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May 01, 2005
Rushing off to the East
I am off to Russia on Monday and hope to live-blog with an entry every day or two. I depart Monday night and arrive in Moscow on Tuesday night and then take a long, greuling, painful overnight train to St. Petersburg, returning to the States on 10 May. I've been to the former USSR (the Baltics: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), but this will be the first visit to the land of Lenin, Trotsky, Rasputin, Raskolnikov, and Anastasia.
I'm looking forward to the visit, as the week I spent in the Baltics last year was among the best weeks of traveling I've ever done. The Baltics are far enough removed from the well-trampled European tourist beat that each captial retains its unique character: mystical Vilnaus (Lithuania), bustling big-city Riga (Latvia), and the grown-up Helsinki suburb of Tallinn (Estonia). Give me this any day over Prague or Budapest. And the guys know what I've said about Latvian women (or you can look up the blog entry from when I was there last year). Here are some pics from the Baltics in July of last year:
The coolest part about Tallinn, Estonia, is the helicopter ride from Helsinki, Finland. This is one of few major international routes dominated by helicopter rather than plane. Flights leave hourly and start at 89 Euros, which has doubled in the past year.
Tallinn's centre, built on the Toompea hill, has been fortified since 1219 and attained great prosperity as a member of the Hanseatic League in 1285. It largely retains its 15th century character, as the town declined because of various wars in the 15th century and slumbered until the 1990s when it became an inexpensive "just across the gulf" suburb of Helsinki.
Small dunes and pine trees line the Baltic Sea cost in Parnu, Estonia. People in the Baltics are hard-core beach fans. A trip to the beach on a sunny day involves crowding aboard a train that passes Soviet-style public housing projects and continually loads on bikini-clad girls until the seaside is reached.
I did not expect to be walking through Riga, Latvia, and see a Maybach, the $350,000 Chrysler. Rents in the centers of the Baltic capitals are comparable to rents in major American or European cities, and some residents have done quite well for themselves. Nonetheless, the vast majority of the Baltic people are quite poor, with pensioners of Russian ethnicity suffering in silent, heartbreaking poverty.
Latvia's Gauja National Park is locally called the "Switzerland of Latvia," but the comparison is weak at best. The castle here was constructed in 1207-1266 by the Knights of the Sword, also known as the Livonian Order. Interestingly, a friend from Columbia (and reader of Transatlantic Zeppelin) can trace her family's ancestory directly to the Kinghts of the Sword.
The Lithuanian capital, Vilnaus, is perhaps the only city to host a memorial to Frank Zappa, erected by the city's active artists' community.
Some young Lithuanian girls feed adolescent swans at Trakai (population 6,111), a minor resort town outside the capital. A fortress was built on the lake in the 1300s to defend against raiding German knights, and today it is a popular picnic and wedding destination for well-dressed Lithuanian families.
Posted by adrianjo at May 1, 2005 08:45 PM
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