Veronika Wild

Tallin, Estonia - the Perfect Medieval City Tallin is a wonderful place. In fact, if I have any complaint, it would be that it’s much too nice. It's so clean you could eat off its cobbled streets, the people are universally friendly, it has quaint buildings, everything  works and  the toilets are free. However, after the frenzy and chaos of Russia where it’s still OK to smoke in cafes and shops don’t close until late (they don’t open before 10 am either) and revelry continues far into the night, I was afraid that Estonia was going to be a bit like the way someone once described the difference between Canada and the US,” like spending a long wet weekend with your aunt.” Though it was rather like being in someone's parlour and you felt you shouldn't light up or pass wind, there were smoking rooms in the little tobacconists and there was undoubtedly a lot more nightlife than immediately obvious to someone who had just stumbled off an all night bus. Perhaps they...

"Had one Vodka, then one more…” but maybe not as many as I would have liked Friendly staff at the Soul Kitchen  St. Petersburg has a lot of hostels as it’s only a short hop for most Europeans (I’m so jealous!), but there were Australians here too. It was good hearing a bit of news from home. Australia was having elections and we now had our first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. I didn't realise that I missed it, but it was fun to have a casual group of people to go sightseeing with and with whom you could converse without having to struggle with the language. On the BBC news on TV – I found out that it was now 38oC and that there were four hundred fires burning in Russia. Putin was shown photogenically arriving in a helicopter and helping to douse the flames. This hostel also had free internet and free international phone calls, if you could ever get near the phone. One young man asked me how long I’d been travelling. After I replied, “Probably since the ...