26th August, day 15 - Tallinn -> Helsinki. Home!

Soooo tired. Slept as badly as the first bus journey. I don’t mind sitting on a bus for a long time, but I don’t think night buses are for me. At least ones that are completely full. Just could not get any sleep. Though, the last time I did a night train was almost as bad.

At Tallinn 7am in the morning. Tired walk over towards the harbour. Tired zombie staring at laptop at a cafe. Tired queuing into the ship. I did take a small cabin because I knew I would need the sleep. Two hours of being completely passed out in the cabin.

Helsinki. Home. It was a great trip.

What went well

• Didn’t run into any major problems along the way. The most annoying thing that happened was the covid infected occupant in the hostel room in Copenhagen. But even that turned out good thanks to a great person who I met up with, who let me have their sofa. Thanks again 🙏
• I definitely chose the right backpack. The great thing about the Osprey Radial is that while you have your stuff at the hotel, you can have it in the smaller 26L configuration, and when you need all your stuff, the 34L configuration. The metal frame that keeps the bag upright is just golden, makes life so much nicer being able to just set the backpack down, and it wont fall over in random directions. With every night I found that packing the bag became much more routine, everything going into the right places. And even with the full weight, it wasn’t too bad to carry around.
• I packed the right amount of clothes. And only bought one t-shirt on the way! :D Needed to do laundry two times.
• The “just the shorts on me” strategy worked fine, i.e. had no major food accidents :)
• All in all, I think I did a pretty good job with packing, taking only the essentials. Could even fit my hoodie in the backpack up until Vilnius, where I bought souvenirs, after which the hoodie needed to be carried. The great thing about travelling light is you can’t buy a lot of things on the way. Who wants to spend the day shopping anyway!
• I didn’t catch covid and especially didn’t get the trip interrupted by it \o/
• None of the trains or buses got cancelled.
• I didn’t lose my camera or anything else that would have been costly and annoying.

What didn’t go well

• It was way too hot. Being 27C to 31C every single day was way too much for me, especially getting to the end of the trip. I knew this was a risk, but I had bought the Elbriot ticket already some while ago so I needed to travel there at least. I think in the future I’m going to seriously avoid travelling anywhere south in the July-August period.
• The trains and buses were full. Again, avoiding August, the main holiday month, is probably a good idea.

I started properly locking down my trip only around early July, which was leaving it a bit late considering it was a holiday season. Luckily the only thing I had trouble finding a reservation for was the hotel in Turku. The rest was really easy. The first thing to do was to map out approximately what days I would be spending where, and put them in a sheet. After that I started going through the reservations a day at a time. Obviously there was the risk that a connection would be fully booked for some part of the journey I wanted to make, but as I could be flexible that wasn’t a real concern. My main idea was to always end travel in a hotel, to avoid the mess of missing connections due to delays. Within a few days I had booked most of the journey. And most of the trip was refundable or at least rebookable.

The most important advice I have received on doing trips like this is to gather everything into one sheet. Dates, times, from, to, hotel details and link, etc. It helps in both planning but also makes it easy to find things on the road. For trains, in Sweden I reserved directly via SJ, and the rest via DB up until Warsaw. From there LuxExpress buses to Tallinn. The boat trips were reserved directly from Viking Line. For hotels I used hotels.com, except for Turku where I had to find the hotel by going through all available hotels in Turku manually. If interested, you can see my travel sheet here. I copied and adapted it from someone else :)

While a spontaneous idea, I had fun writing this trip journal. I hope someone has found this interesting and maybe gotten inspired to go on a land based journey themselves. While no travel is free from environmental issues, land based travel has a way smaller carbon footprint to air based travel, by a huge margin. I think from the perspective of this trip, the hotels I stayed at were probably the biggest contributors to my environmental footprint on the way. Using hostels is probably one way to decrease one's footprint a bit more. Unfortunately during covid times that carries other risks, like I ran into.

Numbers

• Kilometres travelled (approx): 3400km
• Kilometres cycled: 146,16km
• Festivals: 2
• Moshpits joined: 2
• Trains used: 5
• Boats used: 2
• Buses used: 2
• Hours on train, boat or bus (counting delays): ~54
• Trains broken down: 1
• Hotels/hostels stayed at: 6
• Countries visited (without Finland, went through Latvia during the night): 7
• Cities stayed at: 6
• Items lost: 3 (charger left on a broken down train, earplug and a pin lost in a moshpit)
• Items bought (discounting souvenirs): 3 (replacement charger, t-shirt, pin (later lost in moshpit))
• Times needing to eat meat: 0
• Laundry times: 2
• Photos (after editing): 236
• Highest temperature: 31C (Warsaw and Vilnius)
• Times needed hoodie: 1 (when arriving to Tallinn)
• Times leaving camera somewhere: 1 (I have a habit of doing this)
• Tinder matches made during the way: 2
• Tinder matches met during the way: 0
• Beers drank: (let’s not discuss this..)

All the previous posts and photos available at https://jasonrobinson.me/streams/tag/jasontravels/ (reverse order and confusing grid layout).

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels

25th August, day 14 - Vilnius

Slept late, choosing 1,5 hours of extra sleep instead of breakfast, due to the next night being on a bus.

It’s another 31C day. Also starting to feel the trip a bit so going to give exploring a miss for today. Going to be a day of jumping from shadow to shadow and spending time in cafes, pubs and shopping centres. Laptop time! Also need to do a bit of souvenir shopping.

To celebrate the end of the trip, had a slightly finer meal at Grey with a crispy portobello mushroom with vegan meat balls appetiser and grilled eggplant with vegan meat patty main. Afterwards back towards the bus station via a few pubs. It’s going to be another long night on the bus, and I don’t imagine there will be a lot of sleep this time either.

Soon home!

Total kilometres travel approx (end of day): 2900km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #vilnius

24th August, day 13 - Vilnius

So, as expected, sleep didn't happen much at all on the bus from Warsaw. I may have slept an hour, but it could have also been the clocks moving when the country boundary was crossed, not sure 😅. Otherwise the bus journey was fine, and did manage to get some rest even without proper sleep.

Given it is going to be 31C later, I decided to immediately head out for a walk around the hills overlooking the city (obviously after a coffee and breakfast). At 7am the weather was still a nice cool 20C.

“The Republic of Uẑupis” is a fun area. In 1997 the residents declared it an independent state in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek kind of way, with their own constitution.

1. Everyone has the right to live by the River Vilnelė, and the River Vilnelė has the right to flow by everyone.
2. Everyone has the right to hot water, heating in winter and a tiled roof.
3. Everyone has the right to die, but this is not an obligation.
4. Everyone has the right to make mistakes.
5. Everyone has the right to be unique.
6. Everyone has the right to love.
7. Everyone has the right not to be loved, but not necessarily.
8. Everyone has the right to be undistinguished and unknown.
9. Everyone has the right to idle.
10. Everyone has the right to love and take care of the cat.
11. Everyone has the right to look after the dog until one of them dies.
12. A dog has the right to be a dog.
13. A cat is not obliged to love its owner, but must help in time of need.
14. Sometimes everyone has the right to be unaware of their duties.
15. Everyone has the right to be in doubt, but this is not an obligation.
16. Everyone has the right to be happy.
17. Everyone has the right to be unhappy.
18. Everyone has the right to be silent.
19. Everyone has the right to have faith.
20. No one has the right to violence.
21. Everyone has the right to appreciate their unimportance.
22. No one has the right to have a design on eternity.
23. Everyone has the right to understand.
24. Everyone has the right to understand nothing.
25. Everyone has the right to be of any nationality.
26. Everyone has the right to celebrate or not celebrate their birthday.
27. Everyone shall remember their name.
28. Everyone may share what they possess.
29. No one can share what they do not possess.
30. Everyone has the right to have brothers, sisters and parents.
31. Everyone may be independent.
32. Everyone is responsible for their freedom.
33. Everyone has the right to cry.
34. Everyone has the right to be misunderstood.
35. No one has the right to make another person guilty.
36. Everyone has the right to be individual.
37. Everyone has the right to have no rights.
38. Everyone has the right to not to be afraid.
39. Do not defeat.
40. Do not fight back.
41. Do not surrender.

I think this constitution makes sense at least!

The hills east of the city are around 160 metres above sea level and offer a really nice view across the city from the three crosses monument. Very much worth climbing all those steps and getting bitten by insects.

I still had four hours left after this until the hotel could check me in, so I just walked around for a bit and sat at some air conditioned cafes. By 2pm it was already hell outside but it was already my hotel time.

Three hours later after a nap and shower, time for some touristy walking. First food. Vegafé nearby has good Happy Cow reviews, so there. Had a tofu steak with rice, which was very nice. Light, filling and tasty.

Vilnius. Vibrant city with an old heart. Lots of cars though, driving extremely fast on the small narrow roads. Kind of spoils the small historical city atmosphere with the rather frequent massive BMW zooming past along the tiny cobblestone road, windows open blasting some four to the floor.

While there are lots of cars, the city does seem to have a lot of bicycle lanes and there is a bike sharing system too. I'm afraid it's too hot for me to move around on a bike today. Plus today I've focused on the older historical part of the city which is easy to walk around.

Ended the day at the Craft & Draft pub near my hotel. Good selection of local craft beers.

Starting to slowly reach my roaming data limits which I had not prepared for. Have hit the 20GB alert I have, max included in my plan is 23G. Probably mostly due to having video backup uploads enabled on roaming, which I have now switched off. Time to start using more local wifi in cafes and the hotel, also a lesson learnt for future trips.

Total kilometres travel approx: 2700km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #vilnius #uzupis

23rd August, day 12 - Warsaw

I was looking forward to exploring Warsaw, and after some struggle managed to register and load a little bit of credit to the Veturilo city bike system (hint: if registering and adding credit via the mobile app doesn’t work, it didn’t for me, try the website). However the temperature is around 30C with not much wind. And after checking out of the hotel my next shower will be in Vilnius at around 2pm, after a day of exploring Warsaw and then a night bus, and morning exploring Vilnius. Thus I decided it’s probably better to play it safe and stick to air conditioned cafes and pubs for the day. I also haven’t had a break day since the start of the trip. Have to leave exploring Warsaw for another time!

What I did see was the parade square surroundings and some of the fancy buildings Warsaw city centre has to offer. That PKiN building is just so awesome btw, I will need to have a closer look next time. Found a Caffe Nero (one of my favourite chains!) and then using Untappd, a nice beer pub called Hopito. Good selection of local beers on tap and a good bottle selection. Also, pizza, with no less than four vegan options. Not the best pizza though, more on the ok level.

Having spent the hot day relaxing with air conditioning, it was time to head to the LuxExpress bus leaving for Vilnius at 9pm. My first time on a LuxExpress bus, which has been highly recommended as the best way to travel through the Baltic countries. The seating was a bit tighter spaced than I had expected, especially regarding leg room. Otherwise no complaints, except that the bus was packed full and I was an idiot for not buying the seat next to me at booking time.

Will I get any sleep? Earplugs? Check. Inflatable pillow? Check. Still feels unlikely.

Total kilometres travel approx (till end of day): 2430km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #warsaw #heatwave

22nd August, day 11 - Berlin to Warsaw

With a rather long 7 hour train journey coming up I decided to chill near the railway station and get a bit updated on some things on the laptop. Had a filling but totally average vegan burger meal at Peter Pane to last until the evening. Even though the burger was average, bonus points for the fries mayo on all the tables being vegan, even though the restaurant also served meat.

Train left on time, but soon stopped for an hour for a technical issue. Later I heard the engine was needed for another train from Berlin, so they made us wait for an hour while we got another engine.

Hit the restaurant car for a few beers. At this stage I realise I sillily and slightly arrogantly hadn’t prepared for Poland at all. The train is operated by Polish rail and the restaurant waiter doesn’t speak a word of English. Beer ordering isn’t really that much of an issue anyway, but it just felt silly not even being able to say thank you in Polish. I had prepared pretty well for Copenhagen, somewhat for Hamburg, not really for Berlin and none at all for the rest of the journey. I thought I would just prepare on the way as time goes by, but I’ve actually ended up quite a bit less sitting at the laptop than I had imagined.

Deep in thoughts about how to ask if I can settle my bill, I leave the restaurant car with my camera bag under the seat. My seat neighbour later arrives back to the seat and tells me they saw me leave the restaurant car and asked if I left a camera bag in the restaurant car. I hurry to the restaurant car and the bag and camera are still there. Lucky again! This accident ends up being lucky in other ways as well, as we end up talking and that proves useful later.

Our car soon loses electricity and at the next stop the train crew tries to repair it. Some of us are offered a switch to another train, going to another station in Warsaw. I imagine this may be the train our engine was given to 😄. Thanks to my new friend I joined the volunteers moving to the other train. Absolutely nothing has been announced in English the whole journey. We continue onwards in our new train..

Until a smell resembling driving away with the handbrake on starts to appear and soon the car has a haze of smoke in it. There is no announcement but after a while a crew member walks by and tells us they found one of the brakes of the car stuck, due to “reasons”. May or may not be ok now. With a slight headache building up due to the smog, we head off again to Warsaw, this time reaching the Gdansk station without further events, almost 2,5 hours late. Exciting train journey.

The Polish public transport app Jakdojade works really well for finding a route and buying a ticket. What is not clear is how one uses the ticket to get past the gates, so I end up buying another cardboard ticket from the vending machine. I probably won't be needing further public transport, so a mystery for another time.

Short metro ride later and finally at the hotel, some minutes past midnight.

Total kilometres travel approx: 2210km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #berlin #warsaw #trains

21st August, day 10 - Hamburg to Berlin

Journey back towards home begins!

Just before the train left I realised I have no seat reservation. Not entirely sure if I intended to not buy one at the time or if I intended to buy one later, but lesson learnt one should check before standing on the platform. The train was full, so there were no seats left. Luckily I was able to grab one from the restaurant car, so it all worked out without sitting on the floor. It’s not really clear to me which trains do have a requirement for seat reservations and which don’t, for example Copenhagen to Hamburg did mandate a seat, and so does Berlin to Warsaw. Possibly inter-Germany trains or at least some of them?

Berlin! The New York of Europe, as a web guide puts it. I've only been here for 6 hours many years ago on a wasteful work trip (fly in the morning, fly out in the afternoon :/). Didn’t get to see much then.

Hotel is pretty stylish. Their "There is no planet B" sign seems a bit greenwashey, given the expense gone into all the style and for example the AC set to 18C. But I'm no hotel economics expert, so perhaps room cleaning is a major factor.

Berlin immediately makes me like it by having the familiar and well working Donkey cycles available. I jump on one and ride around the beautiful Tiergarten. One could spend a week just exploring this.

From there to an outdoor bar recommended in a guide called Gestrandet Mitte. Nice beach bar feeling with a view along the river.

It's time to eat so I fire up Happy Cow to find a place. 1.5km of cycling brings me to "Quy Nguyen - Vegan life". Honestly, one of the best rolls and a portion of lemongrass tofu noodles I've had. No wonder the place was so full. My only gripe is the waiter jumping on to ask if I had finished while I still had a little bit of broth and of course I accidentally replied yes, but I miss that last spoonful of broth 😅.

I've still got a bit of travelling to do, so it's laundry time. I had already bookmarked and looked up the best rated launderette in the area called Waschsalon Speed Queen, and had my laundry with me. Really well arranged modern launderette 8with English instructions, credit card payment and fully automated machines. Wash + dry in under an hour. Should last me home easily. Totally living dangerously and leaving my clothes unmonitored and going for a beer while the machine spins.

Germans sure love QR codes. To be honest, almost no one uses them in Finland. Here ordering from the table via a menu found behind a QR code link seems to be quite common. Well I prefer it to needing to wait for someone to come over to the table, if not allowed to order at the bar (like we always do in Finland for drinks and sometimes even food).

Cycling has been great. There have been some situations with missing markings and a lot of the time cycling happens on a dedicated section of the road instead of a separated section. Generally though at least as easy as in Hamburg. Have had no trouble getting around, also thanks to the Donkeys having a mobile stand built into the bikes, which makes navigating a breeze.

Could have spent more time in the night of Berlin, but feeling a bit tired so back to the hotel!

Total kilometres travel approx: 1680km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #berlin

20th August, day 9 - Elbriot 🤘

Today is metal day! No shitty tourist photos, no cycling, just metal! Well ok, I took a few photos on the way on my phone. Cute river boat homes and a dragon overlooking a canal.

Alestorm was as fun on stage as their tracks are. Suited this beer heavy festival well.

Jinjer rocked 🤘 They’re the one I came to see and no disappointment here. Fuck the war!

Fever 333, unknown to me before, did some crazy stage stuff.

Bullet for my Valentine made the crowd pretty crazy. Ended up in the mosh pit which interestingly wasn’t the normal type of round-we-go circle. It was just hundreds of bodies bumping into each other. Is this a German thing or just a local Elbriot specialty? I’ve never touched so many people :D Lost my other earplug and a pin too while being heaved around.

Crowd surfing was an interesting thing I’ve not experienced before. It’s usually forbidden in Finnish festivals, at least the ones I’ve been to. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. Constantly needing to help someone cross over you at the danger of being crushed if you’re not ready kinda takes some focus out of actually enjoying the music. But hey, riot 🤘

Festival food for me was mozzarella bread and vegetarian noodles. The rest of the stuff would have required a local guide to be able to choose..

Also, people come to talk to you! At least four people talked to me during the festival and none of them was at the urinal which is where drunk Finnish men will make small talk (please, don't do that).

Total kilometres travel approx (still): 1420km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #hamburg #elbriot #festivals

19th August, day 8 - Hamburg

The hotel I’m staying at is the BO Hotel. Some kilometres out from the centre in what seems to be a local car industry area. Breakfast was unsurprisingly not very interesting for someone preferring vegan food, but the room is nice. And also has the first ever totally open space I’ve seen, with the shower in the actual room. At least the toilet has a door, should there be two people staying in the same room. Wifi is poor, but this is Germany. My Finnish cellular data works well still.

Germany is still mandating masks in public transport. On the train from Copenhagen masks needed to be put on as soon as the border was crossed. Would be interesting to look at infection level differences between countries mandating masks and those who have dropped the requirement. The hvv app for local transport is really good and easy to use. Compares easily to the one we have in Helsinki. DB and that city bike thing should learn and adapt.

(^ picture showing how many of the cycling lanes are marked - not very clearly)

As I was locked out of the city bike system due to my account being in some error state, I looked up a store renting bikes and headed to Reeperbahn for one from Hamburg City Cycles. Their website claimed all kinds of bikes, but apparently this was only if pre-booked. On-demand it was only 3-gear city bikes. Also as a surprise when starting to ride off, I found out they have pedal brakes. Haven’t ridden one like this for some tens of years or more. Otherwise the bike was well serviced and got me around completely fine. Went around the Outer Alster lake. Very pretty and probably very expensive as an area to live, at least the northern side of it, based on the houses.

I may have been too harsh in my previous update regarding cycling in Hamburg. I only had to use a really busy car road without any cycling area once during this 16km trip. A lot of the time there is either a pavement cycling path or one marked on the road. And some of the way around the lake the roads seemed to even be cycling first, based on markings. All in all I had a pleasurable experience during my few hours of cycling. My main concern is how cycling and pedestrian areas are marked on the pavement. It’s not very clear at all, especially for pedestrians, which may explain why they are constantly in the cyclists' area. Saying this as a pedestrian while I didn’t have the bike at my disposal.

Found an interesting area by accident with the most graffiti, tags and stickers I’ve yet seen anywhere, called Karolinenviertel. Hamburg truly is an interesting place regarding urban culture. Lots of interesting small shops here, need to visit at a better time, was at a timetable to return the bike so didn’t have the possibility to stop now. Generally, there is an interesting contrast in Hamburg between urban culture, old buildings and car / high street culture. Also they sure love their stickers here 🤩. I’ve made sure to add a few XR stickers here and there.

Thanks to checking in a beer on the way on Untappd, I also found out there is an Omnipollo brewery (one of my favourites!) bar in Hamburg - which also does vegan pizza! One bike drop later, metro to that direction. Nice place, nice taps, nice staff, ended up staying for quite a few hours. Vegan “Kimchi” pizza was very unique and tasty. Actually three out of four pizzas in this place do not have meat. I like this ratio, this should be the new normal.

Metro back to the hotel, 2 minutes in the room declaring its way damn too hot, down to the lobby bar until need for sleep kicks in.

Total kilometres travel approx (still): 1420km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #hamburg #cycling

Ps. Those on Mastodon and other platforms limiting the number of photos in a post, all my posts photos can be found at https://jasonrobinson.me/streams/tag/jasontravels/

18th august, day 7 - Copenhagen -> Hamburg

Time to leave Copenhagen behind! Such a warm and welcoming city with an awesome cycling culture. Definitely coming back. Well, can’t avoid it, the quickest route from Finland to Central Europe goes through Copenhagen :)

Pre-train brunch at cafe Kaffestuen highly recommended at Happy Cow. And it certainly didn’t disappoint, not just pretty but extremely tasty and filling too. And vegan of course.

Train (not the one in the picture) to Hamburg was on time and everything basically worked as it should. But it was also full and even with some AC extremely hot and sticky with the 28C weather. I had lots of time to hit myself on the head about failing to buy a little portable fan before leaving. I did have a look in Copenhagen but the only ones I could quickly find were at Flying Tiger, so err nope.

Met a friend at Hamburg train station with plan for food and beers. Weirdly, Hamburg as a proclaimed cycling city actually doesn’t seem to have all that many options for bike sharing. My friend didn’t really know why, possibly the city bikes have chased the competition out? Having a city bike system without competition is all good if the bikes are well maintained, the pricing is affordable and the system is easy to use.

Out of those 3, only the pricing was true for me. Registering to the Stadtrad biking system via their web page went fine up until phone verification was needed. The SMS never arrived. There is no retry button. Another well done IT job. The account section has no way to re-trigger phone verification. The app doesn’t do any better. Trying to reserve a bike returns a mysterious “server error”.

I call their support and listen to endless amounts of German bot voice, expecting some English language instructions on what to do anytime now. It never arrives. After all, this is only the support number for the city bikes marketed for tourists as the best way to get around the city. Apparently only German tourists are actually welcome.

My friend calls support and has better luck actually speaking German. The support person is completely mystified. They give us a code to type into the app, but can’t say where the code should go in the app. We thank them and go through every single part of the app. The only place to type in a code (which may or may not be the right place) throws the mysterious server error.

We look at other options. There are none. Apparently bike sharing by other companies in Hamburg just doesn’t exist currently. Which is a bit of a bummer trying to get around when the Stadtrad system gives you the middle finger in German.

I accept that my 5€ initial yearly fee for the biking system has been lost and my friend created an account on their phone number. This works for tonight but doesn’t allow me to use the bikes the next two days I am here. The first bike I try has issues with the gears and makes a scary squeaking noise while pedalling, so we switch to another bike at the next rental station. The next bike is in good condition and actually nice to ride. These have 7 gears and you can actually get to a nice speed with them. Finally we make it to beer and food \o/

Cycling in Hamburg immediately strikes me as much more chaotic, compared to Copenhagen, but also in some ways to Helsinki. The cycling paths seem to be very narrow and often going in the middle of the pavement, making pedestrians constantly be in the way and in danger. Car traffic is high and fast, and in some situations the road seems to be the only place to bike. My friend tells me of constant dangerous situations with cars cutting him off during his daily commutes around the city. He always wears a camera which has once managed to get him justice when a car bumped into him, and the recording had the licence plate of the car. Cycling definitely seems very popular here though just by the number of bikes around.

Vegan burger with cauliflower “wings” at Brewdog was good. The apparently famous ÜberQuell brewery pizzas need to be tried another time, they were full and could only give us beer. To the hotel just in time for midnight check-in, into a hot room with barely working AC.

Forgot to record days cycling, approx 3km in Copenhagen and ̃12km in Hamburg.

Total kilometres travel approx: 1420km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #copenhagen #hamburg #cycling #stadtrad

17th August, day 6 - Copenhagen

Yesterday I overdid the amount of time I spent in the sun based on the tingling in my arms and neck. Being out for hours in direct sunlight at the worst UV time was a poor idea. So after a relaxing sleep I stayed in until the afternoon except for a quick trip to Grød nearby for lunch. Really nice place focused on things like porridge and bowls, largely plant based. The bowl I took was actually more of a mix between a bowl and a lentil soup, anyway it was very good.

Some hours and laundry later I went out to return my “beloved” mountain bike, exchanging it for a Donkey bike. Much nicer tbh 😅.

Got to do some touristy things a day, so I headed to the Christiansborg castle tower. Impressive security just to see a tower, basically the same as going on a flight. To be honest, the views were not that interesting. Copenhagen is best at the street level.

Still hadn't visited one of the more unique places Copenhagen has to offer - Christiania. I had no idea what to expect but it's easy to know when you've arrived - the smell of marijuana is just everywhere. Even at Cafe Nemoland, where I had a decent vegan burger, where all the tables have "no joints" signs, for pure show clearly. Festival like chaos all around. So weird and wonderful. Didn’t take too many photos as it seemed like not the right thing to do here, and one street even had no photos signs. Which is understandable given the open sale of pot.

I'm more of a craft beer person than a joint person however, so up to Mikkeller Baghaven, the place I saw from the other side of the bay two days earlier. Apparently it's the place they brew their sours, but thankfully they also sell other stuff, as I'm not a sour beer person either :P

When coming back to the flat, I ended up going south via a different route and cycled through this awesome few kilometres of pure cycle path / walkway with all kinds of cute small houses. What was interesting was the speedbumps, apparently for cyclists? It was totally dark I'm afraid so I totally need to go back there again during daylight one day. I also saw a fox scurrying away! Foxes are great.

Total kilometres approx (still): 990km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #copenhagen

16th August, day five - Copenhagen

I took a conscious risk when deciding to stay at a hostel. For sure the risk for covid for example is that little much larger. Well, this morning that risk partly materialised. The reception informed us in the morning there is a person in the room who tested positive with a self-test.

Now, amazingly, this person in their own words already had flu symptoms the day before. Either they didn't inform the staff of this or the staff put the person in a room with 3 other people anyway. Somewhat irresponsible either way.

Mask on, quick pack of gear and out of the room as quickly as possible. At least the person wasn't coughing but still I spent approx 7 hours sleeping in the same room. Going to need to mask up when inside for some time and do some daily tests. I checked out of the hostel two nights early to avoid further exposure.

But, "onni onnettomuudessa", as we say in Finland! Means roughly luckily getting away with something in an accident. A person who I was going to meet for beers today offered me their couch even though the risk, massive thanks ❤️ A replacement hotel room would have cost a few hundred euros and even more if I do get sick for some days.

So out for some breakfast. Chose Cafe Kalaset from my list. And wow this place is really worth the visit. The banana bread was especially awesome!

(^ apparently the cats were waiting for me in the bathroom of Cafe Kalaset 🙈 )

It’s another hot day in Copenhagen. Loaded with a full backpack without access to a shower until the evening it felt a bit too much combined with the humid heat, so I mainly cycled around a bit and had a few beers in the shade. My corona test for today was negative.

Apparently it's pride week in Copenhagen, which explains the flags everywhere. I kind of assumed maybe it's always like this? :P

Met my friendly host later and we had a really nice evening with spicy vegan ramen and got taken to a few nice places for beers.

Total kilometres approx (still): 990km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #copenhagen

14th August, day 3 - Stockholm to Copenhagen

Probably slept too little, tried to get on the wrong bus from the terminal to the railway station (some random tourist bus). Also forgot to actually figure out where my bus ticket is before trying to get on the right bus 😁

One hour in Stockholm before the train leaves, so a quick walk around in the morning sun and a mozzarella toast for breakfast. I'm giving myself some more than normal slack if I can't find anything vegan available during travel time. It quite often seems to be a choice of "you don't eat meat? Well have this other animal product then".

Train journey to Copenhagen went uneventfully. Swedish trains, at least the X2 running on this route are very comfy with lots of legroom. Had to switch at Malmö, which seems to be a common thing for this route, needed to do it last time as well. Announcements are also in English and the SJ app is excellent for seeing route info and disruptions.

It’s soooo hot (30C with almost no wind), so I decided to chill at the hostel for a bit after the second shower of the day. The hostel is called Steel House Copenhagen. It’s a massive hostel, and feels very comfy and well taken care of, with a well stocked bar, lots of place to chill, games, kitchen, swimming pool, etc. And more hip people listening to hip music than you can point a finger at.

To get around I jumped on a Donkey Republic bike. It's a basic cheap 3-gear that handles like an elephant, but it gets you around. You can find them all around the city and they’re quite cheap (it cost me 105DKK or 14€ from the afternoon to evening, which is very decent pricing). There is an app to operate the bike lock, so jumping off and walking around is easy too.

Riding a bike here is great, it's not just marketing words. Obviously being as flat as a pancake also helps. Most larger roads seem to have a cycle path separated from the road and pedestrians. It feels a ton safer to cycle here even as an outsider, compared to my hometown Helsinki, where going on the road, even if it’s a cycle path section of the road, is just scary due to cars driving so fast. All the markings are much clearer too, and of course it helps to know you can just take any road and cycle on the right side of it. In Helsinki you need to jump between sides quite often and the markings are just really poor, which leads to either cycling on the road or pavement, to try and find the next piece of cycle path.

After nine kilometres cycling around I found a nice little side street vegan burger place called Eden Jaxx. Btw, Happy Cow is a nice app to find some vegan/veggie options around large cities globally.

The architecture of this city is so beautiful, I could spend the day just going around looking at buildings.

Some more exploring around, around the seafront mainly, before ending up at the Warpigs Brewpub (Mikkeller) for a good pint of beer. Too tired to do anything else after two short nights so crept up to the hostel to get some sleep.

Total kilometres approx: 990km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #stockholm #copenhagen #cycling

Ps. Readers on Mastodon kind of platforms, which limit amount of photos in the post, you can see all the photos at https://jasonrobinson.me/streams/tag/jasontravels/

Summer trip \o/

For my summer holiday, I decided to do a slightly longer trip by land. I already had tickets to Knotfest in Turku and Elbriot in Hamburg, so the rest was just planning around these. I went through Copenhagen in March for the first time, staying a night there, and wanted to see more of that place. I’ve also never been anywhere basically in between Hamburg and Talliinn, so it was time to also do that route!

What I ended up with was this, going from Helsinki -> Turku (1 night) -> Stockholm -> Copenhagen (4 nights) -> Hamburg (3 nights) -> Berlin (1 night) -> Warsaw (1 night) -> Vilnius (1 night) -> Tallinn -> Helsinki. From Stockholm to Warsav it's train, and from there onwards night buses. Approximately 3500km with 48 hours actual travel time. Yes, it’s a bit of a rush for two weeks, but lets see! :)

The hardest thing was actually choosing which backpack to take. I like to walk around a lot, so any kind of suitcase was out of the question. I have two Osprey bags, one Fairpoint 40L and one Radial 26/34L. Osprey bags are awesome quality. The Fairpoint doubles the function of a suitcase while being comfortably walking around, while the Radial is a great bag for cycling. Since I want to do a lot of cycling during this trip, especially in Copenhagen, I decided upon the Radial in the end, even though it required more minimal packing. Though, that is also a good thing because I find I just back for all the space available subconsciously, finding it really hard to limit stuff taken, so now it was a must at least. The Radial expands to 34L so it’s still quite a roomy backpack anyway.

Other great points about the Radial are:
* It has a metal frame to make the bag stand up even when empty - this is great to be able to just place it on the ground and not have it fall in random directions.
* While the Fairpoint is also ventilated from the back, the Radial actually has a support mesh that leaves a gap between your back and the bag, which is important especially when cycling on a hot summer day.
* The containers are really well designed. Well, apart from the side pockets which are weirdly angled.

For anyone looking for a bag for cycling, really recommend this one. Now, how does it fare loaded to the full 34L (total weight 11kg) and walking around? Let’s see in the next two weeks.. Most of the time I’ll have the bag much lighter, most of the stuff sitting in the hotel room.

Oh, I almost forgot. Packaging bags are great when travelling with a backpack. No more random mess of clothes mixed up with all the other stuff. Finding things is much easier when the clothes are neatly tucked in bags.

My main worries for this trip? My mobile phone. I have a OnePlus3 from way back with the original battery. Should have gotten that changed. Two spare batteries and constant charging when plugs are available should hopefully do it. I'm also staying in a hostel in Copenhagen (too expensive otherwise) which is going to be exciting, has been a while. Also the night buses up to the baltics is a bit nerving, but I'll have one hopefully good sleep in Vilnius to make it less hard.

What follows are some day by day posts as I manage to write recaps, in the hope of encouraging others who haven’t tried to travel by land. It’s way more fun than air travel, with freedom to visit many places on the route and seeing lots of scenery and city life on the way. It’s also way way way less harmful than flying, even having to take a boat across the pond to escape Finland.

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels