Arto's Blog

Curonian Spit is one of the most interesting places in the Baltic region. It's about 100 km long and only a couple of kilometers wide cape which separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. About half of the cape belongs to Lithuania, half to Russia. The land is sand dunes, but due to intensive forestation most of the dunes are nowadays covered by forests.

We (me, Mikko and Sami) spent one and a half days on the Curonian Spit. The unique natural landscape was definitely worth seeing, highlights being the desert of unforested sand dunes on the Lithuanian side and the 'Dancing Forest' on the Russian part. The latter was an area where pines had grown in various unusual shapes for an unknown reason. Must have been pretty funky dance music I guess. :)

The Russian part of the ride was together with members of the Koenig bicycle team, which came to meet us in Nida (near the border, on the Lithuanian side). Our group consisting of one tandem, one recumbent and four upright bicycles - equipped with two Russian and three Finnish flags - drew quite curious looks from the cars overtaking us. Crossing the border with the help of locals was a breeze. Even the customs officer helped us by filling one of the forms.

About 30 kilometers south of the Curonian Spit lies the city of Kaliningrad, where we spent two days. The city has a strange history. Once Koenigsberg, the glorious capital of the Eastern Prussia, it was mostly destroyed in second world war and taken over by the Soviet Union, which blasted away some of the remaining ruins in the city center with dynamite. Now the city and the surrounding region are part of Russia,most of the dunes are nowadays covered by forests.

We (me, Mikko and Sami) spent one and a half days on the Curonian Spit. The unique natural landscape was definitely worth seeing, highlights being the desert of unforested sand dunes on the Lithuanian side and the 'Dancing Forest' on the Russian part. The latter was an area where pines had grown in various unusual shapes for an unknown reason. Must have been pretty funky dance music I guess. :)

The Russian part of the ride was together with members of the Koenig bicycle team, which came to meet us in Nida (near the border, on the Lithuanian side). Our group consisting of one tandem, one recumbent and four upright bicycles - equipped with two Russian and three Finnish flags - drew quite curious looks from the cars overtaking us. Crossing the border with the help of locals was a breeze. Even the customs officer helped us by filling one of the forms.

About 30 kilometers south of the Curonian Spit lies the city of Kaliningrad, where we spent two days. The city has a strange history. Once Koenigsberg, the glorious capital of the Eastern Prussia, it was mostly destroyed in second world war and taken over by the Soviet Union, which blasted away some of the remaining ruins in the city center with dynamite. Now the city and the surrounding region are part of Russia, but geographically detached from the rest of the country.

Probably nowhere can three layers of architecture be seen so clearly as in Kaliningrad. The city center is a showcase of the blocky 1960's and 1970's Soviet state architecture, while in the surrounding parts remain many old German style buildings from the era before the war. New modern buildings appear here and there, and future plans include constructing skycrapers in the city center as well as rebuilding the old castle and parts of the old town.

Now we're already about 80 kilometers east of Kaliningrad in the city of Tschernjachowsk, and planning to cross the border to Poland later today.

My trip has advanced until Liepaja, Latvia. After Tartu I continued towards south-west, spent one night in Sangaste castle and crossed the border in Valga. There were some very nice places and very bad gravel roads in the Gauja national park on my way to Riga. Mostly the roads were perfectly okay, though.

In Riga airport I met my old cycling friends Mikko and Sami and we've been riding together since then. We spent the midsummer in a camping area in Mersrags. It was actually quite similar to the Finnish midsummer, with a big bonfire built of old boats. Then we continued along the coast to cape Kolka.

The best part was the beach to the south from Kolka. We spent one whole sunny day riding on the beach, occasionally stopping for a picnic or swimming. It was actually much easier than the road would have been, and the scenery certainly beat the roadside 10-0.

We also had our first stays with Hospitality Club members in Jurmala and Ventspils. Greetings and thanks to valmundos and walx! Currently we are in Liepaja, Latvia, and will continue towards Klaipeda in Lithuania, the Curonian Spit and Kaliningrad.

The possibility to leave comments in the blog has been at least temporarily disabled due to excessive comment spam. I'll try to find a better solution later, but meanwhile you're welcome to send feedback simply by email to ajt@iki.fi.

I'm in Tartu now, and being kindly hosted by Lauri Anton from EENet means that finding an Internet connection is not a problem. :) Actually it should be pretty easy in Estonia in general, there are plenty of wireless access points, libraries and some Internet cafes have computers and the places to get connected are conveniently marked on maps.

The oddest sight during the ride from Tallinn was a truck pouring small grained light brown sand on a lenghty section of a normal paved road. The result was naturally a big cloud of dust every time a car drove by. They weren't just as big as the dust clouds on the dry unpaved roads, but almost!

Other than the dust I had a very nice ride to Tartu, sunshine all the way and not too much traffic. My friends asked if I had noticed how Estonian motorists drive dangerously and ignore cyclists - no, didn't have any problems. It would have been even nicer in three or four days with more detours, this time I squeezed it in two days.

Tomorrow I have time for sightseeing in Tartu, today's short sigthseeing time was spent on a special tour in the EENet office with Lauri and Mihkel. It included the usual visit to the server room, but also an evaluation of the roof terrace with appropriate beverages. Later in the evening I also met Lauri's wife and daughter, and had a dinner and a sauna in their nice new house.

My last day at work was Friday 9th of June and then I needed to get my flat empty by the morning of Monday 12th. And it actually took until the morning, didn't have much sleep last weekend. But now all that is done, tomorrow I'll take care of the last things I still need to do before departure and board a ship to Tallinn early Friday morning.

My great colleagues at CSC had put together a cool farewell gift which you can see in the picture. I'll try to report later what I ended up buying with those notes. :) They also gave me a solar panel charger but after considering the extra weight including the 12V chargers for my phone and camera I decided to trade it for a small water filter.

My employer was not the only organization where I needed to plan for leaving. In 2005 I was the chairman of Finnish Linux User Group and board member & webmaster of Japania ry, a Finnish-Japanese friendship organization. When all the work is done by volunteers it can be non-trivial to find someone to take over. In retrospect, getting rid of the non-paid activies was at least as difficult as finishing work. However, I feel that all of them are doing okay and I can start my trip without too many worries. Reserving enough time was the key for that.

Hi, I'm coming to Helsinki for a couple of days, could you host me?. Since last September I've received such emails about once a month. Hospitality Club and other hospitality exchange networks make it perfectly acceptable social behaviour to ask questions like that from people you've never met. While that might sound strange at first, it's great fun for both the hosts and the guests. So the right answer to the question is yes. ;)

In a way, it's like bringing an ancient tradition to Internet age. People didn't use to lock their doors and offered food and shelter for strangers who happened to pass by. The development of transport and accommodation services has made it easier than ever to travel, but at the same time has in the worst case reduced contacts with local inhabitants to transactions in a souvenir shop. It's no surprise that people are forming communities where these barriers are broken again. The Internet makes it easier than ever.

As the networks grow, also larger meetings are organized. Last week from Thursday to Sunday there was a Hospitality Club event in Helsinki with more than 130 participants. I met again some truly wonderful people and had good time. Everyone else seemed to do as well, so the event was a success. You can take a peek at the event website if you like.

However, no matter the size of the club, the real core of it is still small encounters between just a few people. That will be one of the new elements during my upcoming trip. I will be visiting some friends I've hosted in Helsinki, and others whom I will meet the first time when arriving at their front door. I'm looking forward to that.