Baltic wind-down

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Don't they all sound kind of similar? Do you know which one is east-west-in the middle? How about the capitals Riga, Tallinn/Regal and Vilnius, which one fits with which country? Is it true that they all speak Baltic? How about the rumour that they eat fish from the Baltic Sea? All these questions lead to our visit to the Baltics! So here is our report:

As we arrived at Riga airport, it was as if we had flown across a century, instead of being in the air for just 90 minutes. The airport was brandnew and very stylish. Nothing reminded of the recent Soviet past. Modern highways, supermarkets...These are countries that have succeeded in leaving the communist past behind! We stayed in a wonderful hotel in the old town of Riga, which consisted of six medival buildings. Our room had a wonderful wood floor, original wood beams on the ceiling - this is the good life. Latvia and Riga turned out to be beautiful. A wonderful energetic city, full of culture and commerce. Very proud people (a bit xenophobic: I bought the national Latvian soccer shirt. First I wanted the jersey with the number two on it, which the seller refused to sell me since the player was a Latvian by nationality but Russian by ethnicity...). Riga is an architectural gem. A wonderful old city but also many art nouveau buildings. The city seemed 'to develop' - it was clear that all the new buildings were built with EU money, but the Latvians seemed optimistic about their future. We actually felt so good in this country we even dared to rent a car! Off we were to Lithuania. As we realized soon, there is not much to Latvia other than its capital...many trees, no hills or mountains, but the roads were good, so I am not complaining! The border to Lithuania felt like a crossing into nowhereland. It did not help that it was a grey, foggy, icey day (not that not all our baltic days were just like that). Lithuania seemed much more agrarian and 'differently developped'. Little did we care about these things since we came here for a specific purpose: to see the hill of holy crosses. In the middle of nowhere there has been a hill covered with thousands of wooden crosses, that Lithuanians have put up to commemorate/alleviate their suffering. The biggest crosses are maybe ten foot high, most are two foot high. It is quite the experience to walk among this sea of crosses, hearing thousands of tiny crosses blow in the wind. The Soviets tried several times to destroy the hill. Usually within a week the hill was covered again with two dozen crosses. It must have rained the night before we arrived, since the hill was surrounded by a virtual sea of ice! We admired an elderly woman who was selling religious souvenirs in this iceage day. We probablely were the only tourists that day. Lithuania overall had a darker feel to it, although quite charming.

Estonia - the proud ones. We had heard so much about these Estonians before. The are the rich Baltic people, the ones who initiated the downfall of the USSR (quite ironic, Estonia is a tiny, tiny country, and it brought the almighty USSR to its knees). Tallinn, its capital is just 50 miles south of Helsinki, a 18 minute helicopter ride. Estonians speak a language which is related to Finnish, Hungarian and Korean (this means you do not understand a word, not one!!!). Tallinn has a wonderful old city. While our hotel was great (a former factory changed into a loft hotel), the city overall seemed a bit touristy (two out of three houses in the old town have a souvenir shop in them...). We went to a Gregorian chant concert. I got my first hair cut since Tashkent (my first one was in Istanbul). Even though my hairdresser spoke only Russian, this turned out to be the easiest of the three.

We did like the Baltics, but we also realized that we were tired. This was the first time, we did not bother to learn the basics of the local language and our heads seemed heavy - time to move on I guess...

We will have a brief stop over in Amsterdam and Switzerland, before landing at O'hare on Monday! We will be Wisconsin through the 31st before flying out to Maine for two months, and then onwards to Alaska. The travelling does not really stop, does it!

Our next and final entry will include the much anticipated top five lists for everything such as worst and best hotel, super worst ice cream, mildest food poisoning etc... If you have any special requests for categories to be included, let us know!

So long