’s fucking waking me up.’
Unfortunately we had to miss the walking tour of the town
and taking in the culture and history because we had the important business of
sourcing an old british imperial-threaded pedal for Iain’s bike; a task which
we were somewhat concerned about, to say the least. We were directed by the
hostel staff to the Velo Depo in the north of the city. This proved an
interesting enough excursion in and of itself. Threading our way through the
busy foot traffic of Riga we headed down the broad bustling boulevards of which
make a delightful contrast from the tumbling quiet warren of the old town, to
an inauspicious warehouse opposite the main police station.
Housed inside is the most amazing bike shop we have ever
seen. Hundreds of bikes are piled up as a busy crew of mechanics quietly and
competently fix up all manner of bikes. There were a steady stream of customers
wheeling in their rides and the proprietor is an exuberant man who evidently really
loves old bikes, he speaks a little English and showed us his collection
proudly. As to the pedal, despite Iain and myself being slightly panicky that
they wouldn’t have imperial-threaded old British pedals there was an entire drawer
packed chock full of British pedals from the old pre-metric days. These were promptly replaced for the bargain
price of £8 including all the work. The mechanics were rather taken by Iain’s
bike and stopped working to admire the fine machine that it is.
Iain also seized
this opportunity to replace his panniers, which he had received for free from my
father (who said they were shit at the time) and had fallen apart and were held
on with duct tape and bunjees. His new panniers were a rather snazzy waterproof
set of saddle bags he picked up for the princely sum of £12. He bodged this
onto his rack with the aid of our hostel owner, a buoyant Australian man with
endless enthusiasm for just doing stuff.
So now sat on the back on Iain’s rack is a two foot long piece of ply, which
was attached by means of the Aussie’s power-drill and some screws through the
old rack. Working with wood and screws Iain was in his element.
I had overheard our room-mates, the two most Canadian men
alive, [eh?] were also facing a similar dilemma. Thus began a subtle and deadly
race for the last beds in Vilnius, that were not in a hostel which was
described on trip advisor as one smelling of poo. With Iain providing unwitting
aid in the form of pleasant conversation to distract the Canadians victory was
certain as I raced through the bookings online, I felt guilty because they were
very nice lads, but mostly relief that we had somewhere to stay.
After this frantic episode was over, Iain and I could
finally relax and meander around the town. The old town is a labyrinthine collection
of Hanseatic medieval architecture interspersed with Russian baroque colonial
influence, but mostly it is Art Nouveau which shines through, every other
building has elaborate and intricate corbelling and friezes lending their
facades a sense of Arcadian detail. I climbed the tower of the highest church
(and paid £5 for the privilege) and took in the breath-taking vistas of the
flat plains of the Baltic lowlands and the urban sprawl of Riga. Iain didn’t
think this was worth £5 and watched a cat take shit, ‘which was priceless’.
The next day we started pedalling for Sialaulai, with the
wind at our backs we blasted down more of the apparent “motorways” of
Latvia/Lithuania. For the record, as soon as you cross the border into
Lithuania the roads become almost instantly better than in Latvia, where the
road maintenance is clearly a low priority. We were setting a record pace (our
own record, but still…) as we raced on the arrow straight roads for 70miles.
However, dreaded steppe syndrome began to set in, as the repetitive terrain combined
with large scale of our maps made it feel like we were going nowhere. It didn’t
help that we had set our sights on the oddly elusive (and badly sign-posted)
hill of crosses which always seemed like it should have been just over the next
“hill” [slight incline], but we never quite reached it and must have
unfortunately flown past it.
We reached Siaulalai and collapsed into bed in an exceptionally
cheap hostel based in a university dorm, the caretaker didn’t speak a word of
English (and beyond my Ps and Qs I haven’t mastered Lithuanian), but it didn’t
stop her talking to us and we roughly managed to communicate what we were after
with hand gestures. Iain befriended some
Turkish students who were at the university to improve their English of all
things! He valiantly tried to go a bar with them but had to return exhausted
when his legs were giving up on the dance floor (might have had something to do
with 100 odd kilometres we had cycled…) despite the fact that the bar was full
of six foot tall beautiful blonde women (or so he reports).
We were up at the crack of 8am next day to head to the
train station and that is where I leave you for now. By now I am already in
Vilnuis, but we’ll leave our adventures here to the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment