Gdansk, Poland

If you think 'Gdansk' is a difficult one to pronounce, be advised that my local train station here is called 'Wrzeszcz'.

This is where my 2019 blog ends. (Don't all burst into tears at once). I'm not going home just yet, but I will be soon, and anyway my camera appears to have stopped working. I really don't expect you all to read my waffle without the compensating benefit of a few pretty pictures. Nor do I have any confidence about getting my camera fixed in a foreign country where I don't speak the language. It's a fair bet that they'd charge me 250 zlotys for an 'inspection fee', after which they'd put it in a cupboard for 24 hours and then tell me it can't be repaired.

Also I've decided to discontinue the tradition of ending each blog with a 'homecoming' picture, because otherwise Sunderland will always be the first thing people see on my blog when I'm between trips. It doesn't exactly lure people in.

Gdansk is nice. Nothing to write home about. Some significant history to do with World War 2 and the Solidarity trade union movement of 40-odd years ago. Further north up the coast are Sopot and Gdynia, nice seaside towns, bathed in sunshine at this time of year. My Gdansk apartment is in the Zaspa area: it's on the 6th floor and it has balconies at both front and back, through which cooling breezes make a steady one-way journey. My local Carrefour has a decent selection of imported beers. Everything's cushty.

Apart from interludes in Finland and Spain, and both parts of the island of Ireland, and now in Poland, this trip has been all about the north-western remnants of the former USSR. The three Baltic states are of course very different to Ukraine, which is in turn a long way removed from Belarus. But I enjoyed all five countries and I'd gladly go back to any or all of them.

I don't know when my 2020 trip will take place. Probably it won't be in summer, because for the past two months I've been sweating like a dyslexic on "Countdown", and I don't think I want to repeat that. Nor have I picked a continent just yet. Let's see what the visa rules look like after Brexit. It's all going to be sorted out soon, right? Right?

Enjoy the rest of 2019.

Along the Motlawa river

As above

Sopot

Sopot pier

My apartment in Zaspa

Mrozinscy?
Didn't he used to be in the Szmiths?

Edd vs Food #82
Home comforts...

Minsk, Belarus

In 1991, the only member of the Belarusian parliament to oppose the dissolution of the Soviet Union was one Alexander Lukashenko, a former collective-farm director and Soviet army official who then became president in 1994 by winning Belarus's first ever democratic election. 25 years on, guess who's still in charge?

Belarus is commonly known as 'Europe's last dictatorship' and essentially it's true. No serious opposition leader has ever stayed out of jail for long. Belarus is also the last place in Europe that retains the death penalty. Most of the economy is state-controlled, albeit often via cronyism and corruption rather than formal socialism per se. Civil society is kept on a very tight leash. In short, this is a country that goes against almost everything that I believe in.

And yet, and yet...I've hardly encountered any police or security officials. The streets and parks are clean and safe at all hours. The metro and buses are cheap and reliable. Unemployment is minimal. Nobody sleeps rough. During a night out along Zibitskaya, where the best bars are, the clientele drank deeply, laughed loudly and sang karaoke lustily; they all looked as happy and carefree as anybody else in Europe. Not much English is spoken, but people are friendly and reliable wherever you go. It's cooler here than in Kiev, and mosquito-free as far as I can tell.

Does this mean I'm suddenly converted to Soviet nostalgia and to benevolent dictatorship? Not at all. But it's certainly given me something to think about. There is a growing worldwide cynicism about our smugly complacent Western liberal-capitalist-democratic model, and we can't just laugh it off.

It's time for an innovation: sound. On the Minsk metro, each impending departure is announced by a pleasing Fmaj9 chord (that's what you get if you play an F and the next four alternate white notes on the piano), as well as "Please mind the closing doors!", spoken by a camp version of Darth Vader.  I have recorded it for your listening pleasure and it's here.

One last thing. I had a bit of bother on departure. Foreigners are supposed to register with the police if they stay longer than 5 days: it's normally the hotel's responsibility to do the paperwork, but you have to do it yourself if you're staying at a private address, and evidently that's what AirBnB apartments are. Anyway, I hadn't registered, and so all of a sudden I was an illegal alien. I spent some time being interrogated politely by two uniformed officials, both lithe young blondes of course, at the end of which I was given an administrative warning and a long confession to sign (in Belarusian). How many of you have ever brushed up against the law in a dictatorship, eh? Beat that. I am now officially a Bad Boy and I bring excitement into all your lives. You're welcome.

Church of Saints Simon & Helena, at Independence Square

Memorial to 5,000 Jews shot in this place by the Nazis during one day in 1942.
This sculpture recreates the victims being herded down into the pit.
Each figure was sculpted individually by hand.
There are pregnant women, and children clinging to their parents. One man plays a violin.

This is the headquarters of the KGB.
Yes, it's still going, and yes, they still call it that.
Apparently you're not supposed to take pictures here.
Oops.

Statue of Lenin. (Independence Square used to be called Lenin Square).
One day this will be knocked down.

Island of Tears
Memorial to soldiers killed in the Sovet-Afghan war, 1979-1989.

Museum of the Great Patriotic War (WW2)

Homely Soviet-style AirBnB apartment

Edd vs Food #81
Potato cakes
In foreign fast food joints, it's easy to avoid linguistic confusion.
Just take a pic from the menu and show it at the till.
And then you can put the photo in your blog when you forget to take a picture of the actual food.

Kiev, Ukraine

During all the long journeys and lonely walks that have filled up my travels over the years, I've spent a lot of time lost in my own thoughts, time during which I turn over many profound questions in my mind; and as my flight to Ukraine came in to land, I found myself confronting one of the profoundest questions of all...

Do chicken Kievs really come from Kiev?

The answer, it turns out, is 'maybe'. Find out more here if you really want to, and see Edd vs Food below. Furthermore, nowadays the city is often spelled Kyiv rather than Kiev, but I'm old-fashioned as you all know. Continuing on the theme of trivia, allow me to clarify that this country is called 'Ukraine' and not 'the Ukraine'. Only two countries in the world officially start with 'the': The Bahamas and The Gambia. So now you know.

By most measures Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe. However the numbers are skewed by the ongoing civil war (or insurgency, or Russian invasion, call it what you will) in the east of the country, and by wide regional disparities more generally. Kiev itself is a bustling and prosperous city. Nonetheless things here are agreeably inexpensive. Metro tickets are the equivalent of 30p, and I have a spacious new-build apartment with gloriously powerful air conditioning for just £38 a night.

As with all the former Soviet republics, there are plenty of monuments to the Great Patriotic War, aka the Second World War. Also there is a memorial commemorating the Holomodor, the man-made famine of 1932-33 which killed somewhere between 3 and 7 million people, and which you don't always hear too much about back in England. Many people deny that the famine was imposed deliberately; but even if you take the 'good intentions' argument to its absolute limit, you can't avoid the fact that those who attempted to leave the famine-stricken areas were shot, or that people eating the dead bodies of their relatives resulted only in conditions being toughened still further (there were 2,500 'convictions' for cannibalism).

For the second time on this trip, I'm reminded of the idiots back home who still walk around in 'CCCP' T-shirts. Of course, even while the famine was at its height, the policy of forced collectivisation was vigorously defended by fellow-travellers in the UK, including many of the leading cultural & intellectual figures of the time.

On a happier note, I've taken in the first football match of this trip, in which Dinamo Kiev got beat 2-1 by Shakhtar Donetsk. In my unthinking prejudice I had always assumed that Ukrainian footballers had to kick balls through snowdrifts while wearing fur coats and Cossack hats. But it's 30°C here and I was sweating in the stands. Back in my apartment, the aforementioned air conditioning has been going more or less permanently. Unfortunately I have no such luxury in the metro, which is cheap and efficient but also crowded and fearsomely hot at times. And the people are friendly, but so are the mosquitoes...sigh.

On the whole, though, Kiev is a fascinating city and the Maidan on an evening is a magical place to be. More people should come here, and certainly I think I'll be coming back one day. In the meantime, I'm heading to the airport, where it'll be time for Check-In Kiev. Ha ha.

`The Maidan, epicentre of the 2014 revolution
That revolution was not without some unpleasant elements.
But more good than bad on balance, I think.

Looking out over the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery to the Dnieper river

Humongously long escalators on the Kiev metro

St Andrew's church, overlooking Andriivskyi Descent

Kreschatyk St, the main central shopping area

Statue of Anna Akhmatova.
Regarded by many as the greatest female poet of modern times outside the English language.
Inevitably she spent much of her life censored, persecuted and impoverished by the Soviet government. 

Dinamo Kiev 1 Shakhtar Donetsk 2, at the Kiev Olympic Stadium

Comfiest digs of this trip to date.
Air-conditioned spaciousness on the 13th floor

Edd vs Food #80
Chicken Kiev, in Kiev. At the Hutorets restaurant, to be precise.
Here it's served on the bone, and there's no garlic in the butter.
Much more rewarding than that time I had Kentucky Fried Chicken in Kentucky.
But not as good as Denver Fries in Denver.

Alicante, Spain

43. Forty-bastard-three. When did that happen? I'm sure I was still in my twenties just a few months ago. Ah well, I of all 43-year-olds can hardly have grounds to complain. Still living the dream. For example, here in Alicante I'm having a few nights of drunken debauchery & riotous revelry with my good mate Mark. I can divulge no further details. Lo que sucede en Alicante, queda en Alicante.

Warsaw, Poland

Regular readers will have noticed that I always include the name of the country, as well as that of the city, in my blog datelines. You might think this is usually a bit pointless. However when I googled 'warsaw taco bell', I was directed to a town called Warsaw in the USA, in Indiana to be precise. There are no Taco Bells in Poland. And if I just titled my blog 'Warsaw' then possibly some of you might think I'm in Indiana, which I'm not. Although I'd quite like to be, as then I could get a Taco Bell.

This is my 200th blog! Trumpets, champagne, confetti, etc. Eleven years in and still going strong. It doesn't quite equate to 200 different places that I've visited, because there are numerous places from which I've blogged two or more times. But it's a milestone nonetheless. I'm going to have to think of something very special for Edd vs Food #100, although that's some way off yet.

While I'm in a counting mood, I recently totalled up all the countries I've ever visited, and it comes to 51. 29 in Europe, and 22 elsewhere. Some of my claims are slightly dubious, for example Liechtenstein & Luxembourg: I'm reliably informed that I was present as a small child in the back seat of a 1980 Saab during a family tour of Europe which fleetingly included both countries, but all I really remember is I-Spy books and blowing bubbles. Similarly, my claim to have 'visited' the United Arab Emirates rests on approximately 7 hours spent in a hotel just outside Dubai airport, midway through a return flight from a 2013 piss-up in Hong Kong.

Well, anyway, all of the above waffle is solely to disguise the fact that I only stayed in Warsaw one night, and that I don't have anything to report other than a) the photos below, and b) the fact that my long journey over land & sea from Helsinki to Warsaw is now complete. It's time to get back on a plane.

The Royal Castle, peeking out at the end of Świętojańska

Old Town Market Square

on Solidarity Avenue

Palace of Culture and Science (1955)
6th tallest building in the EU.
A Soviet creation, but thankfully too early for the worst excesses of Brutalism.

Another angle of the Palace of Culture and Science.
Even Soviet carbuncles can be preferable to studies in glass'n'steel blandness.

Ulica Nowy Świat (New World Street)
At this point the sun almost came out.

The Polish language. It's not that hard really.

Vilnius, Lithuania

Unlike Tallinn and Riga, Vilnius is hundreds of miles from the sea and sits on a small river, so it can't be reached by cruise ships. It's probably the least touristy of the three Baltic capitals. As you might expect, it has become my favourite of the three.

My apartment here is 'bohemian' in the genuine sense of the word. I do believe that this is the first time I have had an actual divan to myself. See picture below. The weather has been pretty darn hot, to the extent that some of my long walks have been curtailed due to sweat-related chafing. (Just thought I'd share.) And for the first time on this trip I've taken a proper interest in the local food. The classic Lithuanian dish is cold beetroot soup: it's nicer than it sounds. Also, when I saw 'potato zeppelins' on a menu, there was no way I could refuse. Again, see picture below.

The journeys from Tallinn to Riga and from Riga to Vilnius cost €28 each and both took about 4 hours, courtesy of an individual 'lounge' seat on a Lux bus. Naturally there are cheaper options on pikey buses, but I'm older than I used to be and no longer willing to tolerate annoying strangers sitting next to me unless it's absolutely necessary.

In truth there isn't a whole lot to see on those bus journeys, other than large expanses of flat farmland and the occasional small town. I can't help but imagine what it was like just one lifetime ago, with German tanks rolling east, or Soviet tanks rolling west. It seems to me that the various national monuments and memorials in the Baltic countries are admirably restrained, taking into account the struggles and suffering they've undergone to get to where they are today. But of course it's hard to travel anywhere in Europe without stumbling across an old grievance of some kind or other. Anyway we're lucky to live in happier times, where a free and independent Lithuania has the confidence to advertise its capital to the world as the 'G-spot of Europe'. You might think I'm kidding, but I'm not (check out the advert here). Bless 'em.

Central Vilnius, pictured from the top of Gediminas Castle (see next picture)

National Museum of Lithuania
Gediminas Castle (see previous picture) in the background

Vilnius has a museum dedicated to amber
(of which the Baltic area is home to the world's largest known deposits).

Military parade outside the cathedral. I don't know what for.
Maybe it was National Amber Day or something (see previous picture)

Vilnius Cathedral and the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania.
Again this was taken from Gediminas Castle.

Trakai
A short bus ride from Vilnius, it hosts Eastern Europe's only island castle.
Hot air balloons float overhead at dusk.

My Vilnius digs. Note the divan.

Edd vs Food #79
Potato 'zeppelins' at the Stikliai Tavern
Washed down with 500ml of Dundulis Humulupu IPA

Riga, Latvia

I've decided that from now on each blog update will include a picture of my accommodation. This will provide a more vivid picture of what my life is actually like on the road. Also it reduces the need for me to keep taking the same predictable photos as all the other tourists.

Anyway the Edd vs Bed series (don't worry, I'm not really going to call it that) begins with another 'bohemian' apartment. In this case 'bohemian' refers to the apartment itself rather than the surrounding area. Basically it means I'm living in somebody else's house - they're away somewhere, I don't know where - and they couldn't be arsed to free up any space in their cupboards, or check the fridge for dangerously out-of-date foodstuffs, or indeed clean the apartment properly, before handing the place over to me via a key left in a rain-filled plant pot outside the back door.

In fairness this place is at least neither 'cosy' (meaning miniscule) nor 'quaint' (meaning last redecorated in the 1970s). There is a nice exposed-brick bathroom with a roomy walk-in shower. Also I have induction plates to cook on, and they're a bit peculiar but they're preferable to some older electric hobs, in that their heat level corresponds to the setting I choose and not some obscure inverse logarithm of it.

Riga is a place of considerable architectural interest, although much of the recently-renovated Old Town is a bit too squeaky clean for my taste. In this blog I have made reference before to Uncle Monty's dictum that "there can be no true beauty without decay." Also the barbershops are outrageously expensive in the touristy areas. €30 for a headshave! Even if the wi-fi is free, and even if they make good on the promise of a free shot of single-malt whisky, that's too much. I went south over the river and walked a mile or two in order to get my bonce buzzed by a bemused non-English-speaking local for just €6.

One realm in which I don't mind spending extra money is of course beer. The best place to buy the good stuff here is a bottle shop called Callous Alus. 'Alus' is the Latvian word for 'ales', you see, and I guess Callous was the only English rhyme they could come up with. If only they'd called it Phallus Alus. Then they could have created an amusing logo where the 'P' was a risqué graphic hinting at brewer's droop. But I digress. Latvian craft beer is pretty good, as was the Estonian stuff, even though there's nothing in particular to write home about just yet. Only one Baltic state left to check out!

Freedom Monument

In the heart of the Old Town

House of Blackheads
Built 1334, destroyed by German bombing during WW2, rebuilt 1999

Elsewhere in the Old Town

Bastejkalna Park

National Library of Latvia
In theory this is the kind of building I should really hate...
...but for some reason I actually quite like it.

My digs in Riga. £34 a night, all in.

Edd vs Food #78
Beer platter at Folkklubs
That black bread doesn't half sit on the stomach.
There were mushrooms hidden under the bacon, but luckily I spotted them just in time.

Tallinn, Estonia

Sea travel hasn't featured much in this blog over the years, apart from some minor excursions here & there, and a quick return trip across the River Plate from Buenos Aires to Uruguay in 2012. The ferry across the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn was about 50 miles, and as such it was the longest sea journey I've ever made. (At £20 or so, it beats the Shields Ferry on a cost-per-mile basis by a factor of about six.) You can't see Tallinn from Helsinki, or vice versa obviously, but you can see both places from halfway across.

There are many interesting snippets of Soviet history here in Tallinn, most notably the Linnahall, a vast pile of concrete put up as an athletics venue for the Summer Olympics in 1980. On a sunny day it looks like something out of 'Star Wars' and at night it looks like something out of 'Blade Runner'. Nowadays it stands empty, because nobody really knows what to do with it. But it is at least a handy place to sit and watch the sun go down, across the harbour to the west.

I had a vague idea that Tallinn was an up-and-coming stag/hen destination, a sort of Prague in the making, but in truth I didn't see any drunken idiots the whole time I was here. Even on a sunny day in the heart of the Old Town, things aren't too crowded. It's much cheaper than Finland, without being noticeably less pleasant. There is good coffee and good food available everywhere you look. And a full 5-day bus & tram pass is literally just €6, plus €2 for the rechargable card. In summary, Tallinn is a splendid place which I recommend to everybody.

Also I have an exciting food update. There's a Finnish burger chain called Hesburger. I didn't get round to checking it out while I was in Helsinki, but they're heavily present elsewhere in the region - indeed they have more outlets in the Baltic states than McDonalds do. Anyway they do a Halloumi Burger and it is the absolute bomb. Grilled halloumi, caramelised red onion, lettuce, tomato, and sweet pepper mayo. In a bun. Which you can buy as a stand-alone item for just €1.70. Hesburger need to expand into the UK as soon as possible and I shall be emailing Ursula von der Leyen to this effect forthwith.

St Olaf's Church, seen from high up in the Old Town.
It's currently being renovated, hence the big square condom thing around it.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

Kadriorg Palace, built by Peter the Great as a summer residence for his wife Catherine.
A bit like the Taj Mahal, only less morbid.

I don't think I want one of these.

Resort Hall in Haapsalu, a small town on Estonia's north-west coast.

Beach near Haapsalu

Edd vs Food #77
Hesburger - see above