Travelling is...

I tried to write down some thoughts on travelling, especially on travelling alone, like I prefere right now.

Travelling is...

... getting out of your comfort zone
... meeting new people
... trying something new
... experiencing the world as a whole, not country vs. country
... realising how small you really are
... discovering new ways of thinking
... solving problems on your own
... learning to ask people for help
... understanding different lifestyles
... finding out what really matters to you
... learning to make quick decisions
... freezing all problems (some will magically disappear!)
... discovering the beauty of your home
... understanding who you really are
... feeling alive

Riga

Riga is the biggest of the baltic capital cities, which you quickly realise when walking along. It is not as compact as in Tallinn and the walls around the old city are missing too. Still the inner city is easy to recognize because of it beautiful old buildings with high rooms and sometimes even small towers on the edges.

What’s really special about Riga is the narrow park around which probably used to be the moat. There is still a narrow „lake“ inbetween the green areas which is long enough you can do boat trips on it. Also, you can rent a rowing boat or pedal boat and explore the lake on your own.

Also, the market of Riga used to be the biggest in Europe. Today it is probably the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, but still the market of Riga is pretty big and you can easily get lost there because it does not only cover 4 big buildings (which used to be halls for building Zeppelins) but also the surrounding squares and streets. There you can buy fruits, fish, meat, spices, clothes, furniture, accessories, handcrafts and many more. What I liked most is that you can buy really tasty peas. After I discovered they sell huge peas here I started buying a big bag of peas everyday for dinner.

Directly next to the market is the academic tower with the best view over the old city of Riga.

From Riga, you can visit several other great places, and one of them is Sigulda, about an hour with the train (but remember, trains here stop like all the time and it takes a long time to get somewhere outside of the city). It is a town located on the edge oft he Gauja Nationalpark with lots of castles and manor houses. From the castle of Sigulda you can see Krimulda manor and Turaida castle on the other side of the valley of Gauja river. Unfortunately there is only one small wall left of Krimulda castle, the third within reach. Of course I visited them all and enjoyed the view of the tower of Turaida castle down the valley.

Just in the middle of the three castles there is the Gutmans cave, the biggest cave of Latvia that got known through a legend of two lovers from different castles who used to met there, but it ended deadly for the girl which is now known as „Rose of Turaida“.

On the other side of Riga, there is Jürmala, the beach region of Riga. Just behind the beach there are lots of impressing villas that are probably owned by the rich people of Latvia. The beach itself is really beautiful, but there are nearly no waves and you have to walk quite long until the water gets deep enough to swim. Also, it is quite uncommon here to have more than 25 degrees so for me it would be too cold for swimming. But spending the last evening in Latvia on the beach is still a pleasant experience.

Tallinn

When walking through the streets of Tallinn, you always feel like a fairytale - you always expect a knight to come around the corner. The city consists of a pretty huge old town that looks like it was a great castle once and around the modern parts of the city including some more shopping centers like in Helsinki, but nowhere as much as over there.

Everywhere around the old town there is a wall which is nearly completely intact. Inside, the roads are pretty rough because of the flagging. I would not even try to go there with high heels, it was even hard to walk along without stumbling or spraining my feet. Everywhere inside the old city there are those old churches with quite peaked church spires.

On top there was a special church that looked quite different than the others - the orthodox Alexander Church. They also had another Alexander in Finland who granted them autonomy, so now there are lots of memorials. I guess it is a different Alexander but I feel like there are only important Russians named Alexander. Or Alexej. The church nevertheless is really beautiful, it is built with the same red bricks that are used quite often in Finland as well as in Norway and I think also in Ireland if I remember it right.

There are lots of other really nice buildings which I will show you in the next pictures, but also I want to tell you a little bit about Estonia in general. They have nature everywhere. In the city there are so many parks, and when there is no park, there are still some small green areas, sometimes even nobody cares for it - almost in the middle of the city.

Also, there is a big gap between inside the old town and outside. While inside everything looks like perfectly cared for, outside there are some places that slowly fall into a state of disrepair. A perfect example is the Linnahall, the city hall. It was closed in 2009 for some reason I don't know and even when it has the perfect location, just inbetween the old city and the sea, right next to the harbour, it slowly starts to look ugly.

The good thing is that you can just walk on top of it without feeling bad. And the sight is really great. From the Linnahall you can watch the ferries approach Tallinn, see the sunset (even if it is quite late), have a look over the old town and maybe you will even see somebody trying to take a bath in the cold sea. Some even used the big amount of stairs for training purposes by running up and down all the time.

If I was living in Tallinn, I would probably come there everytime when hanging out with friends - it is the perfect place to be in the city but still somewhere else. Some teenagers thought like that and annoyed me with their music for a short time but then they fortunately disappeared again. Nevertheless I am sure it was also a really beautiful city hall and it surely is a pity that they don't use it anymore.

There are lots of street artists in the crowded streets of the old town and also there are lots of people trying to sell you something which made me conclude that estonian people probably aren't that rich even if it looks like that on first sight. Fortunantely they are not as agressive in selling you something as people in southern countries are. I never know how to react. The food the inner city is as expensive as in Austria - but this is probably just for the tourists. In the shops everything is obviously cheaper, except from alcohol.

I realised that Estonia has a great national pride, they only became independent in 1991, but still most of them can speak english fluently. And I found out that going by train is more or less an ordeal of my patience. There are so many stations and everytime the train not just only stops until the passengers entered but some more minutes and I was always like: "Why are we still standing here? We are already late." But seems like they don't mind. It was acutally interesting for me to realise how much this annoys me.

Maybe I will post some more about Tallinn tomorrow but I can't tell for sure now. And I already know what to visit when I come to Estonia next time: The islands on the coast.

Helsinki

I think it was April when I decided I had to go somewhere in the summer even only for a short time because I knew I could not afford that much. About the same time, I was in Poland and did not expect I would like the country that much. So when I decided on coming back and visiting Warsaw, I realised that Vilnius was not that far away from there. And from Vilnius, it was only a short distance to Riga, and from Riga to Tallinn, and Tallinn is connected to Helsinki by lots of ferries every day. And after I learnt that there are lots of affordable busses connecting the cities, I decided it is totally worth to travel there. First, I wanted to include St. Petersburg and Minsk as well but in the end the Visa was too expensive for just staying there two or three days.

So my first stop was Helsinki, and since I did couchsurfing there, I also learnt a lot about the people living there. The first thing to mention was that I saw a lot of shopping centers. I have no idea how they can survive, but I have never seen so many shopping centers in such a small area. And as I recall, Helsinki also only has about 600.000 inhabitants, therefore there are not that many people to shop there. Furthermore, when I decided to have a look at those shoppingcenters in the city center because I was hungry and it seemed like it was starting to rain again, I did not find any entrance. I walked around three of those shopping blocks but there were only entrances to shops or restaurants. So I can't tell you how the inside looks like. But unlike Austria, shops here are open even on Sunday.

The first thing that is on every travel guide is the evangelic cathedral. Because it is situated a little bit higher than the building surrounding it, you can see it when entering the harbour by boat, which was probably exactly what they wanted to reach. Since I heard that most of the people entering the city come by boat, they are welcomed by this pleasant view as well as the market place with lots of regional food as well as handcraft. For example I saw a bottle opener attached to the horns of a deer. I don't know who would buy that.


Next to the cathedral, there's the university, and if you enter the metro from here, you get a quite stunning sight.

I would like to think that it was a student project because the idea is really creative. But they have another attraction they built "into stone": A church built into the rock. From outside, you just see the glass-cupola, but inside it really looks stunning.

Other than that, Helsinki is mostly a modern city, with - like I mentioned - a lot of shopping centers, and also a lot of forest. When my plane approached Helsinki, I saw more trees than houses. There are parks everywhere and in one of them, I found my perfect place to stay and enjoy the sun after the rain while looking at the sea.

In front of the coast there are lots of islands, some uninhabited and some with houses on them. The houses mostly were small red cottages, like you would think of when thinking about Norway.

Unlike Austria, the Finns are proud that the refugees come to them and are especially proud that they are one nation. Also, they all want to posess their own cottage next to a lake or the sea somewhere in Finland. And they really love their Sauna as much as everybody says. They even like to say that no other country knows how to build a Sauna properly. Another funny thing was that it didn't get dark. Only after ten the sky turned red and showed the first signals of a sunset. And there were still so many people out. But when I come to Finland again, I won't spend time in the cities but will use my time to explore the nature which is definitely the most beautiful part of Finland!

Lisbon

I found out again that it is nearly impossible to find time to write a blog while traveling with friends because of course we want to use every moment for exploring, sight-seeing, shopping or just relaxing and watching the city express itself. So now that I am home I finally have time to write about all we saw in Lisbon. Don't be surprised, I took so many photos that there will be probably more photos than text.

In total we actually only spent two full days in the city, the other time we explored some places outside the city. So the first day in the city we first had a ride on the popular yellow tram that goes through the old city where you can have a look at the most important sights.

The tram took us over all the hills of Lisbon - there are really plenty of them. It is like you are never walking just straight along, always uphill or downhill.

At the end we got out and found ourselves in front of a big white church. It turned out that we could go on the roof of that church which we certainly did.

There we not only had a great sight over the city and the river Tejo but also inside the church.

I always like to compare churches in different countries because they always tell a lot about the culture and the history of a region. In Lisbon, the churches look a lot like those in Austria, but without all that golden decoration everywhere. In all the churches I saw there was no gallery where people can sit, just the ground floor. Also, the illuminated areas are like altars for different saints. Here you can light up candles for the saint you like the most - it remembered me a lot of Mexico. There, they also like to praise the saints and pray for them. Here in Portugal there is no praying, just lighting up candles.

Then we visited a park just across from the church - there seem to be small parks everywhere in the city. In the park we heard music, so we followed the sound and found a band playing on two in the afternoon.

The next stop was Belém, a part of the city that is a little bit outside but also has pretty much to offer. Very special was the Torre de Belém, a tower that was originally guarding the river and showing the wealth of Lisbon. But after the big earthquake of 1755 the tower was suddenly surrounded by water. I don't know whether you heard about that earthquake but it was the strongest one recorded in Europe and it even caused small tsunamis in England and France. After the earthquake, the following Tsunami and the fire caused by the earthquake that went on for 5 days, about 85 % of Lisbon was destroyed. This earthquake also triggered the portuguese people to start "researching" the causes of the catastrophe which lead to the creation of seismology.

 

  

In the whole city of Lisbon we always saw beautiful grafitty, but in the district of Belém we found the most beautiful one.

 They even hat their own palace there.

In the evening we decided to go out and ended up at a concert again. It was like people in Lisbon really like to spend their nights outside.

Since it was still quite early we first headed to the river to relax before looking for somewhere to go out.

The brightly lit up thing on the left is a small replica of Cristo Redentor on a big socket. The bridge is called bridge of the 25th of April but for some reason we always forgot the date so first we called it just "Datumsbrücke" (date bridge). In daylight it is actually red so it looks a lot like the golden gate bridge which lead us to the name "golden date bridge". There is another big important bridge in Lisbon, the porte de vasco da gama, which is the longest bridge in Europe, but we only saw it partly from the castle and once from the plane when leaving.

When heading to the bairro alto to go out we found out people mostly have fun on the streets and just get into the bars for getting something to drink. So there was one band playing just on the corner of a street and people were actually dancing to the music - not dancing like in a disco but really dancing! And the music was great, people living there opened the windows to enjoy the songs as well.

The second day in Lisbon was also the last day there, therefore we wanted to go by elevator into the upper city. The elevator was opened in 1902 and constructed by a student of Eiffel like all the other elevators in the city. It is 45 meters high and the only one going straight upward - the other ones are more like mountain railways.

On the top of the elevator there is a viewpoint with a great sight on the pedestrian areas of the city as well as all the red roofs. In Graz we have those red roofs in the inner city as well, but the buildings there are not that high.

Directly next to the elevator there was this church without a roof. It was destroyed in the big earthquake and they started rebuilding it but after the religious orders were ambolished and the church was more or less disempowered, they could not finish it. So now it is a archeological museum and when the weather is good there is absolutely nothing wrong about not having a roof.

On the street we found this two guys that were really creative.

After a successful shopping day we decided to finish the day on the castle where we had a marvellous view over the inner city of Lisbon and all the red roofs I already wrote about. In the distance you can see the golden date bridge and the cristo redentor replica and on the right side there would be the atlantic ocean if we could see that far.

So for the last time we watched the sunset and then, like everyday so far, we went to the river to finish off our vacation with a nice vinho de porto.

Sintra

I really saw a lot of Lisbon by now, but since we are still spending one more day in Lisbon tomorrow, I decided to make a big post about it tomorrow or when I am back home. So today, we were in Sintra. Sintra is a town about 40 minutes away of Lisbon and the royal summer residence was there as well as a lot of other residences and palaces of other wealthy people. I read about it in my book "1000 places to see before you die" and that place was really worth the trip.

The first thing we visited was the castle. It was on the top of a mountain with really small streets up so the bus couldn:t take us very far, so we actually had to walk a little through the park that was all around the castle.

The castle was built in the tenth century, but they also found traces of the romans from earlier and even think that there are traces from the stone age. But the best thing about the castle was that you could nearly climb every tower and they were not so keen about security as they are in Austria. It was like a huge playground - a castle like you always imagined it to be when you were a child.

From over there we had a great view around and we could catch a glimpse of the villas and palaces on the same hill. They really were everywhere and we started dividing who wants to live in which villa and so on. But gladly I already knew where I wanted to live - when I first saw the picture I already fell in love with my future home. People who know me better know that I have a really detailled plan on how I want my dream home to be like. Today I found out I need to make some (a lot) adaptions because now I know how my dream home should look like.

The palace is known as Palacio da Pena and it is the most beautiful building I have ever seen. Not only they have these great colours everywhere, there are so many details everywhere. It was the palace of the kings and for some reason they knew how to make impressing palaces.

When walking around there were always so many eastereggs like corals on the wall or beautiful tiles on just the right places and so on.

We also went inside and the interior is just as colourful and detailled as the exterior.

Now I am absolutely sure I want to live there and I already made plans on how to use the rooms. I found out that I will probably have enough space there. And I can just recommend: If you like stunning buildings, you MUST visit Sintra!

West coast of Portugal

Like I wrote yesterday, today we wanted to see the west coast of Portugal, so we decided to go to Cascais and Guincho near to the Cabo la Roca, the most western part of Europe (which we did not visit). In the morning we had some troubles with the train ticket because we bought a single ticket to Cascais from Rossio (where we are staying) but we had to find out that there is no train to Cascais from Rossio to Cascais. So we decided to take the Metro. But for some reason the ticket only included the train so we ended up walking to a station 15 minutes away where there is a train to Cascais.

It allowed us to see something more about Lissabon, for example the actually very steep streets (because Lissabon is another city that is called "city of the seven mountains") and the huge amount of fabric or shoes shops. There is surely at least one in every street. I can only guess that portuguese people like to sew their own clothes.

The coast was really stunning. We saw this cute white villages on the hillsides as well as lots of palm trees and really beautiful villas. Since everything here is reachable from Lisbon within an hour, it really looks like the rich people decided it would be better to live there. But we did not come here for the villas but for the beach and we shortly found out that the beaches that were reachable with the train were completely crowded and did not look comfortable at all. So we went from Cascais, the final station of the train, to Guincho.

The landscape was really different there, sometimes it looked like the desert is slowly consuming the area.
But there we found a beautiful beach we could relax. Unfortunately they did not have any shadow to hide from the sun so we were not able to stay too long because we did not want to turn fully lobster.

First I was wondering why noone was swimming in the sea and I had the theory that it was just too cold. But then we decided to go swimming and I found out that it was not only really cold but also the tide was really strong. We were not even standing in the water and we got wet all over when a strong tide came. This is why normally only surfers come here. But the nature around here was so beautiful so it was totally worth it! Also, the Camino the Santiago is passing here so I am already making plans on doing my own Camino the Santiago on the Coast of Portugal. I already really like this country and I am sure I will come back (which I don't say about every country).

Everywhere they have this tiles. On the wall - inside and outside -, on the floor, and even on the street signs. This is really something special and I like it, even when I normally don't like tiles.

Another interesting aspect was some kind of "social study" we did on our way back to the train station. Directly in front of a hotel there was a roundabout and for some reason there was a car parking at a place which made it impossible for the bus to pass. Therefore the bus got stuck in the roundabout and had to wait until the car driver showed up and parked the car somewhere else (which happened pretty quick - after about 10 minutes). When I think of Austria, I am pretty sure all the cars coming behind the bus would have stayed behind and the drivers would have gotten pretty mad and would have complained a lot. Not so in Portugal. When the first car behind the bus realised that the bus could not move, he just took the other way around the roundabout and drove away. Same happened for nearly all the other cars coming along behind the bus.

But then some car from the driving school approached and of course there was a pupil in there learning how to drive. The driving teacher was really unsure what to do and after some time waiting got out of the car and asked the bus driver what was wrong. The bus driver told her to just go around at the other side of the roundabout, which was something a driving teacher can't tell her pupil. So in the end they changed places so the driving teacher would drive the car to go around. It was really amusing for us to watch the scene. And just in the moment they changed the places, the car that was blocking the bus moved and we could go on. We just caught a glimpse of the driving school car when both of the drivers got out again and the pupil could drive again. Really amusing.

I thing, that is the reason why people in the south are just happier people. Because if there is a problem they think of the easiest solution to solve it without complaining all the time and acting strictly according to the rules. And I also think that life would be a lot easier in Austria, if we wouldn't take our rules so seriously. I know, we are better than the Germans but we still have this state of mind where we just don't think of easy solutions because we just want to complain and make politics to make better rules so we would be satisfied.

Everytime I am in a country like this, I realise our madness about rules and complaining and I always start to question why we have this situation - It is like nobody wants to take responsibility and think on his own but wants to be leaded by the rules or at least make others be leaded by rules. But maybe, just maybe, sometimes it would be better to give back responsibility for everyones actions and make people decide on their own which would be best in this situation and how to save the situation. It actually makes me kind of sad of our country because we don't realise how strange it is to complain without intending to change something on your own. Truth is, the only thing you can really change is yourself.

And that was what the portuguese people were doing. They surely weren't happy about the situation being stuck behind a bus. But they saw that there is another side of the roundabout going back to the same street they were heading so they had a look if there was traffic coming from the other side. When they saw there was no traffic, they just took the other way, the problem was solved and there was no need to complain. Surely, you can tell the driver of the car blocking the roundabout that it was bad and make him pay a fine but it will probably happen again - not because some car drivers want to harm you but maybe they are just desperate because there is no parking space and you can't just dump all the responsibility for bad situations on someone. Maybe it is your own responsibility to do something about it so it won't be a bad situation at all. And that is what is really missing in our culture. And that is why I already feel really comfortable in Portugal.

 

 

And this is the sight out of our room in the hostel - we are really central. :)