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Driving through the Baltics
 
DRIVING THROUGH THE BALTICS Submit a Tale here | More Tales
It was a very fine adventure. I came to Wilno (Vilnius) with my brother by train. Then I get to the hostel on Filaretai Street. The hostel was without luxuries (like all hostels) but very clean and nice. The owner was very helpful and friendly. There were a lot of international tourists from many countries (among them quite a lot of Japanese!).

Wilno is a very interesting city with a lot of wonderful architecture. We admired old churches and other old buildings. But as a city it is rather "dead". There are some foreign tourists but not too much. There is quite a lot of little cafes and restaurants and most of them are rather empty. Shops are like they were during communist times - dirty - and saleswomen ignore customers. And generally, I still feel there a "breath of comrade Stalin".

Lithuania made some changes at the beginning of 90s but then they stopped. After visiting the city we were drinking beer under the Monument of Gedyminas (Great Duke of Lithuania, grandfather of Polish King Jagiello) but the police kicked us out. In Warsaw it is normal that people drink beer near the column of King Zygmunt III, but Lithuanians have a more byzantic approach to monuments.....

Then we decided to rent "Tauria". I was a bit afraid of driving it because at work I use a "Fiat Tempra" which is in a very different class. It would probably have been easy for me to get it for my private trip but I decided that if I fight against privileges for officials I must be consequent.... And "Tauria" is not so bad. Only when we took on 2 heavy hitch-hikers was it quite difficult to drive...

First we went to Troki (Trakai). There is a very nice castle. Well there was a little mistake in its reconstructing because bricks look too new and too orange. But in spite of that it is gorgeous! We rent a boat so we could get around the castle. It really impressed us!

Then we went to Kaunas. It is very nice city. There are rather less interesting things to see than in Wilno but it looks more European. Shops in particular look much better. Then we enter the border of Latvia. The bureaucracy on Latvian borders is terrible. I was going from window to window, they enter my details into their computer, check a lot of things, put a lot of stamps on my passport. But during that, my brother was sleeping in the car and they forgot even to look at his face.... If I wanted to smuggle a bandit I would do it without problems...Among all this bureaucracy....

But, aside from those bloody borders, Latvia is fine country. It has changed much more than Lithuania. We went to Riga after midnight so we spent a night in a car. In the morning we visited very nice old city. Then we went to the Museum of Occupation 1940-1991. It was a good idea to create such a thing. Are there museums like that in other countries? As far as I know there aren't any in Poland. Then we were going towards Estonia. On the way we dropped in on a Jazz Festival at the Latvian seaside.

And finally we entered Estonia. Hmmm... I am a kind of jealous that this country made such progress. While in Lithuania reforms are evidently the slowest of all the Baltic countries, in Estonia they are faster not only than in other Baltic countries, but all post-communist countries. The economic growth this year is predicted to be 10% and this country looks really European. But I think that the biggest achievement is that it is the only post-communist country which has created quite a large middle class. How did they achieve that? In my opinion the most important reasons were: a definite break from its communist past, while in most of the post-communist countries there are reforms there is still "continuity" and a quick and quite a fair privatization - taxes are not as big as in other countries. One of Estonia's politicians jokes that in other countries leaders grew up listening to the music of the "Beatles" but in Estonia leaders grew up on music like "Guns'n'Roses" so that's why the Estonian reforms are faster.

We went through Parnu (Parnawa) an old Livonian city with a beautiful wooden architecture and after a few hours we were in Talinn - a beautiful European city. It's known as the "city of happy people" and they really look like that. The architecture is wonderful and it has a lot of fine cafes with live music. We really enjoyed staying there. Then we went through Tartu - a nice Livonian city, but rather "dead" (at least compared with Talinn).

Soon we were in Lithuania again. We came back to Poland by bus. On the bus a driver was collecting money to bribe the Lithuanian custom officers. My brother and I were the only ones who refused. The driver told me that we might have problems... I was glad that I would have a good reason to quarrel....but they didn't say anything to us and we happily came back to Poland.

Cheers
Klaudiusz Wesolek
___________________________________

Klaudiusz Wesolek
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7803/
ul.Kozia 3/5 m.8
00070 Warszawa
Poland
tel. +48 602411937