This morning, we drove up the road to Līgatne in order to visit a former Soviet bunker located nine metres beneath a rehabilitation centre.
The bunker was designed to enable the orchestration of a nuclear war to continue underground in the event of life above ground having become untenable. It was such a closely guarded secret that knowledge of its existence only became public in 2003, twelve years after Latvia’s becoming an independent nation once again.
The stench of the subterranean stale air was overpowering, but the tour was fascinating, nonetheless. Amongst other things, we were shown telephones that had once provided a hotline to the Kremlin, ancient Russian computers, a radioactivity decontamination room, and the kitchen where the staff ate. For kicks, I tried on a gas-mask for size.
No-one who worked in the rehabilitation centre upstairs knew of the existence of the bunker below their facility. How this secret was kept is anyone’s guess.
Our guide told us that local residents, some of whom had been employed in the bunker (it was a civilian facility), are still afraid to talk about their experiences there. This means that, even now, many questions about the operation of the bunker remain unanswered. Hardly surprising, when you consider that these people lived in an era when fear that your neighbour or even your spouse might actually be a KGB agent struck terror into the hearts of many.
It was another chilling reminder of how recently Cold War activities were suspended.
Afterwards, we went to the nearby town of Cēsis, where we had a wander around. After watching Eloïse play in some fountains, we headed back towards the car, stopping off at a place called Aroma for a notably bad lunch. Medium rare pork: ugh!
Back in Sigulda, we went on a hike that took us past a couple of castle ruins, on a cable-car across a valley, and eventually down to the Gūtmaņa Cave.
A girl passing by on a golf-cart-style sightseeing buggy spotted us at the bus-stop and gave us a ride back to our hotel for a couple of lats.
We decided on the easy option of dining at our hotel’s restaurant, which happily turned out to serve excellent food. A nice addition to the meal was that we got talking to a Dutch couple who are making a tour of the Baltics very similar to our own. I wouldn’t be surprised if we ran into them again.
Tonight’s our last night in Latvia for a while, because our destination for tomorrow is Pärnu on the west coast of Estonia. The drive will theoretically take us about two and a half hours.
Pärnu is supposedly a top summer beach destination for Finns and Swedes, who jostle with the Estonians for hotel rooms and a prime spot on the sand. I believe it, too, because we had plenty of trouble finding a hotel room in the town.
I’m looking forward to seeing how Estonia differs from Latvia and Lithuania. It’s the only country we won’t be leaving and re-entering (unless we decide later to make an excursion by boat to Helsinki) as we continue our clockwise tour of the Baltic region, because we’ll enter along the west coast and drive in semi-circular fashion over to the east of the country, before re-entering Latvia.
It’s hard to believe that we’ve already been on the road eleven days. It’s all gone so quickly. At the same time, though, we’ve packed in quite a lot, making the first couple of days in Lithuania seem more like three weeks ago now.
Sounds like a fun adventure. 🙂
Im just wrapping on my trip to Melbourne. 5 weeks is too long for me, I think 3 is just about right.
-g
Be on your guard!
The last time a company asked me to go abroad for a month, it was to be five and a half years before I finally returned home.
By that point, I had changed jobs and had a wife and child in tow. I was also considerably fatter, thanks to a plentiful supply of hamburgers, pizza, quesadillas and souble-dipped chocolate malt balls.