and neon signs got tired...

"welcome to helsinki"
reading that sign late in the evening yesterday put a smile on my face as i left the ferry that brought me back home.
its been quite a trip:
dus-rix by place
rix-tll by bus
tll-hel by ferry.

i left germany on friday early morning after a week filled with anxious waiting, not that much sleep, exams that ive passed, good times with tommy, my roomie for a week, a bbq, coffee breaks and extremely shitty times.
a week is enough and 1707 kilometers are nice. very nice.
i flew ino riga again, only that this time i stayed.
after catching the bus at the airport i was completely lost. surprise surprise. i managed to get off somewhat close to the hostel that i booked and after walking around for maybe half an hr i found it. riga hostel. definitely one of the best places ive been to yet. and 15 bed dorm mixed aint that bad.
anyhow. since the hostel was already booked out for saturday i decided to make the best of one day and leave saturday midday to get to tallinn and then try to get a ticket for the ferry.
riga hostel is situated in the old town. definitely the place you want to be at in riga. basically every church, monument, you name it is there within a walking distance. i ditched the map after a while and just kept on walking. somehow it reminded me of my time in st. petersburg. esp after crossing the river to get to the bus station to get my ticket. like: you have stockmann (a huge department store) on one side of the road, in between you have numerous people begging for money next to bmws and mercedes and on the opposite you have those small kioski that sell basically everything you need to barely survive. the clash between soviet and european style, extremely rich and extremely poor, old vs. new... it all becomes vivid. i dont know if its the same in western europe states but i always notice it the further east i go. still: i like those old soviet influences. i always admired those old buildings in st. petersburg, the little streetstalls, small grocery stores, old streets etc.

after i got my busticket i tried to do the "old town" walk and errrm failed. haha. im not really able to find buildings that im looking for, needless to say that i really tried. i think i managed to see most of the stuff that they point out but in a completely wrong order. i will try again next time. right now i have this plan to go back either in october or sometimes next yr.
i pretty much slept the whole way to tallinn. i dont know where we stopped but it was in some small, tiny city somewhere in the middle of nowhere. couldnt tell you. but hey, 13 euros to get from one capital to the next one, from one coutry to the next one is pretty good. the bus driver was even nice enough to bring me to the ferry terminal so i didnt even have to walk all the way down there from the city center. got my ticket and suprisingly the ferry left an hr earlier than i had thought it would, went on the ferry and off i was. home.
h.o.m.e
how nice.



but for as much as i like to live here im already struggeling again to stay in one place. i met a girl in riga who has been travelling for the past 3 yrs. and although i managed to live in more or less only 3 places the past 1.5 yrs im already fed up with it. the world out there is huge. there are SO many places that i want to see. so many seas that i want to cross, cities to get stuck in by chance, roads to be driven on... you get the idea. i want to see ore of the baltic states, maybe stay a bit longer here and there, work to survive and keep on travelling when ive had enough. im struggeling to stay in college. although i passed my intermediate exams andthus more than half my studies are done and it would be completely stupid to leave it all behind (again) i dont know if i can pull myself togethere for the last 2 yrs. i hope that most courses that i do here can be transfered so i only have roughly one yr left, but still:
i.want.to.see.the.world.





desperately.


the cardigans
the casting out
pale
explosions in the sky
fairweather
polite sleeper.