It has been a while since the last posting. I left my job, I went pretty much cold-turkey regarding the internet (one hour per day, courtesy of Guildford library), and now I'm ready to move out.
But I have a plan.
Okay, so on the first of August I fly out to Kiev, Ukraine, where I'll be spending about ten days at the start of EUR05, my latest excursion around Europe. I've secured a place to stay for the duration - four hotels in all, three in Kiev and one in Lviv.
I'll be blogging as much as possible but whilst I'm gone I'll be reliant on other people's photographs, blogged from flickr and replaced by my own, with any luck, at a later date. Or not.
As regards Ukraine (I'm told the "The" is superfluous), I'm so glad they hosted the Eurovision song contest recently! No, really, I am, because as a result the good folk over in the newly elected government decided to drop visa regulations for EU member states until the start of September. I hate dealing with excessively restrictive visas. I can understand why one was necessary for India - they love their bureaucracy and it keeps people employed - and I understand that many countries need you to get a visa on arrival. What I dislike is having to have everything so perfectly arranged before departure - on a trip like this, I want my flexibility. That's why I'm not going to Belarus, because I don't know enough about getting into and around the country and where it would fit into my plans, which is a shame because I've heard good things about Minsk.
So, about ten days in Ukraine, at the end of which I fly on to Helsinki. But I'm not staying there, oh no, because I can't. Unless I want to spend £100 per night on a single room, which I don't, I can't stay there immediately because there's some big Commonwealth athletics meet or something. Instead, I'll hop off the plane and onto a ferry and spend a couple of days in Tallinn, Estonia, and then return to Helsinki when the fuss is over.
And why am I so keen on staying in Helsinki? Couldn't I day-trip and stay in Tallinn? Why yes, certainly I could, but I have decided that "the list" can only include places where I have stayed overnight as an adult.
What is this list? It is the list everyone keeps, or everyone that travels keeps, detailing the countries one has visited. For me the number has just reached I think 14 - not too bad, but I'm well behind on my ambition to see 50 countries by the time I'm 50. However, this trip should get my up to speed rather neatly: I plan on visiting about a dozen countries in the next few months, which will get me up to maybe 26 or 27, and having recently turned 26 myself that would be rather smart.
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