Brussels -> London

So… A little late but finally I’ve got round to starting the final chapter of the journey!

There’s no doubt that we were excited to return back to the UK but also nervous and a little sad! As we sat in the departure lounge at Brussels midi for the first time in a LONG time we heard English all around us, the usual conversations including how bad politicians are, the terrible weather and the latest eastenders storyline!

We got on the train and met our last fellow traveller who was working for NATO. Unfortunately he confirmed what we already dreaded, that there were no jobs in the UK and everything was very expensive. Still, as we arrived into st pancras station we finally got to experience the moment that we’d been talking about for the last 6 months! St pancras is an amazingly beautiful station and couldn’t be a better welcome back and even as we stepped off the train onto the platform it didn’t feel real.

After months of watching what we had been spending we splashed out a little and celebrated with a glass of bubbly at the longest champagne bar in the world, at £12 a glass, it was expensive but well worth it! After the champagne Iola caught her 31st train north to Wales and I caught my 31st train south to Hampshire.

We’ve been back now for 2 weeks and still the whole trip doesn’t seem real and still I miss Vietnam so much. I think slowly it will sink in as we get used to life back home and hopefully get jobs, which has to be the greatest challenge yet! Despite some drawbacks it is fantastic to be home and as one era ends a new one begins.

Next stop…..

Berlin -> Brussels

Before arriving in Berlin we had arranged to meet my parents. Once again we met a very friendly local, an old german guy who had done the transsiberian and travelled the world back in 1978. After swapping stories we quickly realised that parts of Siberia hadn’t really changed much in the last 30 years. He had some amazing stories about his time in Berlin as the wall came down, things a history book could never truly portray.

Our friendly german companion guided us to where we needed to go and we managed to find our hotel which was a little more glamourous than our usual accommodation (free shampoo)! We spent most of out time filling up on as much food as possible. Between persistent rain showers we did however manage to see a bit of the wall, the brandenburg gate and Olympic stadium. Unfortunately we couldn’t get inside the Reichstag but the outside looks pretty decent! The Olympic stadium of 1936 is very impressive and we took great delight in watching some chubby kids diving (flopping) in the old Olympic pool!

After a couple of nights in Berlin we headed to amsterdam which we’d both done before so just stayed for one night. Amsterdam did win the worst hotel award though, €30 each and mouse comes in free! We escaped Amsterdam and headed to brussels as quickly as possible. We found a great hotel outside of the centre and decided to head to Bruges in the coming days. Bruges is pretty expensive so we bought a great camping combo pack for two people at a bargain price of €40 – carrefour! We arrived in Bruges the following day and set up the tent after which we had a look round town, which is very attractive. That night Vietnamese tropical thunderstorms hit Bruges like never before and although our little tent kept us dry for 10 minutes it wasn’t long until we started getting wet. The result was Iola and myself lying awake at 3am slowly getting wetter and wetter until eventually the rain stopped at around 8am, lovely! We were back at our original hotel in brussels just a few hours later, never has a mattress and a hot shower felt so good!

We spent the next few days relaxing and taking it easy, eating mussels and sampling belgian beer. Brussels is certainly a very underrated city!

As I write this on the eve before our homecoming, we have mixed emotions – happy to be home to see friends and family, happy to be in one place and looking forward to home cooked dinners! But we are sad to see a once in a lifetime journey end, sad to go back to no job and sad to be going in different directions after after 19months together.

It has been an unforgettable experience and I will write one last post tomorrow after our final journey on this 10,000 mile adventure.

Blighty here we come…

Vienna -> Prague

In the last post I mentioned that we were heading to Prague and I feel guilty for omitting Vienna from our travels! Vienna is comparatively extortionate after being in eastern Europe so we only spent one night there. It is however a very beautiful and livable city, much like Budapest, and definitely worth a longer visit. Unfortunately we didn’t have the funds to see an opera or visit the museums but we did walk around a large part of the city taking in as much as possible. We tried out the viennese melange coffee, Iola devoured plenty of chocolate cake and tackled both hock and schnitzel during our short stay. The best place to see the city is from the great vantage point that is the 100+ year old ferris wheel. Being 100 years old it is slightly creaky and rickety and unfortunately iola spent most of the time looking at he floor while sweating profusely, although eventually she managed muster up the courage for a quick glance.

We left Vienna in the evening of our second day to Prague. As with a lot of our train journeys we met some great locals who gave us the low down on Prague even giving us change for the underground. Unfortunately our hostel in Prague was pretty shoddy to say the least but it was made up for by Prague’s attractive streets and buildings. Prague is definitely the one of most beautiful city we’ve visited so far but its also the most densely packed of tourists. The weather in Prague was truly awful so we hid in a tea house for some retreat. This was where I found out that my phone charger was slightly faulty… I plugged my phone in and 5 minutes later there was a loud bang and all the lights went off and we soon realised that the bang had come from the plug nearest us. After the electricity was restored and we had finished our tea I decided to discreetly test out the charger in the men’s loos. As soon as the charger entered the plug there was another loud bang, a huge flash of light the lights went off in the building again. At this point the girl in ladies toilet next to me began screaming and a couple of glasses smashed as I staggered around wondering if I was still alive! Iola obviously knowing exactly what had happened didn’t think to run to my help as she didn’t want to implicated! As the smell of burning plastic grew the lights came back on and I quickly retrieved Iola and made a quick exit! Take note – don’t buy cheap chargers from tesco in Slovakia!

We spent the next couple of days trying out the lovely pilsner and goulash and visited a little known pub once visited by Bill Clinton! One slightly nostalgic point was when we went into a small corner shop and realised it was run by vietnamese people. After paying for the stuff and getting the change I said thank you with a simple ‘cam on’ which certainly took the young girl a back. From that point on we were very popular in the shop but it did bring back great memories of Hanoi and we had quite a few depressing beers moaning about how much we love Hanoi and hate European weather! Talking to our czech vietnamese friends certainly reminded us why we will definitely go back in the future!

Prague is such a beautiful city but it is slightly tainted by the hauds of Americans, Italians, germans, British and spanish and seeing very few local Prague people!

Great beer though…

Budapest -> Bratislava

We took the overnight train from krakow to budapest and were treated with luxuries that we hadn’t yet seen on trains before such as plugs, wardrobe, sink, clean toilet, carpets!

We arrived at the very granduous railway station and quickly set out to explore the city. Much to Iola’s delight we had totally by accident arrived in Budapest on the weekend of the Hungarian grand prix so we did some sightseeing and found a bar with a big screen! I found giving Iola free reign of the food menu silenced any initial moans.

We spent most of our time in pest as there’s a bit more going on than in Buda which is probably the prettier of the two towns. From the statue of liberty which overlooks Budapest on the buda side you get a great perspective of what a great city it is and how huge the Danube is that splits the two towns.

Thankfully on our first day we found an amazing little pub which served brilliant goulash, tapas and westons cider! Budapest is famous for it’s famous baths which was something I wasn’t looking overly forward to as I suspected they would be full of fat greasy old men (Brits abroad). Iola assured me it would be good and it was fantastic! I realised that the hungarian retiree lives the perfect life, hitting the bath in the morning and spending the day bathing while drinking beer and playing chess! There were loads of different baths at different temperatures and with different ‘healing qualities’ plus a great choice of saunas and steam rooms. We only spent a few hours in there but the rest of the day was a write-off as all energy had been sapped from us!

After 3 days of eating, drinking and bathing we set off for Bratislava! On our first night we went out for a quiet drink to see what the old town was like. Unfortunately this turned out to be a near fatal decision as a couple of guys persuaded us to drink with them. Quickly our relaxing beers were replaced by tequila after tequila and the rest of the night is a blur, although one defining memory is that one of the guy’s grandmother escaped from a concentration camp during the war! Needless to say the next day involved lying in a park trying not to think about alcohol. Bratislava’s old town is very pretty but much like other baroque cities like Vilnius, theres not a great deal to do but we learnt the hard way that slovakians are very friendly and accommodating!

Next stop, Prague! Don’t really feel like beer after those tequila’s…

Lithuania -> Krakow

Sorry for the delay but Europe has been much busier and more hectic than we’d originally thought.

Although we loved Russia we were a little relieved to get into Europe proper as Iola calls it. Arriving in Vilnius really did feel like arriving in Europe, everything was geared towards helping foreigners, the cheese was cheap and they had cider!

Vilnius is a very pretty little city although we managed to see pretty much everything in about 4 hours!! So one night seemed enough and we got tickets for the train to Warsaw the next morning.

After enduring some fairly lengthy journeys 8 hours to Warsaw seemed pretty easy but without the usual sleeper it dragged quite a bit. We arrived in Warsaw late at night and only planned a night there before leaving for krakow. Maybe we should have spent longer in Warsaw but almost everyone we met advised us to move onto krakow as soon as possible.

Arriving in krakow after two days of travel was relieving and we had 3 nights and loads to do there! The first day we went to Auschwitz which was probably the most sombre 6 hours of my life. Having said that it is an experience that everyone should witness and it’s sad that so many people haven’t learnt from what happened there. For more info on it get a flight there as this blog can never justify the horror of such a place.

On a happier note we also managed to fit in time to see the old salt mines just outside the city. This has to be one of the greatest things to see in Europe! In order to get to the salt mines you have to decent by a wooden staircase 100 and something metres. There are 300km of tunnels and we managed to see about 3 of them but they included incredible churches and monuments all carved from rock salt and although it sounds a little boring, its an amazing thing to see.

We spent the rest of our time in krakow enjoying the lovely beer and unfortunately in hindsight we should have stayed another day but it’s a beautiful town and although touristy, a great place to visit!

Next stop budapest…

Saint Petersburg

Pretty much everyone we had met told us that st Petersburg had more to offer than Moscow. After seeing so much in Moscow this was a little hard to believe so we left Moscow wondering what was in store.

Once we arrive in SP we soon realised the attraction as the city is incredibly European and has hardly any of the soviet buildings that fills Moscow’s skyline. Peter the great travelled europe and took the best of it and built his own city and you can see that he did a great job! You could write books on SP but the winter palace is the main draw! The building is incredibly beautiful, even for people like us who aren’t particularly artsy, the collection inside the hermitage is astounding! We managed about 4 hours but you could easily spend 4 days strolling through the beautiful rooms and their masterpieces.

After another one of Iola’s customised walking tours we got ourselves onto a canal cruise which gives a great perspective of the city. The city is known as the venice of the north and you can see why with it’s endless number of canals, rivers and tributaries.

The one downside to SP and russia in general is the ridiculous price of everything! Well to get round this we employed the tactic of buying cheap supermarket beer with bread and cheese. It was during one of these meals that Iola nearly got us arrested by throwing a fish shaped crisp in to the canal just as a policeman walked by. We’d heard plenty about how Russian policemen can be somewhat corrupt and targeting of foreigners so the encounter raised our blood pressure slightly. I attempted to offer him beer which surprisingly and worrying didn’t work but thankfully some smiles and photocopied ‘documenty’ did the trick! Phew!

For us Saint Petersburg was better than Moscow in that there seems more to do and it is appears more European minded which after 18months of Asia was quite refreshing. But knowing people who have lived in Moscow (d&j) I know that there is a different side, similar to those who prefer Saigon to Hanoi.

Without doubt SP is a beautiful city and we were certainly lucky to witness the famous White nights, even if they were more dark blue for is late visitors. Thankfully we didn’t have time to see everything giving us the excuse to go back!

Moscow

After 27 hours on the train it was a relief to arrive in Moscow and also an achievement as we’d reached the end of the transsiberian railway. Unfortunately as with everywhere in Russia nothing is bilingual making the metro system extremely hard to navigate if your not a fluent Russian speaker. To make up for the difficulty of getting around the Moscow metro, the interior of the stations is spectacularly beautiful, meaning that getting lost isn’t as annoying as usual. We managed to find our hostel surprisingly quickly and walked to the kremlin in the evening.

Red square and st basils cathedral are a bit smaller than we were expecting but still very impressive and I was pleased to see that Lenin’s mausoleum is much less grand than uncle ho’s in Hanoi! The weather in Moscow was fantastic so we bought a big bottle of beer and made ourselves dinner in the gardens outside the kremlin while the sun slowly set!

The next day we went mental, seeing the incredible armoury in the kremlin, the interior of the St Basil’s, tomb of the unknown soldier, GUM shopping centre (very palatial), saw Lenin and did some exploring. The armoury was extremely expensive but thankfully Iola had her ‘student card’ meaning we got in relatively cheaply. Apparently Moscow is now the most expensive city in the world so we only ate out once and the rest of our stay we managed on bread with cream cheese and crisps, which is an underrated meal!

After our packed day, Iola insisted we did more walking, so she cooked up her own walking tour which took in the huge Bolshoi theatre and arbat street where she finally allowed us to have a break. Despite being tiring walking around Moscow is very pleasant as has a lot of beautiful buildings mixed in with the odd soviet monstrosity and it’s interesting to watch the super rich waltz around in their Ferrari’s and bentley’s.

Moscow is definitely worth visiting and we will return when we’ve made our millions so we can appreciate it’s more lavish side!