Mini-trip

Before my ‘big’ trip to Australia I decided to take a wee trip somewhere, where-ever I could find cheap flights. By the time I was booking my flights I could have had flights even to Edinburgh with just less than 30€ but I just didn’t wanna go there, rather somewhere I have never been so I started to search flights for eastern Europe. Basically I had two choices - either fly to Poland from Turku or to Latvia/Lithuania from Tampere, after weighing options I chose the latter one. At first I was just thinking of either Riga or Kaunas but then decided to combine them since it’s pretty cheap to travel in Baltic countries. Only thing that was bothering me was travel costs to Tampere, about 3rd of whole travel budget.. In that sense Poland would have been cheaper but then I’d have either only 1 full day in Gdansk or other option, stayin 5 days in country and visitin Warsaw as well but when checkin prices for trains I was stunned.. ..would have been 35€ one way, in 2nd class.. ..no way.. So, chose Latvia & Lithuania, after all, it’s only 50€ return to Tampere and this way I get to see two countries and three cities. My travel itinerary is flyin to Riga where stayin for 2 nights, then travelling to Vilnius with a bus where stayin 2 nights as well, and on a last day takin train to Kaunas from where I’m flyin back to Tampere.

When I was reading newspaper yday saw that Dinamo Riga is playin in KHL play-offs on the day I’m headin there, awesome. Finally found a webpage from where to book tickets. There was quite a bit of free seats left and for pretty good price, 15-20lats, but.. ..since it was less than 4days to the venue I couldn’t pay with credit card, great.. Gotta hope I can find some ticket service from downtown Riga and get a good seat for the game. Anyway, no matter where I’m gonna sit, I’m definitely gonna go for that game, especially when I was checkin some game intros from YouTube, looks awesome. And I reckon, game itself is just a bit different than in SM-Liiga.. Dinamo doesn’t have any finnish players but they’ve got swede as a goalie. Lokomotiv Yaroslavl has two or three finnish players but I reckon I’m not gonna recognize ‘em cause their names are in russian..

I haven’t made too much plans of what to do in Baltic, rather just take everythin as it comes, just got few ideas what to see. I rather ask from my hostel what to see, usually the best tips are from locals. Of course, I do have wee guidebooks to get some idea what to see but I don’t wanna rely too much on them. ‘Just go with the flow’, that’s been my motto for awhile.