Entries about history

Once we arrived at our hostel, we spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening walking around the centre of Tallinn seeing the sights like the Town Hall and the city walls. The centre itself is very small, which was great as we had a very short amount of time in the city.

After seeing buildings many centuries old, our last sight was the "Linnahall", a Soviet built concert hall on the edge of the sea. Once you climb up the steps on top of the building, you get a great view of the Gulf of Tallinn and can see all the ships leaving the country.

We started the day by walking along the edge of the old city walls, from where we were staying, in the market area, towards the Freedom monument and Laima clock tower.

Afterwards we went towards the river, visiting the castle area, before coming back across the centre of the city. However by this time it was only 2pm, and so perhaps we should have stayed in bed! We therefore decided to go back to our hostel and rest before going for dinner and another early night before our coach to Estonia the next day.

The hill is a pilgrimage site for Christians, and contains more than 200,000 crosses of varying sizes. Three times in its history it has been destroyed, but each time it has been rebuilt. Once there the site was full with tourists, however most of whom had arrived on coach trips (a pity that with a bit better infrastructure many more people like us could also visit). We also decided that as we had quite a few Litas left over we would purchase a Cross and place it with a message on the hill.

Afterwards we made our long way back to the bus stop to wait for the bus, where we met a couple from Huddersfield - although my sister didn't understand anything they said, and it turns out they were doing the reverse of what we were..and were on their way to Vilnius from Riga and the rest of the Baltic states.

Once we made it back to the centre of Šiauliai, we decided to buy with the rest of the Lithuanian money we had left, food for breakfast and lunch in our next destinations - however miscounting exactly how much we had at the end meant at the tills we were short by 8 sentimas (about 2p), which luckily we let off for before boarding our minibus to Riga.

Eventually we arrived in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania at 1:30pm local time (2 hours ahead of British time) and took the bus into the city before walking to our hotel. Vilnius, like the other cities we were visiting were all on the small side, and so walking around them to see everything is an easy job. Having the rest of the first day and the whole of the second day in the first city meant we could have a relaxing start after our very early wake up, and so we decided to walk around the city centre which was the closest part of the city and then have an early night - little did we realise this meant 8pm local time!

Having had a very nice rest, the second day we woke to feel very relaxed and stress free - ideal for a long walk up a hill!

Having seen the town hall and many churches the day before, the second day involved us walking back through the city centre, past the parliament towards the Cathedral Square. Luckily today was a much nicer day with blue skies and the sun shining - ideal T-shirt weather! As yesterday it hammered down with rain as we were walking, leaving us drenched. After visiting the Cathedral, we walked up the main shopping street towards the Parliament building and the KGB museum.

The museum would give us the most saddening part of our trip, where we went down to the former torturing rooms that were in use until Lithuania broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991 - the year I was born. Although seeing the execution chamber and rooms used to torture people was not the most pleasing thing to look at, much like visiting the concentration camp in Germany I did in 2009, it is a very eye opening experience and definitely worth the visit.

After visiting the museum, we crossed the river and walked along the other side of the city, seeing what must have been our 7th bride of the day - we then crossed the bridge back into the city seeing a total of three on the same bridge! We still don't understand why...

After seeing the whole of the city our last place to visit was the Three Cross Monument on the top of the hill overlooking the city - Although it was a long walk in hot weather, the view was definitely worth it, as we could look over everything we had just seen.

Firstly, I went to the European Parliament, where there was free access to the debating chamber twice a day. Afterwards I went to Jubelpark followed by Brussels' most famous attraction - the Atomium.

After visiting the attractions on the outskirts of the city I went to visit the Royal Palace, where there was free entry for the summer and then the city centre.

Having been a very busy day I went for an early night and the next day I took the Eurostar back to London in the middle of the day. I then had a 45 minute changeover at St. Pancras back to Luton, where I met with two of my Erasmus friends who were visiting London for the last few days.

And that's where my Erasmus journey ends, after just over 10 months of living in Germany, I am finally back in Dunstable. I still have many more travels to go this summer before going back to University in September, but for Germany - it's over.

Thanks for following my travels!
Kevin.