Thursday, July 12, 2012

Cycling in the Baltic countries



First of all we have to apologize to our English-speaking readers (if there are any left) for the lack of updates in English! The days have been quite long and exhausting, to the extent that it's felt like too much of a strain on our brains to produce text in a foreign language. We promise to make up for this as we enter Poland (which will hopefully happen some time tomorrow).

We've cycled through the Baltic countries in seven days, starting from Tallinn where we arrived by boat from Helsinki. The countries are quite small and can be crossed quite quickly on a bike, but it's clear that there's plenty to explore off Via Baltica, the main highway that we followed from Tallinn to Riga. We especially regret not having the time to go visit the Estonian islands of Saarenmaa and Muhu that are famous for their beautiful nature.

The highlights of the trip have been the small villages on the Estonian coast South of Pärnu, the old wooden houses of Jurmala in Latvia, the vegetarian restaurants of Riga and the cherry quark (a milky dessert) found in many supermarkets all over the Baltic countries. We've also met lots of friendly locals, who have generously let us camp on their grounds and helped us find our way forward. Lithuania doesn't have many campsites but we've still been able to stick to our budget and spend lots of nights in our tent without having to fear for intruders.

All in all, the countries are well suited for cycling - Estonia having the shortest distances and best road signs and Latvia the longest sand beaches. Most of the young people speak English and most of the older people Russian, so if you speak both you're not going to have any problems communicating with the locals.

A word of warning, though: All the three countries are quite flat. This might sound great if you dislike cycling up big hills, but actually cycling for 100 + kilometers on a straight, flat road in hard head wind can become so tedious you start praying for a mountain to emerge on the horizon. It's better if you can plan your trip so you have more time to explore, so you can get off the big roads. Apparently Southern Lithuania also has some beautiful, variated terrain with historical fortresses built on the hills, but we haven't found it yet…

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