ISCO POST: Baltic bliss

17.11.06

Hello -- it's another mass mailing, this time from Vilnius, our last stop in the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Tonight we take a night bus to Warsaw.

To begin, a brief Russia wrap-up. We found our excellent club, a tiny box called Dascha and partied hard with a great crowd of young Russians (they played The Fall -- I can't remember the last time I danced to Mark E Smith in a club). Walked home in the snow, very happy. The next day we staggered out of bed, a little less happy, and spent three hours queueing in the same snow to get into the Hermitage museum -- one of the biggest tests of endurance we have had to face so far! By the time we got in, we could only spend an hour and a half inside, but the wait was worth it, for this painting alone: http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/03/hm3_3_1_4d.html. Luminous.

The next day said a sad das vidanya to Russia and took a bus to Estonia.

The last couple of weeks, travelling thru the Baltics, have been very interesting. We currently love Lithuania so much that we keep using expressions like "There's a lot to like in Lithuania!" and "It's our favourite Baltic!" in case someone overhears us and decides to take us in, and keep us as pets. We started our Baltic experience with a very cold bus ride from St Petersburg to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. After the relative rough and tumble of Russia, it was something of a culture shock to arrive in a town that was so neat and clean and beautiful that it looked like Legoland, where things worked and people spoke English without promting. After fumbling about with speaking Russian for the previous month, it was embarassing to (1) not know any Estonian words, and (2) meet people who didn't seem to care whether you spoke their language or not. It was also a shock to meet other tourists -- we met so few across Russia.

We acted like tourists, too -- visited the world's only Depeche Mode tribute bar (surely there cannot be more than one), ate bear and wild boar sausages at a medieval theme restaurant, etc. We spent a wonderful hour at the St Nicholas cathedral, which has a fragment of a wildly entertaining danse macabre (a picture of it is here, if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre -- it's the Bernt Notke one, down the page a bit), and where we heard a recital of Bach organ music on the beautiful cathedral organ -- said to be the best acoustics in Europe, or the Baltics, or Tallinn anyway. Shivers up the spine.

Fuelled by excellent beer, bear sausages etc we visited Latvia's capital, Riga, another Unesco heritage-listed old town, and said 'wow' a lot in the city's very lovely Art Nouveau quarter. Didn't hang around long; took a bus (we're into buses now) to Siauliau, Lithuania's fourth largest city, which is actually a small and pleasant town which we visited for its proximity to the weird and wonderful Hill of Crosses ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_of_Crosses )

We managed to enjoy ourselves greatly in Siauliau, thanks to meeting up with a couple of locals who took us to a great club underneath the town's theatre. (We're discovering that the best places to go out here are usually underground or impossible to find -- a bit like Melbourne, I guess). It was also in Siauliau that we encountered the very charming Lithuanian custom of menus in pubs, divided by 'beer snacks', 'wine snacks', 'vodka snacks' etc. And what snacks! Pigs' ears, toasted bread with garlic, toasted bread with garlic and cheese, chicken livers, etc. Bliss. Then, women get their 0.5L of beer in an elegant tall glass, while men get theirs in a sturdy glass tankard, with handle. Toothpicks on every table... it's the little things, y'know...

We next spent a few entertaining days at Klaipeda (Lithuania's 3rd largest city etc etc), for its proximity to the amazing Curonian spit, a narrow tongue of sand that stretches 100km down the Baltic coast. Really beautiful place, although completely deserted -- a benefit of travelling off-season. Claire and I went walking on the Baltic beach at Nida, where we could see Russia (the Kalinigrad oblast) just a few km away. I found some amber on the beach and wondered whether I was leaving the first ever Blundsone bootprints on that particular part of the world. Probably not.

But for me, the most interesting thing about spending time in the Balkans hasn't been the beer or the scenery, but -- at the risk of sounding very trite and hackneyed -- a new appreciation of the history of this part of the world. Each of the three countries endured occupation by Germany and the USSR from mid-20th century, and each achieved independence in 1991 after Glasnost. Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius each hosts its own Museum of Occupation, and each is a grimly fascinating tour through each country's individual psyche, which comes out very strongly despite the similarities in each country's occupation. Vilnius' museum is the most confronting -- it's housed in the former KGB prison, and its awful cells, execution chamber, labatory blocks etc still reek (and I mean that literally) of suffering. After a tour of a museum like that, when you encounter a group of rowdy schoolkids in an art gallery or some other place, it's hard to feel irritated, knowing what their parents and grandparents went through to give them the freedom to muck up.

The new occupying forces in each of the three countries are perhaps less sinister but certainly as insidious -- each city's old town square is now surrounded by the armies of Benetton, Giorgio Armani, McDonalds etc. It makes everywhere look oh so prosperous, but god it's boring to think that every town square in the world will end up looking exectly the same. One of the local English-language magazines is decrying the fact that Riga still doesn't have a Starbucks, even though there's one in Saudi Arabia. Dude, you can always pop down to Budapest for $50.

Anyway, that's exectly the kind of ridiculous complaint that is too easy to make when one is a well-off Aussie from Fat City who can afford to swan around Eastern Europe for three months doing nothing but look at stuff -- so I'll sign off here.