louiseinlimbo

Otherwise in Latvia … well, the capital is really nice.  A pretty, old, centre, some interesting museums (my first full day there was ‘International Museum Day’, when museums are free to visit, so I rushed around as many as I could that day!), a few nice churches and cathedrals, and the largest central market in Europe, housed inside and around former German zeppelin hangars.  Included amongst the museums is the Human Anatomy Museum, which houses some 700 skulls as well as skeletons and preserved slices, segments and skinned bits from all over and through the human body (including those from children).  I couldn’t resist taking this picture … also have the female equivalent but I won’t share that one here. The House of the Black Heads is apparently not a ‘museum’ (so they didn’t give free entry), but is one of the best-known places to visit in Riga.  Historically, its primary function was to promote entrepreneurship, as a gathering place for merchants and sailors....

I really like staying in hostels.  This is not just about saving money, but more for the social factor – even if I were to win the big prize on the Premium Bonds, I think I’d still stay in hostels, albeit with the occasional night or two in a private room (space to unpack, dry laundry and repack, less disturbances to my sleep, etc). But sometimes it can be a strange experience, at least if you always stay in the cheapest hostel in town, as I do.   I’m quite relaxed about the state of cleanliness, but was still surprised to get a bed twice in the last six weeks, once in Lithuania and once in Latvia, with unwashed bed linen.   In the first instance, there was only a weekly visit of a cleaner, who apparently (I didn’t see her) did a cursory sweep and restocked toilet paper and washing up liquid – but she didn’t do any laundry.   Most of the occupants were there for quite a while (immigrants either looking for work or already doing low-paid jobs) and so put their own b...

As the Belarus trip ended at the bus station in the Lithuanian capital, and I have never visited Lithuania (nor the other Baltic states), it seemed like a good idea to spend some time there.  My next firm time commitment involves meeting a group in New Delhi at the very end of June, leaving me some seven weeks to cover the Baltic states - which seemed like enough as these countries are small, but I still felt the pressure to keep moving on from one place to another. Which meant that I only spent a week in the capital, Vilnius, even though it was a really nice city and a comfortable hostel with nice fellow guests, before I caught the train to Kaunas.  Of course there's the usual point to remember that I don't just jump from one holiday (Belarus) to another (Lithuania), but need a few 'home' or 'down' days - to sleep, do laundry, edit, cull, label and back up my photos, catch up with emails, etc - so my week was by no means a full week.  But I walked many miles to...

After the (too) short trip to Kaliningrad, I continued with the same tour company, and some of the same group members, to Belarus.  An easy border crossing in this time, and the tour leader seemed to be trying to build bridges with those he’d previously offended, so I was hopeful that this trip – a full week – would go according to plan. & most of it did.  Okay, so we didn’t get to visit the workshop of Ozgur, “one of the most esteemed sculptors of the USSR, his workshop full to the brim of monuments to Lenin, Soviet War heroes, and statues of other important communist figures from Kim II Sung to Fidel Castro”, nor to meet “our friend who supplies local film directors with uniforms and weapons of the Second World War. He will provide you with the uniform of a Red Army General and be able to take some fairly epic photos in the surrounding area” (this latter would not have interested me anyway) – and most importantly for most of us, at the Stalin Line (a series of bunkers on...

I'd arranged to go to Belarus for a week with a tour group, and after booking it I saw that I could add on a pre-tour extension of a few days in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad at a pretty good price, so I did so.  I'm glad I did, as it was an interesting place to visit, although the trip was too short which was frustrating, as I'm sure I won't have the time or money to re-visit to see the forts, cathedrals, museums, etc that we missed. To be fair, we missed the first scheduled half-day, as we waited six hours at the Lithuania-Kaliningrad border crossing for some of our group to get through.  We had been warned that it could be a difficult crossing, and some (male) members of our group were held for many hours whilst the Russian border guards searched their phones and their social media accounts for anything incriminating, and in a few cases asked them to remove their tops and roll up their trousers so that their tattoos could be examined.  One (Portuguese) tour grou...

Another trip back ‘home’, and another opportunity to reflect on what it would be like if/when it really does become my home again.   I don’t need to repeat that it is cold and expensive … although in this four-week visit I only saw a few light drops of rain on my second-to-last day, and a market stall in the middle of the City of London was selling three ripe avocados for £1, so it could be worse!   & perhaps I don’t need to repeat how pretty it is, from the great buildings in the City to the beautiful villages and woodlands (full of wood anemones, primroses and bluebells at this time of year).   As an added benefit, on this visit I stayed for a couple of days with a new friend who lives near Heathrow … and also near to some great moorlands that I would not have expected in that part of England.   A keen birder (I met him on my birding trip to the Seychelles last year), he took me out for a couple of birding walks, where I not only got to enjoy the scenery but al...