Honkers

For those of you keeping track:

I'm back on Australian soil, safe, alive and lilting slightly to starboard. I've decided I don't like planes. I'm tossing up whether I really have to get the plane back to Townsville tomorrow. Can't say I'm sure there is any real benefit in it. I can just do my job from Brisbane, can't I? We've technically got a campus here...

Hong Kong was fascinating in a grotesque, hyper-real kind of way. Or maybe it just seemed grotesque and hyper-real because I'd just spent ten hours on a plane and had managed to move six hours forward in time while doing it.

I made a mistake coming into Hong Kong. You see, in Australia, people in official positions read things, think about them and make judgement calls, and being honest can actually make things go faster as they are less likely to take that much time thinking about you. In Hong Kong, they do it by the book. I was not aware of this, so when I was given a health card asking me if I had any of a list of symptoms, I answered honestly that yes, I did have a running nose.

I thought anyone worth their salt would say, "Well, she's been no where near swine flu infected areas, has only one symptom on the list - and an innocuous one at that - and hasn't done any of the other things we've asked about, so she probably hasn't got swine flu." After which they would respect me for not lying to them, let me through and I'd be on my merry way.

Not so, in China. In China they have a job to do - and by George they are going to do it without equivocation or interrogation. Runny nose? Straight to the health check zone for you. Do not come out and attempt to enter this country until at least three people have looked at your form, taken your temperature and asked you questions. Yes, this will add another half-hour to the time it takes you to get to the baggage reclaim area, during which time no one will tell you what you can expect to happen to your baggage. That's your fault for having a running nose and not being Chinese.

I suppose it keeps people employed, which is important in these times.

Then my pick-up told me to go wait for him "in the carpark", neglecting to mention that there were a number of different "carparks", and this one had a particular function. I managed to navigate my way around a small European country on a bicycle, but I had great difficulty getting out of the Hong Kong airport. By the way, following signs in Hong Kong is not the most useful past-time. Half of them seem to be pointing the wrong way, the others are pointing the right way, but are missing relevant pieces of information. It's almost like the entire country is based on the principles behind the Gruen Transfer (thank you, ABC, for telling me about that).

You can almost imagine the city planners chuckling to themselves: "Let's put a shopping mall directly in front of the park, and then make all of the signs to the park direct people back to the entrance of the shopping mall - even if they're already in the store! Hahahahaha! Ooh, and then we can neglect to tell them in any way, shape or form that they have to go out the side of the building and ride up four flights of escalators to get to this park. They'll spend so much money in our country because they're stuck in a mall, and when they finally get to the park they'll be so tired and thirsty that they'll spend more money in the restaurant. Mwuahahahaha!"

I have to admit it sort of worked on me. I bought I CD while I was stuck at the mall. I even looked at the clothes, before my natural aversion to paying AUD$150 for a dress kicked in. Sadly for them, I'm the kind of person who still goes to the park - even though it is nigh impossible to find, it's raining cats and dogs and there is thunder and lightening. I did buy an iced tea in the garden restaurant, but after that I refused to spend any more money until I picked up some lunch from the train station on the way back. Take that, you capitalist dogs!

When I first got to my hotel, I was dying to go for a swim or something to clear the cobwebs from the flight, but my hotel didn't have a pool and I didn't have any togs, so I went for a run instead. I gotta tell you, going for a run in down-town Kowloon is not the easiest thing in the world. It's full to the brim with people - all hurrying, but not getting anywhere very fast. It's a fight for any and all available space, physically, visually and possibly even spiritually.

No body moves to one side, no body stops for a second. It's like they're afraid to, because someone will come along and put a newsstand where they happen to be standing, or try to sell them something they don't want if they're still for too long. Going for a run in that area was like some strange, thrilling game of dodgems.

In my efforts to keep moving for more than three seconds at a time I ended up cutting through any available space, turning corners at alarming rates and changing directions dozens of times. I saw a whole pile of amazing stalls and markets, but I have no idea how I found them or where they were. There was a whole section with people selling dried herbs, fruit, live chickens, stressed-out fish (I'm sure being kept alive in two inches of water can't be good for the quality of the produce) and hardware. Heck, I even managed to see an argument between two stall holders turn into an attempted knife attack. That slowed the human traffic down, I can tell you.

And then there was the Ladies Market. An entire street filled with stalls with people trying to sell you cheap Chinese knock-offs of anything you could possibly knock-off: T-shirts, handbags, watches, CDs...

I said somewhere to someone that visiting Singapore was like visiting the future - that it was so much like the futuristic cities you see in movies and television shows that I couldn't tell who was copying who - the designers of the shows or the designers of the city. Well, Hong Kong was a bit like that too, but one of those distopian type futures that you see in Ridley Scott films - or like the boarder planets in Firefly with the old and poor set right next to the new, high tech and wealthy. I got the feeling the people I saw selling chickens in the market never took the MTR into Admiralty to shop at the Mall - even though it was maybe a five minute trip...

Such was the impression of Hong Kong I managed to get in the day I was there. Oh, I also decided that, as my holiday was over and therefore wouldn't be ruined if I got food poisoning and died, I didn't have to be so careful about what I ate. I tried at least three things I didn't recognise, and a number of things I had never eaten before (like eel and sea snail). Hey, if the luke-warm keefir in Pärnu didn't kill me, I'm sure I'll survive whatever I put in my mouth yesterday.

If not, let's assume it was whatever that deep-fried stuff I had at the market was...

Viljandi, Pärnu, Tallinn again

Well, the weather made it difficult to see that much of Tartu, but I still like what I saw. It looked like a very 'liveable' city - and oh, so definitely a university town. The campus of the university was basically the town center, with university buildings scattered throughout the place: next to shops, tucked in with council buildings, doubling up as museums and gardens...

Coming from Australia, it was quite a shock to see such a celebration of intelligence. Almost every statue or monument in the place was dedicated to a scholar of some description - a university alumnus or luminary who contributed something to the literature, art or science of the country. You almost felt like aspiring to greater things, just walking around the parks in town.

I still did not see any of those soul crushingly ugly apartments. There were some apartments that weren't pretty, but they at least had character. They could still make you smile for some reason. I'm sure the ugly ones must be there, somewhere, though.

Viljandi was my first destination traveling by bus. It was also the first guesthouse I had to choose for myself since coming to Estonia. Fortunately I lucked out and got a comfortable one (Endla Guesthouse, if anyone's asking). It was cheap, but nice and charming, in its way. I shared the place with a busload of Finnish Jehovah's Witnesses. I think I was handed three tracts within less than three hours. I suspect at least one of those tracts was in Finnish, rather than Estonian. Not that I would have been able to read the Estonian ones, anyway.

Viljandi is a very pretty little down. There used to be a castle with a moat involved, and now the moat is this funny little mini-valley meandering through the town, and the ruins of the castle sit at the top of the park, overlooking the river and the beach. It has a beach - it's a weird little inland beach that boarders the edge of the main lake, but it's perfectly fine for kicking a ball around and having a picnic with family and friends (provided it's not raining). It was freezing cold when I got there. As in, the-blood-in-your-fingers-doesn't-quite-flow-properly kind of cold.

The town is home to the Folk Music academy (that's the kind of country Estonia is - there's a whole academy dedicated to preserving and exploring the musical heritage of the people). My 'cousin', Johanna, is studying the fiddle and some funky Finno-Ugric harp/lyre/fiddle thingy there. She did tell me the name of that other instrument. One day I might be able to find it again.

You can easily see everything of interest in the town in a day. I managed to get there in time for the first day of the Hanseatic festival, which involved a market place with a hell of a lot of stalls taking up about four streets and a couple of squares. They were selling everything from smallgoods to wallpaper (shame it was raining, really).

From there, another bus to Pärnu, 'the summer capital of Estonia'. Quite frankly, I was a little bored with Pärnu. Sure, it had a real beach (one bordering on the sea), and that beach was kind of impressive, but I felt I'd seen everything to see in half a day. If I was camping somewhere with a book, it would be a nice enough place to do that (but I'd rather do something like that in Viljandi).

The hotel at which I stayed was the Grand Victoria, and that was quite alright. The room was pokey (but I have learnt that pokey rooms are my punishment for travelling alone), but the restaurant was magnificent - and they put on one heck of a breakfast. One of the highlights of the trip, really.

Then back to Tallinn (again by bus), to find myself in the second worst place I've been in since coming to Estonia. I actually ended up asking for a new room, as the bed was so uncomfortable that it made sleeping next to impossible. The second room they gave me has a better bed, but the bathroom isn't quite finished. I keep reminding myself I chose this hotel because it was cheap, and I could have forked out for the Spa place if I wanted flash surroundings.

I can't shake the feeling that the people who own the hotel aren't the people who originally set it up. It's like someone sold it on a w-i-w-o basis, and it was bought by a bunch of young Russians who thought owning a 'trendy' hotel might be a bit of a lark. I'm probably way of the mark, but it feels like that.

Anyway, one more night in Estonia, and then it's back on the plane(s) for another marathon trip home. I have to admit, I'm tired now. Ready to find a bit of normality. Whatever that may be...

Tudulinna, Kallaste, Tartu

Well, quite frankly the last half of the cycling tour was a bit odd, so these thoughts are a bit scattered. Vabandust.

The two longest days on the bike were long. I have not said much about the cycling side of things, but it is both a great way to get around and a pain in the backside (literally and figuratively) at the same time. The first day of cycling I was, as mentioned, not feeling the best, and I thought the entire trip was doomed.

The second day - to Palmse - was magic. The pills I had bought from the pharmacist had kicked in, the scenery was marvelous, and I was in high spirits. I stopped off at manor houses, museums, small shops in the middle of nowhere and käsitöö stalls in the front yards of farmers. I made excellent time, and did not get lost at all, and found my way into Palmse with grace, aplomb and barely a hair out of place. It was a good day.

The third day, into Rakvere, was shorter but seemed longer. My feet and butt both hurt and the highlight of the trip was a late lunch I had at some place called Forell Haljala. The place I had planned to stop for lunch was not a town with a shop so much as a hamlet without one, so I had to push on longer than I would have liked.

However, this Forell place (forell is Eesti for trout) was worth the stop. It was beautiful, the food was good (and massive), and the people who lived there and ran the joint were friendly. They actually caught the fish from their pond - to order! I think that was the first time something has been specifically caught and killed for me instead of lying around dead in a shelf somewhere. Freshly caught, barbecued trout, really good chips and a nice fresh salad - and all more food than I could eat. Well worth it.

Rakvere was... well... let us say I would rather have stayed the extra day in Palmse than Rakvere. At least the break from riding helped me get my wind back. The fourth day on the bike was okay... until I shot straight past the place I was supposed to be staying at and continued on for another three or four kilometers. Then I had to ask a local for directions. She spoke a dialect of Estonian that had a few Russian words thrown in for good measure. I knew just enough of both languages to work out that she said here and there a few times.

Anyway, I eventually found my way back to where I was staying. It was not, in fact, in Tudulinna at all (which my directions had implied) but a few clicks north of that town. Quite a comfortable place - with a hell of a lot of wood everywhere. Walls, furniture, decorations... all carved wood. It looked like it might be a heck of a summer camp, but I was clearly there during the off season. My host did not speak more than a few words of English. I did not speak more than a few words of Estonian. We managed. I was exhausted.

I was asked a few times if I spoke German, as that would have made things easier. I must remember to learn German before coming back to Europe. Maybe French, too.

The trip to Kallaste (actually, a place just south of Kallaste), was exceptionally long. Only, on paper, on or two km longer than the trip the day before (which I had actually exceeded, so in theory it was actually shorter), but my get-up-and-go got up and went at about the 40km mark, leaving me with 25km to pull out of thin air, with nothing in the tank.

I passed the best place to stop for lunch at morning tea time, and spent the rest of the day buying little things to keep me going, thinking I would get something more substantial at Kallaste, or at least make up for it with dinner. At Kallaste, I ended up buying another little thing (a tub of yogurt), and as luck would have it, this guesthouse was the one place on my list that A) did not serve dinner, and B) did not have a restaurant nearby. A fact not mentioned in my notes. Thankfully I had some food in my pack, and my kind hosts at Willipu Guesthouse took pity on me and gave me some of the dinner they had made for themselves.

The ride into Tartu was quite enjoyable. It was a shorter trip (even shorter than it was described on paper), and I managed to see some nice scenery and a museum dedicated to Joseph Liiv. The docent (was she also the curator?) gave me a student discount because I said I was hoping to study in Tartu in the foreseeable future. She said to call it a good-luck charm.

Mercifully, this stretch of the trip had undulations in the road. The trip to Kallaste had been mostly flat and, if anything, slightly uphill. I could not coast for any of it, thus dragging it out all the more. This stretch had some nice rolls, letting me rest occasionally.

Tartu is nice. Really livable. I can definitely see myself coming back to spend some quality time here, down the track. I decided to spend an extra day here so that I could spend one day just toodling about the place on the bicycle, and the other day checking out the museums. The toodling day was most successful and highly enjoyable. I even met up with my distant cousin, Airi, for lunch, which was nice. Today, however, it is raining.

Raining, and really, really cold. I keep getting flashbacks of a horrible knock-knock joke I read as a child:

Knock knock
Who is there?
Martini
Martini who?
Martini hand is frozen from being left out here in the cold.

(I told you it was terrible).

Tomorrow I have to get halfway across town to put the bike on one bus, and then get myself back to the bus station for people to travel to Viljandi. I suspect there shall be taxis involved, especially if I do not get myself an umbrella shortly...

Apartments

To be fair, Rakvere isn't the only Estonian town with ugly apartment buildings. In fact, I think they're compulsory. It seems as if every town I rode through/past/whatever since leaving Rakvere had at least one blog of dead-ugly apartments.

I don't know why... Quite often they're the only "blight" on an otherwise lovely old town. Was it some Soviet plot to make sure the humble Estonian knew that, no matter how pretty the lake-side fishing village they lived in might be, their soul still belonged to the state? Look up and see the uniform, spiritless, characterless building, and know your place.

Or was it just some sort of affordable housing initiative? "That town is big enough to have a shop, it must need an apartment building. May as well make it one of those ugly ones we're sticking every where else."

So far I haven't seen any in Tartu, but I can't help shake the feeling they must be around here somewhere.

Oh, and while I haven't been attacked by any bears recently, I have been attacked by bugs. Damn bugs.

Kaberneeme, Palmse, Rakevere

Kaberneeme

A little beach shack/summer house town high on the Estonian coastline, Kaberneeme is one of those typical fishing village type places which look fabulous when the sun is out, and utterly miserable when it's raining. It started raining shortly after I got there (mercifully after I'd stopped riding for the day), and kept doing it on and off for the rest of the afternoon/evening. The next day the sun was out, the weather was glorious and the place looked brilliant... well, except for the huge mounds of stinky mud created by the construction site.

The Kaberneeme Guesthouse is this weird contradiction. On the outside, it doesn't look terribly inviting - especially as it is situated between a shipping yard, a construction site and a dumping ground for assorted large pieces of oddly shaped concrete. There are some bits of beach that have been left to look pretty, but generally speaking the outside of the place is not a good look. Inside, however, is a lovely, funky little hotel/restaurant which plays lovingly with the nautical theme. Very comfortable, very intersting. Quite nice, really. Oh, and there are lots of birds dancing about the place - quite nice to watch in the early morning sunshine.

Palmse


Palmse hotel is situated in the old brewery behind the Manor house (now a museum), and the whole complex is quite possibly one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in all my life. They're fixing up the grounds and some of the buildings at the moment, so it was a bit of a construction site as well, but you can tell it's going to be magnificent when they have finished. It was a wonderful place to spend time, and I felt truly recharged and edified just by being able to walk around the grounds.

The hotel itself has been refurbished recently, and everything was so new it squeaked. The food was unbelievably cheap, considering how good it was, and the service was very friendly.

I'm going to go back there someday.

Rakvere

Rakvere is not so pretty. I think the town is slowly dying, and their response to the death is to basically shrug their shoulders and say "eh, whatever". The area where I'm staying has a lot of derelect buildings, and the local kids have been having fun rebuilding them in their preferred image.

The local kids are quite amusing, actually. They're trying to do that "I'm so tough, wearing hoodies and hanging out with my gang late at night" thing, which looks weird when "late at night" is still quite a lovely afternoon. The whole hoodies-and-bmx after dark thing doesn't quite work when it's still light.

At some point, during the 80s, someone decided that apartments didn't have to be beautiful, and so they created some of the most soul destroyingly ugly buildings in the world. A lot of them seem to have been put here, in Rakevere. I've never seen so many ugly apartment buildings in the one place.

All of this, right nextdoor to a large stretch of parkland with the ruins of an old castle in the middle of it. Quite a strange juxtaposition.

Also, I couldn't find a laundromat. Three different people told me to go to three different places, and there wasn't a laundromat in any of them. It doesn't bode well for the town...

So far, so...

Well, Singapore was warm. Very, very warm. I thought it looked like an interesting place, and part of me wouldn't mind spending more time there, but I'm not sure I'm interested in returning to that climate.

I've decided I hate 12 hour flights. Especially when they are followed by another six hours spent variously waiting in airports and taking even more flights. I usually fly fairly well, but by the end of that I was willing to stay here in Estonia simply to avoid getting on another plane.

I like Tallinn. It's a nice looking place and surprisingly easy to get around. I successfully found a laundromat and "achieved laundry" (hey, it felt like an achievement) yesterday, so I felt pretty good about myself.

I woke up yesterday feeling strangely depressed. I think it was a combination of the flights and the hostel (hostels always depress me. If it wasn't for the sake of expedience - the tour and the hostel are run by the same people - I would have gone fore some place without the "s"). By the time I had achieved laundry, walked around for a few hours and bought some things I didn't need to buy, I was feeling much more positive about it all.

The cycle tour of Tallinn in the afternoon was great. It took me places I probably wouldn't have gotten to on my own, and I saw a lot of very pretty sites. I'd recommend it to anyone.

However... I don't know if I've eaten something that's disagreeing with me, or if I'm coming down with something, but last night my stomach started playing up. I was up almost all night with the rotten thing, and I'm starting to freak out about the idea of being sick on a bike in the middle of a strange country. I start the "grand tour" today, but I may have to rethink some of my plans.

Damn physical realities. Always getting in the way...

Just a handful of days to go

Come Friday I'll be heading to Brisbane. Come Saturday I'll be leaving the country.

Yep, the great "Estonian Adventure" begins at the end of this week. Not long now before I foolishly embark on a cycling tour of everyone's favourite small European country.

It's just a short tour, with no more than 75km in any one day, but that 75km is about the limit of my endurance, so hopefully I won't drop dead before I reach my destination.

I'm going to try to remember to bring a camera with batteries, and maybe a USB cable so I can upload photos here when I get the chance.

Stay tuned, I'll try to make sure I keep everyone informed of my continued existence.

Hopefully I won't get eaten by a bear.