Photo by Chris Keenan 

In keeping with the Company’s Ethical & Environmental Policy, members of the Company will travel from the UK to Greece by train, bus and ferry in order to minimise carbon emissions.  We’ll be taking an overnight train from Paris to Rome, followed by an overnight ferry from Bari in south east Italy to western Greece, and the same on the way back.  As well as helping to save the planet, it should be a bit of an adventure too.

We left Vilnius wishing we’d had more time there, and headed for the train that would take us to the border with Poland. While we were finding the platform, we met a fellow rucksack carrier in the form of Jorn, an amiable chap from Norway (hi Jorn, if you’re reading!) who proved to be an entertaining companion for the very, very long journey to Warsaw.

We hadn’t really had any hassle on the journey up to this point, so it came as a bit of a shock when two youngish Russian guys burst into our compartment, blind drunk at midday, and all over the place. We endured ten minutes or so of their shouting at us in a language none of us understood, but as their hands wandered more, and they got more aggressive in trying to communicate, the three of us made a swift exit to another compartment. After we left there was massive crash from their compartment which alerted the conductor. She had stern words, and ejected them from the train at the next stop, where they were met by the police on the platform. I was glad we’d left when we did.

After an hour’s wait at a desolate station near the border, the Polish train arrived to take us on to Warsaw. The hours (all nine of them) passed slowly as we chugged through the Polish countryside, stopping for ages at every station. We were glad we’d stocked up on food at the supermarket beforehand, as there wasn’t even so much as a soggy ham sandwich or overpriced cup of coffee to be had. Jorn had brought even more food than we had, and managed at least ten cakes and a litre of Coke during the last five hours of the journey! Near the end of the trip, we were treated to some live entertainment by a three year old Polish girl called Carolina, who along with her mum joined us in our compartment for an hour or so. She started off shy, but by the end she was performing ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ over and over again (she’d learnt it from ‘Teletubbies’ on TV apparently).

We made a special detour to check out one of the few remaining parts of the Jewish ghettos from WWII (much of these were demolished in Soviet times, along with most of Warsaw). After getting lost in warrens of depressing post-war Soviet apartment blocks, we were in no doubt that we were in the right place when we finally happened upon a back courtyard of the tenements dating from the early 1900s.
They have been left almost untouched, and unoccupied, as a memorial of sorts, and the atmosphere was thick with what had taken place there. There was a dank smell, and a palpable feeling of silence, stillness and loss. Life went on all around though, and people were living in the newer flats right next door. We wondered how it must be to live with such a place on your doorstep. It was a moving end to our trip, and a reminder of how different all of the places we’d travelled through since Helsinki were only a few years ago, and certainly within our lifetimes.

Well it certainly was a long way round, took a lot longer than flying, and was pretty exhausting at times. But we saw so many new countries and beautiful cities, had an adventure, and started to get a grasp of just how big Europe really is. Bring on the next trip!

On arrival at our hotel it couldn’t have been a more different story. The girl at reception appeared to be smiling for Lithuania! Our cash seemed to be stretching a long way here, so we joined the Lithuanian glitterati at a swish restaurant called Pegasus, where I had tagliatelle (yes, back to Italian) followed by crème brulee with a satisfyingly crisp top. Then on with our tour of the ‘Skybars’ of the Baltics (we just couldn’t resist!) – this one also had a great view, with more of the historic buildings lit up, but involved a much longer trek to get there. There seemed to be a lot more money washing around in Vilnius compared with the other Baltic capitals – there were flashy Audi and VW garages on the outskirts, the streets seemed grander and cleaner, and the buildings were large baroque affairs like ornate wedding cakes. In summary: we liked it a lot – decadence at bargain basement prices.

In the morning we thought it would be best to go to the bus station and buy our tickets for the bus to Riga later in the afternoon. So carrying all our stuff we started out on our mission. We got on one tram, then came back one stop on the same one, asked some studenty types where to go since we had no clue by this point, got back on the tram into town, then stood looking bewildered at a complicated map of the Tallinn public transport system, pretty much back where we started an hour earlier. Thankfully our guardian angel turned up at that point in the form of a very lovely Estonian lady, who spoke good English and worked as a tourist guide. She showed us the way, and eventually we reached the bus station and sorted everything out.
Back in the Old Town, we had a good wander around the beautiful cobbled streets, and gawped at the turrets and pastel coloured historic buildings. The place is so consistent and well preserved that it feels a bit like a Medieval Town Theme Park, but not in a tacky way.