summer trip

[freakypete]

Hi

Me and a friend are travelling round E.E. in the summer, would be grateful of any advice you could give us.

We have got a month (possibly 6 weeks) and the plan is 3 days (give or take) in each of the following cities:

Prague
Krakow
Kiev
Moscow
St Petersburg
Tallinn (possible a night or 2 in Helsinki)
Riga
Vilnius
Warsaw

We first planned to go in the opposite direction (start in Warsaw) but then decided to go this way as we wanted fewer cities before Russia with needing a visa there, and then the way back through the Baltics and Poland we don’t have to rush so much. The only disadvantage of this that I found was that if we have a lot of time (or rather money!) when we are near the end of the trip, there are fewer opportunities (we thought of maybe including Budapest and Bratislava and Vienna if we had time going the other way). But I think Poland is big enough to make up for that, and we would go up to the coast and maybe to Poznan if we had time.

The great thing I have found is that its possible to get all the way to St Petersburg using night trains, so we aren’t wasting precious daylight on the train, and saving on accommodation. But a few of the trains I found were arriving in the early hours of the morning. Is that a problem do you think? My sister once travelled to Prague by coach and arrived at around 4am only to be stuck with nowhere to go for a few hours before anywhere opened.

We obviously can’t get a rail card as most of the countries we are visiting aren’t valid on any of them, and we would probably still have to pay an extra charge as we will be mostly using night trains. Would it be much cheaper to book the trains in advance, or will the difference be minimal? We don’t really want to be restricted by having already made reservations, but if the prices were a lot cheaper we might consider it. If so how do you go about booking them from abroad?

Helsinki we are a bit unsure about…we know its just been ranked the 10th most expensive city in the world, but it seems a waste to visit Tallinn and only be a couple of hours away by boat and not visit for a couple of days. But is it easier to get the train to Helsinki direct from St P or go straight to Tallinn then get a boat there and back? I also heard that its possible to get the boat from St P to Tallinn or Helsinki, is that true? We thought it might be nice to have a break from the trains for a bit!

We haven’t had any luck yet finding out about trains between the Baltic states, and I have read that coaches might be a bit easier. I think that might also be the case for travelling from Vilnius to Warsaw. We did find an Estonian website, but it was only available in Estonian or Russian! Eurolines is an option as well, but was it me or can you only find out timetables and prices on the website in the language of the country you are travelling from!?

We are also unsure about Belarus…my sister in law studied Russian in Minsk a couple of years ago and put me off travelling there, and there’s the hassle of applying for another visa. But I want to know if you think we should get a visa for Belarus anyway, in case we have to travel through there at some point, maybe getting to Warsaw?

any experience of applying for a russian visa would be appreciated as well!

Theres loads more i wanna know but cant think of it at the moment!

pete