Our journey from Scandinvia into eastern europe begins with another ferry crossing, this time on the Tallink ferry – Baltic Princess.

The sun is setting as we arrive, dipping slowly below the horizon, yet the light takes longer to fade.  We are slowly getting used to this, as the light up here in the Northern part of the Northern hempisphere hangs around for just that little bit longer.

We’re camped up in Pirita harbour, just a few kilometres east of Tallinn centre.  We’ve cleaned out the van, somehow it managed to get dirtier than ever, despite the fact we have been in a hostel for four days in Helsinki.

Our drive from the ferry port to here took us past some of the strangest constructions I have seen.  The all concrete construction casts them instantly as Soviet structures, the crumbling edges and mossy roofs tell a tale of a time forgotten.

The two structures, on either side of the main Pirita road line up to look out over the Baltic, back to Helsinki and Finland.  Sitting behind one of the structures is a large column, a soviet memorial to the war dead.

Across the harbour resides the facade of a monastry, it’s single remaining wall contains holes where windows once were but little else.

Yet if you look closely you start to see the real Tallinn, modern constructions are springing up, barely visible through the pine trees and internet access points are signposted everywhere.  For a country that has only been free for two decades it has already, in some respects, over taken some of the grand old powers in Europe.

The clash between old and new continues as we walk towards the old town of Tallinn.

Modern wood and glass clad extensions site atop old stonework foundations and buildings.

Tallinn’s old town is it’s real gem.  Hidden away behind stone walls complete with round towers and gatehouses it instantly grabs you, despite the fact that McDonalds has prime location just inside the city gates.

Here the contrast between old and new stops.  There is only one new building here and it makes no attempt to be sympathetic to the old. Yet here, unlike in the suburbs, it feels out of place.

The Town Hall is our destination to meet Sarah and Valerio, two travellers with whom we have arranged an evening, again the couchsurfing network has come in useful.

Over 500  years are contained in these brick walls, the cafes and bars are lively yet, if you manage to shut them out, or just peer down an alleyway or up one of the small streets you could quite believe that this city has changed very little since that time.  Until of course the small blue vans of the litter pickers arrive to keep this small piece of World Heritage clean and tidy.

A newspaper lying on the floor, it’s headline proclaiming something in a different alphabet, reminds me just how close we are to Russia.

After a few fairly reasonably priced drinks in the Hell Hunt, Estonia’s first bar, established in 1992 – we travellers disperse again, agreeing to meet Sarah tomorrow for some sightseeing.

If ever you want to get to know a religion the key thing is to look at its buildings. The sparse Lutherian church near the east gate, with its walls covered in coats of arms – deep brown wood and fading gold lettering to the immensenly white and gold Orthodox Cathedral sat high above the city.  Sarah insists that we see three of them, and she left the Lutherian interior as a surprise for us, so I shall leave the final church as a surprise for you.

After that we head to an unassuming restraunt entitled “Kompressor” where Sarah informs us that they do the best pancakes – and we are not dissapointed, the taste and the quantity suppress our appetite for ferry buffets for now.

Our evening walk leads us out to the park on the east side of town, past the art museum and it’s pretty garden and out to another memorial on the edge of the ice blue Baltic.

Estonia has lost its Soviet feel, what remains are now more quirky artifacts that concrete monsters, the drive towards modernism is surprising though here the people are noticeably more reserved than the Scandinavians.

Coming into Tallinn is like no other city I have been to, it is a complete melting pot of different cultures, different times and different architecture.  A truly unique city that should be on every one’s “to do” list.

…

We stayed at Pirita Harbour Camping.
Camping cost us 200eek (11gbp) per night including electric hookup and toilets, but no showers.
Wifi access is included but you have to send a text to the council run system to gain access for a 24hour period.  The SMS will be charged at your normal rate and there are no other charges.

Please leave a comment, even if just to say hi!

After a few more hours sleep and a long shower, our ferry deposited us on the shores of Finalnd.

Although I swear to you it felt as if we had never left land. The Stockholm archipelago, consisting of some 24,000 islands, kept close company to us throughout the first part of the journey, then after a small crossing of completely empty sea, it was back through an archipelago on the Finnish side.

All of this meant that our journey was incredibly smooth,  In fact the Baltic Ocean has been incredibly flat wherever we have been near it’s shores.  This ocean is so tucked away that it does not have a tide.  It’s incredible ice blue waters seem to invite you in at every chance, though those that take the chance at this time of year must ensure that there is a sauna nearby to survive without getting hypothermia.

We headed into Turku, the old Finnish capital during the time when the Swedes owned most of the lands we have travelled through.

We’re hoping to get a hostel here and join what looks like a parade of boiler suited students.  This is actually their “drinking dress” and it allows them to do silly stuff such as rolling in the grass and getting covered in beer without destroying any of their normal clothes.  I think this throws the Finnish hurtling into first place for practical yet crazy Scandinavians.

Unfortunately all of the hostels are booked, the campsites are shut at this hour and we have little choice but to roll on towards the heady lights of Helsinki.

It is late at night by the time we arrive at our hostel in Espoo, a late night made later by the fact that we have jumped another time zone, now being two hours ahead of London – oh and it is only just getting dark at half past 11.  Which is really screwing with our body clocks.

THe next morning brings a day of just chilling out, enjoying the brilliantly beautiful beaches of Espoo and the Baltic Coastline, the pine trees add an exotic, almost meditterainean feel the just seems out of place in a country where there are only two months that are called “summer”.  The sandy beaches also look out of place, it is only the giant rocks, seen strewn about the landscape and forming cliff edges and formations almost everywhere (our hostel has a roundabout around one such rock in the car park, it’s just too big to be moved), yes – it is only these that remind you that you are in a country more used to snow than sun.

After a day of doing, well not much really, we head into the city of Helsinki.  We took the van.  Not a good idea.  Sat Nav does not cope with small streets.  We do not cope with cobbles.  Van does not cope with tight corners.  We all fall out, but make amends once we find a cool car park.  Apart from the Sat Nav, that has got a lot of apologising to do.

The first thing that surprises us about Helsinki is the incredible, imposing and – in this sunlight – bloody reflective, Cathedral.

It sits up on a plinth, it’s own small plateau in the rising above the streets of Helsinki and commands every tourist to climb the seemingly endless amount of steps up to it.

The interior is lavishly decorated with gold dripping down from every chandelier and up from every candlestick.  It is in stark contrast to the red building sitting on the other side of the river.  The Orthodox Cathedral looks very formal, though its own imposing power is most definitately there, it does not command such a large square or plinth for itself.

We are meeting up with another person from Couchsurfing.org.  This website is a must for travellers, we have found so many different people already and always had a good time.

Sara meets us outside of the white Cathedral and takes us across on yet another boat to the small island of Suomenlinna, literaly translated to Finnish Fortress.

There are two sides to this place.  One is the newer looking Russian side, with small garrisons, shops and other administrative wooden huts dotted around.  Across a small wooden bridge is found the much grander and larger castle.  Our view of this is distracted though by the hot weather and the view of the Baltic, so blue, lapping against a small sandy beach and our destination is set.

The afternoon passes us almost without saying a word, then Luke and I return the van to the youth hostel (sat nav is still in the dog house) and travel back into Helsinki by bus, for tonight is Eurovision night and Luke, Sara and I have a date with a large tv screen and a large, cold beer.

Hi guys and girls, well my planned updates did not work, so here I will try again, the updates are currently a week behind our tour, but over the course of a few days we will all be back on schedule, of course that is if everything goes to plan, which it invariably won’t.  That is all part of the adventure of course!

After stocking up on a few things in Germany (where things are a weee bit cheaper) we headed across the border to the country of Denmark.

We were headed for a place called Dalby, on the isle of Lyo, the middle of the three main parts of Denmark. Our journey took us through some tiny roads, with the van only just fitting round some of the corners and a few blind summits that has us praying that nobody was coming the other way!

Once we reached Dalby we were greeted warmly at a very plush looking campsite, which is not the 50DKK stellplatz we were looking for.

The campsite attendant informs us that he has no knowledge of the stellplatz and that we aren’t the first to call him about it.  It would appear that are usualy accurate Stellplatz Bordatlas has let us down, which is actually a complete first!

After refusing the polite offer of a place for only 220DKK (about 5 times our budget) we moved off to the nearest place available in the harbour town of Skaelskor.

The journey took us over the first of two major bridges in Denmark, between Lyo and Zealand.  We had heard from other campervaners that this bridges are incredibly expensive and prepared ourselves for a hefty 500krone fee, but at just 212krone we were pleasantly surprised!

It would appear that Danish bridges work out the price on length more than weight or height of the vehicle, so our smaller van (when compared to other “proper” campervans) has once again come up trumps and saved us a few bob.

Once across the bridge we headed south, by this time it was getting dark and we find out that our light beam adjusters (The UK drives on the left, Europe on the right – so headlamp adjusters have to be fitted) are not fitted correctly and neaither of our headlamps is spreading much light on the road.

The sat-nav dumped us out at the entrance to the harbour, where we found a spot and promptly turned in for the night, it had been rather tiring driving all them blasted lanes!

We were woken at some ungodly hour, early in the morning by the trendy harbour master with his sunglasses perched on his baseball cap, bluetooth ear piece in, and designer stubble trimmed to perfection. In well versed English he extracted 90krone from us and pointed us to a spot where we would be less “in the way” and be able to plug into electric.

The sunny weather is still tagging along with us for the ride so we set off in best summer-tourist wear for the Skaelskor Touritst Information Centre…

more tomorrow, one is quite tired, it is 12am!  must sleep!

Guest post…

Hey all, you may remember I offered a guest post a while ago seeing as I am off on holiday this week and connections can not be guaranteed.

This post is from Kevin Littleton, you can find a link to his blog at the bottom of this post. Right, that’s enough from me….. enjoy!

Splashy Splashy

The rains have left me sometime last night while I slept after visiting for a couple days. I awoke this morning to find sunshine pouring through all my windows. I miss the gloom that I danced in yesterday and the puddles that splashed all around that seemed to dance with me. All the puddles are slowly dying as I type this and I can’t help but feel a sadness for them and their mommy who floated inland with the gentle breeze. The weather man says more rain is coming for the weekend and that gives me hope.

Yesterday I sat on the corner of the street with my girlfriend and a cup of tea. It was lightly drizzling and there was a huge puddle in the street before us. We sat there for a long time all bundled up and just talking about nonsense. Lots of cars went by and through that puddle. But the puddle was next to a stop sign so all the cars had to stop before turning onto the main street. This halted any big splashes that could have ended in disaster with the two of us sitting there. We were both surprised that the splashes from the cars were not even making it to the sidewalk, let alone where we were… We both had mixed feelings about that though. When we got up to leave I stomped the puddle…

I didn’t hit the sidewalk either.

They say the rains are coming back for the weekend. I really hope so because my feet are dry and this can’t last for too much longer…

Kevin Littleton
http://www.kevinlittleton.blogspot.com/

Howdy all,

I am not sure if Blogger has issues or if it is just me but the last post seems to have some sort of issue accepting comments. Bizarre! Try this one – hope it works!

I be off on me holidays in about 5 hours (and counting) and I need one of those “split-screens” that they have on the rather brilliant 24 series to clearly demonstrate just how many tasks I am trying to do all at once so that I can get going!

I have been looking through the Google Analytics package to see how most of you are finding my little piece of bloga firma and have found (without surprise) that it is from the wonderful Blogs of Note.

Then I found out that some of you were also arriving from Search engines. So i thought I would be all clever like and actually answers one of the questions from the search phrases, seeing as they are related to this blog anyway.

One of the most popular is asking “How long to drive round Europe?”

Well I think that this is the wrong way to approach it. There is just so much to see that you could spend months, years, decades or centuries just travelling round Europe.

The best thing to do is select a few destinations (and not whole countries, yer we’re gonna DO Italy, Yuh huh… quite a LOT to DO!) Keep it down to individual campsites / areas. “Doing Rome” is a plausible statement. You could spend a couple of days in Rome then move on to your next destination.

The trick is to have a plan about how you’re going to plan bear with me it does make sense.

If you have a few people travelling with you then all try and pick on destination of your own. Set all the destinations then see how far the journey is.

If they are a few of you doing the driving then you can do many more miles, If it is just one or two people then make sure you get a good nights sleep otherwise you will be seriously affected by tiredness. Also, remember that in a lot of European countries you can stay in motorway service stations overnight, sleep in your van if you want to – save money!

If you haven’t got a set plan then take a map and a dart or something that makes a mark and lob it at said map, this must be done over your shoulder and well away from any livestock. These have heralded some of my greatest adventure travels. As you may end up in some quirky place you must be prepared to enjoy everything you see and accept the choices.

Alternatively, and currently my favourite destination planning device is Google Earth. Scroll over and just have a look at some of the photos (Panoramio) until you see something you like and then go there! Works brilliantly!

As for timings though – Plan some sort of plan first then work out how long you can take to drive round Europe.

Unless, of course, you have nothing to get back to. In which case put your right foot down and get that van rolling.

Speed limits in Europe.

UK motorways are a ludicrously slow 70mph (112kph) The rest of Europe is mostly at 80mph (130kph). Then of course there is Germany. Their Autobahns have no set speed limit (on some sections only) and you can expect a lot of BMW’s and Audi’s and Merc’s to be passing you at 130mph (209kph).

Beware though that Germany has also brought in a new rule for many parts of these de-restricted motorways and enforced an 80mph (130kph) limit between 10pm and 6am.

Equipment

Yes – something that has caught a few people out. Most countries in Europe require the following equipment by law, else you may face a fine. And there’s no point blaming it on the rental company. It’s your responsibility to be safe. Also for your own safety carry them. You never know, it might just save your life.

• First Aid kit
• Reflective Jacket
• Fire Extinguisher
• Sticker stating where the vehicle is registered (GB / D etc.)
• Spare Light bulb set
• Warning Triangle

Not having any of these could lead to be fined, or just hassled, there is also possibly more. Check before you go with your motoring association, they should know or be able to find out.

Lights

In Austria, and some other countries, you are required to have your lights on all the time, Day or Night. Don’t argue, just do it. Put a post it note, or make a sticker, to remind you and put in on the windshield or somewhere prominent.
Update – this is no longer the case in all of Austria, only certain counties – better check or just leave ‘em on! – thanks to Susi @ 2girlsincalifornia for the info

Also – a note for American visitors.

A note from a previous experience. Please remember that us lot over here in Europe mostly drive manual (stick drive) vehicles.
If you are looking to get a van to travel in then I can almost guarantee that this will be the case.
Automatics are very few and very far between, and will cost you a lot more to hire or rent.

Next time I will do some sort of information on the Insurance policies and how they work in Europe, Feel free to post any questions you may have in the comments.

That’s all for now. I hope this helps some of you. I will update you guys from our glorified car park some time next week.

Happy Travelling
Overland Si!