Wednesday-thursday, Days 11-12: Gdansk - Lutz - Gnydia - FINLAND - Helsinki - Jyvaskyla

All right, it's time to wrap up this blog and drive home. After visiting Auschwitz, we drove all the way to Gdansk through Poland with a slight hurry as the sooner we got to our hostel in Gdansk, the more sleep we could get. We arrived just before midnight, after experiencing some rough roads and weirdly small Poland route number 1, which instead of being a highway from south to north actually crossed through cities and made our drive a much longer.

After getting some sleep, we woke up early in the morning for a quick Gdansk tour (well me and JP did, while Petri and Aleksi slept longer). After our tour, it was time to go again and drive just 40 km's to Gnydia, where we got onboard to a ferry to Finland. We ate, we drank, we used the sauna, played slots, we got drunk, fell asleep and woke up the next day.

Right now, I'm writing this while the ferry is coming to it's final destination - Helsinki, Finland. All we have left is a 300 km drive to Jyvaskyla, what seems a ridiculously short drive comparing to what we had driven up to this point. Our trip was a big success as all our plans worked, our car didn't break down and we were never late from anywhere. Of course, Ukrainian militia gave us some problems, but that was all. It was very educating to visit Chernobyl and Auschwitz and we can only recommend those locations to anyone, who wants to see some dark history of Europe.

Thanks for reading, it was one helluva road trip!

Tuesday, Day 10: Zakopane - Oswiecim (Auschwitz) - Torun - Gdansk

Let me start by just saying that those nazis were pretty damn f*cked up back in the war days.

Earlier we visited Chernobyl, which caused a lot of destruction. That was still "easy" to handle, as it was an accident. But today, visiting Auschwitz concentration camp, it's way different. This was no accident, and there were millions of people killed.

Today, Auschwitz is a museum and more than 2 million people visit it every year. You'll get a tour guide, who takes you around Auschwitz and Birkenau and tells you stories behind the photos and buildings along the way. And it is tough, because even though you can understand what the tour guide is saying, you can't quite grasp that it has actually happened. You try to imagine what it was like, but yet it seems impossible because the things they did was beyond anyone's comprehension. I couldn't even make up the ways nazis killed their innocent victims, and that makes it even more difficult to understand that someone has once actually done it.

I won't go to any details about the stories there, but you can get the image when I say that they transported more than 1 000 000 people just to this concentration camp to their deaths. How someone could do it, I have no idea. It's just so horrible and cruel that at some point you feel that has this actually happened? But it has and the evidence is right there. I'm glad that people can visit the site today to understand and learn the history behind those barbed wires.

The ruins of Birkenau gas chamber

Unloading zone for people coming to their deaths

Only a handful people were successful escaping Auschwitz

Wall of death...

Monday, Day 9: Poprad - POLAND - Zakopane

After a very, very good night of sleep we woke up without any alarm clocks, ate our breakfasts and packed our car once again. This day was by far the easiest drive, just over 100 km from Poprad to Zakopane. We chose to do this short drive because we were driving within the Carpathian Mountains, so there was most likely a lot to see and not a good place to drive in a hurry.

The road heading from Slovakia to Poland

The drive was really nice, although there were not much scenic spots to take photos from the journey. We tried to drive to a mountain lake called Morskie Oko just after the Polish border (which was just a small bridge and a sign that you're now in Poland), but without knowing more about it, we found out that you can't drive there. Parking place was located 9 km's from the lake, so for us it was a no-no for a 2 hour walk one way... We decided to continue to Zakopane and after walking the town centre for a while, we decided to head to our hostel.

Zakopane city center

Just before opening our beers we decided that let's go to see a mountain nearby, accessible by a cable car. That was a jackpot, as soon we were heading up to a mountain top 2km high (Kasprovy Wiech) with amazing views to every direction. Zakopane area is extremely nice and it wouldn't be a bad idea to spend more time here and do lots of trekking, since there seems to be a lot of paths to discover in the mountains. But that's not for us this time, so after getting a healthy dose of fresh air we headed back to our hostel. Rest of the evening is about relaxing, since rest of the trip will be pretty tough...

Cable car going up to Kasprowy Wiech mointain

This is how we get high

Saturday-Sunday, Days 7-8: Kiev - HUNGARY - Debrecen - Miskolc - SLOVAKIA - Poprad

The most grueling part of our road trip. Total of 1 200 km's to be driven before reaching our next hostel in Poprad, Slovakia. It was too tough to try to reach our destination before evening, so we decided to tour Kiev for a while and start driving at 2 pm. After walking around in a really hot 30 celcius city it was time to go and wreck nerves again in Ukrainian traffic. As a pleasant surprise, we got out of the city without any traffic jams and roads were either in almost good or even in excellent conditions and we were able to drive much faster than we thought.

Last photo of Kiev: Main road

As the sun was setting down, Aleksi's stint was done and JP got behind the wheel. Or maybe I should say Mr. Bad Karma. We were driving somewhere between L'viv and the border town Chop, when for the second time we got pulled over by the always awesome and fair militia. So JP had to once again sit into the militia's Lada to solve out with a huge language barrier what was going on. Apparently we changed lane in a place where we shouldn't have. This time the officer gave JP a paper and a pen to write down what he thought the correct penalty would be, in US dollars. JP wrote $30, to which the officer laughed and after a while wrote and circled $80. So there it was, freakin' 80 smackers for changing lanes! I have probably never seen one being so pissed off like JP was after he had to throw all that money to the floor of militia's Lada. Boy, the border wasn't coming quickly enough...

At this point we all can give an advise for you. If you're planning to do a road trip to Ukraine, don't. Fly to Kiev and be happy. Thanks.

Anyhow, I jumped behind the wheel after the incident and drove as careful as someone can drive. Obeying all the traffic rules in Ukraine is mostly about pure luck, because there aren't speed limit signs, but you have to figure out are you in a built-up area or not. If example a truck drives the other way during dark hours, you more than easily can miss a sign and drive wrong speeds. Before reaching the border the road started to elevate through a mountain of some sort and I was driving slower than ever, couple of cars passed us by in dangerous areas. It didn't take long when a militia car zoomed by us and a while after that they had stopped the duo. They concentrate their all efforts to penalize people on the road and civilians despise them. Than can easily be seen as all the oncoming traffic will flash their headlights to warn fellow drivers from a militia radar zone - and there seems to be thousands of them.

JP posing with a IS-2 tank near Rivne, Ukraine

Eventually we got to the Ukraine-Hungary border and for our surprise Ukrainian border official had a good sense of humor and we got by their side of the border much quicker than when entering the country. As Hungary is an EU country, entering was also pretty effortless. We drove through the night to Debrecen, the 2nd biggest city in Hungary. The original plan was to get there in the morning, but we were way ahead of our schedule (we forgot change of timezones as well), so no eatery was open. We only saw a lot of drunken people going home from the city clubs, filled our tank to full in a gas station and continued north towards Slovakia.

Night time driving, finally over...

Driving through a small Slovakian village

In the next city, Miskolc we tried to get some food but once again everything was closed. But we were finished as well, after being awake for 21 hours and driven for 17 hours of it. Just after Miskolc we parked our car to a roadside parking spot and slept in our car for and hour or so. It's amazing what a proper power nap can do, so we were once again able to continue towards Poprad. Hungary-Slovakia border station had apparently been closed for years, so we just drove straight into the country and had only a short journey left.

We didn't look too closely how the roads were in Slovakia, so we found ourselves driving very twisty crossing of a mountain, which was an excellent surprise. But the biggest surprise was in the end as we finally were able to check in to our hostel. I made a reservation for "2 bedroom apartment" for 65 euros, but my jaw dropped couple of inches when opening the door. It was an amazing about 120 square meters completely new apartment and suddenly we didn't feel tired anymore. So here we are now, enjoying beers, listening music and writing this blog. Life's good again!

The living room of a cheap apartment booked from Hostelbookers. Sometimes you get real lucky!

Friday, Day 6: Tour Chernobyl

The most anticipated day for us was of course the trip to see the blown nuclear reactor in Chernobyl and the deserted nearby city called Pripyat'. Trip started with a bus ride to north from Kiev, about two hours long. First safety and passport check was 30 km mark before the actual site and it was also the safety zone radius for the reactor. We entered Chernobyl city, which currently a has a population of 4 000 and consists workers for the site. They are restricted to first be inside the 30 km zone for 15 days, then 15 days outside, then 4 in and 3 out. Obviously because of the high radiation issues.

In the city we met our tour guide and after waiving off all our rights to claim anything if we got ill or something because of being exposed to radioactive materials, we started driving to the site. We saw the power plant - or the rusting remains of it - before driving through the "red forest", the most contamidated area. Some tourists and the guide had geiger meters to show the radiation amounts live and every alarm in the meters went off to warn from high radiation. There were collapsed trees, which had died instantly after being contamidated, but otherwise as the time has passed, the forest was blossoming again.

Pripyat' view from hotel balcony

After the badly contamitadet area, we entered the completely abandoned city of Pripyat', which was built in 1970 and because of the jobs in the power plant. 50 000 people had total of 3 hours to evacuate and the city was fully deserted, before the radiation was safe enough for people to visit it again decades later. The city is pretty mind-blowing. Nature has totally taken over of anything that had built earlier, trees grow inside the buildings and everything is rusting and falling apart day by day.

We got the chance to see city center by walking the badly damaged streets and enter some buildings like a hotel, a school and a spa. The aging and no repair works had made the buildings almost like death traps, broken glass all over the floors and items hanging by a thread from the walls and ceilings. 50 000 people used to live here, now it's a ghost town. It was really fascinating to visit Pripyat' and the guides let us wander around pretty freely in the buildings. There were only two rules; Stick together and only walk on the paved areas to avoid higher exposure to radation, as plants and grass were highly contamidated.

After Pripyat' we had an excellent meal in a local eatery for the workers. Before anyone entered to the eatery, we had to do a radiation test in a machine specifically made for it. Then it was time to see the famous catfish that had lived in the cooling channels. After feeding and looking the amazing size of the fish, we drove as close to the blown reactor as it's safe to do. At that point, the radiation levels were really high, but yet 500 times less than inside the reactor. And that would be deadly without any proper equipment...

The trip was a big success. We had high hopes what the tour was about, but every location that we had the chance to see was even better. It's obviously horrible that the reactor blew back in the 80's, but today it's a good thing that they let people to see what it had caused. Enjoy the photos...

Nature has completely taken over

Abandoned amusement park in ruins

Trees have even taken over inside buildings, this is from school gymnasium

The remains of swimming pool

Gas mask left behind in a hurry

Finally the root of all evil: Chernobyl reactor 4

Thursday, Day 5: Warsaw - UKRAINE - Rivne - Kiev

We woke up very early in the morning for this drive, mostly because after watching the deciding NHL final it was impossible to get sleep enough in a room without air-con and no chance to open windows because of an airport nearby. All the better anyways, we avoided Warsaw morning traffic and got out of the city vicinity by 7 am. Our planned route was 765 km long and first Poland part of it was as easy as it gets.

When entering Ukraine side of the border, it all changed. First we got stuck to the border for 45 minutes, as we had to completely empty our trunk and JP had to unpack his bag and show what medicines he had. At the end we had five border employees and a drug dog checking our bags, but finally got the clearance and off we drove.

This road was in good condition compared to the bad ones...

But then the real nightmare started. The road was simply undriveable. And I don't mean some grooves here and there, but at some points it felt that THERE WAS NO ROAD! Our car had to endure a hole after a hole and it seemed that it would break soon if that was going to last long. And it did. After more than 60 km of pure horror we decided to try another road going to Kiev, but first we had to drive a small unpaved village roads, but even those felt better than the M06 road...

JP bribing the officials

Things got better as we got to the next big road and even though by our standards the road was still really, really bad, it was way better than the previous one. So we settled in for a cruise mode as there was still a long way to go. But soon, the drive became even longer. After a four-lane motorway the road narrowed to a normal highway, militia waved us beside the road and showed a reading of 85 km/h in his radar. Well, that didn't tell us anything since we were driving the same speed than others and anyways there was no speed limit signs available. JP was still the driver and was told to enter militia's car (Lada, surprisingly) for a ticket write-up. And it took a long time, since militia didn't speak English and JP didn't speak Ukrainian. Ticket was 580 Hryvnas, about 50 euros and to pay it we had to follow militia to a local bank. When we got there, it was surprisingly closed for the day. For us, it looked that it was closed back in the 80's. They told JP to get back into their car and finally both found the same page - If we wanted to get out of there without more hassle, they gave us a 50% discount if JP dropped the money to the car and didn't ask for a receipt of it. So in other words, it was not hard to guess, but bribing a militia officer was just what this thing was about. And we had been in the country for about 2-3 hours...

We changed drivers at that point and I jumped behind the wheel. The rest of the way was uneventful comparing to what had happened earlier, but we didn't really need anything more than just to get to our Kiev hostel and get some sleep. After 15 hours, we finally arrived to the capital city after more than 800 km and found our place to stay pretty quickly. It didn't take long for us to fall to sleep!

Every city has it's Soviet style monument. Here, we arrive to Rivne.

These are the cars of Ukraine

Wednesday, Day 4: A day off at Warsaw

Well, not much stories about this day. It was about relaxing for a bit and recharge our batteries for the next long drive to Ukraine. For the most part, Warsaw looked very unorganized and there was not much to see. That is, until we got to the old quarters. Almost every big city has one, but Warsaw's one is HUGE. It's really amazing place to walk, as most of the streets have been completely pedestrianized (is that even a word?) and you can walk freely taking photos while avoiding all the normal hassle. There is no-one trying eagerly to sell you anything and not much beggars, so it was a great place to visit.

Here's some photos of our tourism day.

Palace of culture and science

A view of downtown Warsaw from the Palace of culture and science

Soldiers guarding the tomb of the unknown soldier

Polish teenagers are very original and tough

Street performer doing his thing at the old quarters

An example of pedestrianized old quarters streets

Tuesday, Day 3: Vilnius - POLAND - Warzaw

Third day and fifth country coming up. We're really on the fast lane as countries keep changing quickly. During hostel breakfast we met a Finnish girl who was traveling alone by bus and told that she got all the way to Vilnius from Tallinn for only 40 euros in a bus equipped with Internet connection. Not expensive and should be a fun way to travel as well!

Very nice example of Polish roads

This day consisted driving smaller roads, avoiding the bigger Via Baltica route to Poland and Warzaw. It was about a 500 km drive through small villages and very fine country roads using 16 and 61 routes. Roads were in excellent for the most part of the route, but in the more populated areas there were some holes to avoid. Amount of traffic was surprisingly low and other than couple of dangerous overtakes by cars going way past speed limit, it was generally safer than I thought. Sun was shining and we were in no hurry keeping breaks at gas stations, so it was a very, very fine day doing road trippin'.

When we finally arrived in the vicinity of Warzaw, the road conditions changed to outright horrible. The problem of metropolitan areas; Too much traffic to cut the road to make proper repairs, so if there's a hole, it's patched individually. That makes the road very bumpy and hard to drive. But we avoided all the traffic jams and found our hostel for next two nights without too much trouble. After unpacking our bags to our room, it was time to eat and head out to the city to get some beers.

Everything went smoothly, if you don't factor in the language barrier in a fast-food type restaurant, where we, nor the staff know what everyone was saying. But the food we got was excellent, sometimes it's not that important to know what you're eating!

The night was about to end without problems, until arriving back to our hostel in a taxi. We agreed a price of 30 zlotys, but taxi driver insisted the price being 40 zlotys. It was a matter of principal now, and we argued not to pay more than 30 zl while me, Aleksi and Petri were outside the car. JP was in the front seat arguing, when suddenly the driver took off with JP to left us puzzled that what the f*ck just happened?! We were about to call the police when JP walked to Petri from the other way just saying "what's up"? In the end he had to agree with the 40 zl price, as the driver was acceleting towards highway ... with JP having no idea where he was heading. The incident ended peacefully as the driver drove JP bacck, but man ours and especially JP's adrenaline was high after figuring out what happened.

Better to sleep without any alarm clocks waking us up next morning. And anyways no reason to, because wednesday was to be the first car(e)less day of the trip!

Here's more photos from Vilnius to Warzaw.

Old house in middle of nowhere, Lithuania

Country house in Poland

Securing the load is completely unnecessary

Polish people are kind enought to make platforms for stork nests, and there are a lot of them

Driving through a Polish town

Monday, Day 2: Parnu - LATVIA - Riga - LITHUANIA - Vilnius

After eating breakfast at 8am, it was time to get back on the road. This day consisted crossing two borders, Latvia and Lithuania. Parnu is located south of Estonia, so it wasn't a long drive before we prepared our passports for the border officials ... Just to find out that the border was closed. We'll, the border was open but no-one was checking anything so there's even no need to stop while driving to another country. Didn't know that, now I do. European Union has made things a lot easier for road trippers - Yet I don't think it's a completely good thing. Like Aleksi said, we could have had a bomb in our trunk and nobody would have cared. Strange stuff (disclaimer: We don't have bombs in our car).

Baltic Sea on the background, dumbasses on the foreground

First 20 km's in Latvia were horrible, as the road had massive grooves and bumps in it and it was tough to keep our car going straight. We knew we would have to deal with bad road conditions sooner or later, but didn't think it was happening this soon! But after that rough section roads were in decent enough condition. We drove Via Baltica route and stopped couple of times to see the Baltic Sea before arriving to Riga, the capital of Latvia.

After parking the car near to the Riga old quarters, we just started walking around and I can say that the city, especially the old historical parts of it are just amazingly beautiful. They keep it in mint condition but still not overriding the history of it. For budget travelers, we made a calculation error in the currencies, as Latvia's currency Lati is actually stronger than Euro, not the other way around. We ended paying about three times the usual price for our foods...

Old quarters, Riga, Latvia

Just as we were about to leave, we noticed an expensive Mercedes parked nearby with strange licence plate including only a national logo or something and a police escort. Surprisingly, it was the car of Latvia's president and we got to see the main man as the police escort drove off.

We drove off as well, saying soon goodbyes to Latvia and preparing ourselves to border officials of Lithuania. Once again, not one soul occupying the border station and we were able to change countries once again without passports. Somewhere around 7pm we arrived to Vilnius, also a capital city. After finding our hostel for the night we enjoyed walking Vilnius streets for a while and drank coupla of beers, before falling asleep.

Well, except I had alarm ready for the 6th NHL final. Never thought I'd watch hockey in Lithuania, but glad I did. Go Bruins!

Soldiers guarding the victory monument in Riga

A sight from Riga

Small and old streets in Vilnius

Town hall square in Vilnius

Sunday, Day 1: Jyvaskyla - Tampere - Helsinki - ESTONIA - Tallinn - Parnu

Cruising from Helsinki to Tallinn

Me, Petri and JP took the train from Jyvaskyla to Tampere, where we had a rendezvous with Aleksi and our car for the trip. As we took off from Tampere, it was time to do some final minute booking and get a room from Parnu, Estonia. Since we live in Finland, there's not much else to write about getting to Helsinki. We had a 2 hour ferry ride to Tallinn, Estonia and after that it was time to get the trip properly started!

The ride from Tallinn to Parnu was a quick one, only couple of hours. There was not much traffic on the road, but we enjoyed giggling to all kind of signs beside the road. Why, you ask? Estonians speak somewhat similar language compared to us, but how it's written and spoken is amazingly funny. But, most likely it's also the other way around, Estonians visiting Finland will laugh at us. Completely win-win situation!

The sea of... Estonians have a funny language (sorry, understandable only for Finns)

We arrived to Parnu late evening, found our guest house and after a small hassle and small language and understanding barrier we checked-in. The owner said something about Finnish not ever reading details and all sort of things, whcih probably was partly being humor and him partly being annoyed by Finns. Can't blame him though, at the moment he had a drunk Finnish motorcycle club in his premses. But it was all the same for us€, we left our bags and went to do some sightseeing. Parnu is a small town, but it's enjoyable to walk in the old quarters for a while and get something to eat.

Just after midnight, it was time to get some sleep. Which we really didn't, as the room was hot and moist and getting good night's sleep was impossible.

Walk this way. Or walk this way. Walk in between!

JP and Aleksi posing in Parnu, Estonia

The blog begins

This blog is about a 1,5 weeks journey in the Eastern Europe, including some worst European moments in history. Main objectives are Chernobyl in Ukraine and Auschwitz in Poland. A blown nuclear reactor and a concentration camp. Man-made horror in the worst scale.

But as usual, main objectives are just a small part of the trip. Getting there is a completely other story and hopefully a fun one. We'll visit about 7-8 countries and drive more than 4 000 km's. So let's see how it goes: Welcome to the destruction tour road trip blog.

Our knight for the road trip: 2000 Renault Megane 1.4 16v!