Monday, September 19, 2011
Poland and Czech Republic
Flying west from Lithuania through Poland, we visited the Masurian lakes district on the advice of a German aero journalist we'd met in Bonn. The area is fast developing into an aviation hot spot and swooped and cycled around several of the airfields there. Hitler's eastern front bunker, where he spent the majority of his time in the war is clearly visible from the air, though overgrown with vegetation.
The amazing huge flying club/hotel at Kikkity was a revelation. The pilots there invited us to accompany them on a four day tour of the Czech Republic, along with 18 other planes.
There are many timber carvings like these ones in the forests in the area.
Czech is an excellent place to aviate - the rolling terrain is endlessly interesting, there are many amazing historic towns to see and they have a strong history of flying and aircraft design and manufacture.
For anyone thinking of going to Prague who hasn't been there before, I'd suggest you go to Cesky Kromlov instead. It is jaw droppingly awesome.
Here we are relaxing under the wing at the first of 7 stops on the rally schedule.
This is Siggy who invited us to join the Czech rally.
We managed to snap some decent mid air shots of our friend Simon on the final leg of the day. We are still trying to meet up with him again after several failed attempts due to bad weather or us having to fly elsewhere. He is a totally classic character!
The amazing huge flying club/hotel at Kikkity was a revelation. The pilots there invited us to accompany them on a four day tour of the Czech Republic, along with 18 other planes.
There are many timber carvings like these ones in the forests in the area.
Czech is an excellent place to aviate - the rolling terrain is endlessly interesting, there are many amazing historic towns to see and they have a strong history of flying and aircraft design and manufacture.
For anyone thinking of going to Prague who hasn't been there before, I'd suggest you go to Cesky Kromlov instead. It is jaw droppingly awesome.
Here we are relaxing under the wing at the first of 7 stops on the rally schedule.
This is Siggy who invited us to join the Czech rally.
We managed to snap some decent mid air shots of our friend Simon on the final leg of the day. We are still trying to meet up with him again after several failed attempts due to bad weather or us having to fly elsewhere. He is a totally classic character!
Prague
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Lithuania
We flew to the capital of Lithuania, Vilnius, in formation with Justinas, a great guy that we met at an aero club at Kaunas in the centre of the country. His lightly loaded modern microlight with retractable gear wasn't much slower than our much larger heavier plane and it certainly climber quicker!
The whole Vilnius area is wooded and hilly and we spent a week checking out the nice areas around the city as well as looking at the history of the place and its people in the museums. This photo below shows a carved bellows from a blacksmith's shop.
The airport at Kaunas where we met Justie is named after these two aviators, shown on the 10 Lat note. They made a vast pioneering flight only to perish in an accident shortly before making it back safely.
This amazing town wall gate contains a chapel, complete with organ and Catholics taking mass!
I bought a pair of running shoes and whipped myself to crank out a few laps of the local forest which was very soft, green and peaceful. The climate here is wonderful in mid summer. We bought wild mushrooms and tiny wild strawberries (packed with flavour) from the roadside and cooked them up at Justinas' house. Isn't this sculpture great?
There are some very good beers brewed in the area and some great non alcoholic brewed malt drinks.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Latvia
We spent around 10 days in Latvia, catching a train between several towns on our way west to the capital Riga where we stayed for mid summer. The solstice is celebrated by wearing leaf and branch wreaths and lighting huge bonfires. Several stages were set up for bands to play all night.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Estonia
After a long day flying between Stockholm and Helsinki, we were disappointing to find no hotel rooms under 250Euro available in town (seriously) so we bounced back into the plane at 6pm and flew across the north sea to Estonia's capital, Tallin.
An old Hansa trading town, it has a lovely elevated fortified old town populated by friendly positive, outward looking people. Their modern art gallery (Kumu) is the best I've seen recently.
Tallin central;
Moscow Olympics 1980 (cold war era) sailing was held on the bay at Tallin. This is a concrete underground ice rink built for the games, now fallen into disrepair it is still an amazing piece of architecture.
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