We’ve spent two weeks having a look in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and can tell you the sky has been mostly varying shades of grey with very occasional bursts of sunshine. The locals are not fazed and seem to take a pride in their lousy weather. I guess it’s better than having two hurricanes. Places stayed in have been the three capitals of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius plus Tartu in Estonia, and we did a few day trips to various tourist places, usually with castles or in one case to a beach which wasn’t like Waihi. The longer trips have been by bus including one in their version of business class, but even in cattle you get a screen with movies, music and wifi. Along the way we met up with a Belgian couple we first found in a canoe, in the Bolivian Amazon Basin 22 years ago. We have both visited each other a few times since then and they came to Tallinn to see us. Also Bruce and Cheryl from the Volga Dream turned up unexpectedly when we did a day trip to Helsinki and then again in Tallinn and Riga. Helsinki has one sight really worth seeing which is modern church built into a rock formation and Cheryl spied Kay as she walked on the roof area, mainly because of Kay’s extremely bright striped leggings.
The locals are not casually friendly and one has to look at the recent history to explain that. Before 1918 only Lithuania had ever been an independent nation, they had an empire for a while in the 1400s, and they all were serfs and peasants with other nationalities being the bosses. However the languages and cultures stayed strong and after WW1 all three of them fought for and got their own independent states and started off democratically but drifted into authoritarian rule. Then Hitler and Uncle Joe Stalin signed the Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 and it included secret bits about who took which parts of Europe, so the USSR got the Baltic countries and quickly set about including them in its happy family. Nationalisation, commercialisation, heavy industrialisation and free long-term trips to Siberia were put in place in countries which had been doing quite well, with the inevitable results of food shortages and a lot of unhappy citizens plus economic disaster for many. Then two years later in 1941 Germany liberated them which didn’t really turn out so well with all the catastrophic events associated with such an occupation. Lithuania had over 200,000 Jewish in 1940 and when the SS had finished there were maybe 5,000 left. And it wasn’t just them who were dealt to. Then the Soviets came back and liberated them from the Germans and finished off what they had started a few years before, so all three countries became part of the USSR and were subject to plenty of attention from the KGB because the indigenous people thought too independently. But there is a happy ending with each country getting their independence again in the early 1990s. It wasn’t a simple matter to suddenly set up a new nation and each of them has had economic ups and downs, but at present they seem on the way to being part of Western Europe. One of the legacies of past times was considerable Russian immigration to Estonia and Latvia which is a problem at present as these people are seen as a disgruntled minority who could easily be manipulated by Putin’s mates.
Anyhow, caution and wariness in dealing with unknown people have become part of life, although now diminishing, and you don’t get a “hello” or even a nod when you are the only people walking on a park track. But in normal transactions they are friendly and helpful. The only surely tourist serving person we have had was a superior waiter in a restaurant with no wine by the glass listed. I asked if there was any and he said yes, I asked what there was and he said red and white, so I asked if there was more detail and he said helpful things like there was a French chardonnay. Then I got grumpy and said I didn’t want any, which meant ten minutes later I had to back down and get more specific detail. The only other time I have been actively annoyed was when I put down an open umbrella to do complicated navigation stuff and it blew into me, so I kicked it away, and the next thing that happened to it was me having to put it in a rubbish bin. But I’ve now got one with a pattern which Kay assures me is quite masculine.
The only emphatic local behaviour we have seen happened on a local train when an old lady stopped by an empty seat behind us. There was a bag on the seat belonging to an equally old guy sitting by the window who I think had started the day with a few vodkas. She stood there for quite a while waiting for the bag to be shifted because there were few empty seats, and the vodka man ignored her. A degree of concern amongst other passengers was palpable and then a young guy stood up, guided the lady to his seat, went back and picked up the offending bag, threw it at vodka man and sat in the seat. The old guy got a bit noisy as did his new companion but things settled down when Galahad’s mother told him to stop. Well it sounded like that.
These countries are not geographically exciting. They are flat or at best very gently undulating. Apparently there is a hill in Lithuania that’s 300m high. There is lots of woodland, or forests as they are called, but not many of the trees would produce a good length of 4×4. Agriculture is all cereal cropping which isn’t too exciting in late autumn. Because there are no rocks all the old big buildings are made of red bricks and somehow a brick castle doesn’t quite look rugged enough. However, there are plenty of tourists and they mainly come to see the “Old Town” in each of the three capitals. Not all come to admire the architecture as evidenced by the noise on Saturday nights, but they are visually interesting places and for me the best was Riga which has lots of amazing Art Nouveau buildings. Kay liked Riga because Latvians are particularly keen on knitting and you can buy postcards that say Knit Like a Latvian. We watched the ABs play SA there in a local bar called The Kiwi Pub and there weren’t too many Latvians in attendance. I suspect I made the most noise, but who wouldn’t when they play as well as they did.
Each of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius have interesting museums about the occupations and the most compelling parts are the videos of these now old people talking matter of factly about the terrible things that happened to them and their families. It’s pretty hard to stay dispassionate about the events of WW2 and the Soviet occupations when you watch that sort of stuff. It certainly makes me wonder just how human beings can treat others so horribly. (And while I am on this subject I have to say it really annoys me that the description”Nazi” is substituted for “German” in institutions . I may have mentioned that a few years ago.) In Vilnius the museum is in the old KGB headquarters and the highlight is to wander through the cells, and have a look at the bullet holes in the execution chamber. Not a place for making jokes.
And less historically, we have had some very good food. Partly because sometimes when all the popular places are full we end up in more expensive restaurants where the chefs and their subordinates have the requisite tattoos and desire to be different. As always in Europe white wine by the glass is a problem for people from NZ. A couple of nights ago we unknowingly ended up in a Lithuanian restaurant jam -packed with a bus load of bemused Chinese and another of stoic English. There were accordians , dancers, traditional costumes and delightful hard pressed staff. When asked about a drink I didn’t want to hold the waiter up so I just asked for a glass of tasty white wine, and certainly nothing from Italy. I got something from Spain that had a bit of Muscat in it and went very well with my local meat and chips. The next night we went to a place that was all industrial and full of youths and very uncomfortable looking chairs, so we walked back to one seen on the way and it turned out to be Chinese. We both agreed a bit of Asian food was a good idea even though we hadn’t really thought of it.
Next stop Warsaw for a few days. Then Kay flies home if the airline has enough fuel. I fly to Belarus, supposedly the last dictatorship in Europe, if they haven’t changed their trial period of visa on arrival for nice people from democratic places.
Dennis.