After a crazy night in Vilnius that saw me stumbling home soaking wet at 6:00am with the sun already high in the sky, I woke up less than five hours later to ride the 340 miles to Tartu in Estonia. I entered some type of zone where I was alert to riding, but dead to everything else, and basically rode the entire distance straight through stopping only twice for fuel. Apparently there were some festivals going on in Tartu and I just managed to get the last hostel bed in town. I think I would have rather slept on a bench in the park, my roommates consisting of some creepy old dude who spent most of his time late and night and early in the morning rummaging in plastic bags and muttering, and a Colombian who kept trying to ply me with foul whiskey at all hours of the day. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep. The next day still exhausted from Vilnius I went to see what was up. There was a festival celebrating the Hanseatic League and a smaller classical music festival. The Hanseatic League was a trading coalition in northern Europe between the 13-17th centuries and the normally quiet university town of Tartu was overrun with people in traditional dress and spectators from all over Europe – Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Baltic countries, Poland, and even Scotland. There were musical and dance performances, and even an Estonian couple getting married in a traditional ceremony.
It is kind of bizarre to just stumble into these situations, in less than two weeks I was in my 6th country and starting to become disoriented.
As I was wandering around I came across this and couldn't resist a light afternoon snack:
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