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Showing posts from July, 2018

Russia

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Russia was the last country for me to visit in Europe and it's also the world's biggest country. It covers 1/8 of the populated area of the world so I thought it would be funny to visit it only for a day trip because of this. My friend Erik and I went on a visa free cruise from Helsinki in Finland to the second largest city in Russia, Saint Petersburg. After a night's sleep on the boat we woke up to a rainy day and it was a sign of how bad the day would start. The cruise line had told us we could take the shuttle bus into town 09.30 and then back at 16.30 but it turned out to be lies, after spending hours waiting to get off the boat and then to get through customs we had more like a total of 4-5 hours to hurry through the city if we wanted to be able to see anything at all. The first thing we saw when we came into town was a T-shirt of the nations leader Putin (or dictator if you rather call him that) riding a bear and I thought it was so funny that I bought it later o

Belarus

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The last dictatorship of Europe, how can you stop yourself from going to Belarus when you hear those words? Last year the leader Aleksandr Lukashenko finally made it possible to go to Belarus for a couple of days without a visa and my friend Erik and I decided to meet up in the capital Minsk. We took a cab into town and the driver offered us free water bottles that were lying in the taxi, but they seem to have been opened before so we never dared to drink it. Beforehand this would possibly be the worst country I've ever went to, but they must have put all of their money into the capital because to my surprise it looked nice during the long taxi ride. Not a single one of those gigantic apartment complex looked worn-down, not even in the suburbs. We were beginning to think that all the beautiful women who looked like models, the casually relaxing people in the pedal boats on the cozy river and the heat from the sun must all be an illusion made up by Lukashenko, this can't be f