To Copenhagen By a ferry I arrived in Helsingor, which, unlike the Swedish side of the strait, boasts a mighty fortress. While going south via Sweden, the Nordic wooden houses gradually disappeared, being replaced with half-timbered and brick walls. And here in Denmark this Hanseatic style really dominates. Right in Helsingor, besides the fortress, there is a beautifully preserved old centre with lots of such medieval houses – there was nothing like that in Scandinavia. While in Denmark there is such a centre with perfectly preserved and actively used historical houses in every town and village. The next thing noticeable in local towns is the cyclist infrastructure, even better than in Scandinavia. Into the residential neighborhoods leads a way accessible by car from one side only, but pedestrians and cyclists…

From the Norwegian border fortress Fredriksten I followed the strip of long Bullaresjön lakes all the way to another fortress, Bohus, which was captured by Swedes and thereafter it was use to watch the border from the Swedish side. By the way, regarding lakes, since Belarus I could practically any time stop by a lake or at least a river and have a bath in perfectly clean water. Sweden is the last place where this is possible, in Denmark are already just green ponds with water very far from clean, just like home. And then to Göteborg, where I, among other things, joined other visitors – mostly children – to crawl through the ships in local open-air maritime museum. While getting further south away from Norway, some pleasant things like…

Nordland I disembarked the ship in Harstad and continued south over the district of Ofoten. Some time ago I was nearby at Lofoten. And while then I had the impression that here beyond the Arctic Circle is already the wild north, now when arriving from Lapland and Nordkapp I had the opposite feeling of coming back to comfortable civilization – lots of villages, shops everywhere, reindeers replaced by sheep, horses and tractors, grass grows on meadows. The same day I sailed again (a small rural ferry), and the no-cash strategy from Belarus worked again: while the ferry is not free here, only at the pier I realised I only got cash in Euro (as otherwise they accept cards everywhere throughout Norway) – when I offered those, the ferry captain decided…

From Finland to Norway I did not expect a significant difference between northern Finland and Norway, yet the border crossing is noticeable. In Finland, there are already just a few remote houses and reindeer farms for every 100×100 km, otherwise all that is here is just for the tourists – a perfect straight road and a couple of stops around it. In Norway is the road more casual, the reindeers here are just the wild ones and instead locals breed sheeps, horses and use tractors. Then the landscape changes again at the coast, which I reached in Lakselva. The last trees disappeared, leaving just the green rocks above the fjord, the dark blue lakes, the patches of snow, the green-blue sea below. Going north… Nordkapp is the northernmost place in…

Rovaniemi functinos here as a starting point for tourists of all kinds heading beyond the Arctic Circle. That lies 8 km north from the city and leads through a commercial village of commercial Santa Claus, where carols are played and each cottage has a plastic Christmas tree even in the summer. Beyond the Circle there is no larger town (if you do not consider area as a measure of size, as for example the village of Inari formally covers an area of ​​17 333 km²) and the small ones lie 100 km from each other. If someone is looking for solitude, I can highly recommend this place. Basically, there is absolutely nothing here, only trees and water, sometimes mosquitoes and horse-flies – and yet it is somehow terribly beautiful here and entire…

The border crossing yet again means a contrast. On the Finnish side a cycle track leads all the way to the border crossing and on grandpas ride on it on roller skis (sic, not skates), villages are tidy, neglected industrial sites disappeared, hybrid Toyotas hum on the roads.

Saint Petersburg The atmosphere of the Petersburg streets, with its classicist houses and palaces surrounding the river and its many smaller channels, works best when the evening sun colours the facades into orange-pink and glitters on the channels surface.So it is very handy that the summer sunset lasts here for hours beyond midnight. What on the other hand spoils the atmosphere is the fact that even the very historical centre was changed into land of cars. So on a stroll around the streets you need to watch the traffic rather than the architecture and every 50 meters you need to stop for at least a minute on pedestrian traffic light. Hermitage Same as Louvre is a must in Paris, here it is off course Hermitage. In square metres only sligtly…

At the border I again witnessed an interesting contrast. At the Estonian side is everything tidied up, town and fortress looking forward to tourists, children swimming in the border river, the sun was shining. On the Russian side lots of barbed wire, trucks parking place and you can only get to the fortress by a large circle around all of this.

I Expected Estonia to differ from Latvia only by the name and language – but the difference is surprisingly more evident. The first spotted difference are the roads – the lesser roads in Latvia are just soft sand, in Estonia new tarmac everywhere, plus often new cycling lanes. And the overall atmosphere appears already Scandinavian – most of the houses repaired, majority of them having Scandinavian style wooden planks walls, all around is clean, all gardens carefully trimmed. The nights are already light. Roads are quiet, through the nature, weather is reportedly above local average for June, hills are short – everything ideal for leasure cycling. First I climbed the highest mountain of Baltics, Suur Munamägi (also here was the impression Scandinavian: compared to Belarus is this small hill pretty…

I passed Latvia over its eastern edge, away from most cities (not that there would be so many of them in Latvia). So the landscape was similar as in Lithuania, with the lakes diminishing when coming from the south, but this was compensated by the last lake around Aluksne in the north. In Daugavpils I stopped at an extensive baroque fortress, which was visibly still actively used up until the end also by the soviet army. The fortress is still home to many locals. The municipal buildings are slowly being reconstructed. The last town before the border is Aluksne, situated at the aforementioned lake. While going there my chain broke apart, possibly because of not that expert installation of it in Kiev. Off course it broke just at a start…