Baltics

Capital Cities #6 and 7

Latvia

After Finland, we took another early morning flight. Yes, as much as we decided to travel overland, sometimes the only way to travel is by jet (or in this case, turboprop). For some reason there aren’t ferries that travel from Turku to either Riga or Estonia, so we decided to hit up Riga by air.

The Scandinavian summer continued to be so warm that it was the perfect temperature while walking to the shuttle bus at 5.30am. Turku airport is probably smaller than Palmerston North’s airport, just to give you some sense of scale. We wandered out onto the runway, and boarded the small plane without fuss; it was more like boarding a bus than an aircraft. Air travel should always be this way.

It was also interesting flying between Shengen (passport-free border control) countries, as it was the first international flight for which we didn't need to get our passports stamped on arrival.

Riga is cool, although there’s definitely a perceptible shift from Scandinavia to the Baltic countries. Everything’s a little less fancy, a little more rundown. We arrived and found our accommodation (after a little unplanned walk, since the bus took us to an unexpected place).

Riga has a huge market attached to one of the train stations. It stretches on for ages with rows upon rows of stalls. Since I’m the one with a sense of direction, I tried to make sure we were covering the whole area, but quickly gave up after we realised just how big the place is. It’s a market that the locals go to, so there was plenty of stuff that we weren’t interested in, like fruit and veggies, with a huge hangar filled with meat. Many of the stalls were selling non-consumables, however, like shoes and clothes. Much of it seemed second-hand, and we could swear that a good half of this part of the market was devoted to bras. They were simply everywhere. This bolstered our suspicion that the main market (ha!) for this market was old ladies.

Speaking of old ladies, Riga has a(n) (in)famous street performer. Perhaps street performer is too strong a word. She looks to be about seventy, and she stands on the footpath with a little CD player, and dances to pop songs. Dancing is perhaps too strong a word too. I felt sorry for her, and thought that she was either insane (still a possibility) or there was some sort of scam. Later we heard that she's (in)famous, and has been doing her little busking routine for years.

We hit up Riga’s War Museum (as you do) which covered the military history of Latvia, from ancient to modern times.

Them pants. (Just liked the picture, it's not indicative of Latvia at all)

Relics from a tiny little war.

Anna took this photo and said "John shows off his guns." and didn't realise that she'd made a pun until ten minutes later.

One of the most impressive buildings we saw was the House of the Blackheads, which had to be completely restored after the Second World War.

Latvia used to be dominated by the Soviet Union, and although they’ve been free from Soviet oppression for over a decade now, everything is still a little backwards. Many of the older generation will speak Russian, which is helpful in the markets, but apparently it’s a bad idea to speak Russian with them, as they might take offence. Once you see the way the Soviets treated the Baltic states you can see why. Anna did try out her Russian once or twice though when speaking with ladies at a much nicer, though smaller, market we also visited in the centre of the town.

Unfortunately we only had one day in Riga; we would have liked to spend a little while longer.

Lithuania

The next morning we set off for our bus, struggling to find the bus station at first. Some signs would have been nice, as we started to FREAK OUT as the time got closer and closer to the departure time, but we asked some helpful people who pointed us in the right direction, and we hurried up just as the bus was boarding. So we were off on our four-hour trip to Lithuania.

We arrived in Vilnius just as a thunderstorm was easing off. It’s always preferable to book accommodation close to where the bus comes in, and ours was about 10 minutes’ walk away, right next to the Gate of Dawn. As far as we can tell, this isn’t referring to someone called Dawn but to the phenomenon that usually happens in the early morning. There’s a church built right over the gate with a picture of Mary that allegedly has supernatural powers. Pope John Paul II visited the church once, and there were always at least a handful of tourists outside our window looking up at the miraculous picture.

The outside of the gate.

Inside. That window is normally open, and you can see the miraculous image from the street.

View from our window.

One thing that’s noticeable in Vilnius is the number of church buildings. Catholic mostly, but also Russian or Polish Orthodox churches, with the odd Lutheran thrown in for good measure. It’s nice (denominational and doctrinal affinity notwithstanding) to see fantastically decorated churches being used for their intended purpose, and not just fancy places for tourists to visit.

This one is undergoing restoration.

Fancy.

Of course when it’s being used it’d be incredibly rude for us to barge in with camera ablazing, so we didn’t get pictures of the inside of the Orthodox church just down the road, but it was fancy.

Outside some of the churches there were often people begging. I'm not sure how to react to this, since it's not something that I've got any experience with whatsoever. On the one hand, presumably there are people who have no other option. On the other hand, when the bandage on your leg switches legs the next day, there's something fishy going on. We actually saw that happen. He did quite a good job in the make-up department though; it did look quite realistic. In the U.S. and Canada people would sit somewhere with a lot of foot traffic and hold a cup. Here though often they'll be kneeling with their head down next to the ground and their hands out in a posture of begging. It makes me feel uncomfortable, which perhaps is the idea.

Anyway, back to Vilnius. The old town was interesting and all, but once you’ve had enough of old church buildings and little shops selling amber jewellery it’s time to set off to the newer parts of the city.

The Cathedral is a very impressive building:

Action Pope!

This now has nothing to do with the Cathedral; these scary things were outside the theatre:

As with Latvia, Lithuania also suffered for decades, first under Nazi oppression during the Second World War, and then under Soviet oppression. We visited what’s called the Genocide Museum, a building that used to house the Gestapo and then the KGB. It’s a relatively innocuous-looking building, but it has the names of some of the people killed there inscribed into the walls on the sides. They've got sobering exhibitions on what happened to the national militia that was fighting both the Nazis then the Soviets, as well as prison cells and the execution chamber that you can visit. You can still see the bullet holes in the wall. There were exhibitions on how whole families were deported to Siberia, to work clearing forests, or laying railway tracks in terrible conditions.

The somewhat grand, officiously banal façade of terror.

It's easy sometimes to think that the worst actors in the Second World War were the Nazis, but here's a concrete example of how the Nazi and Soviet atrocities run in parallel, and perhaps if the Soviets hadn't been part of the Allies, if the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had actually lasted, then our measure for evil might be Stalin, rather than Hitler.

Here's a solitary confinement cell, which might as well be called a torture chamber. The floor was filled with ice cold water (which was often actually ice in the winter) and the prisoner would have to either stand in the water, or on the tiny round platform in the middle, so when they fell asleep or lost their balance they'd get soaked. 

On a slightly different note, Vilnius is also famous for its Frank Zappa statue, that’s actually more like a bust on a pole. It wasn’t too much out of our way, so we thought we’d check it out.

I know nothing about Frank Zappa, other than that he’s a musician (I think) and that he has (or used to have) a moustache.

We found an international church on Sunday; this one was Lutheran, and quite different from what we’re used to - like how they did communion, and the responsive readings that thankfully we were able to see in the bulletin. It was highly liturgical, with a robe-wearing Minister and a very set order of service. When we were chatting afterwards, though, the people were just as nice as normal.

We took the bus that afternoon to Warsaw.