And so it begins

The scene at Stanstead airport at 1am is deeply unsettling. The mass of crumpled bodies in makeshift blankets amongst the eerie tranquility of closed shops and check-in counters is like something out of a zombie film. This is how The Manly Odyssey began. With a few hours to kill George, Magnus and myself set up camp in front of a coffee shop and waited for check-in to open at 4:45am. Our Destination: Tallinn, Estonia.

I managed to fall asleep on the plane and woke up with my copy of New Scientist stuck to my face with drool... high brow. As we touched down the intercom cracked in, "Hello and welcome to Estonia, where today the weather is not so great." No shit. The torrential downpour that greeted us was like something out of a 'Nam film. We quickly filed into the nearest taxi and got to our hostel for some sleep.

Upon waking we decided to have a look around and grab some food at a supermarket. We saw a pretty nuts looking orthodox Russian church just sort of dumped amongst the outskirts of the ferry port. Later on , after seeing the munificent offerings on display in the Old Town we realised why this one had been largely ignored. The Old Town is like a Disney Land for medieval church enthusiasts, albeit one that is punctuated with a series of strip clubs, bordellos and restaurants.

With a day to kill and nowhere to train, it turns out that the 24th is a national holiday here, we were delighted to find a 24Kilo kettlebell just lying around the hostel kitchen on our return from the supermarket. Before we could even get our shopping into the fridge the urge to bust out a set of swings became too much. We took on 5 sets of 5(per arm) and decided that since we'd warmed up we might as well try and get some form of a work out in.

Using my trusty resistance bands we cracked out:
5x10 on push ups (medium band).
5x12 military presses (medium band with broomstick).
6x10 concentration curls (doubled up super-mini with broomstick).

Whilst the work out wasn't fantastic it was still a relief to see we could put something together with our limited resources; something we'll need to do on our 6 day train journey from Russia to Mongolia.

After getting some food down us we went for a look around the Old Town again and found a well equipped playground just outside the city walls. We stretched our gymnastic imaginations by doing some dips, chin ups and -in George's case- muscle ups into hand stands. Freakish bastard.

We kept wandering through winding streets and courtyards until we realised that, even though it was still light, it was 1 o'clock in the morning. I hadn't really given any consideration to how far north we'd gone. I'm not sure it actually got dark at any point, what a mind fuck.

Today we'll get a chance to roll with the guys at 3DTreening, we'll let you know how it went once we get to St Petersburg.