GE 2016: Blasting Through Baltic Europe

Finally back on internet and with 5 seconds to spare.  We have been on the road for 5 days straight now... hitting 4 new countries for me along the way (Woohoo). Bill dropped us in Warsaw, Poland and we had to travel through Lithuania (Vilnius), Latvia (Ryga) and Estonia (Tallinn) and end up in Finland (Helsinki).  It has been a wild ride. Everything I brought with me is filthy and smelly and, when I open my suitcase, there is an odor like a sewage pit.  I have cursed every extra bra and pair of socks in my suitcase as I've lugged it through the countries (although Booth has helped out quite a bit).  But we had some truly WOW moments.  Who knew that these old Soviet bloc countries are so nice?

We traveled with Savannah and Bop as well as Wendy and Georgia for this leg but we split up during the days - when we got to the various cities - so people could chose the scavenges they most wanted to do in each place. But we did get to spend some time with everyone, especially eating together.

Rainey and I have been running hard and have completed over 125 scavenges so I am only going to hit the true highlights:

WARSAW, POLAND
We landed in Warsaw and got to spend almost a full day there before we headed out on an overnight bus to Lithuania

- Get close to the heart of Chopin
Believe it or not, Chopin decreed that when he died his heart should be cut from his body and returned to his homeland of Poland.  So his heart was removed and stuffed into a wall in a church in Warsaw. You can't make this stuff up.

- Find the narrowest house in the world
It is called the Keret House and it is probably 6 feet wide and looks like an AC vent... not a house.  We walked by it 2 or 3 times before we figured out we had found it.

- Visit the statue of the child soldier
Very cute statute dedicated to the youths who helped during the Polish Uprising in 1944 by relaying messages, starting fires etc.

- The Invisible Experience
Although it was not in the scavenge book, this place seemed too interesting to miss... so we signed up for an hour long experience simulating being blind.  We were led into 5 separate pitch black rooms where we had to negotiate, walk through and describe an apartment, a city street, a jungle, coffee shop and an art museum. The art was all sculptures that we had to identify through touch alone:  Atlas with the world on his shoulders, replica of Michelangelo's David, a seated buddha... you get the picture. Really gives you a new perspective of how incredibly difficult it is to be blind.  Our guide was blind and freely answered questions about his own trials and tribulations. This event got an easy A+.

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
We arrived in Vilnius at 6:30AM after a long, hard night on a bus. The bonus scavenge for this day was to sleep in an AirBnB place and, after many false starts, I found a place that could hold all six of us near to the main city center. I've never used AirBnB before so I probably missed the part of the listing where it told me that we would be sharing the house with the owner (an older man who did not speak a word of English and who we promptly nicknamed "Daddy") and that there were no actual beds in the house, only couches.  Daddy met us the front door at 7AM with wild hair and fuzzy slippers, freshly awakened.  He has clearly not cleaned the one and only bathroom in several years.  The whole house smelled of moth balls and damp.  It was extremely "modest" accommodations ... to say the least... but it did provide a flat surface for all 6 of us to sleep and it was in a good location. Plus we laughed ourselves silly about where we found ourselves (at Daddy's in Vilnius... no place we ever expected to be).

Rainey and my bed ... a fold-down couch with no sheets and only a musty blanket.

- Climb to the Three Crosses
You could see the crosses on the hill overlooking town.  So hike uphill we did... in the rain

Note to self.  The people in Lithuania are INCREDIBLY unpleasant.  They seem to get true enjoyment from being as rude and unhelpful as possible.  So while the town of Vilnuis was nice, I am fairly sure this is the one and only time I ever need to be in Lithuania. I have no idea what caused the bees in their bonnets, or if they only hate Americans, but the country has a permanent scowl.

RYGA, LATVIA
After sleeping at Daddy's,we took a bus early the next day to Ryga and spend five hours racing around the town before heading on to Estonia. It was Independence Day in Ryga so the town was celebrating with parades and speeches and lots of activities.  Great energy.

- Rent a bike to do scavenges
This is my favorite scavenge as having bikes makes everything closer and quicker. Rainey and I found a place to rent bicycles pretty close to the bus station, the weather was sunny and cool and the day in Ryga turned out really fun.

-What was Central Market originally?  Assemble a travel picnic.
This market is in an old Zeppelin hangar (how cool is that?).

TALLINN, ESTONIA
We arrived in Tallinn late on Wednesday night .. via an evening bus from Ryga.  We got a hotel on the edge of the Old Town and woke up this morning to find that Tallinn is surprisingly nice.  It's an old walled city with towers every half mile or so... and they have maintained most of the ancient walls and cobbled streets.  Very quaint and some great architecture.

-Visit the Continent's oldest continuously running pharmacy.
It is in the town square and it's been open since 1422 (Yikes).

- Visit Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
I've just about had enough of temples, cathedrals and churches... but this one was a particular beauty.

- Locate a secret building that says, "There is nothing here."
Turns out that a section of a hotel in town was used by the KGB for interrogations (a/k/a tortures) and surveillance.  The door leading to that area has a sign on it denouncing that anything exists beyond the door (in Russian and Estonian).

- Take a dip in the Baltic
Since I am the designated eat-all-of-the-gross food scavenger, Rainey has to do the awful swim-in-cold-water challenges.  And he got flat down and neck dip in the freezing Baltic this morning.  What a good team mate he is.

We took an afternoon ferry from Ryga to Helsinki.  Check-in for this leg is at 11:30AM tomorrow so we're going to get up early again and try to see some of Helsinki.  The trip is almost over, which SUCKS.  In fact, Savannah leaves us at 6AM tomorrow morning to fly home.  She is skipping the last leg in Washington, DC.  When we met everyone for dinner tonight the mood was pretty somber.  "Ending" is always so much less fun than "starting."  But it has been a great Europe leg.

Sadly, the one consistent conversation theme that we've encountered on this trip, is people asking us whether all Americans are crazy since the US has nominated Donald Trump as a presidential candidate.  In fact, a repeated question was:  "This is a joke, right?" Frankly I may starting claiming to be from Canada, just to avoid the hot embarrassment.