The Recap - The Baltic States

It was a quick whistle stop tour through the Baltic states but it provided us a good insight into the region's culture and customs and whetted our appetite for the most highly anticipated stint of our trip.

The Ticks 

• The region has certainly picked up on a couple of Scandinavia's good habits. Namely beer and coffee
• Lithuanian rye bread is my new favourite bread and will take some beating
• The epic mountain-like cats and dogs of Sigulda 
• A mysterious chocolate brownie smell in Riga that we tried to follow but could never find the source of 
• Tallinn sunshine that was a godsend 
• The Riga markets that fill four old Zeppelin hangars and sell all of your grocery needs, plus a bit more, and all super fresh.  We also fluked getting a bottle of birch tree sap whilst it was in season - this is stuff that the Japanese pay $100 a bottle for due to its supposed health benefits
• The first red squirrel of Spring! 

The Crosses

No other cross comes close to what we endured below.

In Tallinn we had the privilege of staying in a classy little establishment called Tallinn Centre Hotel.  A place where the shower drains constantly smelled like someone had laid a turd in them.  But that wasn't the worst of our problems there.

For three nights we were stuck in a €14 per night sweaty little cupboard space that looked out onto the sex holiday of a pair of Russians.  Their general routine went something like this: argue, mate, devour a cigarette out on the balcony that our room looked out onto whilst she was in a sexy short pink nightie and him boxers with a tight shirt that exposed his due in six weeks gut, toilet break, another cigarette and then repeat.

We are very lucky people.

The Food

Lithuanian food helped to pull us out of our post-Spain food depression.  Bread chips and the pig's ear that we had at Busi Trecias had us begging for more.

The Drink

Craft beer and the beers by the Estonian brewer Öllenaut win this one.  Any brewer from the more well known craft brewing hot spots around the world would be happy producing beers of this quality.  The Wahtula in particular was a favourite.

The standing of Öllenaut's beers on RateBeer are unjustifiably low in my opinion.  They're not American and they're not by Mikkeller but that doesn't mean that they're not any good.  Get your hands on these beers!

Tallinn, Raped and Pillaged by the Vikings

The year is 1014.   The Vikings descend on Tallinn and take it for all it's worth.  They drink their beer stocks dry, they rape and pillage and they just generally run amok.  Fast forward a thousand years and times haven't changed all that much.

Alcohol and cigarettes in Sweden are significantly more expensive than they are in Tallinn you see.  So for some, it makes economic sense to to do the 35 hour, €90 round trip from Stockton to Tallinn to stock up on as much booze and fags as you can physically carry off the ferry (with the trolley that you've brought with you of course).  The record that we saw was a trolley stacked high with eight cartons.

However the Swedes don't stop at just stocking up for when they get back home.  From the moment that they step on the ferry to Tallinn to the very last minute before they get back to Stockholm, it is a non-stop binge.  We were lucky enough to catch the final leg of the crusade.

Our ferry from Tallinn to Stockholm left at 6pm by which point 95% of everyone on board were half cut.  Out on the sun deck everyone just sits around in groups surrounding a bag of beers, chain smoking and hoeing down cheap snacks.

Then once the boat takes off it's duty free time and everyone begins to stack their trolleys high with carton upon carton before they head back to their rooms to load up before dressing up nice for a night of more boozing, more chain smoking and to hopefully find themselves a root.

It was at around 9pm (when Mr and Mrs Boring were sat there without a beer, or a bottle of vodka or a carton of cigarettes, and eating their supermarket bought salad and bread rolls) that the viking analogy clicked.  The Swedes land in the lesser country, booze themselves stupid and have their way with the local women before setting sail back to their homeland and boozing just a bit more to celebrate before stumbling about on deck, looking for someone to shag.  What a spectacle!

Apologies for the lack of photos.  It was a feast for our eyes that we couldn't avert our gaze from.

Our time in Estonia was focused on much more noble pursuits such as drinking and eating.  Hmmmm....

The Coffee

It continues to flow.

Gourmet Coffee

A half hour walk gets you out to Gourmet Coffee which before you've even had a coffee isn't the greatest proposition but there's a pot of black liquid gold at the end of this rainbow.  Great espressos using various house roasted single origins provide the perfect start to your morning.

Kehrwieder

For a cafe that's located so close to the main square these guys make decent coffees at slightly inflated prices.  Not bad for a quick stop before heading off to see the sights.

The Bars

These Baltic countries do love their beer.

Drink Bar

This one is a bit too English (which of course is never a good thing).

Pudel

This one is a bit too poncey.

Hell Hunt

And this one is a bit too American.

Porgu

This one gets it just right.  It's a cavern bar, it's staff are lovely, the food is great, the beer list is extensive, has heaps of local stuff and is very reasonably priced, and they don't mind if you set up shop and stream the rugby.  The other three are bars you can imagine anywhere else, this one you cannot.  They got sick of seeing us I think.

The Interesting Eating Experience at III Draakon

I normally hate these themed restaurants but this one actually had a feeling of authenticity to it.  It's in an old cavern off the main square with a blackened, sooty, stone ceiling, the only light is from a few candles and the decor genuinely looks like it's centuries old.

A surly wench barks at you, your beer comes in ceramic mugs and you have to fish your own pickles out of the barrel.  Then you drink your "decent serving" of elk soup from the bowl, gulp down your beer and get stuck into a pie.  The food wasn't that flash but the experience was fun.

A bit more of Tallinn for you...

The Beers (they're back in time for Scandinavia!) 

Ollenaut Suitsu Porter, Eesti Rukki Eil, Humulu Padrun, Wahtula, Simkoe Eil
Pohjala Videvik
Brewdog Hoppy Easter
Mikkeller/Brewdog I Hardcore You
Mikkeller Beer Geek Bacon, Beer Geek Vanilla Shake
Lehe Lobus Njuufa
Meantime IPA
PINTA Imperium Atakuje
Huvila Arctic Circle
Hell Hunt Ale

Latvia, it's sort of close to Scandinavia

It was more of the tried and true formula in Riga.  Good coffee, good beer and good food.

More Great Beer

One thing that we quickly learned in the Baltic States is that they love their beer and they do it well.

Valmiermuiža alus tirgotava

This is a fairly fancy affair as far as beer bars go but there was no pretence.  Just good beer and good beer snacks.  And a freebie mousse with pickled beetroot and pistachio that the kitchen sent out after I ordered the porter.  They've definitely got our vote.

ALEhouse

From the outside the ALEhouse looks like a standard, fairly run of the mill bar but they've a no-filler tap list and an extensive, internationally driven bottle list.  Not bad for a bit of SexyStyle with some bread chips and Mikkeller Milk Stout (which is an incredibly good beer).

Folkklub Ala Pagrabs

For a couple of days I continued to insist that we needed to go here.  For some reason Nix wasn't keen on going to a place that bills itself as a folk club.  Finally I convinced her and, as per usual, I was on the money.

We were there at lunchtime so Nix didn't have to worry about being dragged up onto the stage to do a jig with the band but we did have the pleasure of sitting through a couple of hours of Latvian folk music playing through the speakers.  What this place essentially is is a one stop shop for all things Latvian.  Twenty all Latvian beer taps, traditional Latvian food and the Latvian folk music.

We put ourselves in the hands of the waitress and worked our way though various decent Latvian beers and went for a hunter's salad with fried livers and a halloumi-like cheese and Latvia's national dish - grey peas with bacon.   We finished off with a shot of the potent, herbal Rigan spirit.

We rolled out quite merry, rather full and did a wobbly little jig.

More Good Coffee 

This time at MIIT and Zanna.

MIIT - A cool coffeeshop-bike shop that pulls a nice espresso using Lithuanian roasted beans.

Zanna - Another cool coffeeshop in a fairly random residential area of the CBD that pulls an equally good espresso and uses beans roasted in Estonia.

Sigulda and the Ligatne Nature Trail

To escape the city for a while we headed to a sleepy little Latvian town known as Sigulda.  Upon stepping out of the train station we thought we'd arrived to the arse end of the world but its beauty soon revealed itself.

The smell of burning wood fires fill the cold, crisp air, locals give you quizzical looks that say what are you doing here and massive mountain dog like pooches sit proudly atop their kennels.  And the warm welcome we received from the owner of our guesthouse really got us over the line.  She was clearly very excited to be having us as she walked around saying "Australie! Australie!".

The next morning we set off in the direction of the Ligatne Nature Trail.  I'd worked out that four buses and about four kilometres of walking should get us there and back.  One bus, 15 kilometres of walking and a hitched ride back to Sigulda got us home.

Seeing brown bears, lynx, wild boars and more in semi-natural habitats meant it was worth the effort.

The animal highlight?  This massive woolly bastard hopping straight onto both of our laps within a second of squatting down.  He's found a highly sought after place on our 'Top 5 Cats of the Trip' list.  All of the cats in the region are these big woolly-small dog beasts too.  Nice.

Vilnius, nothing really rhymes with it...

The promise of round upon round of potato dumplings with meat in sub 10 degree temperatures all of a sudden didn't sound too appealing when we flew out of what was a balmy Barcelona.

Never fear, the Beer Gods were keeping an eye out for us and carried us from great beer bar to great beer bar over a well lubricated few days in Vilnius.

Spunka

We bolted out the door after arriving in a chilly Vilnius and were in desperate need of a refreshment and some snacks.  Spunka delivered ten fold.  Located in the very cool Uzupis, a neighbourhood within Vilnius that declared itself a republic in 1997 and has its own constitution*, flag and anthem, we enjoyed a few great Lithuanian micros and received an introduction to "bread chips".  Yes, bread chips.

Bread chips are the best rye bread that you've ever eaten (sorry Germany) that have then been deep fried and covered in raw garlic.  Best beer snack ever?  Possibly.  Worst passion killer ever?  Yes, even worse than your nana's knickers.

Spunka was just what we needed to acclimatise back to Eastern Europe.

Snekutis (Uzupis) 

Time for a change of scenery.  More bread chips, this time with a garlic sauce, and more pig's ears (we hadn't really left Spain behind just yet).

Busi Trecias

House brewed dark lagers, the best goddamn pig's ear we've ever eaten (and we are connoisseurs of that part of the pig now) and the Lithuanian speciality beer snack of split peas and bacon for the win!

Bambalyne

The following day we headed here and opted for a v enjoyable DIPA and our first Baltic Porter in the Baltics!  We also got talking to a couple of Belorussians here that enjoyed their conversation with us so much that they handed us 1,700 Belarus Rubbles upon leaving (the equivalent of about 18 Aussie cents...).

You've got to love a good cellar bar and this is indeed a goodie.

Snekutis (Old Town)

The Old Town sister to the Uzupis bar.  This one's a touch more clean cut than the Uzupis location but it stocks a good tap and bottled beer selection and does a mean zeppelin - a meaty filled dumpling that's covered in garlic sauce and is funnily enough shaped like a zeppelin.  Coming here you also get to be served by the quite bizarre, very eccentric owner who is somewhat of a cult figure within the Lithuanian beer scene.  He's cult enough that people ask to get photos with him.

Unfortunately you feel like the ramshackle, everything you can ever imagine hanging from a ceiling Uzupis location is his home.  He doesn't look at home at the Old Town location.

No Sugar

The Beer Gods are beings of refined taste and with good beer must come good coffee.  They certainly delivered at No Sugar.  They also delivered on the best looking barista front too.  But don't tell Nix I said that.

A Monumental City 

Vilnius' other big love is monuments.  Here are but a couple of the more interesting ones.

That was it for Vilnius (and Lithuania).

*we didn't get a photo but after taking photos of the Uzupis constitution a dog dropped off a barker's egg right in front of it.  A dog has the right to be a dog. 

The Recap - Eastern Europe (and around)

Eastern Europe.  The region where at times you feel as though a Western European city has been gifted to a South East Asian government, which as you can imagine can sometimes be very trying but at the same time very interesting and very different to what we're used to.

Over our month and a bit in the region we met some beautiful and very generous people, ate some great food, drank copious quantities of spirits distilled from everything you can think of and have left wanting more and cannot wait to get back to the region in summer to delve deeper.

The Ticks

• Beer snacks and food in general in Czech.  We had no idea how much we were going to grow to love this nation's food.  Just brilliant. 
• Dogs EVERYWHERE in Romania, every train station that you stop at has its own welcoming and farewelling dog pack. 
• Zdiar actually gave us snow! 
• Christmas markets. 
• The Octogon in Budapest for NYE is mental. 
• Viennese coffeehouses.  So fancy, so traditional, so cool, so good. 
• The salamanders at Home Made Hostel. 
• Rail and bus services in Czech actually do work like clockwork.  They were even more reliable than Germany's.  Gasp. 
• The Budapest coffee scene.  Something that again took us by surprise and gave us a much needed taste of home. 
• Romanian "boobies" 

The Crosses

• The speed of trains in Serbia and Romania.  Whilst they actually allow you to enjoy the countryside as it slowly drifts by, sometimes you just want to get there and not take an hour to do 20 kilometres. 
• The hype behind Bratislava.  Sorry but it was lost on us. 
• Water that gives you the shits in Serbia and Romania.
• Not being able to find traditional Hungarian food in Budapest. 
• ATMs that eat your card in Bratislava. 
• Unfortunately every place that we visited we found ourselves saying, "wouldn't this place be great in summer". 
• Where is the snow? 

The Food 

Christmas Markets - the "tradelink" in Brno, hands down.  We've tried about five or six others throughout the region now and none of them have come close.

The Rest - Czech garlic soup and pickled trout from U Černého Vola .  This was a tough one and there are about five other things that we ate in Czech that could've taken this.  Czech food wins, that's the moral of the story.

The Booze

Christmas Markets - the wine punč at Český Budějovice that was packed full of sultanas and macerated strawberries.  So good when the temperature is hovering around zero and your fingers feel like icey poles.

The Rest - rakia/palinca/fire water/slivovitz/slivovica/brandy.  Call it what you will, this drink is now synonymous with Eastern Europe for us and it will feel like we're catching up with an old friend anytime that we have it again throughout our lives.  This drink is quite possibly the most memorable thing about our time in Eastern Europe.

We would've already been in Morocco for a week once you read this so look forward to sheep's heads, goat's testicles and year old preserved camel meat.  The regularity of those posts will depend on us getting decent internet connections. 

There's one more post on its way before the Morocco ones begin to (hopefully) roll though, it's a goodie.  At least I think it is anyway... 

Vampire Hunting Across Transylvania - Sighişoara and Braşov

Vlad Țepeș Dracula v Bram Stoker's Dracula.  Bran Castle v the castle referred to in Bram Stoker's book.  Reality v myth.  Fact v fiction.  Certainty v possibility.  What you choose to believe and accept along the Vampire trail in Romania will shape your journey.

The "facts" are that Vlad Țepeș Dracula was born to Vlad Dracul and he rose to prominence as somewhat of a hero in the region for his role in freeing the Romanian people from the Ottoman rule.  He, maybe erroneously so, has since been regarded as somewhat of a villain under the moniker of 'Vlad the Impaler' due to his predilection of impaling his victims' heads on stakes.

The fiction is provided though Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' where a young lawyer travels to Transylvania to assist Count Dracula in a real estate acquisition and stays with Dracula within his castle.  He soon suspects that Dracula is not all as he seems and upon waking up to two females, fangs exposed, ready to go at his neck and having previously noted Dracula's lust for blood, quickly flees.

It's the crossover and mishmash of the fact and fiction that has generated a tourism industry around a bevy of what ifs, maybes and possibilities.  So, like everyone here before us, we're in Romania on the hunt for Vampires.

Sighişoara

We'd come to Sighişoara to begin our journey along the Vampire trail as it's alleged that this is the city where Vlad was born.  However, with the positives of travelling in the low season come the negatives.  Whilst it feels like you're cheating the system when you pay for two beds in a ten bed dorm and no one else is in it, you also run the risk that things may be closed.

In this case, the house where Vlad is supposed to have been born in was closed for renovations.  There's now a restaurant in the building and we'd even prepared ourselves to go and indulge some guilty pleasures and drink Dracula's blood and Dracula's blood soup, which are really just red wine and tomato soup.

The best we could do was a picture of Nix out the front of his house, one of the "official" plaque and photographic evidence of a potential attack.  Coincidence?  I think not.

In saying that, the rest of Sighişoara did not disappoint and confirmed for us again why UNESCO heads around doffing its cap to cities and other various landmarks.  I'll let the photos do the talking here.

Brașov

Being the intrepid travellers that we are, paying $45 each (an entire day's full budget) to go on a tour to see a castle that the castle in Bram Stoker's may have been based on didn't really appeal to us.  So instead we payed $9 to go there and back on local transport.

You arrive in Bran surrounded by more tat than you've ever seen in your life.  You then pay the equivalent of $8 to enter Bran Castle.

To use Nix's words, "I'm not sure what I expected but I expected more".  That statement hits the nail on head.

You wander through what is a pretty plain castle with plaques pointing out rooms that the Queen used as a toilet, a candlestick that was used in a movie about Dracula and a "secret passageway" that had a very obvious door leading to it.  Finally, after what seemed like a thousand steps, you reach two rooms with some token information regarding Vlad and Dracula and...  that's it!

You then exit through aforementioned tat, are half heartedly convinced into entering a "haunted house" by some strange werewolf/vampire guy and then leave Bran wondering, is that it?  Is that Transylvania?  Is that Romania?  Maybe it is...

The most exciting part of the trip for me was trying to throw rocks through the frozen lakes next to the castle.

Other highlights of Brașov were servings of brains in preparation for our next destination and finally trying the "boobies" (delicious doughnut things made with some sort of curd in them) that I shouldn't have left until our last day in Romania!

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