A bit of everything

I didn’t post anything here for quite a long time! Time to update blog a bit!
In February I managed to visit 3 new countries: Sweden, Estonia and Latvia in one week!
I had to go to Sweden for work – related meeting for 4 days and then I took a day off to travel around Northern part of Europe a bit. Stockholm was really nice, however very expensive – a bus trip from the airport was around 20 euro, 3 days metro ticket – 23 euro, small postcards for 1,5 euro etc.
Everything else was just fine – good weather (actually it’s was very warm for Stockholm at those days), interesting people – I was glad to meet with Olya Buchenko that I haven’t seen for some years, I was happy to meet new people, especially Sandra, Inga and Michelle.
My trip to Estonia was complicated let’s say. Estonian customers didn’t want to let me in Estonia in the airport because my visa allows me to travel to 1 Schengen country (apart from Italy) at once, however they never checked it before (that’s why I had Netherlands – Belgium trips etc), but since Estonia join Schengen zone only this year, they are still checking visas and put stamps. So for 1,5 hour they were trying to persuade me that I’m not allowed to come. But I was quite stubborn because I wanted to see Inna and I didn’t want to waste money spent for tickets, so I kept on long discussions with them and they finally let me in without stamp that I arrived.
I enjoyed staying in Tallinn, a lot of things: architecture, buses and trolley busses, supermarkets and food are very similar to those in Ukraine; even 90% of people speak Russian, so it felt a lot like at home, especially after eating salads with mayonnaise and “syrkova massa":) Old Tallinn is a very nice place to walk and discover small gardena or houses hidden in narrow streets from eyes of tourists. And I was really glad to see my “martyshka” Innok againJ
I had my flight back from Riga, so on Saturday we went there. We spoke with Inna until 3.30 am so it’s needless to say that we almost missed our bus (at 6 am) - we had to come back twice for tickets and Inna’s passport J Riga was quite similar again – small and cozy town with old city center.
In new EU countries (I mean Baltic here) you better speak English instead of Russian. That makes people (guides, shop assistants, and waiters) much more polite to you apparently.
Coming back to Italy was a bit tricky again – I had difficulties leaving Latvia (remember that I can travel to only 1 Schengen country? and Latvia was 3rd already:) and moreover, I didn’t have any proof that I arrived to Estonia and even more, Latvia (we went to Riga by bus and there was no passport check). Again one hour, again no stamps BUT I got my boarding pass in the end.
After being successful in Riga I had to go through same procedure in Milan again since I only had stamp that I left Stockholm on 6th Feb and the fact that I arrived to Milan on 9th… I was lucky and good in communication enough, so it went ok in the end, even though I was the last one to leave customs control.
I hope my parents will never get to know that their smart daughter was crazy enough to travel like that:)
What else? Don’t expect me to be online soon:) My traveling schedule for coming months looks like this:
20 – 23rd February – Rome
24th February – Bergamo
25 – 29th February – Naples
5 – 7th March – Trieste
8-9th March- Belgium
14-19th March – Sardinia
21-24th March – Easter trip, don’t yet know where but will go for sure
I should be awarded by Trenitalia (national railway service) and different Italian airlines as frequent, VERY frequent traveler:)

Yesterday we had pancake lunch with interns at my home. That’s fun that nobody ever tried salty pancakes with filling. In Europe they only eat sweet ones, mostly with Nutella.
The evening itself was good and the movie we saw “Das Leben der Anderen” (The life of others) was definitely as some like saying “masterpiece”, even tough it was tough to watch it in German (I had to read subtitles 70% of time). In brief the film tells the story of a plot by the Stasi to discredit a famous playwright in 80th in Eastern Berlin. I reminded myself yesterday how interesting it’s to watch this kind of movies with people from other countries and even continents, how problems and historical issues that are extremely relevant for some, don’t bother others at all. For me movie’s added value is in not only in what you see in movie itself, but most importantly in what you feel, think and discuss after it. in that sense, this movie is definitely worth seeing.
I never plan to write such long posts, I know it might be boring to read, but surprisingly in the end the size is always like that. Dunno why!:)