What can i say about Odessa, it was sunny and cheap again, loads of babushkas came up to us at the train station and offered us lodging we got a room for about £6 each with 2 double beds in an out-house with seperate kitchens and tank shower. we went into town to check the boat but we got lost and ended up walking down the steps that were in 'The Battleship Potemkin' we got to the ferry terminal where the woman told us that there wasnt a boat until tuesday (i think it was a friday) so we had a sit down and decided to go to Moldova, yay! (there was a even a breif mention of georgia, but that was by me, and i was going nuts with no money) After cancelling the bulgarian hostel and booking the moldovan one. we bought our coach tickets, a fiver each and went back to our babuska, to get ready to spent the late afternoon, early evening on the beach, no topless beanies here, but i had my first dip in the Black Sea (third sea of the trip). Whilst i was out on the jetty to brusied and bloody men climbed out of the sea with a big bag of muscles. That night we checked out Arkadia, sort of like a Ukrianian seaside party mecca, and went to an open air club with an unbelievable amount of beanies, obvo didnt get with any. it was the first club i've ever been to with a half time show where the cleared the dancefloor and a couple came on and did some gymnastic sort of dancing, involving lifts etc. they were followed by two people in costumes dancing, fuck knows what they were supposed to be. for the rest of the night they were playing Ftv LATE on the big screen, basically videos of buff topless women posing for photo shoots, one after another for hours on end - it was distacting to say the least.
we had to wake up early the next day to get the bus to Chisinau (Kish-i-now) the capital of Moldova, preferably i would have stayed a week in Odessa and i was sad to leave, and to leave Ukraine in general but we had a music festival to go to, and 3 countries to visit along the way.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Kiev
I love russian trains, even thought our trip was during the day we still had a bed because our train was on its way to moscow from like Venice or something so every carriage was a sleeper, and thats wht i did - sleep we got to Kiev in the evening and found our hostel pretty easily wrote down the directions well, they were easy to follow as well. we also had a map this time. When we got to the hostel the hostel guy, who we couldnt tell where the fuck he came from, checked us in. 'Where have u come from buddy?' 'Lviv' 'Shithole' 'well actually it was quite nice' 'holes in the roads, lights going off, makes it shithole in my books' ok whatever.... later on we're in the common room, i go on the computer to find that FACEBOOK IS BLOCKED so i get on a proxy server and load it up... 'dont u be downloading anything or going on facebook, buddy, its blocked for a reason' cunt. of course after this whenever he wasnt in the room or he was out we would go on facebook as much as possible. He then went on to try and persuade us away from going to Odessa which is the summer party capital of Ukraine to got to Sevastapol by pointing at Sevastopol on his map overzealouslywhilst naming out randon events and leaders from history who had probably been there once. After treking around teh very hilly Kiev to find an Indian restaurant recommended in LP we found it relised cheapest meals cost more than they do in London, so we wnet to a place called Potato House which was shit, though while we were there we saw the most ridiculous weather report ever - behind the weather map was a woman slightly out of focus in a flesh coloured bikini, rubbing herself. When we got back we made the mistake of asking the hostel guy where to go that night, he told us to go to Shooters before calling us 'so fucking cheap' that we had to buy beers and drink them at the hostel, we thought the other guys at the hostel were at a bar but when we left we found they wer sitting outside cos they were trying to get away from HIM. we got a taxi to shooters, got to the door and got face controlled, i then asked some girls if they knew some good clubs locally, Arena, so we walked into town and found arena eventually to find it was very expensive, thus ending our 10 nights outs in a row streak. I got a noteably good sandwich at Mr Snack and then we went home.
Next day we had a walk around town down to independence square where teh shots from the Orange Revolution came from and then up to a park overlooking the river where we saw the beach in Kiev on the otherside of the bank which looked niiice. after posing on some communist landmarks we went back to the hostel where we met up with the other guys before going to dinner. we went to the local Ukrainian restaurant which served relitavely cheap food (for Kiev). we then and went and got a few beers and drank with the other guys on curbside before me pierre and a boy called james (who had actually just finished his first year at manchester) went clubbing. we read about a club in lonely planet that was supposedly good, we payed our 100 grivn (a tenner) to get in, it was shit so we thought we should try and leave and get our money back, and guess what, it worked. we the checked out arena which was virtually next door, but the club night hadnt started yet so we snuck into teh next door casino and used their very posh toilet and messed around with the b-day, 3 giggling boys walking out of the toilet must have seemd weird, on the way out i stole a russian playboy. we then tried our luck on shooters again. this time i got told i was allowed in but james and pierre would not be. at this point james started asking why, we were quite drunk, and asked me to explain that if they wanted tourism in there country they should stop with the 'face control' and let foreigners in. at this point the bouncers asked us to leave. i went for slash to come back and see from a far james, with pierre as amused audience, piss of the bouncers more by stating that the club wasnt allowed to have the black cab with nodding dog it had inside, if we were not allowed in. at this point a bouncer and a policemen led james down a side alley much to pierres anger which was the point i decided it wise to step in. one of teh bouncers clouted james in the neck before i got there whikst pierre was shouting at the other one 'thats fucking out of order' i explained to teh bouncer that u cant do that and he replied 'he thinks we need foreigners but i have plenty of ukrainians and russians who come here that fill my club up - fair play. we then got a cab to another club, i cant remember what it was called but we didnt get let into that either, the bouncer at least gave us a reason - dresscode - even though we saw i guy go in wearing flip-flops. we later walked hoem dejected, via McDonalds, where the woman refused to give me a large chips cos it would take her '10 minutes to fry the potatoes'.
i feel i should finish this post as i started it about 3 months, the only problem being that i cant remember very well what we did that day or the next, i know one of the days was spent on the beach, yes there was a beach in kiev, 10km of it supposedly and it was was white sand, with lots of topless ukrainian women as well as a couple having sex (trying to disguise it but not doing it very well), on another day we watched the euro final, a relitive anti-climax, partially cos we were in some shitty restaurant with no atmosphere, fortunately for us it went against the general trend of high kiev pricing so we enjoyed the cheap beer.
we decided against going to sevastopol like the dickhead hostel owner advised us to, so we went to the summe party capital of odessa instead with plans to get the boat to varna in bulgaria and then up through belgrade to Exit that way, this envolved another trip in plaskart overnight, james had his train and about the same time so we said our goodbyes in the station, with pierre organising with him to meet up in the balkans, me and him in bestival, neither would happen...
Next day we had a walk around town down to independence square where teh shots from the Orange Revolution came from and then up to a park overlooking the river where we saw the beach in Kiev on the otherside of the bank which looked niiice. after posing on some communist landmarks we went back to the hostel where we met up with the other guys before going to dinner. we went to the local Ukrainian restaurant which served relitavely cheap food (for Kiev). we then and went and got a few beers and drank with the other guys on curbside before me pierre and a boy called james (who had actually just finished his first year at manchester) went clubbing. we read about a club in lonely planet that was supposedly good, we payed our 100 grivn (a tenner) to get in, it was shit so we thought we should try and leave and get our money back, and guess what, it worked. we the checked out arena which was virtually next door, but the club night hadnt started yet so we snuck into teh next door casino and used their very posh toilet and messed around with the b-day, 3 giggling boys walking out of the toilet must have seemd weird, on the way out i stole a russian playboy. we then tried our luck on shooters again. this time i got told i was allowed in but james and pierre would not be. at this point james started asking why, we were quite drunk, and asked me to explain that if they wanted tourism in there country they should stop with the 'face control' and let foreigners in. at this point the bouncers asked us to leave. i went for slash to come back and see from a far james, with pierre as amused audience, piss of the bouncers more by stating that the club wasnt allowed to have the black cab with nodding dog it had inside, if we were not allowed in. at this point a bouncer and a policemen led james down a side alley much to pierres anger which was the point i decided it wise to step in. one of teh bouncers clouted james in the neck before i got there whikst pierre was shouting at the other one 'thats fucking out of order' i explained to teh bouncer that u cant do that and he replied 'he thinks we need foreigners but i have plenty of ukrainians and russians who come here that fill my club up - fair play. we then got a cab to another club, i cant remember what it was called but we didnt get let into that either, the bouncer at least gave us a reason - dresscode - even though we saw i guy go in wearing flip-flops. we later walked hoem dejected, via McDonalds, where the woman refused to give me a large chips cos it would take her '10 minutes to fry the potatoes'.
i feel i should finish this post as i started it about 3 months, the only problem being that i cant remember very well what we did that day or the next, i know one of the days was spent on the beach, yes there was a beach in kiev, 10km of it supposedly and it was was white sand, with lots of topless ukrainian women as well as a couple having sex (trying to disguise it but not doing it very well), on another day we watched the euro final, a relitive anti-climax, partially cos we were in some shitty restaurant with no atmosphere, fortunately for us it went against the general trend of high kiev pricing so we enjoyed the cheap beer.
we decided against going to sevastopol like the dickhead hostel owner advised us to, so we went to the summe party capital of odessa instead with plans to get the boat to varna in bulgaria and then up through belgrade to Exit that way, this envolved another trip in plaskart overnight, james had his train and about the same time so we said our goodbyes in the station, with pierre organising with him to meet up in the balkans, me and him in bestival, neither would happen...
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Lovin Lviv
We got dumped off teh bus at the train station, which, because of my Lonely Planerts very vague Ukraine section with no map for the second biggest city, meant we didnt have a fucking clue where we were. after getting a bus vaguly into town cos the tram we were told to get was terminated cos there had been a hurricane or summit. after relying on my mental map we evntually got lost, through a combination of russian and wrong street names, 3 people and about an hour later we arrived at our hostel which was actually quite nice and cheap. the woman tried to charge us more than hostel world had said but we argued and she put up no resistance, so we got our room for 4 quid a night, the cheapest since mongolia. we were in a rush cos the Germany Turkey match was coming to end so we just went straight to the first pub we saw got to pints and watched the last 2o minutes. much to our dismay turkey were 2-1 down, almost immediately though, they equalised, yaz we think, extra time, until Phillip Lahm wenta bit mental and scored an amazing goal in the 94th minute. when the game finished we went down stairs and as soon as the barman told me the 2 beers cost a quid in total i realised i loved thios place, there's nothing better than good, cheap alchohol to take awaz all the stress. when we got back the hostel owner and his friends invited us to drink with them. a few funnz broken russian stories, vodka shots and glasses of moldovan wine later we decided to go to the club. we had a chocie of 3, Millenium which would be expensive, Picasso which was quite far away and metro which was close, cheap and full, easy choice. Well saying that we had actually been persuaded to go to Picasso but Metro was on the way so we went there instead. we got in and the main dancefloor was packed, unfortuanately they were playing cheesy russian dance music. we had a few beers (Staropramen were a quid each) and then had a look around. we checked out the hiphop and the house rooms and then jsut cut our losses and went back to the main stage, the next 3 hours or so are very hazy so i'll keep it simple: I met some young ukrainians with union jack t-shirts cos their nicknames are 'Hooligan', i danced with some girl who told me no, but later while i was talking to pierre said good dancing in my ear, in russian konyeshna. pierre left, i'm not sure when but it was because his feet were 'cunted' basically i went over to the table where she was sitting and did another russian chirps and got off with her, when we left the club though, with her mate i was like, ok back to yours? (she was actually well on it) but then she goes and shows me her ingagement ring - 'im getting married in 3 months', 'err... cool' we shared a cab cos apparently we lived on the same road, or at least i thought i did. in the cab she was stroking my leg, which in my opinion was a brutal form of torture. the cab pulled up at 'my address' but what actually happened was teh hostel is on schevchenko avenue not schevchenko street. i was like 'i will sleep on the floor i just need to sleep, please, actually on the floor' after telling me that she actually lived with her fiance, her friend sent me home and even payed for my cab, i had 50p on me, the cab was 2 quid....
Next day i woke up with up at about 2 in teh afternoon to the hostel girl asking me why i was still in bed, we decided to go into town and ask about train times at the tourism office, get some food and pierre to get a haircut. the tourism lady was dumb and wrong saying we could get a train to moldova in 3 hours (would actually take 17) which perked us up for a about an hour or so until we checked online. something usful she did tell us was a barber shop where pierre could get his Andre Arshavin hair cut off it ended up costing about a quid. while he was having his haircut i went and had a look around the nearby market, where a few stalls were closing up, why so early i thought, me not even having lunch yet, oh wait its 5.30. atre Pierres haircut we went to a fancy yet popular pizzeria where u chose ur own toppings, pizza and a drink cost about 2 pounds, by now we were actually realising how fucking cheap lviv actually actually was, pizza was delicious and all. After that we went to the Internet Cafe to find the real train times we found that the train to Moldova was an overnight, so, with our plan to have as many consecutive nights out as possible in our 'dash to EXIT' we decided to head further into ukraine and skip moldova completely as well as romania and end up getting a ferry to varna from odessa. Later that evening we found a seat in one of the cool outdoor shisha bars we saw the night before on teh mainstreet to watch the football, spain russia, if i remember correctly, everyone was supporting Spain, eastern Ukraine, are very patriotic and therefore anti russian, Spain won 3-0, absolutely demolishing the russians, Arshavin was quiet all match, partly due to the deity that is Marcos Senna. during teh game we got some shisha the man was like 'what flavour' peach please 'and what would u like inside?' err peach? 'no, inside, wine cognac, milk?' err... well aparently milk was the best bet and we got it cos it was cheapest as well, but apparently it acts as a filter, what resulted was a shisha pipe that tasted like peach yogurt, honestly one of teh buffest things ever. we also got chatting to a guy called Vladimir who studied english at Uni and has since kept in touch, he was a cool guy. when we got back to the hostel tank up before the club we met a scouse bloke who had just arrived. his mates were asleep and he was in his pants but a few minutes (beers) later he was persuaded to come to Metro with us. On this night in Metro the tallent wasnt up to its best, they were all very young so we went on a mission to get drunk. there were some pretty hot strippers on the podium so thats where all the young boys were cameras out, recording. this night fades away in my memory i did end up getting off with some girl she gave me her number but i didnt remember her name so i saved something ridiculous in my phone, just check it now.......Juv.... (i tell u 2 weeks on when i'm actually writng this that cracks me up soooo much).
i stayed too late at the club and drank too much especially as i had to be up at 8 the next morning when the alarm went off i seariously have never felt so bad, Pierre can vouch for it, he saw the state i was in, that morning is a bit of a blur but i still managed to get the train to Kiev.
Lviv was seariously up there with St Pete and Beijing as one of the favourite places i went to. If we wern't in some mad crazy rush, i could have easily stayed there another 3 days or so, would have done well for my finances too...
Next day i woke up with up at about 2 in teh afternoon to the hostel girl asking me why i was still in bed, we decided to go into town and ask about train times at the tourism office, get some food and pierre to get a haircut. the tourism lady was dumb and wrong saying we could get a train to moldova in 3 hours (would actually take 17) which perked us up for a about an hour or so until we checked online. something usful she did tell us was a barber shop where pierre could get his Andre Arshavin hair cut off it ended up costing about a quid. while he was having his haircut i went and had a look around the nearby market, where a few stalls were closing up, why so early i thought, me not even having lunch yet, oh wait its 5.30. atre Pierres haircut we went to a fancy yet popular pizzeria where u chose ur own toppings, pizza and a drink cost about 2 pounds, by now we were actually realising how fucking cheap lviv actually actually was, pizza was delicious and all. After that we went to the Internet Cafe to find the real train times we found that the train to Moldova was an overnight, so, with our plan to have as many consecutive nights out as possible in our 'dash to EXIT' we decided to head further into ukraine and skip moldova completely as well as romania and end up getting a ferry to varna from odessa. Later that evening we found a seat in one of the cool outdoor shisha bars we saw the night before on teh mainstreet to watch the football, spain russia, if i remember correctly, everyone was supporting Spain, eastern Ukraine, are very patriotic and therefore anti russian, Spain won 3-0, absolutely demolishing the russians, Arshavin was quiet all match, partly due to the deity that is Marcos Senna. during teh game we got some shisha the man was like 'what flavour' peach please 'and what would u like inside?' err peach? 'no, inside, wine cognac, milk?' err... well aparently milk was the best bet and we got it cos it was cheapest as well, but apparently it acts as a filter, what resulted was a shisha pipe that tasted like peach yogurt, honestly one of teh buffest things ever. we also got chatting to a guy called Vladimir who studied english at Uni and has since kept in touch, he was a cool guy. when we got back to the hostel tank up before the club we met a scouse bloke who had just arrived. his mates were asleep and he was in his pants but a few minutes (beers) later he was persuaded to come to Metro with us. On this night in Metro the tallent wasnt up to its best, they were all very young so we went on a mission to get drunk. there were some pretty hot strippers on the podium so thats where all the young boys were cameras out, recording. this night fades away in my memory i did end up getting off with some girl she gave me her number but i didnt remember her name so i saved something ridiculous in my phone, just check it now.......Juv.... (i tell u 2 weeks on when i'm actually writng this that cracks me up soooo much).
i stayed too late at the club and drank too much especially as i had to be up at 8 the next morning when the alarm went off i seariously have never felt so bad, Pierre can vouch for it, he saw the state i was in, that morning is a bit of a blur but i still managed to get the train to Kiev.
Lviv was seariously up there with St Pete and Beijing as one of the favourite places i went to. If we wern't in some mad crazy rush, i could have easily stayed there another 3 days or so, would have done well for my finances too...
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Border crossing
Ok for some reason after beeing in the safety of the EU for about a month, we decided to leave it again. we also wanted to keep up a consecutive string of night out so we didnt get the train from krakow cos it got in at midnight and it was too much hassle - Ukraine, ex-USSR, different wheel gage, hours on the border etc. So, as the travel blogs the night before had suggested we got a train to teh main town near the border, which took about 3 hours, then a local bus to the border town - we actually go the bus to the centre of the town rather than the border section so had to SAS it 2 km down the motorway - and then cross the border by foot.
The thing about the border between Poland and Ukraine is that there is a big cigarette smuggling trade, so teh border is full of Poles making easy money. the first thing we noticed starnege was that a few had US dollars tucked into there passports but we turned a blind eye. when they saw our Passports they were like go to the front, go to the front, ok. we went to teh fron where there was still no movement and put our bags down and waited. For some unknown reason there wasnt any passport control person working so we had to wait for a while in the sun, i was listening to my music in one ear when suddenly i head a loud cry. I turn around and see the 300 people behind me charging the border. SHIT. grab my bag and get crushed to death - only joking - but it was highly uncomfertable. eventually teh one border guard sorts it out and eventually about half an hour later we get to the passport control even though there are only 10 people infront of us. the passport woman said i had to fill in a immigration card but held onto my passport which was helpful it took me 3 turns to fill it in right she only gave me my passport to fill in my passport number on teh third time of asking. Eventually we got the stamp and walked into to Ukraine. on teh other side we got a not-so comfortable, but reletively cheap and reliable bus to Lviv.
despite this, the whole palava, was still 4 hours faster than getting the train.
The thing about the border between Poland and Ukraine is that there is a big cigarette smuggling trade, so teh border is full of Poles making easy money. the first thing we noticed starnege was that a few had US dollars tucked into there passports but we turned a blind eye. when they saw our Passports they were like go to the front, go to the front, ok. we went to teh fron where there was still no movement and put our bags down and waited. For some unknown reason there wasnt any passport control person working so we had to wait for a while in the sun, i was listening to my music in one ear when suddenly i head a loud cry. I turn around and see the 300 people behind me charging the border. SHIT. grab my bag and get crushed to death - only joking - but it was highly uncomfertable. eventually teh one border guard sorts it out and eventually about half an hour later we get to the passport control even though there are only 10 people infront of us. the passport woman said i had to fill in a immigration card but held onto my passport which was helpful it took me 3 turns to fill it in right she only gave me my passport to fill in my passport number on teh third time of asking. Eventually we got the stamp and walked into to Ukraine. on teh other side we got a not-so comfortable, but reletively cheap and reliable bus to Lviv.
despite this, the whole palava, was still 4 hours faster than getting the train.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Krakow
When we got to krakow we found that we were truley back on, what my friends in south america would call it, the gringo trail (i dunno if ive spelled that right but who cares). Anyway when we got there we had finally hit teh Eastern european tourist trail proper, people 'interailing' from switzerland, norway, england, estonia, all the corners of europe and we were now properly amonst it. Our hostel was a really cool place designed to be as socialble as possible (you had to walk through the common room to get in and out and through the dining room to go to the toilet). On top of that it was so well located, literally a stone's throw from teh main town sqaure. We had read about a really good indian restaurant in the lonely planet but unfortunately it didnt exist so we went to a vegetarian diner style place that provided a very hearty meal for cheap cheap price. we went back to the hostel and watched the italy spain game - boring - over a few beers and got chatting to some italian german swiss guy called... forgot, oh well, italy lost, thankfully, cos they are shit, despite it being on penalties, and me and pierre, because we had started drinkins so late (we got to krakow itself at 8pm, then check in dinner etc) went to the club alone. we went to a club recommended by the hostel, we did teh split price entry thing to see if it was good it was, so then pierre came in, actually for free cos he remebered he had some free entry pass, so it worked out at about a quid-50 entry each. we got in and unfortunately teh house room was emptying, the smaller hiphop room was full though and we danced there for the night, their were lots of girls, slightly younger than us bu7t we still didnt get any play, resulting in Pierre declaring, 'we are shit!' which is true. we stayed there for a few hours and then gave up, i left slightly earlier. when i got back i raided the breakfast cupboard and had a bowl of cereal on the balcony with my t-shirt off (what i failed to mention was that it was hot! especially in the club) and then retired to bed where pierre had already crashed out on the bunk below.
The second day i woke up late, like 3pm and we planned to go to a lake near the centre that people were talking about but we dawdled so much that eventually the heat gave into thunderstorms which produced probably the biggest hail stones i has seen in my life, about teh size of a large marble and this is in mid-June! later on some english guys from the hostel - Tom and harry - said they knew a place where they were selling litre beers for a quid-50 we still had some bottles so we arreanged to meet them later. when we were about o leave we invited a group of 18 year old guys from northern Ireland - who were doing what me pierre and the rest of the train crew did last year - if they wanted to come with us, using the cheap beer as a selling point, 'sorry lads ur talking to the wrong people' my gosh. eventually we started walking to the bar with 2 other english guys from leeds, sam and joe (joe was a yiddo!) but pierre didnt remember the way, we asked some girls and they knew where the place was but then they were like 'its her birthday, do u want to come drink with us?' we were like yeh ok, there were 4 of them too. as we walked back to the main square pierre was talking with one of the hot ones while the other 3 of us were being shit and walked seperately from the three others. In fairness Joe and Sam were telling about their dipping into sex tourism, which was quite jokes but at the same time a bit creepy. about 5 minutes later the girls were like actually we have to work tomorrow so we're going to sleep, they were coming to london at the end of august so the birthday girl asked for my email adress and will se what happens, potentially 1 of me, 4 of them... we eventually found the bar which was closing tom and harry came out to meet us, and tom - who was doing a paper on stag culture and had been to krakow a few times - took us to a shisha bar/club. as a club it wasnt the best of places but we did get a shisha pipe which was cool.i ened up paying the most cos one of the guys thought it was my treat, who does he think i am?? we ended up dancing in a small room which played funk, but some of teh tunes the DJ brought out were so bad. after a few hours of not being able to take it anymore we left. when we got back i repeated the same cereal routine but this time i didnt feel at all tired so i bought an Ice Tea at reception and blogger until the early morning, i was feeling quite nocternal in Krakow.
On our last full day i woke up slighly earlier, about 2 and we went straight to the lake, the lake was basically a filled in quarry so it had good opportunities for cliff diving:
i was showing off a bit to some 14 year old boys and they responded by calling me a black something i'm not sure but the word for black in polish is the same in Polish as in russian so i understood half of it. we then hit the 'beach' of the lake - basically the old ramp into the quarry. we met the Estonian bikers who were staying at our hostel and then went to TESCOS to buy some food for dinner. that night i had elaborate beans on toast, kidney beans, fried with onions on cheese on toasted baguette, i nearly had a coronary. That night 4 stunning norwegians turned up, nice one. Tom and harry were like we're thinking about going to a micro-brewery and we were like 'ok cool we'll just finish our beers and-' 'ok, we'll see you later, come on girls' they didnt go to the micro brewery, we checked. we ended up going to a club night called 'House Forever' the door lady was like 'ID please' so we gave it to her 'OMG u guys are sooo young (*sigh*) ok this is the last time...' err ok then, we were following some girls that had passed us on the street and when we got in we couldt actually find any house, one of teh girls came over to dance with us but again teh club was so hot, i went to the toliet to air my balls and when i came back Pierre was pulling her. fair game. after a while of dancing with by myself in line with fan her friends came back from whatever and i started dancing with one, for some reason she was happy to grind and stuff but whenever i went to kiss her she pulled back or shook her head, then went away talked with her friends as if discussing something important and then coming back to dance with me, the twist is everytime she came back i got further, first a kiss, then she got some ice in her mouth and transferred it to my mouth then eventually we got off. we went and sat down and she was like where are u from, england, 'oh i thought u were foreign! - cool.... anyway after a while sitting down and getrting offd she 'had to' go home. i sat down for a while then went to the dancefloor where pierre was still getting off with his bird, i decided to leave, but on the way out heard some pumping house! i finally found the house room but could only dance for a bit as i was tired and my feet hurt - i know, pussy'ole. when i got back and had a bowl of cereal and harry and teh norwegians got back. one of them was giving me searious eyes, seariously, and when all her friends went to bed i was waiting for teh internet that she was on. finally she gets up and i catch her eye, and say excuse me - her eyes light up - is the internet free now, 'err, yes' ... i know, i am shit. Pierre came back later and his girl was also staying with a friend so 'had to' go home, we checked a few travel blogs about what was the quickest way yto get to Lviv in Ukraine from krakow, i blogged for a bit and then went to bed.
in the morning i got a few snaps of the main square as i ahdnt actually had a proper look around town, partly because Krakow was wicked. If we didnt have our EXIT tickets i think i could have easily stayed there a week.
The second day i woke up late, like 3pm and we planned to go to a lake near the centre that people were talking about but we dawdled so much that eventually the heat gave into thunderstorms which produced probably the biggest hail stones i has seen in my life, about teh size of a large marble and this is in mid-June! later on some english guys from the hostel - Tom and harry - said they knew a place where they were selling litre beers for a quid-50 we still had some bottles so we arreanged to meet them later. when we were about o leave we invited a group of 18 year old guys from northern Ireland - who were doing what me pierre and the rest of the train crew did last year - if they wanted to come with us, using the cheap beer as a selling point, 'sorry lads ur talking to the wrong people' my gosh. eventually we started walking to the bar with 2 other english guys from leeds, sam and joe (joe was a yiddo!) but pierre didnt remember the way, we asked some girls and they knew where the place was but then they were like 'its her birthday, do u want to come drink with us?' we were like yeh ok, there were 4 of them too. as we walked back to the main square pierre was talking with one of the hot ones while the other 3 of us were being shit and walked seperately from the three others. In fairness Joe and Sam were telling about their dipping into sex tourism, which was quite jokes but at the same time a bit creepy. about 5 minutes later the girls were like actually we have to work tomorrow so we're going to sleep, they were coming to london at the end of august so the birthday girl asked for my email adress and will se what happens, potentially 1 of me, 4 of them... we eventually found the bar which was closing tom and harry came out to meet us, and tom - who was doing a paper on stag culture and had been to krakow a few times - took us to a shisha bar/club. as a club it wasnt the best of places but we did get a shisha pipe which was cool.i ened up paying the most cos one of the guys thought it was my treat, who does he think i am?? we ended up dancing in a small room which played funk, but some of teh tunes the DJ brought out were so bad. after a few hours of not being able to take it anymore we left. when we got back i repeated the same cereal routine but this time i didnt feel at all tired so i bought an Ice Tea at reception and blogger until the early morning, i was feeling quite nocternal in Krakow.
On our last full day i woke up slighly earlier, about 2 and we went straight to the lake, the lake was basically a filled in quarry so it had good opportunities for cliff diving:
i was showing off a bit to some 14 year old boys and they responded by calling me a black something i'm not sure but the word for black in polish is the same in Polish as in russian so i understood half of it. we then hit the 'beach' of the lake - basically the old ramp into the quarry. we met the Estonian bikers who were staying at our hostel and then went to TESCOS to buy some food for dinner. that night i had elaborate beans on toast, kidney beans, fried with onions on cheese on toasted baguette, i nearly had a coronary. That night 4 stunning norwegians turned up, nice one. Tom and harry were like we're thinking about going to a micro-brewery and we were like 'ok cool we'll just finish our beers and-' 'ok, we'll see you later, come on girls' they didnt go to the micro brewery, we checked. we ended up going to a club night called 'House Forever' the door lady was like 'ID please' so we gave it to her 'OMG u guys are sooo young (*sigh*) ok this is the last time...' err ok then, we were following some girls that had passed us on the street and when we got in we couldt actually find any house, one of teh girls came over to dance with us but again teh club was so hot, i went to the toliet to air my balls and when i came back Pierre was pulling her. fair game. after a while of dancing with by myself in line with fan her friends came back from whatever and i started dancing with one, for some reason she was happy to grind and stuff but whenever i went to kiss her she pulled back or shook her head, then went away talked with her friends as if discussing something important and then coming back to dance with me, the twist is everytime she came back i got further, first a kiss, then she got some ice in her mouth and transferred it to my mouth then eventually we got off. we went and sat down and she was like where are u from, england, 'oh i thought u were foreign! - cool.... anyway after a while sitting down and getrting offd she 'had to' go home. i sat down for a while then went to the dancefloor where pierre was still getting off with his bird, i decided to leave, but on the way out heard some pumping house! i finally found the house room but could only dance for a bit as i was tired and my feet hurt - i know, pussy'ole. when i got back and had a bowl of cereal and harry and teh norwegians got back. one of them was giving me searious eyes, seariously, and when all her friends went to bed i was waiting for teh internet that she was on. finally she gets up and i catch her eye, and say excuse me - her eyes light up - is the internet free now, 'err, yes' ... i know, i am shit. Pierre came back later and his girl was also staying with a friend so 'had to' go home, we checked a few travel blogs about what was the quickest way yto get to Lviv in Ukraine from krakow, i blogged for a bit and then went to bed.
in the morning i got a few snaps of the main square as i ahdnt actually had a proper look around town, partly because Krakow was wicked. If we didnt have our EXIT tickets i think i could have easily stayed there a week.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Warszawa
3 trains later we arrive in Warsaw were we are picked up by the guy we were doing couchsurfing with, called Michal 'u can call me Mike'. we had originally planned to stay with some other guy but when Mike replied to our request 'good idea coming on the weekend 150 clubs await you' we had no choice but to make up an excuse and ditch the other one. we got chatting about poland and frisbee and festivals and also how he was quite the avid couchsurfer, in fact he had hosted over 60 sets of people last summer including 9 people at one time! he was also quite a paty animal and hadnt slept for 3 days but a few beers later he was ready for the club. On the way he got us some special recipe vodka which was quite drinkable. In poland they use mixers also but instead of it actually being mixed u take the mixer aftrewards, so in this case we were going vodka and then coke and the vodka etc etc etc i also got a bottle of Tiskie, instantly reigniting myt love for Polish beer. eventually we hit the club which was called Balsam. It was Mike's favourite club cos it played funk music, unfortunately House and techno werent his things. The club wasnt full but not far off and teh clientelle were of a slightly older age but this didnt ward me off. a few pints later i was dancing with these 2 women, not the best lookers, but i got if with both of them one after another, literally taking turns. I thought i was in there but later on after Pierre and Mike had gone home we were playing foosball, on what was probably the worst foosball table i have ever played on (one team had 8 players, and teh other's keeper had no legs!), and then the bouncers said the club was closed, the girls turned around and said 'nice to meet u' hopped in a cab and went home. on the walk home i was talking to some guys and we bumped into a girl who had just graduated from secondary school that day and was waiting for the first metro. i started chatting to her but there was some big guy with a bruise on his eyebrow who just wouldnt leave. eventually i got fed up and was like 'you know the metro's started' and so i took her down the subway' - Mike's flat was on the otherside - and she was like do u knopw that man, whilst holding my hand, 'no i said' but then she went into teh metro and i never saw her again... she was butters though.
After sleeping on the floor, for a reason i cant remeber we went into town to see the Warsaw Rising museum which Mike had recommended, on the way i had proberly the worst felafel of my life. The museum was cool if not a little depressing really showing how much Stalin fucked over the Poles by not helping them fight against the germans to get back an Independent poland and instaed waiting another year to do it himself and take all the glory. we then had a walk around the old town where we saw the bears , one from evry country in the world, my favourites included Cuba, Ireland, America and Moldova's which was basically a plea for tourism. we went back and changed and then went back into town to watch the football. And after missing Turkeys miraculous win over Croatia, we wernt going to miss Russia - Holland, in which the Dutch got thrashed - Arshavin again! we then met up with Mike who went into a club to get some Pills without telling us and then took us to a shitty club where his mate was DJing, after her set we went back to Balsam and this time the clientelle was strangely young, i was dancing with this girl who was quite fit but then she smiled and i saw her braces, not haps. i stumbled home in the morning light and managed to get some potato wedges in slad and pitta for about 60p at the kebab shop. i was lsitening to music on my phone ehich ran out of power jsut before i got back. Whats a matter with that is that the door code was on my phone. After a few meek atempts at climbing into teh secon floor window i gave up and had a little doze on the doorstep until Mike came back.
The next day we were off to Krakow but we had a good lie in, as the train was in the afternoon and only took 3 hours. we eventually said fairwell to Mike, and almost missed our train but once we got on we were properly on our dash to EXIT.
After sleeping on the floor, for a reason i cant remeber we went into town to see the Warsaw Rising museum which Mike had recommended, on the way i had proberly the worst felafel of my life. The museum was cool if not a little depressing really showing how much Stalin fucked over the Poles by not helping them fight against the germans to get back an Independent poland and instaed waiting another year to do it himself and take all the glory. we then had a walk around the old town where we saw the bears , one from evry country in the world, my favourites included Cuba, Ireland, America and Moldova's which was basically a plea for tourism. we went back and changed and then went back into town to watch the football. And after missing Turkeys miraculous win over Croatia, we wernt going to miss Russia - Holland, in which the Dutch got thrashed - Arshavin again! we then met up with Mike who went into a club to get some Pills without telling us and then took us to a shitty club where his mate was DJing, after her set we went back to Balsam and this time the clientelle was strangely young, i was dancing with this girl who was quite fit but then she smiled and i saw her braces, not haps. i stumbled home in the morning light and managed to get some potato wedges in slad and pitta for about 60p at the kebab shop. i was lsitening to music on my phone ehich ran out of power jsut before i got back. Whats a matter with that is that the door code was on my phone. After a few meek atempts at climbing into teh secon floor window i gave up and had a little doze on the doorstep until Mike came back.
The next day we were off to Krakow but we had a good lie in, as the train was in the afternoon and only took 3 hours. we eventually said fairwell to Mike, and almost missed our train but once we got on we were properly on our dash to EXIT.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Dash to EXIT - An Introduction
After we booked our exit tickets we were officially in a rush. we didnt need to be, of course, but we wanted to go through about 7 countries getting there, which included: (the previously planned) Lithuania and Poland and then on top of that, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and then finally Serbia, all in 24 days.
We were supposedly rushing in Lithuania but we would have only spent more time in Vilnius, which was a disappointment anyway, so in Poland the dash was really starting.
Of course the mad rushing is synonomous with the Eurotrip me pierre and 3/4/5 others did last summer, so of course it evrything has to be a lot more intense, drinking, going out on the pull actually seeing sites - maybe even a bit of Nazi tourism, anyway i'm looking forward to it.
We were supposedly rushing in Lithuania but we would have only spent more time in Vilnius, which was a disappointment anyway, so in Poland the dash was really starting.
Of course the mad rushing is synonomous with the Eurotrip me pierre and 3/4/5 others did last summer, so of course it evrything has to be a lot more intense, drinking, going out on the pull actually seeing sites - maybe even a bit of Nazi tourism, anyway i'm looking forward to it.
Baltic Reflections
The baltic reason was always a place that i wanted to see properly and not really need to go to again, we got there on the 27th May and left on the 20th of June so 24 days for 3 of the smallest countries in teh world is more than enough i thought.
Estonia was a good place to go to after russia and scandinavia cos it seemed to me like the best off of the entire baltic, Tallinn was so small though and we spent too long there. It was also where we experienced the worst effect of stag-dos. Parnu was wicked, it was so relaxed so chilled out and it was almost a good thing to have 4 days without clubbing - didnt think i'd ever say that...
Latvia was really good, it had an excellent vibe to it, wasnt that cheap, cos of teh ridculous strength of the Lat combined with the 17% rate of inflation, we stayed with really cool guys in Riga, that showed us the best things to do, and best places to go. it was really nice to get into teh country as well, up into the forest. Liepaja as well was really edgy and wicked, always good to get to the beach as well.
Lithunia on the otherhand was rewally disappointing. The women were no way near as good looking as there baltic counterparts and teh supposedly 'cheeky' nature of the Lithuanians was never really apparent. As an example the funniest thing that happened in Vilnius was Pierre thinking Snoop's 'Sexual Eruption' was in fact 'Sexual Reduction'. the most fun we had was in Kaunas, probably cos we were staying with an Italian who loved to party, but even that had a downer put on it cos of Portugal getting knocked out of the Euros.
Over all it was cool i guess, however not overwhelmingly so.
STANDINGS:
MATT: 12 pulls, 1 bang, 1 gf
PIERRE: 9 pulls, 2 bangs.
Estonia was a good place to go to after russia and scandinavia cos it seemed to me like the best off of the entire baltic, Tallinn was so small though and we spent too long there. It was also where we experienced the worst effect of stag-dos. Parnu was wicked, it was so relaxed so chilled out and it was almost a good thing to have 4 days without clubbing - didnt think i'd ever say that...
Latvia was really good, it had an excellent vibe to it, wasnt that cheap, cos of teh ridculous strength of the Lat combined with the 17% rate of inflation, we stayed with really cool guys in Riga, that showed us the best things to do, and best places to go. it was really nice to get into teh country as well, up into the forest. Liepaja as well was really edgy and wicked, always good to get to the beach as well.
Lithunia on the otherhand was rewally disappointing. The women were no way near as good looking as there baltic counterparts and teh supposedly 'cheeky' nature of the Lithuanians was never really apparent. As an example the funniest thing that happened in Vilnius was Pierre thinking Snoop's 'Sexual Eruption' was in fact 'Sexual Reduction'. the most fun we had was in Kaunas, probably cos we were staying with an Italian who loved to party, but even that had a downer put on it cos of Portugal getting knocked out of the Euros.
Over all it was cool i guess, however not overwhelmingly so.
STANDINGS:
MATT: 12 pulls, 1 bang, 1 gf
PIERRE: 9 pulls, 2 bangs.
Kakakakakakakakaunas
Lithuania's second yet 'stubbornly provincial' city was a polace that i knew nothing about and still know reletively nothing about but it was going to be fun. We met Guiliano, the guy who we were couch surfing with, at the bus station and he immediately offered us teh option, old town or have a beer? we opted for the latter after dropping of our bags at his apartment and went for a cheap cheap pint. He told us how he was volunteering at an orphanage here, how he like, was with a cool bunch of people, had got fairly far in learning the language etc... he immediatly gave us a tour of town which, didnt actually take that long, it si a small place afterall but it was good to have a couchsurfer who for once wasnt like, ok i'm busy now, go do ur own thing. we went for dinner at a traditional lithuanian restaurant then went to some amazingly cool bar to watch the russian sweden match - Arshavin! we then went to a club called america. luckily for us every wednesday or so its 'expat wednesdays' so it was free entry. we got in and the club was full of girls, of teh type of talent which we hadnt yet seen in lithuania, so we got amongst it. after a while i started dancing with some gitl who had great T&A but turned out to be the BIGGEST cocktease ever, she was teh kind of girl who danced with u, THEN sat down with u, cuddled u, leant against u, kissed u on the cheek, made u kiss her on the cheek, but wouldnt get off with u, 'do u have a boyfriend' 'no, do u' ' no i dont have a boyfriend either...' - still didnt lose my wit... pierre meanwhile was dancing with one of guilianos friends who was another one of those devil women, fortunately ot to the same extent.
Day 2 we had a good lie in, i had the spare room, when Guiliano came back from work we went up to the new-age looking church on the hill which, from its terrace has a wicked view of the town, we then went to a second hand store where i found 2 white suits! unfortunately one of teh trousers was 28" (too small) and 60" (faaaaar too big, they looked like clown trousers), oh well. Pierre got a Croatia shirt from the 2002 World Cup, for about a quid, as they were his new team after France's dismissal. we wnet to a local bar and got some even cheaper beer, Guiliano was dozing off becuase he only had 3 hours sleep the night before, so we went back. i cooked some fajitas, and got ready for teh big game, Portugal - Germany. the interesting thing was that Guiliano's flatmate was German. we went to teh club which we were going to later who were showing teh game on big screen, one of teh best places we actually watched any football, and sat down for the match. It was a good game but frankly we playeds shit and germany stifled us but 3-2 is honorable i recks, still gutted. we hung around with our beers until the club got banging and danced to some pretty good house. there was one of those girls who loved dancing on stage and getting attention she loved me clubbing in my hoodie and somehow ended up thrusting her poom in my face, which was jokes. Guliano was dancing in the other room which was playing teh cheesiest Lithuanian music, i ended up falling asleep on the sofa and getting woken up and told to leave. before we went to bed we said thankyou and goodbye to guiliano becuase we woulnt catch him in the morning and went to bed.
we did a 'lake bled to rijeka' style 3 train journey the next day and finally said fair well to the baltic.
Day 2 we had a good lie in, i had the spare room, when Guiliano came back from work we went up to the new-age looking church on the hill which, from its terrace has a wicked view of the town, we then went to a second hand store where i found 2 white suits! unfortunately one of teh trousers was 28" (too small) and 60" (faaaaar too big, they looked like clown trousers), oh well. Pierre got a Croatia shirt from the 2002 World Cup, for about a quid, as they were his new team after France's dismissal. we wnet to a local bar and got some even cheaper beer, Guiliano was dozing off becuase he only had 3 hours sleep the night before, so we went back. i cooked some fajitas, and got ready for teh big game, Portugal - Germany. the interesting thing was that Guiliano's flatmate was German. we went to teh club which we were going to later who were showing teh game on big screen, one of teh best places we actually watched any football, and sat down for the match. It was a good game but frankly we playeds shit and germany stifled us but 3-2 is honorable i recks, still gutted. we hung around with our beers until the club got banging and danced to some pretty good house. there was one of those girls who loved dancing on stage and getting attention she loved me clubbing in my hoodie and somehow ended up thrusting her poom in my face, which was jokes. Guliano was dancing in the other room which was playing teh cheesiest Lithuanian music, i ended up falling asleep on the sofa and getting woken up and told to leave. before we went to bed we said thankyou and goodbye to guiliano becuase we woulnt catch him in the morning and went to bed.
we did a 'lake bled to rijeka' style 3 train journey the next day and finally said fair well to the baltic.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Disappointed in Vilnius
We got the bus to Vilnius which was frankly a lot more expensive than we had previously expected, probably due to the fact that we were travelling by 'Eurolines' bus as opposed to my favoured 'Ecolines' but oh well it got us there, we walked through the old town to the main cathedral square to meet Mindaugas, the guy who we wouleb couchsurfing with and he took us back to his flat which was set in a lovely little green little soviet estate 2 minutes walk from the centre. we let his flat was a nice little bed sit with a wicked computer set up (2 screens) and a foosball table, we left Mindaugas alone after the standard couchsurfer chat, and went to pizzeria that he had recommended - we hadnt eaten all day. when we got back we played a few games of foosball, and Mindaugas showed us just how good he was, seariously, have u ever seen a man do stepovers on a foosball table, play triangles between the front three? well i have, and its mental. he took us to his favourite bar to watch the ausria germany -shit game. afterwards (i'm going to sound like a pussy'ole) i had really bad asma so i had to go home as did Mindaugas cos he had an exam the next day, pierre decided to go lone clubbing but 2 places recommened were emptyso he got back about half an hour later.
The next day the rain came down, and i mean seariously, we couldnt go and see the old town so instead we went to the cinema and watched Indiana Jones. On the way there guess who we bumped into - Luca! the Argie bastard from the 3 towns previous. we organised to meet up with him at the bar we went to earlier to watch the game. The match that night was a delight, watching 2 highly overrated teams play shit football and the worse one coming off, well, worse with almost what was classified as a Thierry Henry own-goal. after we went in search of a club, Luca told us he knew a place, Mindaugas went home but said as he left 'good luck in finding a club look everywhere and then if u cant find a place, go to Broadway' and guess where we ended up. Lonely Planet says Broadway is the place 'for expats and anybody who wants to meet them' and this was too right. the gusy in there were business types, the girls were 30-somethings and average at best, and the music was possibly the worst of any club i have ever been to. We still managed to stay for a good 2 hours though, we left Luca still trying it on with the best looking girl in the club, our time of departure coincided with the playing of YMCA - a reflection of the DJ's shit taste in music which in turn refleted his shit DJing skills, i went up to him and told him he was 'fucking shit' with a smile and a thumbs up naturlich.
next day we got the fuck out, we only stayed to days cos it was the beginning of our 'Dash to Exit' but we didnt really feel to stay anyways
2 words - Dis appointed.
The next day the rain came down, and i mean seariously, we couldnt go and see the old town so instead we went to the cinema and watched Indiana Jones. On the way there guess who we bumped into - Luca! the Argie bastard from the 3 towns previous. we organised to meet up with him at the bar we went to earlier to watch the game. The match that night was a delight, watching 2 highly overrated teams play shit football and the worse one coming off, well, worse with almost what was classified as a Thierry Henry own-goal. after we went in search of a club, Luca told us he knew a place, Mindaugas went home but said as he left 'good luck in finding a club look everywhere and then if u cant find a place, go to Broadway' and guess where we ended up. Lonely Planet says Broadway is the place 'for expats and anybody who wants to meet them' and this was too right. the gusy in there were business types, the girls were 30-somethings and average at best, and the music was possibly the worst of any club i have ever been to. We still managed to stay for a good 2 hours though, we left Luca still trying it on with the best looking girl in the club, our time of departure coincided with the playing of YMCA - a reflection of the DJ's shit taste in music which in turn refleted his shit DJing skills, i went up to him and told him he was 'fucking shit' with a smile and a thumbs up naturlich.
next day we got the fuck out, we only stayed to days cos it was the beginning of our 'Dash to Exit' but we didnt really feel to stay anyways
2 words - Dis appointed.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
There are 2 beanies in Klaipeda
we got to Klaipeda whic teh lonely planet had described as 'gritty' which it really wasnt, we walked into town to get some info on camping and more importantly the Curonian Spit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curonian_Spit) which is Klaipeda's biggest draw. the T&I girls were useless, and 3 of them didnt even know what teh Curonian Spit was, obvo the Lithuanbian name is different but u know what i mean, that would be first up on their list of vocab. we found out that the onbly campsite on the Spit was in Nida, which was a ferry and a bus away, so we decided to visit it only on short excursions and stay in the youth hostel, partly due to the fact we couldnt be bothered to trek and partly cos of the Euros. we checked into the hostel which was gritty but wasnt cheap and on he way i hard the call of 'EUSEBIO' from across the street, it was the Argentinian man. we went back into town which was eerily empty and got the 10 minute ferry over the lagoon to the Spit. We had a walk along the beach we got back and watched the football, Russia's win over sweden and headed back to the hostel. we got back and argentinian guy was in fact stayin at our hostel, he told us he was going to party but we for us klaipeda was teh calm before the storm which would be our mad dash to EXIT. besides he was 31 and the club he was going to, which he had been the night before was, he said, full of 30 somethings.
the next day was our proper day on the beach we had a swim, built a fortress against the sea, something i havnt done in along time and headed back to to the hostel, in town we realised that there were a few more people than we had seen the day before but the streets were overwhelmingly empty, i nsaw my first beanie of the town. whenwe returned to teh hostel i found teh only other beanie in Klaipeda, our hostel girl! she was some fit as russian who walked aorund in hotpants and liked football. we watched turkey's comeback against the Czechs which knocked them out of the competion, whilst she kept uypdating me on Portugal's dismal game against the Swiss. after a while she changed from teh denim hotpants into some tracksuit hotpants but looked like she wanted to sleep so we all (by thge end there were 5 of us in her room/the reception) excused herself and let her get some sleep, she did have a 72 hour shift ahead of her after all!
we got the bus the next morning to Vilnius, but apparently the reason why there were no beanies in town is cos on the weekend (we were there for saturday and sunday) everybody goes to party in palanga - lesson learned, trust a Chileano.
the next day was our proper day on the beach we had a swim, built a fortress against the sea, something i havnt done in along time and headed back to to the hostel, in town we realised that there were a few more people than we had seen the day before but the streets were overwhelmingly empty, i nsaw my first beanie of the town. whenwe returned to teh hostel i found teh only other beanie in Klaipeda, our hostel girl! she was some fit as russian who walked aorund in hotpants and liked football. we watched turkey's comeback against the Czechs which knocked them out of the competion, whilst she kept uypdating me on Portugal's dismal game against the Swiss. after a while she changed from teh denim hotpants into some tracksuit hotpants but looked like she wanted to sleep so we all (by thge end there were 5 of us in her room/the reception) excused herself and let her get some sleep, she did have a 72 hour shift ahead of her after all!
we got the bus the next morning to Vilnius, but apparently the reason why there were no beanies in town is cos on the weekend (we were there for saturday and sunday) everybody goes to party in palanga - lesson learned, trust a Chileano.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Liepaja - Fontain Palace and Beach and Exit Festival
We got to the beach after a couple of hours on the bus, with a few guys who looked like traveller's but for some reason we didnt bother communicating with them. when we got off the bus we decided to walk and saw all the others who were on teh bus get on a tram and go past us, we were intending to camp and they were all hostelling so we thought nothing of it. 15 minutes walk later, walking alongside the tramlines we get to the T&I and find that the campsite is miles out of town and that there is a hostel really close to the beach. we go to the hostel and find the 5 peeps on the bus were infact there already.
we settled in, it was a really family feeling hostel, partly due to teh 5 year old, pregnatnt woman and ridiculous puppy called Bingo who loved to knaw at everything. we had a barbeque with everyone and after a few hours drinking and chatting we decided to head to the club called Fontaine Palace that everyone had recommended which the amzingly peng T&I woman had told us it was 'striptease' and Jonathan the 'Chileano' worker at our hostel was like 'u have to come today man, its sexy tuesdays', what was weirdest of all was that fit hostel girl really wanted to go too. whilst we were going, a bloke called Simon or 'the guy inside' was wooing some Latvia girl who he had met on the bus back to our dorm, i was lucky enough to be changing as they came back, Siumon went off to the toilet and his girl watched me, and even introduced herself to me as i dropped trou, changed tshirst etc, 'where are u from?' 'England' 'oh i thought u were from America' 'what cos of my pants' (i was wearing my star spangled banner boxers)...
anywho we all hit the club, me, pierre, chileano , fit hostel girl, her friend, australian guy (as we called him), mel (very annoying australian girl) some english guy (whos gf was sick in bed) american guy with dreds and a canadian, overall a very varied group. when we got in we saw that teh sage was infact set for a striptease. Jonathan told us to put our jackets on teh seats which he classed a the best ones. in a bit teh striptease started and we were entertained with three or four good performances from the in house strippers. at intervals we stopped to dance and got dancing with hostelgirl and her friend, well they got dancing with me, then the strippers started again, australian guy had an excellent chair and got all the lapdances as did the english bloke with me heckling him saying 'i'm gonna tell ur giiiiiiiirlfriend' but he just replied, 'no i got to tell her, besides she just get jealous and i'll get really good sex' fair play. after some more dancing with hostel girl the next session started i sat in australian guy's seat and got talking to some wasted russians. after a while one stripper started off dressed as a secretary gave me a littlke lapdance, put her feather boa over my head a gave me a kiss on teh forehead, later on she came back, and thrust my head into her tits and wriggled them about in my face, all i remmeber is har nipples and shouts of 'motorboat!' from the canadian guy sitting next to me. afterwards she released my head grabbed my hands and p;laced them on her tits and let me give them a squeeze. overall a nice experience, (fuckin awesome actually) after that i had a massive grinon my face for teh whole evening, pierre said he's never seen me so happy. after this i wnet back to dance with hostelgirl and friend but hostel girl had started dancing with american guy with dreads (who actually lived in the fontaine complex and dj'd in the club) so i went for the less attractive friend. american guy was like 'u stink of tits man' after some more dancing with the friend i triued it on with some girl who was actually just dancing with me to make her bf jealous. australian guy was giving me looks of disapointment, 'uve messed up man' in relation to teh friend but i got it back, i walked hostel girls friend home and we ended up getting off astride a cannon, then she tolfd me she had a boyfriend, but then much to my at first amusement and then frustration found it a really hard decision whether or not to sleep with me, it ended up negative. Pierre meanwhile was getting off with the most annoying girl you will probably ever meet, when i was leaving she was like 'i feel so sorry for him, he's so young and so beautiful' i feel sorry for him too....
next day wake up, eat munch, go to the beach with australian guy and chillax, last night was cool and i still thinking about titties (well i always thing about titties but still). the beach was cool, it was my first real swim in the baltic proper as the beach in Parnu was actually in the 'Bay of Riga' which is a lot more shallow and less rough, fuckin chilly though. we found a bar to watch the portugal game that eveing and then had some more much back at the hostel, portugal of course cruised to an easy 3-1 win over the highgly regarded yet highly shit Czech team. later we went to Fontain again, this time the clubnight was called BIG FUCK DAY so naturally we had to check it out. as i gopt inb the bouncer who the night before had told me he used to know seven sisters was like 'hey english guy! there is another nglish guy over there.' i went over to talk to him and bit turns out he was here on business we talked about uni and his daughter who is very proud of and her AS-levels and stuff, he invited me to his business meeting the next day in which he was buying 200 million euros of steel, and then he offered me a job buying and sellin startin salary of 50k a year! i was drunk and shocked, naturally, but even if i as sober and he was sober, and the offer was for real, real, i think there was a certain validity in his offer - he seemd like that kind of guy after all - i would haver rejected it,and did, cos i've got my life set out ahead of me and i dont want to enter the world of commercialism, buyinmg and selling goods, fuck that, i'm young i wanna have a good time, i wanna go to uni and party (and study). Some argentinian man came up to me and told me that he had seen me in Tallin, 'are u potuguese? u look like Eusebio!' i guess its better than Rooney, kinda. later we got dancing with some local girls and went outside and had a chat with some local girls, they asked me how old i am, and i was like, as i usually do, 'have a guess!' 'erm... 19?' 'ok... cool... er.. thats cool, yeh i'm 19... how old are u?' (if ur wondering why i replied like this and u havnt read anything else its cos mostly - to my pleasure - poeple go 'i dunno, 22, 24 maybe') she was 17 and all her mates were, 17 is a good age and she was pretty but she was only chatting to me to improve her english, the girl i was dancing with inside was apparently asking after me while i was outside muching a pizza, but it turned out she only liked my dance moves. anyways we got the numbers of the girls and half arranged to meet up with them on the beach the next day.
obviously next day the weather was terrible so we couldnt go to the beach, we instead spent the day in the hostel, when the weather cleared up i went to have a look at the town and take a few snaps. in teh evening we went to watch teh football and buff hostel girl came with us, i think the game was croatia germany which was quite good. that night pierre had an early one but me, hostel girl and chileano went to Fontaine again, but it was shit, well actually thats a bit harsh, there was some Ukrainian band that were playing some cool music and some jazz/blues musician from new zealand who seemingly loved to play with this guitarist who american guy with dreds, who also turned up, told me was apparently some sort of latvian superstar. after american guy with dreds turned up hostel girl left, they had had some akward moment a couple of nights before involving a stripper interupting their backstage love making session a before it had actually began. after the bands hd finished he put on some latin music that Chileano loved but there were still too few people to keep me there, even if the owner was giving us free Latvian champagne...
next mroning i woke up a bit later than usual to fuind pierre downstairs on the computer, as i was finishing of my cheese and tomato toasties, pierre goes to me 'tickets for exit are still available' 'yeah?' 'shall we book them?' 'err, ok then' 15 minutes later we had tickets, the rest of that morning was spent organising our 24 dash to exit, but as we were going to that part of teh world, might as well visit some places (poland, ukraine, moldova, romania, bulgaria) so big rush, we went into town then spent the rest of the day on the beach, we watched the Latvian women's basketball team qualify for the olympics with hostel girl, friend and pregnant woman and later watched France get demolished by Holland. we tried to go tofonataine again as it was friday and would of probably been the best day to go but none of the ATMs accepted the nationwide card and even though i had 3 lats, enough to get in, i realised I had left my wallet at the hostel. possibly teh best night and i missed out. i really wanted to make it 4 nights in a row as well. there were two other clubs in Liepaja, and supposed to be good ones too but i just never got round to them, maybe next time.
Finally, on staurday morning, we left, despite Chileanos plees to party in Palanga 'Simon, man, he has an apartment, and he says we got on sattuday to party in Palanga'. i didnt really know where that was so we went to Klaipeda as planned.
we settled in, it was a really family feeling hostel, partly due to teh 5 year old, pregnatnt woman and ridiculous puppy called Bingo who loved to knaw at everything. we had a barbeque with everyone and after a few hours drinking and chatting we decided to head to the club called Fontaine Palace that everyone had recommended which the amzingly peng T&I woman had told us it was 'striptease' and Jonathan the 'Chileano' worker at our hostel was like 'u have to come today man, its sexy tuesdays', what was weirdest of all was that fit hostel girl really wanted to go too. whilst we were going, a bloke called Simon or 'the guy inside' was wooing some Latvia girl who he had met on the bus back to our dorm, i was lucky enough to be changing as they came back, Siumon went off to the toilet and his girl watched me, and even introduced herself to me as i dropped trou, changed tshirst etc, 'where are u from?' 'England' 'oh i thought u were from America' 'what cos of my pants' (i was wearing my star spangled banner boxers)...
anywho we all hit the club, me, pierre, chileano , fit hostel girl, her friend, australian guy (as we called him), mel (very annoying australian girl) some english guy (whos gf was sick in bed) american guy with dreds and a canadian, overall a very varied group. when we got in we saw that teh sage was infact set for a striptease. Jonathan told us to put our jackets on teh seats which he classed a the best ones. in a bit teh striptease started and we were entertained with three or four good performances from the in house strippers. at intervals we stopped to dance and got dancing with hostelgirl and her friend, well they got dancing with me, then the strippers started again, australian guy had an excellent chair and got all the lapdances as did the english bloke with me heckling him saying 'i'm gonna tell ur giiiiiiiirlfriend' but he just replied, 'no i got to tell her, besides she just get jealous and i'll get really good sex' fair play. after some more dancing with hostel girl the next session started i sat in australian guy's seat and got talking to some wasted russians. after a while one stripper started off dressed as a secretary gave me a littlke lapdance, put her feather boa over my head a gave me a kiss on teh forehead, later on she came back, and thrust my head into her tits and wriggled them about in my face, all i remmeber is har nipples and shouts of 'motorboat!' from the canadian guy sitting next to me. afterwards she released my head grabbed my hands and p;laced them on her tits and let me give them a squeeze. overall a nice experience, (fuckin awesome actually) after that i had a massive grinon my face for teh whole evening, pierre said he's never seen me so happy. after this i wnet back to dance with hostelgirl and friend but hostel girl had started dancing with american guy with dreads (who actually lived in the fontaine complex and dj'd in the club) so i went for the less attractive friend. american guy was like 'u stink of tits man' after some more dancing with the friend i triued it on with some girl who was actually just dancing with me to make her bf jealous. australian guy was giving me looks of disapointment, 'uve messed up man' in relation to teh friend but i got it back, i walked hostel girls friend home and we ended up getting off astride a cannon, then she tolfd me she had a boyfriend, but then much to my at first amusement and then frustration found it a really hard decision whether or not to sleep with me, it ended up negative. Pierre meanwhile was getting off with the most annoying girl you will probably ever meet, when i was leaving she was like 'i feel so sorry for him, he's so young and so beautiful' i feel sorry for him too....
next day wake up, eat munch, go to the beach with australian guy and chillax, last night was cool and i still thinking about titties (well i always thing about titties but still). the beach was cool, it was my first real swim in the baltic proper as the beach in Parnu was actually in the 'Bay of Riga' which is a lot more shallow and less rough, fuckin chilly though. we found a bar to watch the portugal game that eveing and then had some more much back at the hostel, portugal of course cruised to an easy 3-1 win over the highgly regarded yet highly shit Czech team. later we went to Fontain again, this time the clubnight was called BIG FUCK DAY so naturally we had to check it out. as i gopt inb the bouncer who the night before had told me he used to know seven sisters was like 'hey english guy! there is another nglish guy over there.' i went over to talk to him and bit turns out he was here on business we talked about uni and his daughter who is very proud of and her AS-levels and stuff, he invited me to his business meeting the next day in which he was buying 200 million euros of steel, and then he offered me a job buying and sellin startin salary of 50k a year! i was drunk and shocked, naturally, but even if i as sober and he was sober, and the offer was for real, real, i think there was a certain validity in his offer - he seemd like that kind of guy after all - i would haver rejected it,and did, cos i've got my life set out ahead of me and i dont want to enter the world of commercialism, buyinmg and selling goods, fuck that, i'm young i wanna have a good time, i wanna go to uni and party (and study). Some argentinian man came up to me and told me that he had seen me in Tallin, 'are u potuguese? u look like Eusebio!' i guess its better than Rooney, kinda. later we got dancing with some local girls and went outside and had a chat with some local girls, they asked me how old i am, and i was like, as i usually do, 'have a guess!' 'erm... 19?' 'ok... cool... er.. thats cool, yeh i'm 19... how old are u?' (if ur wondering why i replied like this and u havnt read anything else its cos mostly - to my pleasure - poeple go 'i dunno, 22, 24 maybe') she was 17 and all her mates were, 17 is a good age and she was pretty but she was only chatting to me to improve her english, the girl i was dancing with inside was apparently asking after me while i was outside muching a pizza, but it turned out she only liked my dance moves. anyways we got the numbers of the girls and half arranged to meet up with them on the beach the next day.
obviously next day the weather was terrible so we couldnt go to the beach, we instead spent the day in the hostel, when the weather cleared up i went to have a look at the town and take a few snaps. in teh evening we went to watch teh football and buff hostel girl came with us, i think the game was croatia germany which was quite good. that night pierre had an early one but me, hostel girl and chileano went to Fontaine again, but it was shit, well actually thats a bit harsh, there was some Ukrainian band that were playing some cool music and some jazz/blues musician from new zealand who seemingly loved to play with this guitarist who american guy with dreds, who also turned up, told me was apparently some sort of latvian superstar. after american guy with dreds turned up hostel girl left, they had had some akward moment a couple of nights before involving a stripper interupting their backstage love making session a before it had actually began. after the bands hd finished he put on some latin music that Chileano loved but there were still too few people to keep me there, even if the owner was giving us free Latvian champagne...
next mroning i woke up a bit later than usual to fuind pierre downstairs on the computer, as i was finishing of my cheese and tomato toasties, pierre goes to me 'tickets for exit are still available' 'yeah?' 'shall we book them?' 'err, ok then' 15 minutes later we had tickets, the rest of that morning was spent organising our 24 dash to exit, but as we were going to that part of teh world, might as well visit some places (poland, ukraine, moldova, romania, bulgaria) so big rush, we went into town then spent the rest of the day on the beach, we watched the Latvian women's basketball team qualify for the olympics with hostel girl, friend and pregnant woman and later watched France get demolished by Holland. we tried to go tofonataine again as it was friday and would of probably been the best day to go but none of the ATMs accepted the nationwide card and even though i had 3 lats, enough to get in, i realised I had left my wallet at the hostel. possibly teh best night and i missed out. i really wanted to make it 4 nights in a row as well. there were two other clubs in Liepaja, and supposed to be good ones too but i just never got round to them, maybe next time.
Finally, on staurday morning, we left, despite Chileanos plees to party in Palanga 'Simon, man, he has an apartment, and he says we got on sattuday to party in Palanga'. i didnt really know where that was so we went to Klaipeda as planned.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Riga and around
we were couch surfing again in Riga and for the first time ever we didnt have to bum around the town wasting money. Our host Jean-Julien came to pick us up from the bus station! he took us to his flat, which was sick and his flatmate, the one who's flat it actually was (also french, sells pharmaceuticals, company pays for it) was rolling a joint. we smoked, talked, watched soem TV and then he was like, ok u are free now explore the town, get some dinner, the door will be open when u get back, he showed us a good bar to get CHEAP beer and a good club for thursday too. Pierre got some dinner at maccy Ds, I at Hesburger (the delicious baltic fast food chain) and then we headed to 'la belle epoque' or 'the french bar' as we called it. we sunk a couple of 2 quid litres of beer and then the place really got going, a few people came in, mpost of whom i dont remember, pierre started talking to some austrian bird who he later started pulling, after a bit he goes to me, after this one we'll leave so i'm like alrite, then he's taking a long time to finish cos of the bird, so i get another one, eventually he's like 'now that i've pulled a beanie, i don't really feel like clubbing' so i take his ear aside and, very drunkenly, i'm like (this is what he told me not what i remember) 'mate ur being well out of order, u PROMISED me that we would go clubbing, if she was serious, she would go clubbing WITH U, u made me buy another pint...' 'err what are u talking about...' eventually i get him an his beanie to come to the club but low and behold we dont get let in, because for the first time ever they only accept passport or driver's license, and me and teh beanie only have student cards. pierre's like (in the most sarcastic tone ever) THANKS matt THANKS... whatever them two go off, by this time i'm well on clubbing, so i ask teh bouncer what time th club closes, 6am cool that gives me 3 1/2 hours to get my passport and club, i return 20 minutes later and get in to find an emptying dancefloor, there are a few disgustingly beautiful beanies at teh front but i could tell they were cock teases from a mile-off, instead i start dancing with this older looking woman, maybe 25-30 cos she cant take her eyes off me, she's going back and forth between some man, her sensible choice and the young gun, ie myself. in the meantime i'm showing off my russian house dance moves with some fellow experts, and looking at teh screen of our dance floor, but, there is another screen thats full of ppl, after a while i realised its next door and is the RnB room which baltic people seem to love, every club u go, or every person u meet. after a while woman comes and dances with me again, and we get off, much to my disgust she is possibly the worst kisser i have ever got off with which goes against the general trend of older women, on top of that i realised she was probably the 12th, maybe 13th least attractive woman in the club. then the ever present question comes, 'how old are u' '19 but so what' 'i'm 28' blah blah blah ur soooo young blah blah blah.at about quater to five we leave and i'm like what do want to do, and she's like 'sleep', ok which way are u going home, 'this way' ' me too! lets go...' 'er... no i take a cab' her loss.
next day after sleeping on the floor cos pierre took the big section of the sofa, i couldnt fit on the big bit (yes he did get back before me, unsuccessful, she lived far away) we went into town. riga's old town, like tallins is ridiculously small so we did the only thing that interested us and went up a tower in a church to get a better view of the city, the views were nice and after a bit we came down and walked around a bit more but then we were satisfied we got some beers and cotched in the park in the centre for the afternoon. when we got back teh frenchie's were watching teh last french hope of the torunament (Monfils - pierre was going 'come on, my son' - get it?) get knocked out. i made some delicious leek and mushroom pasta sauce then me pierre and JJ went to the french bar for some more drinkies. after a litre or 3 we decided to go to a club, it was friday so we thought that any club would be good in the centre, we were wrong. we went to a club called nauticus (or something sea based) and found it had that annoying feeling of being half-full, we danced for a bit and then pierre decided he had enough and headed for essential but got caught up with soem latvians along teh way and went to another bar, me and JJ stayed on and danced with some latvians before a hen party AND a stag do turned up, after a while we got tired of it and went home.
The next day we woke up late and didnt really leave the house until the early evening, partly because we wanted to watch Anna Ivanovitch win, peng. the first time i went out was to get some felafel at what up until about 6 months ago was the only kebab shop in Riga (there were no turks or even central asians running it) and it was disgusting. the next time we left was to go and see teh kick off of the euros which was a really boring game between the Swiss and the Czechs, before the Portugal game i got some Hesburger and realised that everyone was wearing white! pierre was at MacDo and noticed the same thing. Anyway we watched the first half of the game at the pub where we were before where there was even worse clientèle than at Ryan's on Spurs game days. for teh second half we headed to a Stella pub just around teh corner which had a few more young people, including Julien, JJ's flat mate. portugal triumphed, and while we were there we found out why everyone was dressed so, something called White Sensation, a massive 12 thousand people rave just outside the centre, but tickets were 60 squids and u needed to be wearing all white clothes (the only white peace of clothing i have has a black power symbol on it ironically) of course that night we again headed to the french bar and met the best of the several stag-dos we had met in the Baltic including some ridiculously drunk welsh man with a lisp. he was like #i dont know how they do it in london but in wales we just get among it, you (me) are a hansome fella, and you (pierre) are... decent looking, get among it lads' (meanwile i'm thinking - but theres only like 3, 30-something women here and i'm trying to lower my mean average age...) later on some guy came up to me and was like 'Matt, do u live here or something?!' (i didnt know who he was). when the bar emptied out we evntually went home.
next morning we were awoken by JJ who told us he was off to Jurmala and that we needed to get out of the house because he was going to show us were to get the train to sigulda where we were gonna spend a night. we got the hour train and arrived in latvia's outdoor activity prime location. it has a bobsled track and a couple of pistes, which in itself is quite amazing seeing as it is only about 350m above sea level. we spent the afternnon on the beach in the meander of the river and then went into town for some food and to find a place to watch the footy, we spent the evening in a bowling alley, not bowling but watching telly and saw the two very boring opening games from group b, when we were leaving we saw that everybody had beer or was in teh process of buying beer, so i was like 'beach party please!!' but no, apparently sunday7 is just the night that all the silguldans have house parties, of which we wern't invited/coudn't find/hear. in the morning we went back up the chairlift and i had a go on teh summer bobsleigh which is basically a one man downhill rollercoaster which was pretty fun, especially as i didnt use the brake. we then got the train back to riga.
we needed to go back to riga to collect my card which my dad had sent to JJ at the french embassy because the postbox at his apartment was 'destroyed'. we thought seeing as we were in riga we might as well stay another night (well actually it was because there were no buses getting to liepaja in time for the france game) we checked into Friendly Fun Frank's hostel which had a really high rating on hostelworld and, most importantly, gave you a free beer on arrival! after watching teh france game we returned to find a university 'cricket tour', 48 people, with tour shirts, nicknames and all. "TOUR TOUR TOUR, HOW DO U LIKE IT? HOW DO U LIKE IT?" sounded out through the halls, chav girls with nicknames like 'bumfun' were getting felt up by cunts who had cut off the sleeves of thier tour shirts, while one fat arsenal fan who even pierre didnt like, kept on going 'ah come on lads, u fuckin yiddos, mickey mouse cup' one thing that FFF does is take everyone out to party as Frank told me himself but this meant going with our tour buddies, we went along cos the other other people from our hostel were going but guess what, we ended up at the french bar where we got talikng to some guys who we had met earlier and recommended the french bar to them. later on we went back to the club and i did some african dancing to soem african music which was strange music for a club in riga on a monday night. after half the people in the club had left we went home and the next day got the bus to Liepaja on the west cost.
next day after sleeping on the floor cos pierre took the big section of the sofa, i couldnt fit on the big bit (yes he did get back before me, unsuccessful, she lived far away) we went into town. riga's old town, like tallins is ridiculously small so we did the only thing that interested us and went up a tower in a church to get a better view of the city, the views were nice and after a bit we came down and walked around a bit more but then we were satisfied we got some beers and cotched in the park in the centre for the afternoon. when we got back teh frenchie's were watching teh last french hope of the torunament (Monfils - pierre was going 'come on, my son' - get it?) get knocked out. i made some delicious leek and mushroom pasta sauce then me pierre and JJ went to the french bar for some more drinkies. after a litre or 3 we decided to go to a club, it was friday so we thought that any club would be good in the centre, we were wrong. we went to a club called nauticus (or something sea based) and found it had that annoying feeling of being half-full, we danced for a bit and then pierre decided he had enough and headed for essential but got caught up with soem latvians along teh way and went to another bar, me and JJ stayed on and danced with some latvians before a hen party AND a stag do turned up, after a while we got tired of it and went home.
The next day we woke up late and didnt really leave the house until the early evening, partly because we wanted to watch Anna Ivanovitch win, peng. the first time i went out was to get some felafel at what up until about 6 months ago was the only kebab shop in Riga (there were no turks or even central asians running it) and it was disgusting. the next time we left was to go and see teh kick off of the euros which was a really boring game between the Swiss and the Czechs, before the Portugal game i got some Hesburger and realised that everyone was wearing white! pierre was at MacDo and noticed the same thing. Anyway we watched the first half of the game at the pub where we were before where there was even worse clientèle than at Ryan's on Spurs game days. for teh second half we headed to a Stella pub just around teh corner which had a few more young people, including Julien, JJ's flat mate. portugal triumphed, and while we were there we found out why everyone was dressed so, something called White Sensation, a massive 12 thousand people rave just outside the centre, but tickets were 60 squids and u needed to be wearing all white clothes (the only white peace of clothing i have has a black power symbol on it ironically) of course that night we again headed to the french bar and met the best of the several stag-dos we had met in the Baltic including some ridiculously drunk welsh man with a lisp. he was like #i dont know how they do it in london but in wales we just get among it, you (me) are a hansome fella, and you (pierre) are... decent looking, get among it lads' (meanwile i'm thinking - but theres only like 3, 30-something women here and i'm trying to lower my mean average age...) later on some guy came up to me and was like 'Matt, do u live here or something?!' (i didnt know who he was). when the bar emptied out we evntually went home.
next morning we were awoken by JJ who told us he was off to Jurmala and that we needed to get out of the house because he was going to show us were to get the train to sigulda where we were gonna spend a night. we got the hour train and arrived in latvia's outdoor activity prime location. it has a bobsled track and a couple of pistes, which in itself is quite amazing seeing as it is only about 350m above sea level. we spent the afternnon on the beach in the meander of the river and then went into town for some food and to find a place to watch the footy, we spent the evening in a bowling alley, not bowling but watching telly and saw the two very boring opening games from group b, when we were leaving we saw that everybody had beer or was in teh process of buying beer, so i was like 'beach party please!!' but no, apparently sunday7 is just the night that all the silguldans have house parties, of which we wern't invited/coudn't find/hear. in the morning we went back up the chairlift and i had a go on teh summer bobsleigh which is basically a one man downhill rollercoaster which was pretty fun, especially as i didnt use the brake. we then got the train back to riga.
we needed to go back to riga to collect my card which my dad had sent to JJ at the french embassy because the postbox at his apartment was 'destroyed'. we thought seeing as we were in riga we might as well stay another night (well actually it was because there were no buses getting to liepaja in time for the france game) we checked into Friendly Fun Frank's hostel which had a really high rating on hostelworld and, most importantly, gave you a free beer on arrival! after watching teh france game we returned to find a university 'cricket tour', 48 people, with tour shirts, nicknames and all. "TOUR TOUR TOUR, HOW DO U LIKE IT? HOW DO U LIKE IT?" sounded out through the halls, chav girls with nicknames like 'bumfun' were getting felt up by cunts who had cut off the sleeves of thier tour shirts, while one fat arsenal fan who even pierre didnt like, kept on going 'ah come on lads, u fuckin yiddos, mickey mouse cup' one thing that FFF does is take everyone out to party as Frank told me himself but this meant going with our tour buddies, we went along cos the other other people from our hostel were going but guess what, we ended up at the french bar where we got talikng to some guys who we had met earlier and recommended the french bar to them. later on we went back to the club and i did some african dancing to soem african music which was strange music for a club in riga on a monday night. after half the people in the club had left we went home and the next day got the bus to Liepaja on the west cost.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Summer Capital
We decided to go to the beach a day early from tallinn cos it was driving us fucking nuts, so we headed to Parnu which almost every Estonian we told about it said, Parnu is Estonia's 'Summer Capital', ok cool yes we know we've heard it a million times... we got the 2 hour bus south to the little town on the beach and went to our campsite which was on the river. unfortunately for us there was nobody there (what i mean is no beanies) so we just pitched up and went to the beach about 15 minutes walk away. on the beach beanies were more numerous and the beach itself was excellent and u could see how it was equipped ready for the summer rush when half of estonia runs for teh coast. that night we had a barbeque and almost a crate of beer before we checked out the famouse sunset club which, despite what the bible says, was CLOSED. after an unsuccessful clubbing experience we realised that there wasnt much in terms of nightlife in parnu, at least during the week, we spent the rest of our days on the beach, or when we were at the campsite, reading or blogging (whole of scandinavia) - free internet. Special Mention goes to Pierre for some excellent sleep talking,
As i get back from a blogging session:
(from Pierre's tent): "WHOA!"
Me: What?... Pierre... What?
(Tent) ...huh... are u going to the museum?
Me: err.... what museum?
(Tent) err, just some people were saying they were going to the museum, the museum of ...(trails off)
It was nice to chill out for 4 days after tallinn - being mental in its intense peculiarity - and parnu was the perfect place to do it, we were going to Riga to party as well...
As i get back from a blogging session:
(from Pierre's tent): "WHOA!"
Me: What?... Pierre... What?
(Tent) ...huh... are u going to the museum?
Me: err.... what museum?
(Tent) err, just some people were saying they were going to the museum, the museum of ...(trails off)
It was nice to chill out for 4 days after tallinn - being mental in its intense peculiarity - and parnu was the perfect place to do it, we were going to Riga to party as well...
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Tallinn
after the ferry journey that was, we got left our bags in the ferry port and walked into town, knowing that we had to wait until 6pm to meet up with our couchsurfing friend. after lunch in Hellhunt the first estonian pub we wondered around town and after about 2 hours we realised that we had actually been everywhere, and that pints in pubs are not actually as cheap as we hoped, instead we went to an alko and bout a few cans and relaxed in the park watching the beanies, of which there were many, walk by. we also got chatted to by some crazy drunk american diplomats' wives who were over from finland on a bender, its quite funny to see 2 middle aged women so drunk in the middle of the afternoon 'here, talk to my girl, she's 17, she's a model...'. at 6 we went back the terminal and then met up with teh boyfriend of the girl Merelin, who we were gonna stay with. at first when we met him he sounded like a cool guy and he was but things would get weird... When we got back to merelins flat about 10 minutes bus from the centre Merelin wasnt there and when she got back she didnt notice us, on pierre's quiet 'hey' she nearly jumped out of the window. after a while olo, or whatever his name was, started cooking dinner that's when some of the classic quotes came out i.e. 'u know a few weeks ago i went into the forest and starved myself for a week, for the 3 months before i had a really bad back but after it was better - u can cure anything with starvation.' or, 'last week we went to see our friends, one of them is a witch...' enough said. anyway after eating dinner with chopsticks (house rule) we went and smoked some draw on the roof, they made a sort of pipe out of a bottle and cut it half with crushed mint and it tasted really nice left ur mouth feeling like u had just brushed ur teeth. unfortunately olo is one of what i likle to call an annoying stoner, who instead of letting u enjoy ur high, he's always like, 'how do feel maaaaaan, what are u thinkiiiing about, lets look at teh clouds and inmagine things...' knob. we then started walking to merelins friends house but then they asked us to lead the way, even though we didnt no where we were, eventual;ly we ended up at some old soviet ice house on the coast, which was now a heliport. olo badly sprained his ankle trying to jump from something to something so me and pierre just went home.
the next day we woke up to olo in bed doing some lieing down yoga exercises and his ankle heavily strapped, he still managed to make us some porridge which i thought was quite decent of him, although he still spouted some bollocks 'u know my life has been pretty hectic for the last month so me doing this is a sign that i need to rest - everything happens for a reason...' we escaped from teh madhouse and went to town, we checked out the castle, teh last part of the old town which we hadnt seen and then realised we had actually been everywhere. i checked out the post office to see how much it would cost for me to send stuff home which worked out to be pretty cheap. that night we got home and played a few board games and drank some wine (which was surprisingly fun, especially as i won the estonian version of articulate), we then managed to escape to a club called hollywood, via a bar called woodstock which happened to be full of rascist skinheads, so we left there quickly. hollywood was a BIG place full of beanies, but the luck just wasnt stricking for us two, the music was cool and we stayed for a while, me practising my russian house moves picked up in moscow.
our third day in tallinn we went to a place called kalev spa (by now we were really looking for things to do) where we went on a few wicked water slides, jet pools and finished it off with a nice sauna. we got back and made some dinner and then went with merelin and olo to the free industrial rock concert in the old town square, which turned out to be the slovenian equivalent of stomp. after that they took us to an art afterparty in the roof of some warehouse, which after getting over teh shock of how weird and un-mainstream everyone was (the absolute opposite to us basically) started to turn out really be really fun - free alchohol helped. i got chatting to a few of them, they were and international bunch of people, americans, estonians, french, british etc... and ended getting off with some American hippy woman who was was wearing see-through tights with no knickers on - dont ask. there were also making pancakes and listening to the beetles, which you just have that often at house parties.
on the friday we finally got to leave olo and merelin as they were going up to the country, they offered us there flat while they were away but we turned it down on the grounds that we would meet more people at the hostel, which was false cos when we got to the hostel we realised it was one of the quietest places we had ever been. on the saturday i sent off my box (20 euros for 8 kilos) and then we went and washed our clothes. we got a crate from teh alko and then headed to holiwood again, when we got there we noticed a high amount of split-arse (SORRY - HAD TO PUT IT IN AT LEAST ONCE) leaving the club but we payed the hefty cover anyway, when we got in beanie numbers were thin and the music no way near as good as on wednesday, then came the stag-dos who ruined it for everybody. on the way home i was like, 'i'm not sure if i want to go home anymore, that just reminded me what clubbing is liek back home, i'm not sure if i wanna go home..' 'then dont' says pierre, 'but i do wanna go home' 'then do, what do u want me to say...'
we had three nights booked and after our shitty night the night before we asked if we could cancel the last 2 we could only get the money for one so we agreed to stay one more. that day we rang on the doorbell of a door that had a backpacker on it and the doorbell said 'chill out' on it, otherwise there was nothing else saying what it was, no name, nothing. and estonian guy came out and told us it was infact 'the hostel with no name' and he told us his plans on how he was going to buy a an old soviet car which is a collective in england, where he was going to drive it too, sell it, and then buy a scooter, and drive home, crazy. we also asked him where we could get some tents, he directed us perfectly to a place where we got 2 tents for about 8 euros each - bargain. that night instead of going clubbing we went to the shisha bar in town where the staff our beautiful, got invited into a private party also at the bar by some drunk man, and teh subsequently told to leave by the birthday girl's overly sunburned boyfriend., we got chatting to a few locals, one of them a 16 year old birthday boy, so drunk was he, and then later probably the gingerest man in the world.
on sunday morning we finally got the fuck out and headed for the beach, 5 days in Tallinn is too long, its like the smallest city in europe...
our third day in tallinn we went to a place called kalev spa (by now we were really looking for things to do) where we went on a few wicked water slides, jet pools and finished it off with a nice sauna. we got back and made some dinner and then went with merelin and olo to the free industrial rock concert in the old town square, which turned out to be the slovenian equivalent of stomp. after that they took us to an art afterparty in the roof of some warehouse, which after getting over teh shock of how weird and un-mainstream everyone was (the absolute opposite to us basically) started to turn out really be really fun - free alchohol helped. i got chatting to a few of them, they were and international bunch of people, americans, estonians, french, british etc... and ended getting off with some American hippy woman who was was wearing see-through tights with no knickers on - dont ask. there were also making pancakes and listening to the beetles, which you just have that often at house parties.
on the friday we finally got to leave olo and merelin as they were going up to the country, they offered us there flat while they were away but we turned it down on the grounds that we would meet more people at the hostel, which was false cos when we got to the hostel we realised it was one of the quietest places we had ever been. on the saturday i sent off my box (20 euros for 8 kilos) and then we went and washed our clothes. we got a crate from teh alko and then headed to holiwood again, when we got there we noticed a high amount of split-arse (SORRY - HAD TO PUT IT IN AT LEAST ONCE) leaving the club but we payed the hefty cover anyway, when we got in beanie numbers were thin and the music no way near as good as on wednesday, then came the stag-dos who ruined it for everybody. on the way home i was like, 'i'm not sure if i want to go home anymore, that just reminded me what clubbing is liek back home, i'm not sure if i wanna go home..' 'then dont' says pierre, 'but i do wanna go home' 'then do, what do u want me to say...'
we had three nights booked and after our shitty night the night before we asked if we could cancel the last 2 we could only get the money for one so we agreed to stay one more. that day we rang on the doorbell of a door that had a backpacker on it and the doorbell said 'chill out' on it, otherwise there was nothing else saying what it was, no name, nothing. and estonian guy came out and told us it was infact 'the hostel with no name' and he told us his plans on how he was going to buy a an old soviet car which is a collective in england, where he was going to drive it too, sell it, and then buy a scooter, and drive home, crazy. we also asked him where we could get some tents, he directed us perfectly to a place where we got 2 tents for about 8 euros each - bargain. that night instead of going clubbing we went to the shisha bar in town where the staff our beautiful, got invited into a private party also at the bar by some drunk man, and teh subsequently told to leave by the birthday girl's overly sunburned boyfriend., we got chatting to a few locals, one of them a 16 year old birthday boy, so drunk was he, and then later probably the gingerest man in the world.
on sunday morning we finally got the fuck out and headed for the beach, 5 days in Tallinn is too long, its like the smallest city in europe...
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Scandinavia reflections
ok first of all i have to add that the new 'content warning' is not becuase any thing out of the blue has happended just that i thought it would be jokes, there is some use for it, and it makes teh blog look cooler.
ok now thats out of the way on to our well welfared friends. finland really suprised me, i thought if anything its the least famous of our scandinavian buddies (except maybe denmark, but who cares about them anyway) and their also a bit different due to there unique language, theyve also been part of either the swedish or the russian empire for like the last 500 years. The thing about Helsinki that i liked the most was that it felt like helsinki, it felt like scandinavia but with a bit of edge u know, something that would set it apart from the rest, and i think it was really cool that we got to stay with nasta and juuli, and met up with siini sanna and anna cos they together managed to show us the cool side and meet some cool finnish people. the fact that i had my birthday there also helped...
stockholm, and i guess the whole of sweden, despite what the swede's from outside stockholm said, is a land of ridiculous. ridiculously beautiful women, ridiculous prices, the town itself is ridiculously nice, and thats the best way to describe it, in terms of the city of stockholm itself nothing stood out to me particularly - well, infact thats a lie because the natural beauty of this city, and it may sound weird talking about the natural beauty of a city, but really is amazing, so green, set on an archepelego i think, or a river estury but in the centre of town, or near enough THE WATER IS SWIMABLE. anyways, the people we met in stockholm were really cool also.
it was a shame we couldnt meet up with the swedish girls living in norway that we met in beijing cos in the words of pierre 'it would have been a right laugh', but our (especially my) wallets wernt big enough and we were getting a bit scared of the costs so thats why we ran back to eastern europe via some ridiculous ferry.
STANDINGS:
the same, we didnt get a sniff...
ok now thats out of the way on to our well welfared friends. finland really suprised me, i thought if anything its the least famous of our scandinavian buddies (except maybe denmark, but who cares about them anyway) and their also a bit different due to there unique language, theyve also been part of either the swedish or the russian empire for like the last 500 years. The thing about Helsinki that i liked the most was that it felt like helsinki, it felt like scandinavia but with a bit of edge u know, something that would set it apart from the rest, and i think it was really cool that we got to stay with nasta and juuli, and met up with siini sanna and anna cos they together managed to show us the cool side and meet some cool finnish people. the fact that i had my birthday there also helped...
stockholm, and i guess the whole of sweden, despite what the swede's from outside stockholm said, is a land of ridiculous. ridiculously beautiful women, ridiculous prices, the town itself is ridiculously nice, and thats the best way to describe it, in terms of the city of stockholm itself nothing stood out to me particularly - well, infact thats a lie because the natural beauty of this city, and it may sound weird talking about the natural beauty of a city, but really is amazing, so green, set on an archepelego i think, or a river estury but in the centre of town, or near enough THE WATER IS SWIMABLE. anyways, the people we met in stockholm were really cool also.
it was a shame we couldnt meet up with the swedish girls living in norway that we met in beijing cos in the words of pierre 'it would have been a right laugh', but our (especially my) wallets wernt big enough and we were getting a bit scared of the costs so thats why we ran back to eastern europe via some ridiculous ferry.
STANDINGS:
the same, we didnt get a sniff...
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Party ferry 2
ok take 2, we get on the ferry and get to our cabin which this timw is shared, there\s a respectable old man in there watching tv so we dump our stuff and take our 2.75% Koppenburg cider to teh viewing deck to have our last toast to sweden, eventually we get going, i take some snaps and it gets cols so we go inside. after having my dinner of cream cheese and lettuce sanwiches, i change some euros to get some EEK or estonian kroons (which have a 25 note!) so i could by a crate of beer and a jumbo bucket of peanuts so we can have a jam. whilst we're chillaxing having a beer, playing cards we realise there are a lot of young people on the boat, i dont mean cool young i mean too young. after w while 3 girls stop and say 'heeeeey' and i'm like 'alright?' as monotone as poss. after talking to them for about 20 seconds i realise that they are members of the school group that slowed down the bus to the boat (remember them readers..?). well anyway we got rid of them and then carried on playing. after a while we went and tried to chat up the photo girls asked to look at our terrible pictures and then got to talking about where we're going what we're doing etc, after a while they looked bored and when one of them started mocking our tase in music we decided it was time to go back to the beer and peanuts. on returning from the toilet one time i relised that the 3 school girls that had started talking to us earlier had started to terrorise pierre. they started asking us where we were going to party tonight, not the old persons (30 year olds) night club but the sportrs bar where they play house, ok - how old are you, 19, no, 17, no, 16, she is 15, woah ok stay away. the brown one of the group (fake tan, not african) was saying how much the blonde one liked me and she obviously had the hots for pierre, i mean she was all over him. after we got rid of them again pierre told me she bit him, and not even in a sensual way just a pure bite to the neck. some lebonese guy came and sat with us but didnt talk, just used his laptop and then again on returning from teh toilet there was some huge swede who when i sat down said 'ok, well i know he is gay' erm no. after finishing our nuts and getting 5/6ths through the crate we hit the club which was painfully full of 15/16 year olds. the music was good but you felt like you were in a school disco so we had to leave. on the way out the same big swedish guy started wrestling me! i'm not entirely sure why or how it started but at one point i got bored so i let him go and he kept going, then on the way back to teh cabin the lebanese guy asked me if i could take one of his bags off the boat for him... erm no thanks. we giot back to our cabin which stank due to some smelly estonian man, who in the morning decided to strip for the shower outside giving us nowhere to look and also revealing that he was going commando,
what a party...!
what a party...!
Pierre's 'Promised Land'
after getting the bus into town and drinking the remainder of our juice we checked teh internet and saw that we still had no couch surfing replies, which, in combination with 22 euro per night hostels, means we had no bed for the night. we proceeded into town and were stunned, nay shocked by the amount of beanies there were in the street. maybe it was the fact that the sun was out but my gosh it was amzing, one of the things we were exited about was going to teh flagship H&M which we wern't sure where it was. we went to all 4 in central stockholm so if it started in the capital then we deffinately went to the first one, i got some shorts as a momento. in the afternoon we went into teh old part of town and checked our messages again. we had a reply from a girl named sara who was full but she had told us about some stuff we were doing and we could meet up with her and the person she was hosting, some american guy called derek. we spent the afternoon over a 5 euro beer (if ur under 21 you cant buy alchohol over 3.5% in a shop. and ate some felafel (lunch and dinner). we had arranged to meet derek to see some crazy gypsy band and we were to meet him outtside some metro station on the south side of town. we tucked into our (very expensive) six pack and as soon as we cracked the first one open some security gurads told us that u cant drink on the stockholm metro so we had to throw it away, a whole can!! when we got out we started chatting to some drunken swede and he was telling us about some date he had with a 19 year old (he was about 28) in which the first thing he said to her after she asked him what he wanted to do (her friends were there as well) was 'i want to fuck you in that alleyway'... about half an hour later her friends asked him politely to go home. we told him we were going to slussen and he told us it was one of the best rock venues in the world! when we got there we realised that we could get into teh bar but not the venue because it had an 20 age limit. derek could go and we let him cos we didnt want to ruin his night but we arranged to see him later. meanwhile we went on a little adventure with the drunk swede who apparently knew lots of cheap bars with easy girls where they would let us in. strangely enough half an hour later aftre trying 4 places we let him go in and have fun, then went a cotched in a square and munched on some felafel (3rd of the day). we then got on the tube to meet derek and sara at in the main square. when we met them sara, out of teh goodness of her amazingly loving couchsurfer heart let us stay at her place even though she was hosting derek and picking up another 2 couchsurfers, she had her dads place free as well so she stayed there and derek stayed there as well, while me, pierre and mabel and jonathan (a couple from singapore) stayed in saras flat. derek was leaving the next morning so sara wuld let us stay for 3 nights, result!
the next day we went into town to get our bags and walk around the town centre to watch the beanies some more, we also decided that we wernt gonna see the rest of scandinavia anymore as it was too expensive even just to travel around in it, (the day before i had spent 50 euros (including the shorts) and that was with a free nights accomodation, grand master thrift left me for that day. we then went and got our ferry tickets to estonia which wernt too expensive as the website suggested and then we went back to sara's to chillout. that night i cooked dinner for everyone except the singaporians and my mum called me and still managed to be an over the shoulder cook even though she was about 1000 miles away. sara's friend jimmy came round who is a an english teacher here and has it pretty easy going as he lives with a swedish family so gets free food and accomodation, as well as not having to learn the language cos all his friends speak english (as well as everyone else) and on top of that he gets a fairly decent wage. jimmy and sara took us to a anarchist collective party, that sara had told us about the day before which is one of the reasons we really wanted to meet up with her. the house was made out of shipping containers and found wood but had working elctricity et al. and was in some forrest in the suburbs of stockholm becasue they had been trying to find a squat in teh centre but swedish squatting laws are really strict. there were a good number of people there but they preferred to sit around the massive bombfire and chat rather than rave inside to teh pumping elctro, in true squat rave style they were selling cheaper-than-a-bar-standard beer and vegetarin pasta salad. we met a few of sara's other friends who were really cool. the music was decent but it never really felt packed enough and so in order to get the last metro we left at about 3-ish.
on our last full day in stockholm we went to the park and had a picnic and had a bit of a kick around, which was so good as i havnt had more than one touch of a football in about 3 months. then me an pierre stayed around and had a little snooze. we got back to sara's and had some pesto (another thing i hadnt had in ages) and watched 'control' the biopic of Ian Curtis, the Joy Division lead singer and then jimmy and Mika, one of sara's friends that we met teh night before put on some anarchist video so i went to bed.
the next day we said our goodbyes to sara and went a checked out the town hall, which is a really nice building, and if you go to the top of tower which cost about 2 euros then u can see the whole of stockholm. our ferry was at 6 so we had to be at the terminal by 5 so we aimed to get the bus from town at 4 along the way some school group got on and they slowed the whole journey down we booked our tickets through silija line so we though our ferry was going from there terminal so first after me not being able to get off and going an extra stop i run to catch up with pierre who is finding out that we've gone to the wrong terminal we then SAS it too the car entrance and there like no go around this was blah blah, anotehr 15 minuts and we finally make it to the passenger terminal for TALLINK and get the on the ferry via the buff photography women who take a photo of you all sweaty and bothered just before you board the boat.
'promised land' my taint, it was cool but my 'calling' was better.
the next day we went into town to get our bags and walk around the town centre to watch the beanies some more, we also decided that we wernt gonna see the rest of scandinavia anymore as it was too expensive even just to travel around in it, (the day before i had spent 50 euros (including the shorts) and that was with a free nights accomodation, grand master thrift left me for that day. we then went and got our ferry tickets to estonia which wernt too expensive as the website suggested and then we went back to sara's to chillout. that night i cooked dinner for everyone except the singaporians and my mum called me and still managed to be an over the shoulder cook even though she was about 1000 miles away. sara's friend jimmy came round who is a an english teacher here and has it pretty easy going as he lives with a swedish family so gets free food and accomodation, as well as not having to learn the language cos all his friends speak english (as well as everyone else) and on top of that he gets a fairly decent wage. jimmy and sara took us to a anarchist collective party, that sara had told us about the day before which is one of the reasons we really wanted to meet up with her. the house was made out of shipping containers and found wood but had working elctricity et al. and was in some forrest in the suburbs of stockholm becasue they had been trying to find a squat in teh centre but swedish squatting laws are really strict. there were a good number of people there but they preferred to sit around the massive bombfire and chat rather than rave inside to teh pumping elctro, in true squat rave style they were selling cheaper-than-a-bar-standard beer and vegetarin pasta salad. we met a few of sara's other friends who were really cool. the music was decent but it never really felt packed enough and so in order to get the last metro we left at about 3-ish.
on our last full day in stockholm we went to the park and had a picnic and had a bit of a kick around, which was so good as i havnt had more than one touch of a football in about 3 months. then me an pierre stayed around and had a little snooze. we got back to sara's and had some pesto (another thing i hadnt had in ages) and watched 'control' the biopic of Ian Curtis, the Joy Division lead singer and then jimmy and Mika, one of sara's friends that we met teh night before put on some anarchist video so i went to bed.
the next day we said our goodbyes to sara and went a checked out the town hall, which is a really nice building, and if you go to the top of tower which cost about 2 euros then u can see the whole of stockholm. our ferry was at 6 so we had to be at the terminal by 5 so we aimed to get the bus from town at 4 along the way some school group got on and they slowed the whole journey down we booked our tickets through silija line so we though our ferry was going from there terminal so first after me not being able to get off and going an extra stop i run to catch up with pierre who is finding out that we've gone to the wrong terminal we then SAS it too the car entrance and there like no go around this was blah blah, anotehr 15 minuts and we finally make it to the passenger terminal for TALLINK and get the on the ferry via the buff photography women who take a photo of you all sweaty and bothered just before you board the boat.
'promised land' my taint, it was cool but my 'calling' was better.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Party ferry
we got on the boat that we had been told was a party ferry with 3 of our 3 and a half litres of vodka still in posession. we got some crackers and cheese and made some dinner. afterwards we had a look around and saw that there was, as we were rightly told a nightclub on board. we wnt back to our cabin and listened to some house music and drink some vodka and then we took it up to the viewing deck. after a while we got chatting with some finns who later invited me to there cabin, i left pierre on deck with some crazy finnish girl who kept asking him WHY DID U GO TO FINLAND, I AM A MODEL AND I DONT EVEN LIKE IT she wasnt even attractive which made her comments more ridiculous. the finns gave me some spirit which tasted like licorice listorine and a few beers, we then had a long chat about the finnish civil war and then returned to deck. when we got up ther epierre was alone and he was liek mate i am too drunk i am going to sleep- by this point we had had a litre of vodka between us and it was only 11, what makes it worse is that because of how far north we were the sun hadnt evn set yet. i was feeling a bit tired too so i exused myself from the finns and set my alarm for 1 to catch the party. when i wake up next its 5am and ive slept through the alarm, i have terrible dry mouthbut go back to sleep. next time i wake up its the cleaner saying we've been in stockholm for an hour and a half, its time to leave.
what a party.
what a party.
Helsinki/Helsingfors
We got to helsinki at four in the morning awoken by the call of 'centre!' by the woman i asked her in probably teh last russian i would speak of the trip if we had to get out but didt really listen to teh response, we got out to watch all the clubbers going home after their saturday night and then looked back at the van and realised that they had closed the curtains and everyone inside had just gone to sleep. i tapped on the window and asked again and she told me that we could infact stay until the morning. cool.
next mroning laden with all our things, including 3 1/2 litres of vodka and a crate of budvar, we proceeded to look around what was for both of us, our first experience of scandinavia. Again, like in Siberia we had no place to stay and was still waiting on the reply of the girl who we were supposedly going to stay with. we knew the internet in the library was free so we waited around in some empty shopping centre with and art gallery in it, and listened to music and read. when the library opened we found much to our pleasure that we did in fact have a place to stay, we went to meet anastasia (or nasta to her friends) at her work which was just across the square to the library and she told us she wanted to sort out some shit first and then we would meet her later at her place abour 4ish. we spent the rest of the afternoon in the afternoon in the central art gallery that had a really nice exibition fo the photos of a finnish photographer who had been photographing people from northern finland and norway and their life in the arctic. we got on teh bus out of town and met up with nasta and she took us back to her flat which was really nice bathroom kitchen to bedrooms and a biiig sofa that me and pierre were going to use as a double bed. it wasnt long before we tucked in our duty free (one crate of beer and a half litre of vodka)and headed into town. we were meant to go to a reggae night but nasta's flatmate, uli, wanted to go to a club called DTM which is a gay bar (stands for Dont Tell Momma). we told them we would meet up with them later becasue we had arranged to go to sinni, sana and anna's place (the finnish girls we met in st peter) to have some drinks at their place to celbrate me turning 19 on at midnight and then go to a bar. at their flat we did some more vodka shots, eventually finishing of the bottle (no pun intended!) but the girls had some sort of energy powder that they had got in the phillipines which u put on mouth take a shot shake ur head about and swallow, seariously if i was at all tired then i wasnt afterwards. we wnet to a club near their flat which was quite full for a sunday night, pierre started off buying me my birthday drinks in terrific style with a bottle of moet and i was like 'what the fuck?!!' but it was a joint plan to get me really drunk and impress sinni the finnish girl who he had been trying it on with for about 4 days. i put my name in for some kareoke, pointer sisters - automatic, i dunno why probably becuase it was the first song i recognised but as soon as pierre brought over teh second bottle my memory blacks out...
i woke up the next morning in an airport. i got up still very drunk and went over to some girls:
'hello, its my birthday'
'oh congratulations, do u want us to play you a song?' i look around and realise they are part of an orchestra but for some reason, probably because i have more important things to ask, i just rudely as if its a stupid notion reply, 'No!' then i continue,
'do u know how to get to the centre of town?'
'what helsinki?'
'good, so i'm still in finland'
'hah yeh u just go downsta blah blah blah
i go downstairs and walk out to the bus platform and instead of getting the finnair bus that costs 4.50 i just jump on teh bus that reads FREE BUS on the side, after a quick trip to the airport holiday inn i find myself back at the terminal at the finnair bus stop, but a city bus pulls up saying its going to town centre, i get on, say i'm 16 get a child fare and go back into town. whilst on the bus pierre calls me asking where the fuck am i, i tell him i woke up at the airport and i'll be in town in a minute. when i got into town i see pierre who is also slightly drunk eating a big mac for breakfast, he had stayed teh night with sinni, in her bed, BUT THEY DIDNT EVEN KISS. he says he has no heart left. that mroning we wondered about town for a bit i chatted to my rents about waking up in the airport etc.. pierre was getting really annoyed becuase i kept on singing 'its my birthday and i sleep where i want to, sleep where i want to, sleep where i want to...' eventually we got in contact with juli, nasta's flatmate to let us in to teh house to sleep. apparently while we there, pierre says cos he was awake and so was i apparently juli brought her girlfriend around and we both heard cos he nodded at me afterwards but i dont remember , but there were massive cries of LICK MY PUSSY!!! which i find so jokes, especially as i was to drunk the next day afternoon to remember.
that night we went to a club called redrum where they were selling pints for a euro until 1am. they were also playing quite mainstream/old skool hiphop which was cool as i hadnt heard any in about 3 months. nasta got a birthday drink which i thought was quite nice and we met a lot of there friends most notably a boy called pecka who is nasta's ex but theyre are still really good friends and he did 2 runs home to take on set of friends and then us back home. when we got back pierre hit the sack immedieately but me, nasta and pecka stayed up and drank some beers and played guitar for another hour or so which was cool.
are third day in finland was a lot more low key. we checked out the main sauna in town which was really cool apart from the amount of old finnish knob on display. we got our ferry tickets to sweden and pierre sent a box of unwanted shit home. that night we chilled out back of flat and watched last king of scotland which is a wicked film.
our last full day in finland we chilled out again, me and pierre got some sandwich ingredients from the supermarket and some beers and headed to one of the islands in the helsinki archipelego called semolina or something like that. we chilled out in the sun for the day watching the big baltic ferrys go past, and then went back to catch the champions league final. we gave the nasta the low down on the teams and made her support united as no1 likes a chelsea cunt and i tell you when van der sar saved anelka penalty she was actually celbrating like she meant it, anna was there as well and she was a lot mor keyed in about the footballer's such as 'love-rat ashley' - direct quote. after the football we went back to the flat where me and pierre got battered at Crash Team Racing by nasta and then we just went to sleep.
the next day juli gave us a lift to the ferry in her parents people carrier (which btw has an amazing sounsystem which we found out the night before) and we said our goodbyes.
the title of this post is in finnish/swedesh because for some reason helsinki is a bilingual city evn though i didnt hear a hint of swedish (not even in H&M where i got some wicked 8 euro jeans.) but where we were going there would be loads of swede's...
next mroning laden with all our things, including 3 1/2 litres of vodka and a crate of budvar, we proceeded to look around what was for both of us, our first experience of scandinavia. Again, like in Siberia we had no place to stay and was still waiting on the reply of the girl who we were supposedly going to stay with. we knew the internet in the library was free so we waited around in some empty shopping centre with and art gallery in it, and listened to music and read. when the library opened we found much to our pleasure that we did in fact have a place to stay, we went to meet anastasia (or nasta to her friends) at her work which was just across the square to the library and she told us she wanted to sort out some shit first and then we would meet her later at her place abour 4ish. we spent the rest of the afternoon in the afternoon in the central art gallery that had a really nice exibition fo the photos of a finnish photographer who had been photographing people from northern finland and norway and their life in the arctic. we got on teh bus out of town and met up with nasta and she took us back to her flat which was really nice bathroom kitchen to bedrooms and a biiig sofa that me and pierre were going to use as a double bed. it wasnt long before we tucked in our duty free (one crate of beer and a half litre of vodka)and headed into town. we were meant to go to a reggae night but nasta's flatmate, uli, wanted to go to a club called DTM which is a gay bar (stands for Dont Tell Momma). we told them we would meet up with them later becasue we had arranged to go to sinni, sana and anna's place (the finnish girls we met in st peter) to have some drinks at their place to celbrate me turning 19 on at midnight and then go to a bar. at their flat we did some more vodka shots, eventually finishing of the bottle (no pun intended!) but the girls had some sort of energy powder that they had got in the phillipines which u put on mouth take a shot shake ur head about and swallow, seariously if i was at all tired then i wasnt afterwards. we wnet to a club near their flat which was quite full for a sunday night, pierre started off buying me my birthday drinks in terrific style with a bottle of moet and i was like 'what the fuck?!!' but it was a joint plan to get me really drunk and impress sinni the finnish girl who he had been trying it on with for about 4 days. i put my name in for some kareoke, pointer sisters - automatic, i dunno why probably becuase it was the first song i recognised but as soon as pierre brought over teh second bottle my memory blacks out...
i woke up the next morning in an airport. i got up still very drunk and went over to some girls:
'hello, its my birthday'
'oh congratulations, do u want us to play you a song?' i look around and realise they are part of an orchestra but for some reason, probably because i have more important things to ask, i just rudely as if its a stupid notion reply, 'No!' then i continue,
'do u know how to get to the centre of town?'
'what helsinki?'
'good, so i'm still in finland'
'hah yeh u just go downsta blah blah blah
i go downstairs and walk out to the bus platform and instead of getting the finnair bus that costs 4.50 i just jump on teh bus that reads FREE BUS on the side, after a quick trip to the airport holiday inn i find myself back at the terminal at the finnair bus stop, but a city bus pulls up saying its going to town centre, i get on, say i'm 16 get a child fare and go back into town. whilst on the bus pierre calls me asking where the fuck am i, i tell him i woke up at the airport and i'll be in town in a minute. when i got into town i see pierre who is also slightly drunk eating a big mac for breakfast, he had stayed teh night with sinni, in her bed, BUT THEY DIDNT EVEN KISS. he says he has no heart left. that mroning we wondered about town for a bit i chatted to my rents about waking up in the airport etc.. pierre was getting really annoyed becuase i kept on singing 'its my birthday and i sleep where i want to, sleep where i want to, sleep where i want to...' eventually we got in contact with juli, nasta's flatmate to let us in to teh house to sleep. apparently while we there, pierre says cos he was awake and so was i apparently juli brought her girlfriend around and we both heard cos he nodded at me afterwards but i dont remember , but there were massive cries of LICK MY PUSSY!!! which i find so jokes, especially as i was to drunk the next day afternoon to remember.
that night we went to a club called redrum where they were selling pints for a euro until 1am. they were also playing quite mainstream/old skool hiphop which was cool as i hadnt heard any in about 3 months. nasta got a birthday drink which i thought was quite nice and we met a lot of there friends most notably a boy called pecka who is nasta's ex but theyre are still really good friends and he did 2 runs home to take on set of friends and then us back home. when we got back pierre hit the sack immedieately but me, nasta and pecka stayed up and drank some beers and played guitar for another hour or so which was cool.
are third day in finland was a lot more low key. we checked out the main sauna in town which was really cool apart from the amount of old finnish knob on display. we got our ferry tickets to sweden and pierre sent a box of unwanted shit home. that night we chilled out back of flat and watched last king of scotland which is a wicked film.
our last full day in finland we chilled out again, me and pierre got some sandwich ingredients from the supermarket and some beers and headed to one of the islands in the helsinki archipelego called semolina or something like that. we chilled out in the sun for the day watching the big baltic ferrys go past, and then went back to catch the champions league final. we gave the nasta the low down on the teams and made her support united as no1 likes a chelsea cunt and i tell you when van der sar saved anelka penalty she was actually celbrating like she meant it, anna was there as well and she was a lot mor keyed in about the footballer's such as 'love-rat ashley' - direct quote. after the football we went back to the flat where me and pierre got battered at Crash Team Racing by nasta and then we just went to sleep.
the next day juli gave us a lift to the ferry in her parents people carrier (which btw has an amazing sounsystem which we found out the night before) and we said our goodbyes.
the title of this post is in finnish/swedesh because for some reason helsinki is a bilingual city evn though i didnt hear a hint of swedish (not even in H&M where i got some wicked 8 euro jeans.) but where we were going there would be loads of swede's...
Friday, May 23, 2008
tramp
for some reason i forgot to mention it in teh piter post but the thing that made me know that st petersburg was going to be sick was the first person we conversed with.
when we were queing for our metro tickets a tramp comes up to us and asks us in russian if a tourist could lend a man some change, and in reply i say, also in russian, we're tourists, i live in st petersburg, for some reason this confused him so much he kept repeating whilst holding his head 'i dont understand, i dont understand...'
2 minutes later he comes back and starts speaking to us in perfect english, 'but u are amricans no?', no, 'but at leats english speakers', yes, we tell him, from england. oh i see he says, and walks off.
i guess you had to be there...
when we were queing for our metro tickets a tramp comes up to us and asks us in russian if a tourist could lend a man some change, and in reply i say, also in russian, we're tourists, i live in st petersburg, for some reason this confused him so much he kept repeating whilst holding his head 'i dont understand, i dont understand...'
2 minutes later he comes back and starts speaking to us in perfect english, 'but u are amricans no?', no, 'but at leats english speakers', yes, we tell him, from england. oh i see he says, and walks off.
i guess you had to be there...
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Russia Reflections
Russia was always on my plans for this gap year my original idea was to go brazil for the carnival and then do the trans siberian railway and maybe spend a day in mongolia and a week in china. i have to say by the time we had been through siberia i was quite disapointed with the country i had learnt about so affectionately whilst i was learning the language, and even when so many people had told us about how rude the russians were and how bleak teh countryside was this time of year i still trusted the guidebooks words that i kept repaeting to pierre to 'throw away your preconceptions' i coudnt have pictured how bad siberia really was going to be.
moscow on tghe other hand was wicked, especially compared to siberia and my 'preconceptions' of it, i imagined a city still reeling from communism, packed out with soviet apartment blocks and miserable people. on the other hand the city was full of money (which can also be seen as a bad thing) style, beautiful women and some lovely stalinist neo-classical architechture. we were there for teh may holidays so teh whole country was spruced up and the when the sun was out the town looked magnificent. unfortuanetly after 6 days of trying to see tourist attraction and them being closed, and feeling shit from high alcoholic contented energy drinks i needed to leave.
St petersburg was my calling and i always knew this. it was exactly what i expected especially the feel of the town, in its europeaness with the architecture and the gneral attitude of the people. its ability to be expensive but at the the same time feel inexpensive was especially notable in comparison to moscow in the sense that you were spending money but you knew whole heartily that it was worth it. and teh women, my gosh the women in this town were amazing, the fact that all the girls mentioned in teh previous post are muscovites is no suprise, the women in peter are of a different level. i will deffinately come back here whetehr it be on holiday or even to live becuase my love for that town couple with my love for teh russian language might lead me to that.
overall russia got better the longer we were there, not because it grows on you but because we went to better and better places.
in terms of the standings me and pierre tied in russia with even a possible nose to me due to the amount of offers of future places to stay and the amount of tears shed on goodbye but here they are for real:
STANDINGS
MATT: 9 pulls, 1 bang, 1 gf
PIERRE: 8 pulls, 2 bangs.
moscow on tghe other hand was wicked, especially compared to siberia and my 'preconceptions' of it, i imagined a city still reeling from communism, packed out with soviet apartment blocks and miserable people. on the other hand the city was full of money (which can also be seen as a bad thing) style, beautiful women and some lovely stalinist neo-classical architechture. we were there for teh may holidays so teh whole country was spruced up and the when the sun was out the town looked magnificent. unfortuanetly after 6 days of trying to see tourist attraction and them being closed, and feeling shit from high alcoholic contented energy drinks i needed to leave.
St petersburg was my calling and i always knew this. it was exactly what i expected especially the feel of the town, in its europeaness with the architecture and the gneral attitude of the people. its ability to be expensive but at the the same time feel inexpensive was especially notable in comparison to moscow in the sense that you were spending money but you knew whole heartily that it was worth it. and teh women, my gosh the women in this town were amazing, the fact that all the girls mentioned in teh previous post are muscovites is no suprise, the women in peter are of a different level. i will deffinately come back here whetehr it be on holiday or even to live becuase my love for that town couple with my love for teh russian language might lead me to that.
overall russia got better the longer we were there, not because it grows on you but because we went to better and better places.
in terms of the standings me and pierre tied in russia with even a possible nose to me due to the amount of offers of future places to stay and the amount of tears shed on goodbye but here they are for real:
STANDINGS
MATT: 9 pulls, 1 bang, 1 gf
PIERRE: 8 pulls, 2 bangs.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Piter
we got the express to st petersburg on the monday and arrived at 11pm, we checked into our hostel and immeadiately commenced a process of food and drink. we went to the local produkteh shop and got a few slices of pizza and a 1.5 ltr bottle of beer each. and then headed back to teh hostel to mess around on teh computer and flirt with the peng member of staff that we met, who also needed help with facebook. we stayed chatting and drinking until about 3.30 when we decided to go to the club, i asked the girl what good clubs there were (in russian naturlich) and she was like go to dacha. on the way to dacha which is literally like 5 minutes walk away we bumped into some guys from Zimbabwe called Seff and Bosso, we were liek what are you doing in st petersburg - studying bla blah blah, they had been to dacha but got faced controlled because 'this country is fucking racist man' and we told them ho wwe had been in peter for 4 hours '4 hours?! shit man, these guys are brave theyve been here for 4 hours and they are already going to teh club' yep thats us. well anyway they were liek do u wanna smoke some hash and we were like yeh. no pipe and no rizzla though so we made some short of cigarette burning bong water bottle concoction which gave you a head rush but among 4 guys took just too long to set up. bosso was being so funny apparently it was only his second time smoking weed and the first time he didnt remmeber but he doesnt like smoking it for his mum, man. then they started reciting the lord's prayer and bosso was getting confused remembering everyone's names, including his own..... eventually at about 5 we tried to go to datcha again but the bouncer was having none of it so we just went home to sleep in out lovely ikea bunkbeds.
next day we woke up around 2 ish and decided to go for a little walk around teh town. after getting some blinis (russian crepes, pancake not trainer) we had a little wlak down nevsky prospect to see if the stories about st petersburgian (?) women were true, which they were - probably to teh highest level possible. everyone knows about the ugly friend, right, to make teh average looking girls look better, well, in peter there are no ugly friends, there are no average looking friends. we walked out of teh pancake shop and i looked at a group of 6 girls all AT LEAST 9 1/2s teh front of my pants literally turned to white fluid. we then had a walk down to teh river where i got my pics of peter the great and his horse 'i dont see whty you love it so much, its only a statue...' pierres imput. when we got back to teh hostel, whilst we were messing around on the computer we noticed these trainers that looked really familier TIIIIIIIIIM TIIIIIIIIIM, he said he was coming to St petersburg but we didnt belive him but as i check teh shoes to see if tehre his size who pops his head out the door, but the man himself. tim bradley man of recording studios and woods. yay! that night after we hit a 2 hour all you can eat/drink 300 ruble restaurant we found ourselves in teh hostel with agroup of about 8 english people but funnily enough it was 2 russian girls liz and lyubov who made us go out. we went to datcha and and fidel which are both little bar clubs with cheap drinks and decent music. teh most impressive thing about teh girls was that liz was clubbing with a broken leg she claims but it was more like a seriously sprained ankle. in the end tim and some aussie bloke who i never got his name, although he was a seariously safe guy, kept trying it on with these russian girls pierre got his first kiss in about 6 weeks off liz (she couldnt run away) and tehn went for sushi and me and lyubov went for a walk. we walked down a canal and then into a coffee shop at 3 in the morning i know but russia, st petersburg especially is the most 24 hour country in the world, i knew she wasnt on it because i had sent out my signals in the club but it was really nice that early morning and we ended up chatting for hours about love and her boyfriend, life friends sport me getting old etc, next thing i know i check my watch and its 8 in the morning, i go back and pierre looks at me and is like what time is it? 8am, where have you been? coffee shop, uurrrrrrrghhhhh. mate what about you - banged her, big grin goes back to sleep.
next aftern9oon we wake up and go upstairs to get some water, liz goes to me, u will get dressed and then come out with us. ok, russian women are demanding as i will give further examples of later. liz and lyuba take me pierre and tim out to the other side of teh river where it is fucking cold. there was a snowstorm where if you stuck out your hand a snow ball would form. that night we went back to the all you can eat with a big group of people, and then proceeded im finding a bar to watch the UEFA cup final, as Zenit, the local team, had reached it. the first bar we went said we had to pay a 1000 rubles each to sit down do we foundf this sports bar inside a casino that had 3 big screens, was rammed and had 100 ruble pints! i stated chanting and a woman off the english speaking russian news channel asked if i could do a chant for the cameras and then have an interview! i thought nothing of it but then checked the website the next day and sure enough who should be in the news but old matty spurr. after the first half liz and lyubov had to leave and it was all sad and places to stay were exchanged if we should ever go to moscow again. i went back to watch the football and then lyubov comes and says i will really reget it if i dont do this and then she gets off with me which of course i didnt mind becuase she was quite attractive. all teh zenit fans were patting em on teh back as teh game reached half time, was pretty cool overall. second half zenit ran away with it and scored 2 wicked goals we had a lot of drinks with zenit fans including one guy who followed us half way arround saying the only english word every rusiian knows - drink?. that night the streets of st petersburg were crazy. we were jsut walking down nevsky chanting and hugging the locals, people were hooting their horns setting off flairs, tim followed by pierre went on a quest for some drugs and found some very strange woman who 'was famous, but nobody knows who she is' and pierre ended up pulling her much to tim's dismay as he claims he did the groundwork, turns out she had a boyfriend of 7 years so pierre ran away. me on the other hand had drunkenly decided to go back to the hostel to try and chirps the hostel worker who we had met on teh first night. of course when i turned home i realised just how drunk i was compared to teh general sobriety of the people in the hostel so i just went to bed. as i was going to bed she was like 'matt, i'll never see you again' as she wasnt working until the next week, i probably just didnt hear the 'hopefully'.
thursday day we did absolutelynothing, some finnish girls checked in the morning and we got chatting to them, that night they were talking about going to datcha again because apparently on thursday night its teh best music of teh week there. pierre and tim went but i was talking to 2 russian girls back and teh hostel called olga and i forget the other. we got to the club and i saw teh funniest sight, pierre with his hands placed on one of teh finnish girls hips and her just looking at everyone else shrugging her shoulders, fair enough we were all so pissed as we had been utilising thge all you can drink elemnt of the all you van drink/eat restaurant plus a 1.5 of beer to top it off. after a while he moved on to the best lookin of the three but she was equally as unenthusiastic. i was at the same club as them but i was spending my time with teh russian girls, at one point the one with no name goes to the toilet and olga says to me, she has gone to the toilet and then starts getting off with me, pierre tim and teh finns had gone to a different club but had came back, i told pierre i was going back with olga, 45 minutes please. we got back to the hostel and i was liek come back to my room which i thought, as it had been for teh previous 3 would be empty, no there were to new residents, shit go to her room people there, so she takes me to the kitchenette which is divided by a curtain from teh common room where people were and takes off my shirt, in the meantime one of the finnish girls walks in and is messing about in teh fridge this was apparently because she had drank normal coke as opposed to diet so had to go home. i was like fuck it this isnt going to work so just took her back to my bed
*if you dont want deets skip next para*
and she was like 'ya lyublyu horoshi sex' (i like good sex) ok then 15 minutes later of ridiculously insensitive noisiness to our room mates (i way 100kgs bed creak and she moans despite how many times i tell her to shhh she also spanked me a lot) she's like why havnt u finished dont u like me... i trying to please u bitch, i'm holding out for you. then the condom fell came off (mongolian manufactured) and then pierre walked in so it came to an end.
*u can read now*
after bone city (love that phrase) she went upstairs and everyone went back to sleep.
next mroning i asked pierre about how it went with finn and apparently she was a queen of ice, but that night was just teh ground work, caught by and early winter he says or battle of britain as i called it. next thing i know olga walks in and says 'get up' (demanding) takes me to teh smoking area, grabs my hand and thrusts it onto her pussy and then her tit. fucking hell for a very drunken man in pants and a pink silk dressing gown that shocks you awake. after moving my stuff upstairs we got off some more and i would of got some morning action if it wasnt for the 2 snoring ppakistani men in our room. that day we decided to check out the hermitage as it was tim's supposed last day as i had booked his train ticket a day earlier than he wanted. on the way he was like aww man now you guys have both slept with russian girls and ive only slept with a half russian and we were like where, thinking maybe moscow, kiev no in my room, we started by teh tv then ended up in my bed, oh back home, no last night with teh half finnish half russian girl, WHAT YOU BANGED ANNA, jokes well played, (she was slightly the least attractive of the three but undoubtedly the coolest) gash is gash he says we have taught him well. we got in for free due to student card he had to pay 300 rubles. we spent about an hour and a half there mostly on stairs, the most impressive thing about it was the building itself rather than the art on display, i mean the amout of gold in the building was almost sickening. that night we got a fuck load of alcohol, olga finally left for moscow and stopped being all psycho towareds me, she gave me her scrunchy and a set of match boxes with all the romanov family on them - i know, she was 26 and probably having a i'm not young anymore crisis. we wanted to head to a club in a bomb shelter called tunnel but it was on the other side of teh river. the metro was closed and the bridges were about to open so we just ended up going to datcha again, the woman at the hostel (different one) was like 'matt, hochesh voka? yeh i want, 'hochesh piva' yeh beer would be nice as well. by the time me and tim got the club pierre was already inside cos he had missed out on the on hostel woman's generosities, the bouncers were face controlling us so i was trying to talk them into it with my best druinken russian, but tim just goes we're english! so the ylet us in. next thing i remeber is waking up in bed. apparently i got in sat down, stood up and left.
next morning we checked out by i didnt pack my stuff away until about 7 in the evening, i spent most of the day drinking bowls of water dressed only ib ny pants and my pink silk dressing gown acting teh hostel cunt. that afternoon we watched the cup final and then went and got the bus to finland.
overall i think st petersburg was one of the best places i've evr been to in my life.
next day we woke up around 2 ish and decided to go for a little walk around teh town. after getting some blinis (russian crepes, pancake not trainer) we had a little wlak down nevsky prospect to see if the stories about st petersburgian (?) women were true, which they were - probably to teh highest level possible. everyone knows about the ugly friend, right, to make teh average looking girls look better, well, in peter there are no ugly friends, there are no average looking friends. we walked out of teh pancake shop and i looked at a group of 6 girls all AT LEAST 9 1/2s teh front of my pants literally turned to white fluid. we then had a walk down to teh river where i got my pics of peter the great and his horse 'i dont see whty you love it so much, its only a statue...' pierres imput. when we got back to teh hostel, whilst we were messing around on the computer we noticed these trainers that looked really familier TIIIIIIIIIM TIIIIIIIIIM, he said he was coming to St petersburg but we didnt belive him but as i check teh shoes to see if tehre his size who pops his head out the door, but the man himself. tim bradley man of recording studios and woods. yay! that night after we hit a 2 hour all you can eat/drink 300 ruble restaurant we found ourselves in teh hostel with agroup of about 8 english people but funnily enough it was 2 russian girls liz and lyubov who made us go out. we went to datcha and and fidel which are both little bar clubs with cheap drinks and decent music. teh most impressive thing about teh girls was that liz was clubbing with a broken leg she claims but it was more like a seriously sprained ankle. in the end tim and some aussie bloke who i never got his name, although he was a seariously safe guy, kept trying it on with these russian girls pierre got his first kiss in about 6 weeks off liz (she couldnt run away) and tehn went for sushi and me and lyubov went for a walk. we walked down a canal and then into a coffee shop at 3 in the morning i know but russia, st petersburg especially is the most 24 hour country in the world, i knew she wasnt on it because i had sent out my signals in the club but it was really nice that early morning and we ended up chatting for hours about love and her boyfriend, life friends sport me getting old etc, next thing i know i check my watch and its 8 in the morning, i go back and pierre looks at me and is like what time is it? 8am, where have you been? coffee shop, uurrrrrrrghhhhh. mate what about you - banged her, big grin goes back to sleep.
next aftern9oon we wake up and go upstairs to get some water, liz goes to me, u will get dressed and then come out with us. ok, russian women are demanding as i will give further examples of later. liz and lyuba take me pierre and tim out to the other side of teh river where it is fucking cold. there was a snowstorm where if you stuck out your hand a snow ball would form. that night we went back to the all you can eat with a big group of people, and then proceeded im finding a bar to watch the UEFA cup final, as Zenit, the local team, had reached it. the first bar we went said we had to pay a 1000 rubles each to sit down do we foundf this sports bar inside a casino that had 3 big screens, was rammed and had 100 ruble pints! i stated chanting and a woman off the english speaking russian news channel asked if i could do a chant for the cameras and then have an interview! i thought nothing of it but then checked the website the next day and sure enough who should be in the news but old matty spurr. after the first half liz and lyubov had to leave and it was all sad and places to stay were exchanged if we should ever go to moscow again. i went back to watch the football and then lyubov comes and says i will really reget it if i dont do this and then she gets off with me which of course i didnt mind becuase she was quite attractive. all teh zenit fans were patting em on teh back as teh game reached half time, was pretty cool overall. second half zenit ran away with it and scored 2 wicked goals we had a lot of drinks with zenit fans including one guy who followed us half way arround saying the only english word every rusiian knows - drink?. that night the streets of st petersburg were crazy. we were jsut walking down nevsky chanting and hugging the locals, people were hooting their horns setting off flairs, tim followed by pierre went on a quest for some drugs and found some very strange woman who 'was famous, but nobody knows who she is' and pierre ended up pulling her much to tim's dismay as he claims he did the groundwork, turns out she had a boyfriend of 7 years so pierre ran away. me on the other hand had drunkenly decided to go back to the hostel to try and chirps the hostel worker who we had met on teh first night. of course when i turned home i realised just how drunk i was compared to teh general sobriety of the people in the hostel so i just went to bed. as i was going to bed she was like 'matt, i'll never see you again' as she wasnt working until the next week, i probably just didnt hear the 'hopefully'.
thursday day we did absolutelynothing, some finnish girls checked in the morning and we got chatting to them, that night they were talking about going to datcha again because apparently on thursday night its teh best music of teh week there. pierre and tim went but i was talking to 2 russian girls back and teh hostel called olga and i forget the other. we got to the club and i saw teh funniest sight, pierre with his hands placed on one of teh finnish girls hips and her just looking at everyone else shrugging her shoulders, fair enough we were all so pissed as we had been utilising thge all you can drink elemnt of the all you van drink/eat restaurant plus a 1.5 of beer to top it off. after a while he moved on to the best lookin of the three but she was equally as unenthusiastic. i was at the same club as them but i was spending my time with teh russian girls, at one point the one with no name goes to the toilet and olga says to me, she has gone to the toilet and then starts getting off with me, pierre tim and teh finns had gone to a different club but had came back, i told pierre i was going back with olga, 45 minutes please. we got back to the hostel and i was liek come back to my room which i thought, as it had been for teh previous 3 would be empty, no there were to new residents, shit go to her room people there, so she takes me to the kitchenette which is divided by a curtain from teh common room where people were and takes off my shirt, in the meantime one of the finnish girls walks in and is messing about in teh fridge this was apparently because she had drank normal coke as opposed to diet so had to go home. i was like fuck it this isnt going to work so just took her back to my bed
*if you dont want deets skip next para*
and she was like 'ya lyublyu horoshi sex' (i like good sex) ok then 15 minutes later of ridiculously insensitive noisiness to our room mates (i way 100kgs bed creak and she moans despite how many times i tell her to shhh she also spanked me a lot) she's like why havnt u finished dont u like me... i trying to please u bitch, i'm holding out for you. then the condom fell came off (mongolian manufactured) and then pierre walked in so it came to an end.
*u can read now*
after bone city (love that phrase) she went upstairs and everyone went back to sleep.
next mroning i asked pierre about how it went with finn and apparently she was a queen of ice, but that night was just teh ground work, caught by and early winter he says or battle of britain as i called it. next thing i know olga walks in and says 'get up' (demanding) takes me to teh smoking area, grabs my hand and thrusts it onto her pussy and then her tit. fucking hell for a very drunken man in pants and a pink silk dressing gown that shocks you awake. after moving my stuff upstairs we got off some more and i would of got some morning action if it wasnt for the 2 snoring ppakistani men in our room. that day we decided to check out the hermitage as it was tim's supposed last day as i had booked his train ticket a day earlier than he wanted. on the way he was like aww man now you guys have both slept with russian girls and ive only slept with a half russian and we were like where, thinking maybe moscow, kiev no in my room, we started by teh tv then ended up in my bed, oh back home, no last night with teh half finnish half russian girl, WHAT YOU BANGED ANNA, jokes well played, (she was slightly the least attractive of the three but undoubtedly the coolest) gash is gash he says we have taught him well. we got in for free due to student card he had to pay 300 rubles. we spent about an hour and a half there mostly on stairs, the most impressive thing about it was the building itself rather than the art on display, i mean the amout of gold in the building was almost sickening. that night we got a fuck load of alcohol, olga finally left for moscow and stopped being all psycho towareds me, she gave me her scrunchy and a set of match boxes with all the romanov family on them - i know, she was 26 and probably having a i'm not young anymore crisis. we wanted to head to a club in a bomb shelter called tunnel but it was on the other side of teh river. the metro was closed and the bridges were about to open so we just ended up going to datcha again, the woman at the hostel (different one) was like 'matt, hochesh voka? yeh i want, 'hochesh piva' yeh beer would be nice as well. by the time me and tim got the club pierre was already inside cos he had missed out on the on hostel woman's generosities, the bouncers were face controlling us so i was trying to talk them into it with my best druinken russian, but tim just goes we're english! so the ylet us in. next thing i remeber is waking up in bed. apparently i got in sat down, stood up and left.
next morning we checked out by i didnt pack my stuff away until about 7 in the evening, i spent most of the day drinking bowls of water dressed only ib ny pants and my pink silk dressing gown acting teh hostel cunt. that afternoon we watched the cup final and then went and got the bus to finland.
overall i think st petersburg was one of the best places i've evr been to in my life.
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