Tallinn is a tourists dream. Especially if you're a lazy tourist. The medieval Old Town emerged largely unscathed from nasty wars and nasty Soviets with their nasty slab buildings and Lenin statues. It's surrounded by walls and towers dating back to the 13th century, so there's no bewildered swearing at maps and guidebooks, you just look for the walls and towers and once you're safely inside its all perfectly preserved cobbled streets, movie-set buildings, hidden lanes, soaring churches, spectacular views and dodgy souvenir stalls.

The best part about Tallinn is that British Yobs on Stag Nights haven't ruined it yet. You can wander around the Old Town at night and see people having a good time, no brawling or spewing in gutters. The locals we spoke to were worried all that will change now Easyjet has kicked off its Stansted - Tallinn route, turning their World Heritage listed city into the new Prague.

But for now you mostly see elderly Germans being herded (slowly) off coaches, Americans docking for the day from their cruise ships, a trickle of backpackers and oodles of Scandinavians. The Finns are particularly fond of Tallinn - it's just two hours by ferry from Helsinki. There's a healthy Japanese contingent too. At the Open Air Museum they ignored the architecture and chased chickens with their cameras.

Our hotel was on the wrong side of the tram tracks, but Toompea was close enough to gaze at when I couldn't sleep. You get into a routine even when you have just six nights in a city, and mine was to stand at the window blowing my nose, feel the mosquitos make polka dots on my legs, and watch dodgy people wait for trams. On Friday night I strained to hear a drunk Swede talking at a sober Estonian. After ten minutes of experimenting they realised their common language was English.

"Do you like Russia?"
"Russia?"
"Russia. The Big Red Machine."
"Well..."
"Since you are Estonian I think you would not like The Big Red Machine."
"..."
"I am from Sweden and I do not like Russia. The Big Red Machine."
"..."
"My friends do not like me. Because I drink."
"Are you lost?"
"Yes. I am lost. Can you show me to the cold beer?"

When Australians living in Scotland congregate, the conversation will inevitably swing to Is The Food Here Shit Or What!? at some point.

We all know there's actually an abundance of deliciousness, but when you meet your fellow countrymen there's a strange compulsion to get misty-eyed about vegetables that don't come shrink-wrapped from Kenya and checkout chicks that don't ask "What the hell is this?" when you buy some passionfruit. That cost £1.20 each.

Sometime last year Rhiannon, Jane, Rory and I were pining for Mint Slices. They are a true classic of the Arnotts family - a delicious chocolate biscuit with a layer of peppermint cream, elegantly coated in smooth dark chocolate. They marry the adultness of an after dinner mint with the dunkability of a biscuit.

"Oh yeah," piped up Gareth, the only Scotsman in the room. "That sounds just like a Viscount!"

We shot him doubtful looks, certain that the country that gave the world the deep-fried pizza would be incapable of producing anything near the standard of a Mint Slice. But he bravely faced the panel of Australian critics, bringing a pack to our next gathering.

I was excited, as I was by anything that combined chocolate and mint. You get to scoff the goodness of chocolate and bonus! -- your mouth is left minty-fresh like you've just brushed your teeth! It's like the calories never happened!

The Viscounts came individually wrapped in green foil. We turned them over in our hands, slowly unwrapping, regarding them suspiciously. After examining from all angles we all took tentative bites.

"It's pretty good," I said diplomatically.

"No. Nooo," said Rhiannon, "It's all wrong."

"It's not quite the same," said Rory, "The biscuit isn't chocolate, for starters."

"And the chocolate coating should be dark. This is low-quality milk."

"The mint isn't evenly distributed across the surface of the biscuit."

"It's basically nothing like a Mint Slice at all."

"Oh," said Gareth.

"Well I think they're alright!" I said brightly, and promptly shovelled down three more. One, because I am a big fat guts and two, because I desperately wanted to get into Gareth's pants.

A few months later I was reading Women's Own on my lunchbreak and came across this disturbing article that confirmed the inferiority of the Viscount once and for all. Can you imagine the horror of the daughter of Mrs Engel-Gilmore of Eastleigh, Hampshire when she found a DEAD BEETLE inside her Viscount?

That would surely never happen to a Mint Slice!

This is the first entry in a special series on Scottish Cuisine, the result of eighteen months of exhaustive research and lard consumption. Stay tuned!

Lithuania celebrates joining the EU
Vilnius, 7 September

Decided tonight I would get cracking with the ridiculous backlog of writing and photos I'm busting to post. This all changed when Rhi announced, "Property Ladder is back on tonight!"

Poncho.

Pon. Cho.

Now there's a funny word.

When we arrived in Riga I was suffering from flu and culture shock, a deadly combination that turns one into a shivering, mumbling twit. I was curled up on the hostel bed moaning into my pillow, Why can't we go somewhere normal? Why can't we go somewhere easy? Why not a package holiday to the Costa del Sol?

Then I heard the voice of JFK, going on about the moon and how he had to go there not because it was easy, but because it was hard. Then I thought how my fever must really be out of control if I could dare be so simultaneously wimpy and precious to compare a Latvian jaunt to the lunar frontier.

But these days I've learned to expect that initial 24 Hour Freakout when you land in a strange country, and the only cure for me seems to be to buy a really trashy magazine. Preferably an American one with a lot of advertising and fashion that I could never afford. So this elaborate backstory was just to explain how I came to be reading US Marie Claire and consequently discover that the Poncho is HOT this fall.

Why would you want to wear a poncho? Why not just wear that mat you stick under the Christmas tree? The magazine even dared to say the poncho was suitable for all body shapes, flattering curves and disguising hefty hips. Well, sure it does. Just like a Barbie doll with a crocheted skirt effectively disguises a toilet roll.

I'm amazed how quickly the latest trends filter from the catwalk to the high street to every slapper in town. At the airport last week while Rhi umm-ed and ahh-ed over duty free perfume, I observed at least a dozen different be-ponched ladies swanning past. When we arrived home, the ponchos were waiting, propped up in Princes Street shop windows like scarecrows.

Today I saw the ultimate. When the teenage lassies of Scotland roam in packs, they often choose the standard uniform of two-tone hair (dark bottom layers, bleached blonde slabs on top, aggressively ironed), cigarette, withering kohl-rimmed stare, and the mini-est of mini-skirts (or tartan Slut Kilt if they're feeling patriotic) with no regard for arctic temperatures. But this season they've added the ubiquitous poncho. I watched a quartet standing in a row outside McDonalds, gnashing their chewing gum and checking for text messages. Their ponchos swirled and snapped in the autumn wind; they looked like a flock of polyphonic ravens.

The poncho season has barely started. The poncho population is set to explode. More and more ponchos will wing their way these kiddies. Can you imagine the aerial view of Princes Street on Saturday mornings? Row upon row of flapping flopping crochet, like Edinburgh has been taken over by an evil army of Avril Lavigne/Eastwood clones.

Scotland's Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport sure is down with the groovy kids. Frank McAveety popped out a press statement after Glasgow's pride and joy Franz Ferdinand won the Mercury Music Prize last week:

"I am delighted that Frank Ferdinand has won the prestigious Mercury Music Prize"

Hehe.

A lesson I never seem to learn:  Headphones are ESSENTIAL for all public transport journeys. No matter where you are in the world, there will always be someone with boogers rattling round in their nasal cavities like socks in a tumble dryer. There will always be the equivalent of an 80-year-old man shouting at his newspaper in Russian, spitting on his fingers before he turns each page, muttering to himself as he snaps his briefcase open shut open shut, slurping on chocolate bars so loudly you can hear his dentures rattle, all without a break for four hundred freaking kilometres!

So, after all that we got back to Latvia this morning, and now I keep thinking about potatoes. Yesterday we were on yet another bus scooting around the south-east corner of Lithuania, just me and Rhi and a driver with gigantic shoulders and a slightly nutty guide. We hadn't wanted to do any evil touristy day tours as such, but it was the easiest thing for this particular location. The problem is that by mid-September there are sweet bugger all tourists left in Lithuania, so you have nowhere to hide. You must pay attention to every story, you must nod and express awe at every Ancient Fishing Tool in every museum.

Anyway, back to the potatoes. This area of the country was all about agriculture. But it was also extremely poor. Our bright shiny bus whizzed past locals hunched over potato crops, headscarves sheilding them from the relentless sun. Others attacked the earth with crumbly tools, some drove carts, the horses ambling slowly on dusty lanes. I spotted just one solitary tractor all day, two puffs of black smoke hanging awkwardly in the sky.

The guide caught me looking and said, "This is very poor part of Lithuania. They have to work very hard."

"Yes..."

"So would you like us to take you somewhere nice for lunch?"

She asked us a lot about our lives, asked us what it was like in Australia, asked us how we could be so young and afford to travel so far. She asked us if we were rich. What do you say to that? I could have said how we had scrimped and saved to come here, but how ridiculous would that have sounded with the potato people right there? I felt apologetic and guilty and cranky all at the same time.

At one stage the guide got the driver to stop the bus. She skipped across the road and pulled some strange wildflower out of the ground. She crushed the little brown pods in her hand so a tiny seed was revealed.

"What you call these in English?"

"I've honestly haven't seen them before."

"Yes, you must! Children eat them."

"Umm... I guess we haven't got them in Australia."

"Ha!" she smiled, "There is nothing you have not got in Australia."

Last night back in our dodgy hotel I flicked on BBC World to see if things were okay in Australia. There was a story on suicide, and how Lithuania had the highest rate in the world. 30 people every week in a country of just 3.7 million.

I know a lot of you people out there have travelled a lot, and wonder anyone feels this same bewildered frustration about the world that I am struggling with right now. I've been away from Britain for nearly two weeks now and feel like I have learned so much about this Baltic chunk of the planet, about its complicated history and politics. It's nice to build this tiny awareness and understanding of a place you barely thought of before.

But at the same time, you're in a complete vacuum when you travel. You are so wrapped up in your cushy travellers world, absorbing new places and experiences, that you can start losing perspective. You can fall out of touch with what's happening elsewhere. When I heard about the Jakarta bombing I just felt this sinking, horrible feeling of being so far away from everyone. Then I thought of how it's been almost 18 months since we left Australia, how out of touch I am with the issues of the upcoming election. I even started worrying about family and friends and if I have done enough to stay in touch with them and make sure they know they're missed.

None of this makes any sense and no doubt sounds like a pile of wank. I am just confused and homesick, for Scotland and Australia.

Sometimes I just lay awake at night, squinting at the ceiling and feeling so excited about life, dizzy with this appetite for the world, feeling ever more alive and aware since I left home. But sometimes I think I am just as ignorant and indulgent as ever, and in danger of disappearing up my own arse.

We just signed on for another three nights in our hotel after intense debate. Sure there are holes in the wall and the door won't shut properly, but it will cost us less for a week here than it does for our rent back home. Plus I get to hang out the window and watch the hookers drum up business across the street.

The toilet really unsettles me. When we were in Russia we encountered plenty of those pit toilets, where you must drop your dacks and straddle a hole in the ground and try to ignore the floating objects left by previous tennants. I would close my eyes and whisper to myself, "Come onnnn! Just let go!". That I could handle. Not so the toilet in our hotel room.

This beast appears innocent at first. But it has no seat, no lid, and a bizarre split-level system. Your basic Western loo is just one bowl and everything goes down right away in a beautifully detached, impersonal manner. But this one has the second level, a balcony; a waiting room for waste, if you will. I am so disturbed by it that I have been avoiding any controversial foods and/or running into the nearest McDonalds if the urge hits.

I am haunted by this vision, that if one had to use it, one would have to jump up and face the bowl in order to hit the flush button. Then one would be confronted by one's own handiwork, waiting there on that ledge, like giddy children queuing at the top of a waterslide. And of course the flush button is barely holding on to the tank, so you'd have to swear and wrestle with it for five minutes before it would work and then I bet your business would shriek wheeeeeee! as it finally began the thrill-a-minute ride into the Vilnius sewerage system.

Of all the thrilling tourist delights of this city, I choose to tell you about a toilet. Hmm, what else? I saw a statue of Frank Zappa today, that was very cool.

Here we are in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Lithuania is one of those countries that comes under the heading of Things Shauna Has Obsessed About, alongside Lenin, Alex Popov, Ed from Radiohead, Green & Blacks chocolate and MotoGP. But this is a particularly sad bastard of an obsession because the obsession was sparked by a story on Channel Nine's Getaway show in 2001 and I vowed afterward that I would go there someday.

So here we are. Thank you David Reyne.

We went to the KGB Museum this morning, which was utterly disturbing. Rhiannon found two pairs of very sexy shoes for a bargain price which has sent me into my usual I'm An Ugly Lumberjack mood because my honking huge feet will never fit into anything so dainty.

UPDATE:  I just re-read that last paragraph and realises it sort of sounds like Rhiannon bought her shoes at the KGB Museum. She did not.

The currency of Latvia is called the Lat. By this logic the currency of Australia should be the Oz, the currency of Britain the Brit. It is interesting to have all these wacky currencies in the world, for example Yen and Danish Kroner have holes in the middle thus make sexy necklaces, but sometimes I think it would be easier if the world just had one currency. The Worldo.

Why go to Latvia? This was what everyone at work said when I asked for yet more time off. But why not? Jane and Rory once bought a bottle of Merlot from Uruguay that was called 'Why Try Uruguay?'. Well, because it's there, I guess. That is why we are trying the Baltic states, that little clutch of countries nestled between Poland, Belarus and Russia. Oh, also to see them before the Easyjet flights begin and they are overrun by drunken Brits on stag nights.

So we flew out from Edinburgh last Tuesday, connected in Prague and picked up dozens of people who were not accquainted with deoderants. The guy beside me with the Beirut Duty Free bag was so tired he kept slumping over his dinner tray, unfortunate for me coz his folded arms allowed the stink waves to escape.

We arrived in Riga and it was as mishmash of beautifully crumbly and shiny new buildings. After a wee wander and night in a mosquito infested hostel, we caught a bus to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

We have had a brilliant six days here, thanks mostly to the lovely Kristi, a rockin Estonian chick I met on this here internet. She has shown us around the countryside and been so helpful and generous. It is such a contrast to the relentless pace of our Contiki tour of Russia, this time I feel like I am getting to know the place a wee bit better and just feel much more relaxed.

I have been pretty rotten with flu, however. My stupid body decides to get crook as soon as I finally stop working all the bloody time. It was fun in the Estonian Chemist trying to buy cough medicine. The bottle offered Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian translations. Arrgh! I ended up chosing 'Broncho'. It will either help my chesty cough or make me whinny and jump fences. Either outcome sounds equally exciting.