Ten-day backpacking trip through Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. I nearly didn't go.
Updated: Sep 19
I'd made it all the way to London before realising my passport was still back in the Midlands.
There are mistakes you can solve with money and mistakes you can't. Fortunately, this was the first kind, although my credit card probably wished otherwise.
I'd just got off the train at Paddington. I got straight back on one heading in the opposite direction, collected my passport and started doing the maths.
There was no chance I was getting back across London and out to Stansted in time.
So I bit the bullet.
Taxi.
From the Midlands.
To Essex.
On the credit card.
An absolutely ridiculous start to what was supposed to be a fairly straightforward ten-day trip.
The plan itself hadn't exactly come from a moment of spiritual inspiration. It was another of my Skyscanner multi-city tick-box exercises: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. Four countries I hadn't visited, conveniently lined up in roughly the right direction.
But there was another reason I wanted to go.
It was April 2024, two years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Baltic states sit right on Russia's doorstep, Finland had joined NATO the previous year, and I was interested in what the people actually living there thought about all of it.
I expected to collect some countries.
I didn't realise I was about to collect people.
Vilnius: Just Get On the Bus
My first experience of Lithuania came before I'd even reached my hostel.
The card reader on the bus wasn't working.
The driver's solution was simple: everyone could travel for free.
I remember thinking that if this happened in Britain, there was a decent chance the bus would simply be taken out of service and sent back to the depot.
Here, it was basically: Just get on.
After the previous day's passport disaster, Lithuania was already making life considerably easier.
I dropped my bag at a hostel in Vilnius Old Town and almost immediately walked towards Kalnų Parkas and the Three Crosses.
From the hill, Vilnius spread beneath me: red roofs, church towers and the Old Town I'd be spending the next couple of days wandering around.
I'd only just arrived.
And there were people to meet.
That first evening, a few of us from the hostel created our own pub crawl.
There was an English guy who'd just travelled in from Russia after visiting his girlfriend, whom he'd met in Sri Lanka.
There was his American travelling companion, who was sleeping on the hostel sofa while undertaking a multi-day fast.
He said he was fasting.
I suspected he'd run out of money.
And then there was Taylor.
Taylor was Australian, a teacher at Real Madrid, had previously taught in Seoul and was in the process of moving to Colombia.
Within a few hours, we'd gone from strangers in a hostel to drinking our way around Vilnius together.
The following morning Taylor and I joined a free walking tour.
That's where we met Khalid.
Enter Khalid
Khalid is my guy.
Moroccan, living in Germany and working in a bar, he hadn't actually managed to get enough annual leave for the trip.
This presented a problem.
Khalid's solution was commitment on a level I can only admire.
Every so often he'd have to disappear somewhere with his phone and call work sick.
Then he'd return and continue travelling.
Some people save annual leave.
Some negotiate with their manager.
Khalid simply refused to allow employment to interfere with the Baltic states.
We compared routes and realised that, with a few differences, we were travelling in roughly the same direction.
One of my differences was Kaunas.
I'd planned to stop there on the way north.
Taylor had already flown into Kaunas before travelling down to Vilnius and gave me possibly the most effective negative review of a city I've ever heard.
It was so boring, she told me, that she'd got a tattoo just to have something to do.
Kaunas disappeared from my itinerary.
Already the carefully planned Skyscanner route was being rewritten by people I'd met less than 24 hours earlier.
After the tour, the three of us went to Etno Dvaras to fulfil one of the obligations of travel: eat something traditional whether you actually enjoy it or not.
I ordered cepelinai, also known as didžkukuliaiĀ ā enormous Lithuanian potato dumplings named for their Zeppelin-like shape. Mine were stuffed with varÅ”kÄ, Lithuanian curd cheese.
It looked a bit like someone had produced a massive grey gnocchi.
I wanted to love it.
I didn't.
Mine was watery, heavy and filled with curd cheese, and Lithuanian cuisine and I were not off to the strongest start.
That didn't stop us drinking.
We ended up around Užupis with shots of Lithuanian cherry liqueur.
Užupis is a small district separated from Vilnius Old Town by the VilnelÄ River. In 1997 its residents jokingly declared it an independent republic, complete with a president, anthem, flag and constitution.
One part of that constitution states that everyone has the right to understand nothing.
Which seems an entirely sensible foundation for a country.
[PHOTO 3: Užupis Constitution, bridge or Republic signage.]
Under the Užupis Bridge is a swing hanging over the river.
So naturally I rolled my jeans up and walked into the freezing water.
A Croatian guy I'd met, who was in Vilnius for work involving trains, came out with me.
There we were, two grown men standing in freezing Lithuanian water so we could have a go on a swing beneath the bridge of a pretend independent republic.
This was becoming my kind of trip.
[PHOTO 4: Swing/river underneath Užupis Bridge if available. This is preferable to another generic Vilnius architecture shot because it illustrates the actual story.]
Riga: We Had to Earn Our Pints
We travelled separately to Riga.
Taylor, Khalid and I weren't even staying in the same hostels.
It didn't really matter.
By now we kept finding each other.
Khalid developed a philosophy for balancing sightseeing with drinking.
We had to earn our pints by fulfilling our cultural duties.
Walking tour?
Cultural duty.
Museum?
Cultural duty.
Historic building?
Cultural duty.
Once sufficient culture had been completed, the drinking could begin without guilt.
On a GuruWalk around Riga, our guide took us through Latvia's history and recommended dishes to try.
At one point, Latvia's president, Edgars RinkÄviÄs, simply walked past us.
I was within arm's length of the president of the country.
There was security, but nowhere near the presidential motorcade I'd expect back home. Just the president walking through Riga with a relatively small group around him.
I then went to LIDO, Latvia's buffet-style institution, armed with recommendations from our guide.
This was exactly the sort of place I like finding when travelling. Rather than ordering one carefully presented national dish, you move along the counter looking at trays of food and point at whatever seems interesting.
I tried pelÄkie zirÅi ar speÄ·iĀ ā grey peas with bacon, traditionally served with onions and smoked pork ā alongside what I remember as a beef kotlete, basically a thick beef patty covered in gravy.
It was proper heavy food.
And it was fine.
That's probably the fairest review I can give it.
Between Lithuania's watery cheese-filled cepelinai and Latvia's grey peas and beef swimming in gravy, I was starting to wonder whether the Baltic states and I simply had different ideas about what constituted a good meal.
Fortunately, Khalid had already established that we'd fulfilled our cultural duties.
We'd earned our pints.
Habibi, Come to the Bar
The nightlife was another matter.
Between us, we'd been collecting people from our separate hostels.
Someone knew someone.
They brought someone else.
Groups merged.
By the time we arrived at Rock CafƩ Riga, there must have been about forty of us from all over the world.
Karaoke started.
Drinks appeared.
And Khalid introduced the Baltic states to his own version of a Dubai tourism slogan.
Not:
Habibi, come to Dubai.
But:
Habibi, come to the bar.
It became the catchphrase of the trip.
Forty travellers screaming it at each other in a Riga karaoke bar was probably not what the Dubai Tourism Board originally had in mind.
Fuck. The Russians Have Invaded.
The following morning I woke up extremely hungover.
I went outside.
There were tanks in the streets.
My first thought was immediate:
Fuck. The Russians have invaded.
This wasn't entirely an irrational place to have that thought.
Latvia borders Russia. The war in Ukraine was constantly in the news. I'd specifically come to the Baltics curious about how these countries viewed Russia and NATO.
But Russia had not invaded Latvia while I'd been destroying karaoke songs.
What I'd stumbled into was Latvia marking 20 years of NATO membership.
Latvia joined NATO on 29 March 2004 alongside Lithuania and Estonia, and 2024 marked the twentieth anniversary. The military presence I encountered suddenly made considerably more sense.
This was the geopolitical Baltic experience I'd been looking for.
I just hadn't expected to discover it with a hangover.
Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to contemplate European security.
I had a car waiting.
Snoring My Way to the Hill of Crosses
I'd booked a trip through GetYourGuide to the Hill of Crosses in northern Lithuania.
My travelling companions were a German mother and daughter.
I sat in the front.
And almost immediately fell asleep.
Apparently I snored.
So after waking up convinced Latvia was being invaded, I spent the journey back into Lithuania unconscious in the front of a car while two Germans listened to me snore.
Then I arrived somewhere that completely sobered me up.
The Hill of Crosses ā Kryžių KalnasĀ ā is difficult to describe without making it sound like something from a horror film.
Crosses everywhere.
Large wooden crosses tower above tiny ones. Rosaries hang from them. Crosses lean against crosses which have other crosses attached to them.
There are estimated to be well over 100,000 of them.
The tradition stretches back into the nineteenth century, with the crosses becoming associated with remembrance, Catholic faith and Lithuanian national identity.
During Soviet occupation, authorities repeatedly bulldozed and attempted to destroy the site.
People kept putting the crosses back.
That context changed the place.
What initially looked eerie became something much more defiant.
I wandered through it quietly, considerably more sober than I'd arrived.
It remains one of my favourite places I've ever visited.
[PHOTO 10: Close-up/detail photograph of crosses and rosaries. A detail shot works better here than another wide view.]
PƤrnu Didn't Want Me
Taylor and Khalid went their way.
I went to PƤrnu.
For the first time since Vilnius, I was properly alone again.
PƤrnu is Estonia's famous summer resort.
I arrived nowhere near summer.
I tried to continue the party.
PƤrnu wasn't interested.
I went into bars and was often the only person there.
The general atmosphere seemed to be:
Why are you here?
Come back in summer.
Eventually I accepted defeat.
My hotel provided another encounter I still remember.
I needed some clothes washed and tried explaining this to the man working there.
He was drunk.
He clearly did not want to wash my clothes.
There was a language barrier, so rather than politely disguising his irritation, he basically growled at me while trying to communicate what an inconvenience I'd just created.
But he was smiling while he did it.
I knew he wasn't actually angry.
I laughed, apologised and somehow we understood each other.
He washed them.
Someone else might have thought he was rude.
I loved it.
There was something refreshingly real about a man making absolutely no attempt to pretend that my laundry had become the highlight of his evening.
The following morning PƤrnu finally showed me why I'd accidentally come.
I walked down to the beach.
White sand.
Frozen sea.
Waves breaking through ice as they reached the shore.
After spending the previous evening wondering why I'd bothered coming to an empty seaside resort in April, I stood looking at one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen travelling.
PƤrnu had been right.
It wasn't the season.
I'm glad I came anyway.
Tallinn: NATO and a Lot of Vodka
I continued north to Tallinn and reunited with Taylor and Khalid.
By complete chance, we ended up in the same hostel again.
There was another group staying there too.
American soldiers.
They were on leave before heading out on military exercises.
So we did what backpackers and soldiers apparently do when placed in the same hostel.
We started drinking and playing cards.
This was finally my chance to ask the questions I'd had before leaving Britain.
Why were they here?
What did they think about Russia?
Was having American troops exercising in Estonia deliberately a show of force?
The conversations fitted with things I'd been hearing from walking-tour guides throughout the trip.
For the Baltic states, Soviet history isn't particularly distant.
Guides had told me stories about their own families: grandparents transported across the Soviet Union, people born abroad because of what had happened to previous generations, and families only returning to their countries after independence was restored in the 1990s.
In Estonia alone, more than 20,000 people were deported during the mass Soviet deportations of March 1949.
These weren't stories I'd encountered through museums first.
People were telling them to me while I stood in the streets their families had eventually returned to.
Against that background, American troops preparing for exercises in Estonia felt very different from reading about NATO deployments back home.
I'd finally found the serious geopolitical conversation I'd come looking for.
Then the soldiers invited me clubbing.
They'd booked a VIP booth.
I was adopted.
The questions about NATO deterrence gave way to them feeding me vodka.
There are probably more sophisticated ways of researching international relations.
I enjoyed mine.
The Saddest Goodbye of the Trip
Eventually our little group had to break up.
Taylor needed to return to Spain.
I was taking the ferry to Helsinki.
Khalid was staying in Tallinn.
It felt genuinely sad.
We did what people who meet travelling always do.
We'll visit each other.
We'll plan another trip.
Come to Germany.
Come to Spain.
All the promises of a holiday romance.
Then everyone goes home and life usually gets in the way.
I boarded the ferry to Finland thinking that was probably it.
[PHOTO 14: Ferry/Tallinn disappearing behind you or Gulf of Finland. Keep this understated ā it supports the goodbye.]
Apparently One Night Was Enough
Helsinki started with another walking tour.
My guide might have been the most enthusiastic human being I'd ever met.
The man practically vibrated with ADHD.
Everything was fascinating.
Everything was exciting.
But nothing compared with the Moomins.
He lovedĀ the Moomins.
Fortunately, so did I as a kid.
So there I was in Finland listening to an extremely animated man talk about characters from my childhood and thinking Helsinki was already going rather well.
That evening it got stranger.
I met a girl from Bumble.
She brought me out with some friends from work.
Her workplace happened to be Lƶyly, one of Helsinki's best-known public sauna complexes, sitting directly on the Baltic waterfront.
She offered to get me in for free the following day.
An unbelievable result from a Bumble date.
Then the next morning my phone went.
Khalid.
āBro, last night was boring. I'm coming to Helsinki. I miss you.ā
Our emotional final goodbye had lasted roughly one night.
I messaged the girl from Bumble.
I explained that Khalid and I had been travelling together and asked whether there was any chance he could come too.
For me, it was simple.
If he couldn't come, I'd miss it and hang out with him.
She sorted it.
A woman I'd known for about a day arranged for both of us to experience one of Helsinki's famous saunas for free.
We didn't even have swimming shorts.
So we borrowed some from the lost and found.
There we were.
Me and Khalid.
Reunited after our devastating 24-hour separation.
Sitting inside Lƶyly in somebody else's abandoned swimming shorts.
And then I ate reindeer.
Reindeer, Berries and Christmas Dinner Logic
The dish was poronkƤristysĀ ā sautĆ©ed reindeer served with mashed potato, pickles and lingonberries.
I'd never eaten anything quite like it.
The reindeer itself was rich and savoury, but it was the lingonberries that made the whole thing work.
At first, meat and berries seemed like an odd combination.
Then I realised I already understood it.
Turkey and cranberry sauce at Christmas.
Same logic.
Suddenly the whole plate felt weirdly Christmassy.
Cold weather outside. Rich meat. Mash. Berries.
Except instead of sitting around a Christmas table in England, I was in Finland wearing somebody else's lost-property swimming shorts with a Moroccan bloke I'd met a few days earlier in Lithuania.
And it was amazing.
The kindness behind the whole experience made it even better.
This wasn't something I'd researched months earlier and carefully booked.
A woman I'd known for about a day had gone out of her way to get both of us into her workplace.
Then came the sauna.
I sat inside until I was hot enough to convince myself that getting into the Baltic Sea was a sensible idea.
It wasn't.
I went in anyway.
My entire body immediately objected.
Then straight back into the sauna.
Hot.
Cold.
Hot.
Cold.
Somewhere during all of this I had to appreciate how ridiculously lucky we'd been.
Travel occasionally rewards planning.
Other times it rewards meeting the right stranger on Bumble.
Finally, Food I'd Travel Back For
For all the drinking, history, military conversations, frozen beaches and accidental friendships, one of the things I remember most about Finland is considerably simpler.
Soup.
At Helsinki's Old Market Hall, Vanha Kauppahalli, I ordered lohikeitto.
Finnish salmon soup.
Creamy broth. Salmon. Potato. Leek. Dill.
Simple.
And brilliant.
Finland had completely changed the taste of the trip.
Lithuania had given me a massive watery potato dumpling stuffed with curd cheese.
Latvia had given me grey peas, bacon and a beef patty covered in gravy.
Finland gave me reindeer with lingonberries and then a bowl of salmon soup.
Finally, I wasn't eating something because a walking-tour guide had told me it was traditional and therefore I felt morally obliged to try it.
I genuinely wanted more.
The reindeer was one of the most interesting things I'd eaten on the whole journey, particularly those berries with the meat.
But the salmon soup was the one that followed me home.
I cook lohikeittoĀ myself now.
I've travelled to plenty of places where I've eaten something famous, photographed it, enjoyed it and never thought about it again.
Finnish salmon soup actually came home with me.
And I think that's a better measure of whether I actually loved a country's food than anything I could have written while sitting in a restaurant trying to sound impressed by it.
Ten Days
When I think about this trip now, I struggle to believe it lasted ten days.
That's it.
Ten.
It feels like a month of my life.
I nearly never went because I left my passport in the Midlands.
Then a Lithuanian bus driver let me travel for free because his card machine wasn't working.
I met an Australian teacher who convinced me not to visit Kaunas because she'd found it so boring she'd got a tattoo.
I met Khalid, who considered phoning in sick from another country a perfectly reasonable method of extending annual leave.
I stood in freezing water beneath a bridge in a pretend republic.
I got within arm's reach of Latvia's president.
Forty of us invaded a karaoke bar.
I woke up hungover, saw tanks and briefly thought Russia had invaded Latvia.
I snored beside a German mother and daughter on the way to one of the most extraordinary religious sites I've ever seen.
I visited a seaside resort completely out of season and was rewarded with a frozen Baltic Sea.
A drunk Estonian reluctantly washed my clothes.
American soldiers adopted me and fed me vodka.
I said goodbye to Khalid forever.
Then saw him the next day.
A woman I'd met on Bumble got two relative strangers into Lƶyly for free, where we wore lost-property swimming shorts, ate reindeer and jumped into the Baltic.
And somewhere in Helsinki I ate a bowl of salmon soup that I still cook more than two years later.
The strangest thing isn't how much happened.
It's Taylor and Khalid.
I still speak to them so much that sometimes I forget this is where I met them.
They aren't āthose people I met backpacking around the Balticsā anymore.
They're Taylor and Khalid.
I booked the trip because Skyscanner had given me another convenient route through countries I could tick off a list.
Four more countries.
Another ten days.
Another flight home.
Except somewhere between the watery dumplings, Habibi come to the bar, frozen beaches, tanks, reindeer and borrowed swimming shorts, the tick-box exercise stopped being one.
Countries are easy to count.
It's the people who make ten days feel like a month.
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