After a long year at university with plenty of essays written and exams passed, I thought it time to treat myself to a decent holiday. I wanted something with bit of culture and something that was different to the norm, and that is why I decided to go backpacking in Eastern Europe.
Click here to see Amazon.com’s range of Eastern Europe travel guides
I sat down with a friend and decided that the best route to take was as follows:
Backpacking Eastern Europe Map
The following is excerpts from my travel diary. I haven’t included it all as it’s rather long, but I’ve tried to include some information on all the cities we went to:
Tallin, Estonia
We walked to the Kiadrou stadium for Levadia Tallinn vs FK Haka in a UEFA Cup qualifying match, Tallinn win 2-0. The Stadium is like that of an English conference team, temporary stand on one side but has a couple of thousand fans there yet only 15 away supporters have made the trip across the Gulf of Finland. Walk to the centre and have a meal on the edge of the Old Town, rather nice and proper cheap! Go for a few beers in the Old Town and are told about a rave festival happening at the weekend by a few girls listening to drum and bass on their laptop in a bar.
St. Petersburg, Russia
Arrive in St. Petersburg at half 6 where it is chucking down with rain and have breakfast in a café with two Canadian beach volleyball players who are here for a tournament. Still don’t have a clue what it is I have for breakfast but it’s not half bad. Leave the Café at 8 and walk the mile or so to the Sadovaya Metro station where our hostel is supposed to be. St. Petersburg seems to be full of alcoholics as everyone is drinking beer or Vodka at 7am, probably just a local custom but doesn’t appeal to me!
There seems to be a soldier on every corner with an aggressive look on his face and baseball bat in hand; best not disturb them with requests for directions. Find what we think is the address of the hostel but can’t get in. After another couple of hours walking around pondering what to do, even going back to Estonia tonight seems a viable option.
Riga, Latvia
Head into the Old Town to find a few bars and some dinner. Riga is ridiculously quiet on a Monday night so we give up and go to play a few frames of pool in a bar where the barman is asleep. My friend wins 9-7. As the only thing open is strip clubs charging $20 to get in, we think better of it and walk home via McDonalds’s. Some drunk is kicking the shit out of some bloke in a park, he barely even notices she is doing it, must be off his nut! Lets hope we have a livelier one tomorrow night.
Vilnius, Lithuania
Cook some pasta at the hostel and eat it next to a table of Lithuanians listening to Lithuanian Europop, words cannot describe how awful this stuff is, puts me off my food. It makes Barry Manelow sound like a musical genius. Walk into town and find a few lively bars and have a few drinks but can’t seem to get drunk. End up in this bar talking to two local geezers, one of whom lives in Kilburn and is obsessed with Adidas?!? They tell us that Killa Kela is playing and take us there with them; he is an absolutely nutty driver!! The queue outside resembles a Rugby scrum so we give up and get a taxi back into town.
We stumble into the worst club in town full of English stag parties and local bounty hunters. We attempt to leave to find somewhere else but get talking to this joker from Vilnius who manages to convince this local bird that he is from ‘Landan Tan’ with us. We leave off after about half hour, weren’t the best night.
Krakow, Poland
Go to Auschwitz and Berkinau today, it’s a humbling experience. You can’t write too much on something like this, not really something you want to remember. I know I am stunned at the size of the place!
The image in my mind that will always stay with me is the hole they used to put slave labourers in after a hard days work; they would cram several people into a space the size of a kitchen sink and make them sleep every night in there before 18 hours of work every day. They still have the structure that was erected to hang the officer in charge of the camp. You somehow feel justice was not done; the man should have been tortured!
Budapest, Hungry
We find an Irish bar claiming to have Sky Sports and with it being the 1st day of the new season in the championship we decide to settle down with a few Hungarian beers for the afternoon. They aren’t Irish, they don’t sell any local beers and the TV signal is worse than the signal to an Orange mobile on Antarctica. Walk back over the Danube passed this convoy of over 1000 bikers probably here for the Hungarian Grand Prix tomorrow which is making everything more expensive.
Hungarians seem about as knowledgeable on their city as David Beckham does on quantum physics. No one knows who, what or where Ferencvaros are, nor do they know anything about nightlife.
Hungarian beer does not seem popular here, the only brand we find costs 260 Forints (64p) a pint, not bad though! But that is after some swanky bar sells us 2 pints of Heineken that actually smell of a posh persons fart. We don’t drink them or pay for them much to the annoyance of the barman!
Zagreb, Croatia
A few rounds of Shithead and a couple of games of name the team later, we arrive into Zagreb. Walk to our hostel with the Finnish bloke but there is no room at the inn for him. Hostel is lovely, proper backpackers place and the 2 geezers that run it seem like a laugh, plus they are massive Dinamo fans so there should be a fair bit of banter over the next few days.
Decide to go out for a pizza then down to station to buy train tickets to Ljubljana on Wednesday for 88 Kuna ($13.80), dirt cheap! The local brew is rather nice; ‘Ojzujko’.
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Cross the last border easy enough and enter Slovenia through a stunning mountain range along a river, amazing scenery which is backed up with the soundtrack of progressive drum and bass courtesy of my MP3 player, was an enjoyable journey.
Go out for pizza for what must be the 20th time during the trip at the hottest restaurant in Eastern Europe, which means it has to be an ‘eat and go’ procedure or faint. Then head over to the hostel Celica bar which is supposed to be quite lively. We meet up with some friends, who have had a bit of a full out, is funny to watch anyway. Their hostel looks wicked; an old military prison and next door is a squat which turns into a free party, we don’t investigate unfortunately.
Wake up to find another terrorist plot has delayed and cancelled many flights in and out of London including all Easyjet flights from Ljubljana, lucky we have booked with the even cheaper airline; ‘Buzz’. Walk around town for a bit then get in a taxi to airport with 2 teachers from our hostel who are on same flight.
You may also find this post of use when planning a trip to Eastern Europe:
Eastern Europe Backpacking Itinerary
Click here to see Amazon.com’s range of Eastern Europe travel guides
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