The Baltic Adventure. (Part 1)
Good afternoon, all.
We are on a three week tour of the Baltic region. Everything was booked on the internet: flights, bus and train tickets, accommodation, etc. So far all has gone according to plan but the beginning was a bit dodgy: the taxi taking us to the airport for our early flight overheated on the motorway! The driver used up his water AND our drinking water and finally got it going. Phew!
Finland was lovely. The people are so friendly - in one museum, we asked the ticket woman directions to our next site. She said it was a little difficult by bus but since she was going into town she would give us a lift. Our hostel was good and we had meals there - it was used by locals for a drink or as a restaurant. The ice cream was lovely. Lots of seafood in the main square. Who says Finnish food is rubbish? Sunset was at 10:45pm - the long days and bright nights made it difficult to sleep.
Helsinki was very art deco. The most usual place was a church carved out of solid rock. We took a boat ride to Porvoo and saw the old city with its painted wooden houses. The chocolate shop was a delight - much confection was purchased. We had a train trip to Turku, the old capital and saw a Sibelius museum, an open air craft village, a huge castle and some WW2 ships.
We then took a train to St Petersburg. More wooden houses and lots of forests. Between the border and the town of Vyborg, the toilets and the restaurant car were closed. The Russians scrutinised all our papers thoroughly. No smiles here! From being able to read Finnish but not understand a word we were now struggling to read but words did make sense: bistro, cafe, bisnis tsentr....
In St Petersburg, we had booked a hotel 10 minutes walk from the station. Come out of the railway, see the statue of Lenin and turn right. We came out and - no statue of Lenin. Our limited Russian confirmed that we had been delivered to a new station. Luckily we had studied our Cyrillic alphabet and luckily we had changed money on the train. We were able to use the metro to get to the correct place. It's very deep but cheap. And there was the Lenin statue. Our hotel was a shabby Soviet monstrosity with unsmiling and unhelpful receptionists. The best things about the hotel was the stunning views over St Petersburg and the buffet breakfasts.
Everything in the city was a long way - it took us 10 minutes to walk from our bedroom to the breakfast hall. We had to take a 10 minute walk through a military school and a 20 minute tram ride to the centre. The city exhausted us. But it was fascinating. We spent all day at the Hermitage and only saw the Tsars rooms and a few paintings. So much to see and so little time. We were mainly ignored by the Russians. The museum people were unfriendly. The metro staff threw the tube tokens at you without looking up however politely I asked for "dva bilyet pazholsta". Funnily enough, the friendliest people were the staff of the trams and trolley buses - they always made sure we got to where we were going. And the Armenians - we bought our icons from them!
One highlight was a cemetery at a monastery - we sat looking at the tombs of Tchiakovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Moussorsky.
St Petersburg is expensive because of the tourist price for foreigners - normal activities like transport and food are cheap. We could have used another few days here to see everything at a slower pace. On the last night we went to the opera. The Russians might be miserable but they ARE cultured - their appreciation of what was happening on stage was excellent. The male singer got more flowers than the female because he had performed better that night! They took a bow at the interval which confused us - Carmen hadn't died yet!
We managed to find a place to eat to avoid the expensive hotel restaurant. It was a shabby exterior which led to a basement cavern where students, foreigners and locals congregated to enjoy good food and drink at reasonable prices. The menu had an English translation - it looked like a computer had made it. We had "Fried Language", "Fillet the Hen with Additives" and "Fillet of Fish Fried in the Test". Our favourite desert was "Berry in a Chocolate Stuffed By A Nut".
We took a bus to Tallinn (Estonia). At the border, the Russians made us take all our luggage to go through immigration. Those are the only stamps we've had so far.
Tallinn is delightful. It's a pretty medieval town with cobbled streets, spires and old churches. Our hotel is 2 minutes from the centre but the breakfast is a few biscuits and coffee. People are very happy when we use our dozen words of Estonian. Last night we had dinner in a traditional restaurant with serving wenches. We tried the locally brewed beer: honey beer and cinnamon beer.
The Baltic Adventure (Part 2)
Well. Today it rained for the first time. We are now in Latvia's capital, Riga. We've just had a Lido. This is not a swimming pool or a place near Venice but a wonderful restaurant chain. It is a buffet and it specialises in local food. They were preparing meats, fish, vegetables, salads, deserts, yoghurts, drinks, soups and sauces. We both ate our fill for 8 quid.
Riga has an art deco feel to the "new town" with trams trundling along its streets. We have the old town to see tomorrow.
Again our internet bookings worked well.
It is amazing how different these countries are to each other even though they are neighbours. Latvian is an Indo-European language so we've learned the numbers in ten minutes (rather than the three days it took us to learn Finnish!).
Last night we went to a lovely concert in Tallinn - soprano with piano and violins - exquisite. The culture here is alive and well.
Anyway, time for a shower and a sleep.
The Baltic Adventure (Part 3)
Latvia has so far been the best value of all the countries we have visited. In Finland a two hour train journey cost us 64 pounds for two of us both ways. Here, our day trip (although only an hour and a half each way) cost us 3 pounds.
And of course there's the Lido restaurants. They really look like the buffet in a five star hotel with things being cooked sizzling away and tempting the palate.
Riga is nice - not as quaint as Tallinn or as overwhelming as St Petersburg but has enough elegant buildings, narrow cobbled streets and friendly people. There was a music festival yesterday so we got to see some of the local talent performing in the square in front of the main cathedral.
Today we took a trip to Segulda, a pretty river valley dotted with castles. We took the cable car across the river well above the pine trees, of which there is no shortage. All of these places have been difficult to leave - the Baltic is an undiscovered jewel.
Tomorrow we're off to our third Baltic country, Lithuania....
The Baltic Adventure (Part 4)
In Russia the churches were almost 100% Orthodox. Estonia had 50% Orthodox and 50% Protestant (Lutheran). Latvia had 33% each of Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic. In Lithuania, it's over 60% Catholic with the rest spread over the other two. There are places in Vilnius where all three denominations are visible at once.
We also visited the Holocaust Museum (the Nazi slaughter of the Jews) and the Genocide Museum (KGB activities). Highlight for me was a statue of the US musician Frank Zappa in a park.
Lithuanian is the oldest and least changed of the Indo-European languages. Words like VIRYS ("man") are identical in Sanskrit and similar to the Latin (VIR - the root of virile). PLATUS ("wide") is identical to ancient Greek form. I bought a book on the history of the language (only 2.50 pounds).
We have eaten well in Lithuania, but not quite as well as in Latvia. Cakes and coffees are good here. It's modern and elegant.
Tomorrow we have our last day trip (Trakei, the old capital with its island castle) and then it's off to Warsaw for our flight home. No luck with getting a visa for Belarus so no trip to Minsk for us.
The Baltic Adventure (Part 5)
Well folks,
Vilnius ended up a little wet but we managed to do our sightseeing between showers.
We took a bus to Krakai, a lovely area dotted with lakes and an island castle. The sun came out and we sat at a cafe eating seafood salad with this huge redbrick castle sitting on the island. Newly-weds use the castle as a photo backdrop and we saw dozens of couples posing. Footbridges lead to the castle and one poor groom carried his new bride across (about 150m).
The most direct route to Warsaw for our flight was via a corner of Belarus but this involved getting a transit visa. In the end we went for a slightly more circuitous route with a train change. It worked well. As our train pulled into the little station at Sestokai, the Warsaw train was pulling in to the adjacent platform.
We arrived in Warsaw at 8:30pm and walked to our hotel. I had booked us into the Marriott as they had had a special offer. All this luxury we were not used to. They had different kinds of soap (body soap and face soap!) - it was only 59 Euros including breakfast. We're on the 32nd floor. I've never been on a 32nd floor before except as a viewpoint!
We have the day in the old city before our flight back tonight (Monday night) to exotic Luton.
Best food: Finland.
Best value food: Riga - those Lidos were something else.
Best menu: St Petersburg - the Journalist House (fried language, fillet
the hen, etc)
Best hotel: the one in Riga - nice room, free internet access, nice
breakfast and use of kitchen.
Best located hotel: Vilnius - right in the centre.
Best hotel view: St Petersburg.
Shabbiest hotel room: St Petersburg.
Nicest old town: Tallinn.
Best museum: Hermitage (St Petersburg)
Friendliest people: Finland - just.
Unfriendliest people: Russia - no contest!
Most expensive country: Finland - one train journey cost as much as we
spent in the whole of Latvia!
Best day trip: Island cruise to Porvoo in Finland
Best castle: Trakai in Lithuania.
Most difficult language: Finnish � no contest.
Worst moment: realising we'd arrived at a different station in St
Petersburg than expected.
Best moment: the heatwave for two weeks.
Latest sunset: 23:17 on the first night in St Petersburg.
Earliest sunset: 20:40 (last night in Warsaw).
Internet booking failures: so far - none (phew!)
The Baltic Adventure (Home Again)
Warcsawa (Warsaw).
We stayed at the Marriott Hotel - a special internet offer of �42 per night which included a superb buffet breakfast. I must admit I enjoyed walking into this plush place after a nine hour train journey, wearing my dusty and bedraggled backpack, getting strange looks from the staff and saying "Dzin Dobre - we have a reservation".
We wanted to go to the Chopin Museum but it was closed - renovations had started a week earlier. I had to make do with having my photo taken at the statue of Mikolai Kopernik (known to us as Nicholas Copernicus - he developed the first modern ideas that the Earth moved around the Sun instead of vice versa).
The old city of Warsaw was rebuilt completely from scratch after being razed by the Nazis - they did a good job (the rebuilders - not the Nazis) - it looks hundreds of years old.
I had my photo taken in front of the house at 16 Freta Street.
In 1867 a girl called Marija Skladowska was born here and lived the first 24 years of her life in this family house. She studied science but Poland was then under Russian occupation and a female could not progress. So she moved to Paris and married a scientist called Pierre Curie. She remains the only woman to win two Nobel prizes in science for her discovery of Radium and her work in radioactivity. She is the only woman buried in the Pantheon in Paris. And she is one of my heroines.
Soon we were at the airport and taking off into the twilight. We reached Luton Airport at 10:30. After all the integrated transport of Europe, the shuttle bus took us to the railway station a minute AFTER the London train had left. We had a half hour wait. Welcome home. Then it was a dark and sleazy Kings Cross, a taxi (with a woman driver just like in Russia) and home well after midnight.
We made it. Now I really do need a holiday.
Talaat