Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

Reading between the lines, it seems that Sarah’s folks still aren’t convinced about Rīga (and the Baltics in general). She spoke to them on the phone today and told me afterwards that they sounded sceptical about her enthusiasm for the place, referring to our trip so far as “interesting”, in the same way that your boss might call your brilliant proposal “interesting”, before binning it the moment you leave the room.

I suspect that the country’s former status as an unwilling member state of the USSR has something to do with the misconception that this might be a drab and dreary place to spend time. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

Rīga is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Why?

If look up UNESCO’s advisory body evaluation, you’ll read on page 4 that, “as an assemblage of Art Nouveau/Jugendstil buildings… it is impossible to cite any city to compare with Riga”.

People tend to focus more on the recent past than on a location’s history through the centuries. The misconception therefore arises that former Soviet states must be an endless array of blots on the landscape, a mind-numbing freak show of utilitarian concrete edifices, erected to make a deliberately anti-artistic statement, emphasising function over form.

That notion actually can and does apply to areas of the world that the Soviets actually built, but Rīga has a hugely rich pre-Soviet history. Before it became the USSR’s third city (after Moscow and St. Petersburg), it had an illustrious past spanning hundreds of years. At one time, for example, it was the largest port under Swedish control, larger than Stockholm itself.

Many of the buildings here are hundreds of years old. After a long walk across the city today, I can confirm that the Art Nouveau architecture on display here is the finest of any city I’ve ever been to. I’m no expert, of course, but as UNESCO point out, whilst buildings of similar architectural stature can be found in Barcelona, Brussels, Glasgow, Helsinki, Moscow, Paris, and Prague, those are all individual structures. Rīga, in contrast, has whole streets adorned with stunning examples of the movement. Your camera never stops clicking as the gargoyles and beguiling sirens stare down at you from on high.

Architecture, though, is just one of Rīga’s many facets. We’ve also been lapping up the food, kafejnīcas and parks today.

On the subject of food, I must put in a mention for Šefpavārs Vilhelms (on Šķūņu iela) and its dirt-cheap pancakes. Three plates, loaded up with pancakes and condiments (jam, sour cream, etc.), plus a round of drinks, set us back only Ls 4.20. That’s just under €6!

The café culture here is obviously very appealing to us. A city where you can’t find a good spot to sit outside and people-watch whilst nursing a delicious cappuccino hasn’t earned its place on the map, as far as I’m concerned. Rīga scores well on this count.

And, whilst I’m very happy to live near the Vondelpark in Amsterdam, I’d be even happier if it its upkeep could compare with that of the parks in Rīga.

Fear not, I haven’t lost my perspective. I like this place a lot, but I’m not about to move here. I’d have to consider Stockholm or Istanbul before I could even contemplate Rīga, but this city certainly does press all of the right buttons and send the meter needles flicking.

Another day in the Latvian capital awaits us tomorrow, and that means at least two good things are in store for us: another day without driving and another sumptuous breakfast, courtesy of the lovely Hotel Centra.

Fit for a king, indeed. The Latvian capital is a charming city, instantly likeable in its understated lustre.

For most of today’s journey, the sat-nav once again showed us traversing a massive, white expanse. As far as she (our sat-nav is a lady, in case you didn’t know) is concerned, we might as well have been bounding across the dark side of the moon.

Yes, around these parts, a paper map is still indispensable. Luckily, we had one at hand for navigation 20th century style.

We’ve been struck by the number of storks we’ve seen on our travels so far. They’re a common sight as one drives across the countryside. Many families have erected large poles in their garden, on which they hope a stork will build its nest (and, more often than not, they’re right). The reason they hope the stork will visit, of course, is to bestow children on their household. We still haven’t seen the rarer black stork, however.

We drove north-eastwards to Roja on the coast and then turned south-eastwards along the P131 coastal road. The road was less interesting then we’d hoped, but it was still a pleasant drive.

Our chosen destination for lunch was Jūrmala, a beach resort about 25 km west of Rīga. Back when Latvia was still an unwilling member state of the USSR, Jūrmala was a favourite holiday destination for high-ranking Communist Party officials, including Brezhnev and Khrushchev.

These days, Russian can still be seen and heard everywhere, from restaurant menus to posters advertising toe-curlingly cheesy evening entertainment crooners. Even we, as we walked down Jomas iela, were addressed in Russian by market stall vendors.

It’s hardly surprising, really. During the days of the USSR, 1.5 million Russians (were) moved into Latvia, rendering ethnic Latvians a minority in their own land. Things have evened out somewhat since then, but even now, only just over half the country consists of ethnic Latvians. In Rīga, the capital, ethnic Latvians are still outnumbered by a mixture of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and others.

Jomas iela is the main drag in the Jūrmala sub-resort of Majori. We actually managed to score some decent food on that street, which, judging by the restaurant facades, one wouldn’t have dared anticipate. This kind of street looks much the same all over the world. Only the languages on the menu differ.

Afterwards, we headed for the beach, which turned out to be a 30+ km stretch of golden sanded coastline. The beach was really lovely, and both Eloïse and Lucas certainly agreed.

Sand sculptures lined the beach, some of them quite stunning. I got the impression there had been a competition earlier in the day.

We had to press on, though, so we were forced to leave the beach and head back to the car for the remaining half hour of our journey to Rīga. And, to my surprise, the drive did take only half an hour. I was prepared for longer, given the fact that we were driving into the heart of a capital city with a destination in the mediaeval centre, but the sat-nav guided us right to the door of our hotel.

After checking in, there was time for an hour’s exploration of the city before dinner. The capital quickly revealed itself to be charming, relaxed and unpretentious. There are overtones of a multitude of mediaeval European cities, but with enough distinct, idiosyncratic flavour that Rīga doesn’t remind me of any other city in particular. Of course, we’ve seen very little of the place so far and I’m lucking forward to getting stuck in properly tomorrow.

Latvia is shaping up to be a very memorable holiday in its own right. The country is quite distinct from the rest of Europe. It’s scarcely twenty years old as an independent nation, sparsely populated and bore the unenviable distinction of being the poorest country iin the EU in 2006. In recent times, its economy has boomed as the free market rushed in to fill the post-Soviet vacuum.

Now, of course, things have slowed again, which may just give Latvia a chance to catch up with its own growth. For example, there are twice as many cars on the road today as ten years ago, but Latvia, together with the other Baltic countries, now tops the EU road fatality charts, having bumped Greece from the number one position that it had seemed it would occupy for the rest of time.

From an environmental perspective, the country is relatively unspoilt, with about half of it covered by dense forest. New types of flora and fauna are still discovered here and the country is home to the continent’s largest wild mammals. There are wild horses and bison here, for example.

It’s clear that the Baltic countries are still largely undiscovered gems, ancient societies and yet burgeoning independent nations. I can’t think of a better place for us to have come for our summer trip. I just hope that we’ll have enough time to pack it all in before we have to be back in Amsterdam.

We’re in Latvia.

We awoke yesterday to find that Mother Nature had smiled on us: it wasn’t raining. Precipitation had battered our guesthouse for most of the night, so this really was a very pleasant surprise.

After breakfast, we hired bikes and rode out along the waterfront in the direction of Juodkrantė, another small town some 33 km further up the Curonian Spit.

I had hired a child trailer for my bike, much to Eloïse’s glee, and was thus towing both children behind me. It’s a good job I’ve lost some weight recently, because my human cargo and trailer more than redressed the balance.

With stops to pee and check our route, it took a good three hours to reach Juodkrantė. It was a really nice route, which I wish we could have taken a little more leisurely.

The route climaxed with a stiff climb from the Curonian Lagoon, up through the woods, and then yielded a rewarding descent into the town.

We’d opted for the lazy one-way bike hire option, so we dropped off our bikes and caught the bus back to Nida. It cost only 12 Lt for the lot of us and the hourly bus came as soon as we’d dumped the bikes, so that was a nice stroke of luck.

It was now after 14:00 and we really needed to get on the road, but, after our bike ride, we were in even greater need of a good meal and a few drinks, so we stopped off for lunch at Kavinė Pašiūrė, the restaurant where we’d had dinner the first evening. The food was good, but a muzack version of Baby’s Got Blue Eyes was playing in an endless loop, which must surely be an inscrutable form of Latvian humour.

With bodily sustenance taken care of, we headed back to the car and finally got under way. Speed traps lined the road along the spit back to the ferry to Klaipėda, but the flashing headlights of oncoming motorists alerted us to imminent danger. We were cruising barely over the limit, anyway.

A quick ferry ride later, we were heading to our next excursion, secreted inside the Žemaitija National Park. The location we were looking for was the Plokštinė Nuclear Missile Launch Site, a rather odd thing to find inside a park dedicated to the region’s flora and fauna, but situated in one, just the same.

The Soviet-era nuclear missile base was a bit tricky to find. Not only was it well out of our way to begin with, we took a wrong turn, had to turn back and eventually reached the site after 18:00, the time of the last tour of the day. Rather than simply leave, I decided to gamble wasting even more time and hope that I could somehow wangle us our tour in spite of the lateness of the hour.

When the tour guide emerged with the previous group, we told her our tale of woe of locating the site and she was kind enough to invite us down for an accelerated, but personal version of the tour. Great!

I can only say that it was an incredible experience to stand in one of the actual 30 m silo shafts that once housed a nuclear missile with a megatonne warhead. It’s a chilling thought that these missiles were aimed at targets in western Europe just over three decades ago. The whole country only prised itself loose from the iron fist of the USSR just twenty years ago. When I was growing up, this was part of the USSR!

We visited many of the rooms inside the once top-secret complex. Fading Cyrillic text still adorns the walls and one can almost hear the ghostly footsteps of Soviet soldiers marching along the eerie corridors.

Our guide informed us that the soldiers who worked here were shipped in from other Soviet republics and had no idea where in the USSR they had been stationed, such was the secrecy surrounding the site. Local Lithuanians suspected the presence of a military base at the site, but even they didn’t know for sure, because no civilians were allowed anywhere near it.

After what was one of the most memorable tours I’ve ever been on, we sped back along the A11 towards the coast, where we stopped for a quick dinner on the outskirts of Palanga, before heading north.

A long drive against the steadily fading sun was how we would spend the rest of the evening. We soon crossed the border into Latvia, but there was still much driving to be done before we would reach our bed for the night.

We finally drove into Kuldīga as the clock struck midnight. After checking in, two very tired children were immediately put to bed, ourselves following mere minutes later.

Today has been much more relaxed, ambling about town, visiting Europe’s widest waterfall and a man made tunnel system. Glorious sunshine has been our escort wherever we have roamed.

There are far fewer foreign tourists here; virtually none, actually. This town is quite a way off the beaten track and I haven’t even seen Lithuanian cars driving around. I’ve heard a couple of German voices today, plus a Dutch one. Even Latvian tourists are thin on the ground here.

I must mention that we had a lovely dinner at a restaurant called Pagrabiņš. Dessert, especially, was really nice, although you wouldn’t immediately suspect that if you knew that it was made from rye bread. Nevertheless, rupjmaizes kārtojums is something I highly recommend.

The menu offered lots of dishes whose names had clearly lost some nuance during the journey from Latvian to English. Dishes with impenetrable names like Poke In Foam adorned the menu. Who could know that this was actually bull’s testicles?

I almost plumped for the Tresses For Husbandwomen, but decided at the last minute to try the Bravery Chicken.

Tomorrow, we head for the Latvian capital, Rīga.

Getting to Lithuania was completely painless. We left home shortly after noon on Sunday and drove 500 odd kilometres to a surprisingly pleasant hotel, conveniently located just off the A21 in

Germany. This enabled us to literally drive off the motorway into the hotel’s car park and drive back onto it the next morning.

This was almost identical to the route we took last year, when we caught the ferry from Puttgarden to Rødby in Denmark. This time, though, we were to catch the ferry from Kiel, some

distance west of Puttgarden. Thanks to our children waking up at the crack of dawn, we arrived at the harbour in Kiel early on Monday morning and were able to check in at a leisurely pace.

At around 12:30, we drove aboard the DFDS Lisco Gloria, where we abandoned the car and headed for our cabin, which turned out to be a little more spacious than we had been expecting.

The crossing was very smooth and Denmark was visible on the port side for several hours after departure. There wasn’t much to do, so we hung out in the bar for most of the afternoon. I read our guidebook and the children largely amused themselves.

All around us, TV sets spewed third-rate American tat, rendered even more insipid by the Lithuanian dubbing, which employs the same deadpan voice for all of the actors; yes, even those of the opposite sex. This doesn’t seem to perturb the Lithuanians, though, who are presumably bludgeoned into acceptance at an early age.

Dinner and breakfast on the boat were notable, but only because they were particularly bad. The available items were deceptive in their apparent edibility, but soon betrayed their composition of a strange concoction of wax and grease.

I paid the bar another visit in the evening, by which time it was full of Lithuanian lorry drivers, knocking back cheap vodka.

We docked at noon the next day after a pleasant passage along Kuršių Nerija, better known in English as the Curonian Spit. We were one of the first cars off the boat and headed straight to Klaipėda for lunch, stopping en route for some satisfyingly sub-euro petrol.

As anticipated, the sat-nav had only cursory coverage of Klaipėda, but it was

enough to point us towards the town centre, where we parked and found a place

to have lunch.

Klaipėda is very downbeat and unassuming, a relaxed way to make Lithuania’s acquaintance and a good place to kill a few hours.

After some spent walking around in the glorious sunshine, we returned to the car and headed to the ferry that would take us across the water to the Curonian Spit.

A few minutes later, we were on the Spit and driving south through the national park to the small settlement of Nida, where we were booked in for a couple of nights.

Nida is about 4 km from the border with the Russian Kaliningrad oblast, an exclave marooned by the disintegration of the former USSR.

For the hell of it, we drove all the way down to the border before turning back. Even if we’d wanted to go further, we have neither visas nor car insurance for Russia, so we’d never get in. We could have arranged both in advance of our departure, of course, but this whole trip was rather last-minute and there wasn’t really enough time to surrender our passports and have them got hrough the Russian bureaucratic mangle.

Today, we had planned to go biking along the Spit, but thunderstorms and pouring rain that lasted well into the afternoon put paid to that idea. Instead, we spent the morning couped up in our room.

After a good lunch, we drove up to the fragile sand dunes for which the Curonian Spit is famous. They’re really quite beautiful and vaguely reminiscent of desert sands. These are the highest drifting sand dunes in Europe and well worth a visit. From the 52 m summit of the Parnidis dune, one can see rippling dunes stretching into Russia and to the horizon.

We spent a good length of time walking around the sand dunes before we headed back into town, soon after which it started to rain again. We consider ourselves lucky to have salvaged anything from the day.

Dinner this evening, at Sena Sodyba, was delicious. The food here has been very good so far, better than I’d dared hope from my reading and experiences on the ferry.

Yesterday, I had my first taste of cepelinai, which are a kind of potato dumpling. They’re very stodgy, but taste a lot better than they look.

Foreign tourists are clearly quite the minority here. Most of the tourists in this summer hotspot are the Lithuanians themselves, with quite a few Germans and the occasional Russian. I’ve seen a couple of Dutch cars driving around, too, but not many.

Not much English is spoken here, so we occasionally have to break into broken German to get the message across. Lithuanian’s a bit of a tongue-twister, but it’s fun to try, even if my attempts are invariably met with hilarity.

We haven’t quite figured out whether we’re going to try to stay here another night or drive north to Latvia tomorrow. We’d like to do tomorrow what we intended to do today, but there’s no guarantee the weather will be any better tomorrow.