John's last post

Written in August 2011, but not posted until July 2014 (life must have got busy quickly!)

(John) So I have come full circle, well almost.  In my absence my office was moved and I am now one floor higher, so technically I didn’t just circle, I spiralled – up.  I am writing this first sentence from my desk at my job, everything seems very familiar yet I’m feeling pretty green.  I’ll get back to work and write the rest from home.

Coming back to Canada was very exciting for us.  Being in the UK for a final fling with my family was wonderful and allowed for an easy transition back.  We were able to arrange a week visiting in Southern Ontario before hitting Winnipeg. That was a great decision.  We had a blast in Kitchener and then Port Perry with friends we hadn’t seen for far too long.  I had many “Oh Yeah I’m in Canada” moments when walking around during that first week.  Once in a park in Kitchener I realised I could understand what people close by were saying and stepping in to Tim Horton’s was surreal.   Many thanks to Nicky and Dave and to Paul and Sandra for hosting us that week, we felt very welcome and had a great time.

Getting back to Winnipeg was our final challenge.  We had to get from North and East of Toronto to Lester B Pearson Airport by 11:00am to return the rental car, and then get a West Jet flight home.  Our beautifully planned Google directions took us to a back entrance to the airport where we were not allowed to be.  But we didn’t panic, we had time, and we calmly found our way first to the arrivals area, where we asked where to go to get gas for the car, and then back to departures where we easily found where to leave it. 

After that it was pretty straightforward.  We landed in Winnipeg on a gorgeous sunny day, we were the first off the plane and as we came down the escalator we were greeted by a happy hoard of friends and family with banners and balloons.  It was lovely and we felt great.  Thanks for that; it meant a lot.  The other people on our flight had no idea they were travelling with such celebrities. 

We have been home for two weeks now and it is good to be back in my own bed.   I have stopped dreaming about being on buses and trains and I am back to dreaming about riding my bike.  Yes, my life is that dull.  Not that I’m complaining.  Our cats came back the very first day, which we were not expecting so that was nice.  After a slightly nervous start for Christie, they are both now just as they were, as if we had never left. 

We have been busy organising our lives and so far we seem to be doing OK.  Having to spend so much money since we got back is difficult but we fully expected it and are only too glad that we had been so cheap all year and kept a bit back. 

We have had fun these past two weeks seeing friends and family and hope to continue to see people as we reintegrate, so feel free to drop in we’d love to see you. 

Toronto airport again (Mhari)

We are now in the Toronto airport for the 3rd time this year. This time we are heading home; we will be there soon. yeah!!

Mhari says BYE!!

Back to England... and Wales

(John) We flew home to England's East Midlands Airport on Ryan Air, which is arguably the cheapest way to fly, bar making your own hang-glider out of an old used nylon tent. Other than, the airport in Tallinn (which was much like any other albeit smaller), the usual security procedures and the enforced 2 hour check in time, getting on the Ryan Air plane was exactly like getting on a bus. We had to get in a bus queue, we had to wait for the bus to arrive, we had to wait for the passengers to get off the bus and then we got on the bus as quickly as we could to get the best seat. Then when almost everybody was sitting down and the last drunk man had found his bus (boarding) pass the bus sprouted wings, started going very fast and took off. Two and a half hours later we found the road again, the bus stopped and we all got off. At that point it once more started to feel like flying as we entered an airport terminal, were questioned by an immigration official, waited by a luggage carousel and retrieved our bags. Other than the fact, buses don't fly, there were just two differences that differentiated the Ryan Air experience from bus travel. On buses they don't usually sell duty free stuff and you normally are not given the chance to buy lottery tickets. We paid 225 CAD for all 4 of us, this included the extra 100 CAD we paid to have three checked bags. To get a bus that didn't fly and took 36 hours would have cost twice that. I can't say I loved sharing the plane with the two drunk guys in stag parties who were, while harmless, annoying to many passengers and the crew. But I'd rather put up with them for 2 ½ hours than 36. So think of Ryan Air as a bus not a plane and it is hard not to be impressed.

(Lesley) It is August already!!

We have been in the UK for just over a week now and have been enjoying visits with the family. My sister in law, Mary, arranged a camping trip to Wales and managed to scrounge up camping gear for our lot. She got the word out to the extended family and anyone with time and a penchant for camping found their way to Wales to join in the fun. We roasted quite a few marshmallows by the fire and without graham crackers we found that chocolate digestives work as an alternative in smore production.

We went picking and picnicked at the allotment. It has been a dry summer but Ann and Stanley and Aunty Mary still manage to get things growing. My favourite are the berries; especially when they are put on meringue with cream!

We have been able to hook our little laptop up to the TV and show some photos. No fancy slide shows yet but if you pick a country we can usually satisfy with quite a few images.

Here are some pics: The Ryan Air Bus, Mhari with her window seat, Our green two bedroom detached with open kitchen/living room, Adam's borrowed tent which which he was surprisingly unembarrassed,  Our neighbours tent into which they were able to park their two cars, Henry and Nicola's had a mat outside and a fully fitted kitchen and wall to wall carpeting inside!

Mary and David just bought their whole house! And here is the whole crowd having trouble getting serious.

Unlike this young man who was obviously very serious.  His new Land Rover came with a 'camp like a man' kit. NO that fellow with the gun isn't him.  It is a scarecrow from the allotment.  And finally my parents allotment.  Abundant as always.

  

England (Sam)

(Sam) Just a quick note for flatland family. We spent a while in a small cabin near a town called Rouge, then 3 days in the beautiful medieval city of Tallinn. We flew to England on Ryan Air and have been here for 2 weeks hanging out with family. We spent 3 days camping in Wales with some family and spent most of the rest of the time at our grandparents place. Home soon!

Baltics

(Lesley) When we first got to the Baltics I was a little worried that we had left too much time here. Really I was realizing that had we kept this part of the journey shorter, we could have returned home with enough time to still do our annual canoe trip and enjoy a little Winnipeg summer before heading back to work/school. Well, I am not regretting our time here now. We did a lot of city hopping since Ukraine and although Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have great cities, these countries are best enjoyed out in nature. Not having a car or a tent, makes doing that harder. However, Sam managed, through e-mail communications, to find a camping place that rents little cabins in our price range. We have just enjoyed a nice rural break. We stayed 5 nights in a little wooden tent. We got a couple of extra fiction books and settled in for some relaxation. There was swimming nearby in several little, but deep, lakes and there were some hiking options but the weather was so hot that we opted to get our exercise by swimming across the lake instead. The kitchen was equipped and there was a small grocery store 20 minutes down the road on foot and a big one 20 minutes away by bus. It was a lovely way to end our year on the road. Just a few days in Tallinn, then a flight back to the UK, a few more visits with family and friends and then it is back home for us.

While in Vilnius and Riga, Mhari and I managed to do some amber shopping. We saw some nice things and would have loved to have kept shopping for days but we got a few little treats, did a little Christmas shopping and left it at that. We have seen more amber here in Tallinn but the prices are higher than in Latvia and Lithuania.

We have ditched our worn out things prior to our flight to the UK. My shoes smelt pretty bad this last month and I'd been wanting to throw them out, but had kept them for hikes. My clothes have lasted well though. It really is amazing how little ones needs for a year. I'm sure that after I return I will collect a full compliment of outfits again,, but it is nice to know that it really isn't necessary.

John is quite tired of wearing the same small selection of clothes day in day out but refuses to buy anything as he knows he has more than he needs in Winnipeg. Sam doesn't mind his tiny wardrobe at all. Mhari somehow manages to get creative with her outfits but perhaps it is all her new hairdos that keep things interesting. Both kids want clothing allowances upon our return. They want to live with few clothes and bank the cash for future trips. We may just go for it. They have earned some independence and the money management aspect would compliment a lot of what they have learned this year. The trick will be figuring out what they have to buy independently and what we will help them purchase. Given that they are returning a few sizes bigger, having given away all their old clothes, they may need our help with some of the big ticket items like winter jackets, boots and shoes.

Other Baltic news or thoughts...

-I e-mailed from our bus to Tallinn; the buses here have wifi. Gotta love wifi on Estonian buses! (Wifi we pronounce Wee-fee, since our time in France)

-We travelled to Tallinn from the south east corner of the county, from Voru actually. It wasn't far from Rouge (pronounced Roogger) where we were camping. When we got to the beach in Voru it was clear to me that there was to be a triathlon there soon. The buoys were set up for the swim but nothing else was there. Then, around the corner I found things were all set up for a kids triathlon. So we figured out that it was the kids and the try-a-tri on Saturday and the adults on Sunday. I wanted to stay and watch the swim but we had a bus to catch so we left just before they began. Darn. If I was in better shape it would have been fun to participate but I am so out of shape I would have died on the bike and the run, quite literally!

-From we have learned and witnessed, Estonia seems to be a great country for cycle touring (so for that matter are Latvia and Lithuania). I am hoping one day we will be able to return and spend a month or so cycling around and camping. Or maybe we can come back and ski for a month. Like skiing in Norway without the high prices.

-While camping in Rouge, we noticed the incredibly long daylight hours. It was still very light at 9:45 pm and it would be light again long before 6:00 am. We are used to lots of sun in Winnipeg in summer, but this was something else. And of course Estonians' get less sunlight than us in the winter.

-Estonia shares a common problem with Manitoba - the mosquitoes. There are less of them here but they are about and we were happy to have our Deet repellant (which we have been carrying for 11 months now).

-Estonia also has beautiful wooden houses! We have seen them in each little town, village and city, and they look lovely.  They give the place a Scandinavian feel. Well, I imagine they do, but I haven't been to a Scandinavian country so I wouldn't really know. We could have taken a ferry to Helsinki from Tallinn, there are several crossings daily and it only cost 20 Euros, however, costs once in Helsinki are high, so we didn't bother, besides there is lots to see right here in Tallinn so we are happy with that.

In the Baltic countries, as well as Poland, we saw lots of scout troops marching about (some quite literally marching along, two abreast). Most troops had a uniform of sort: a red scout shirt, a green t-shirt and matching socks or a scarf and khaki pants. Some were all boys, others all girls and the older groups were often mixed. We saw troops camping and some were staying in our hostel in Vilnius. They were canoeing, and hiking. We noticed groups from Belgium, France, Lithuania, Germany and Poland. I spoke with some leaders in Lithuania and I was quite impressed with them and the sheer number of young people out and about, seeing the world and getting in touch with nature. There is definitely a stronger Scout culture in this part of the world. I wonder how their street gang culture is doing? We have certainly never felt threatened.

Baltics: Add them to your list of places to go one day.

Some photos: Mhari and John found a great spot for dancing during a hike; Mhari is not smoking but enjoying a salted fish snack; Our home for a week; wooden house; Estonian buses all have WiFi

The Baltics (Sam)

It's been a while since I blogged but basically, since we left Warsaw we have been to Vilnius, Stalin World, Riga and here, Rouge. Vilnius was really nice. One highlight was going to check out the constitution of Uzupis, a slightly hippy-ish neighbourhood who have (jokingly) declared a breakaway state. Their constitution includes all sorts of important, and unimportant things such as...

10. Everyone has the right to love and take care of a cat.

23. Everyone has the right to understand.

24. Everyone has the right to understand nothing.

37. Everyone has the right to have no rights.

And those are only a few.

Stalin World was cool. The Soviet playground, while not up to Canadian safety standards was tons of fun. Dad wrote about it in detail so check his blog.

From Vilnius we took a 4 hour bus to Riga, it then took two hours in the rain to find our hostel. Riga was nice, but I preferred Vilnius. Riga was too big. There were plenty of old buildings, a few churches and unfortunately, no shortage of Amber shops and stalls. We actually spent two out of three days at Jurmala, the number one beach in the Baltics. The 32 km long, fine white sand beach was one of the number one holiday destinations in the USSR. It's vintage wooden cottages are owned by rich Russians who aren't quite rich enough for frequent flights to the Caribbean.

I must admit I'm not a beach person. If I have somewhere to settle down and clean off then I'm fine but day trips are not my thing. However it was three against one so I manned up and just tried to stay in the shade.

Because our hostel kitchen was so useless, we ended up eating a lot of cheap perogies and pancakes, not that that's a problem of course. We could each get a filling bowl of perogies for about 10 dollars total, and a pancake each for desert was 4 dollars total. On our way up into Estonia we had a 6 hour wait in Valga, a town cut in half by the Latvia-Estonia border. Because of the Schengen treaty the borders since Poland have been completely open. We went from Poland to Lithuania, to Latvia, to Estonia, to Latvia, to Estonia, to Latvia and then into Estonia. We had a bit of fun.

Here is a selection of photos from Poland: Birkenau Barracks; The road that led to the gas chambers; Work Makes Free; Stolen Spectacles.

And more pics from Poland: Palace of Culture and Science; Warsaw Old Town graffiti; Warsaw New Town (not quite as old as the old town)

Some pics from the Baltics: Riga Old Town; I think they mean "sport zone"; Vilnius church; Uzupis Republic Main Square; Stalinworld.

Baltic Countries

(John) Our bus from Vilnius, in Lithuania, left at 4:30 pm. Three and a half hours straight through to Riga, Latvia. We spent our last day in Vilnius constructively. We spent some time at the KGB museum that was excellent. It is actually called the Genocide Museum, but it is housed in the former KGB building that had the prison in the basement. The displays were well laid out and there was a lot of information in English. It was fascinating and the prison was chilling. Sam and I followed that up with the Jewish Holocaust museum, as in one of the books we had read recently there was an account of war time Lithuanian anti-semetism and collaboration in the murder of Jews, and we wanted to learn more. The KGB museum had not touched on the subject, but had directed those interested to the Jewish museum. We weren't disappointed. I was impressed with the detailed displays, the overwhelming evidence and the sheer power of the presentation. A distinction was drawn between educated, Nazi officers whose anti-semetism was based on racist beliefs and illiterate Lithuanian pogromists who had been taught to fear the Jews. The former was unforgivable, but it was obvious that the Jewish community in Lithuania had forgiven those Lithuanians who had participated willingly and unwillingly in the holocaust. Jews in Lithuania as everywhere in Europe had nowhere to hide and those that helped expected to be killed for doing so. As a result they were almost completely wiped out. One display lauded heroes. People who had risked their lives to harbour Jewish people trying to escape and people who had attempted to ease the suffering or reduce the numbers sent to the gas chambers or the death pits in the forest. One was a Nazi officer, shot for treason because he had been ordered to send 80 Jews on a work detail. He had sent 180, trying to pass it off as a mistake and giving 100 men the opportunity to escape. The museum was astounding. It was small but a powerful witness to Nazi atrocities.

From the holocaust museum we went to find Lesley and Mhari on the main square. There is a paving stone in the square that marks the end of the human chain formed in protest, that in 1981 linked Tallinn in Estonia to Vilnius. Impressive.

There wasn't much else we wanted to do in Vilnius to do, so we all walked back to the hostel, ate some food, cleaned up and lugged our packs over to the bus station. We found the right bay and waited. Right on time the bus arrived, looking big and comfy. We got on just as it started to rain. It poured all the way. We did not see much and from what we could tell through the wet gloom there wasn't much to see. In Riga, it was raining hard and we had to unload in the open. We have been finding it pretty easy finding our way around but we were stumped today. We had to get money from an ATM, which we managed quite quickly, then we had to find out how to buy a bus ticket and how to find the trolley bus or bus to our hostel that was a few kms out of the centre, We found an information office. The lady there helped us out and sent us on our way, We bought the ticket but walked endlessly in the rain looking for the right bus stop. We ended up back at the info office. She phoned the hostel they told us to forget the bus and take a train. So we walked what seemed like a long way, I think my pack was getting heavy. We found the train station manged to buy tickets, find the platform and board the train that was waiting. It waited for a while, about 25 minutes. Eventually we were on our way and ten minutes later we arrived. Just as we got off the train the heavens opened and we walked in a huge downpour the 200 metres from platform to hostel entrance, We were dry though, good rain jackets and a couple of umbrellas we bought in Krakow, work well for us. It had taken 4 hours to get to Riga from Vilnius on the bus, a distance of about 350 kms. It took us two hours to get from the Riga bus station to the hostel, a distance of about 5 kms. Sad, but true.

The hostel is a business admin college. In the summertime they use the residence for tourists. We had expected a four bed dorm to ourselves shared toilets and showers, a well equipped kitchen, a cafeteria open all day till 8:00pm, wifi and a computer lab. We got almost all of it. Except the well equipped kitchen, There was a kitchen. The residence was huge and there were eight kitchens, each had two or three stoves with ovens and hoods, two sinks and counters. There was no other equipment. No fridges, no pots, no plates, no forks or knives, We found one spoon. The ovens had no racks and some had rotting food in them. This was a bit of a problem for us as we had hoped to be able to self cater for our 4 night stay in Riga. There were three big supermarkets at the end of the street, we thought we had it made. We tried the cafeteria in the morning: it was great and the food was cheap. So we shrugged our shoulders and said -no problem we'll just eat here. We got back on Friday evening in time to eat dinner and found it was closed - for the weekend, Now we were mad. The weekend staff lady was able to lend us some plates and some cutlery from the staffroom and she let us put our milk in her fridge. We did find one small enamel pot but nothing we could use for cooking for 4 people. So we revised our plan discovered the cheap dumpling and pancake restaurants in Riga, ate cold food at the hostel and mentally practised the scathing review the hostel was going to get when we left. Unfortunately where we are now has no internet connection. So we may not be quite so bitter by the time we can post it. We will probably have softened and focus on the positive things, such as the friendly staff, the quiet room, the hot shower and the fact that we were able to print our boarding passes for our flight out in the computer lab.

Currently, we are in Rouge, pronounced Roogger. Didn't we look stupid when we tried buying the bus ticket. It looked like the sensible way to get to Rouge was by bus from Riga to Tartu, then bus to Voru, then mini bus for the final little hop. But the bus from Riga to Tartu cost 18 Euros each. From Tartu to Voru was 5 Euros. We didn't like the 18 Euro part so looked at getting a train. That only took us to Valga just across the border into Estonia, It left at 6:30am arrived at 9:45 then we would have a 7 hour wait for the bus to Voru. It was a more direct route but it would take all day and would get us there late with a chance that we might arrive in Voru too late to catch the local bus to Rouge. We did it anyway, got to Rouge for half the price of the other route, had a lovely day in Valga, a nice bus trip to Voru, time there to grab some groceries and catch a bus to Rouge. Whereupon we easily found our way to the campground and were shown to our cabin in a beautiful campground on the deepest lake in Estonia to find that we have use of a kitchen with equipment and a fridge. Yay! We win.   

A well equipped kitchen?

Dinner was in the oven when we arrived

Nice bus though

Hostel Turiba

Train/Bus Station in Valga, Estonia

Our new home - A wood tent.