The Via Baltica

Lady selling flowers, Riga
Originally uploaded by rtw2007.

We left Estonia and entered Latvia on the coastal road, which is described by our guide book as the “infamous Via Baltica” (in practice just the E67). The differences between Estonia and Latvia were immediately clear – the whole place is far more run down and it feels far more Russian, with many of the signs being dual language (and apparently Russian / Latvian tensions to match).

First stop was the Gauja Valley National Park to the north-east of the capital, Riga. The Gauja Valley is standard Baltic fare, with forests and castles aplenty – the kind of place that were it in the UK or Western Europe would be overrun with tourists at this time of year, but given that we are in the Baltics it was deserted. It made a pleasant place to spend a couple of days, particularly because we managed to locate a beautifully situated wild campsite by the side of the river. We tested our fire lighting skills to their limits, as we had plenty of firewood but it was all soaking wet. I decided that I must have learnt something from all those hours of Michael making me watch Ray Mears on TV (eg the scene in which Ray explains that Mr Brown couldn’t make Queen Victoria’s tea because the wood was in Scotland was wet, Mr Brown not having had the benefit of a week on the Mears Survival Course). So, I set about making tinder strips with my pen knife á la Mears. Let’s just say that Ray is indeed a legend – it is not as easy as he makes it look, and despite the tinder strips and Michael’s persistence, it took a good thirteen attempts to get the fire going. It was worth it though, and we sat around drinking beer by the fire for the rest of the night with self satisfied grins on our faces.

From the National Park we headed off to Riga, which is a much bigger proposition that Tallinn. In fact, it declares pompously that it is the “only city in the Baltics”. Unfortunately, it is also known as the car crime capital of the Baltics, so we feared for our van’s safety. We opted to leave the van out of town at a campsite in the Jurmala resort area, which is like the Costa Del Sol of Latvia – very odd to see slick restaurants, smartly dressed residents, posh houses and combed beaches, given that the rest of the country is such a contrast. Our campsite, though, was a real hang over from the Soviet era. It was supposed to be attached to a water park and the enterprising owners had attempted to spruce the whole place up by painting everything in gaudy blue and yellow, but it was fundamentally let down by the complete lack of water - no cold water in the pools or slides; no hot water in the showers; and no drinking water on the campsite. Not quite what we are used to from a water park. But it did provide Michael with the opportunity to meet someone he described as “the French, middle aged version of Scasey”, who spent ages rewiring the electrics on his campervan for no reason at all (other than to show that he could, presumably) and confusingly kept banging on to Michael (half in English, half in French) about McGiver.

Riga Old Town is much bigger and rather less fairytale-like than Tallinn, but the upside of that it that the whole place feels much more lively. We visited the obligatory Occupation Museum to learn more about how nasty the Soviets / Russians were / are before retiring to a few coffee shops to mull it all over. We stopped at the enormous Freedom Monument, a large obelisk guarded by a couple of very keen looking soldiers who every half hour have to do an extremely slow Basil Fawlty style walk / march thing under the watchful eye of a scary looking sergeant major. We also explored the bustling market, which is reputedly one of the largest in the world, with an enormous selection of pretty much anything you could want – including live fish and very good freshly made doughnuts (thankfully not necessarily together). We then made Michael’s day by taking the train back to Jurmala.

We headed into Lithuania and again saw a big change, back to a much more prosperous country. We headed off to the Curonian Spit just off the west coast. The Spit is an amazing place – basically a 100 km stretch of sand, almost entirely covered in forest and sand dunes. The Spit is divided between Lithuania and Russia (the southern part being in the Kallingrad enclave) and we spent most of our time very close to the Russian border at Nida. The dunes are huge (though they are apparently being eroded away at a fairly dramatic rate – 20 metres in 40 years) and from the top there is a pretty impressive view across into Russia along miles and miles of untouched sand. Michael enjoyed the view whilst being “forced” by some rowdy locals to drink grim Lithuanian alcohol and eat dried fish. We hired bikes and pootled around the forest tracks and over the dunes in glorious sunshine. All very civilised.

We left the Curonian Spit via some very odd bits of wooden sculpture at “Witches’ Hill” - they really do like their sculptures around here, they are all over the place. From there we went on to the Hill of Crosses, which is a smallish hill but which is covered in an enormous number of crosses. It was quite spooky but also weirdly impressive. There are just a phenomenal number of crosses left here by locals, pilgrims and tourists. Thousands of them. It seems that the Soviets removed them all but hundreds more appeared overnight. Oh, and there is a big Jesus donated by the last Pope when he visited. Not much more to say than that really. A very odd place indeed – a mixture of serene and surreal. Watch Michael’s video for a bit of the atmos. From there we headed off to Vilnius via the alleged geographical Centre of Europe (as decided by the French, conveniently ignoring Malta, as that would put the Centre of Europe in Belarus, and I imagine that no-one wants that).

Vilnius was a bit of a surprise. I knew little about it other than what the boys had told me post Michael’s Stag do. But it turns out, to my surprise, that there is more to Vilnius than a grimy town in which they drink petrol and men pole dance in strip clubs in dresses. We visited said strip bar and Michael reminisced. But then it emerged that he didn’t remember anything else about Vilnius at all - the bar, strip club, restaurant and town square all being within about 200 metres of one another and that being all that he saw on his last trip here. In fact, Vilnius isn’t grimy at all. It is quite a green and picturesque place; more of a city that Tallinn but prettier than Riga. We wandered around in glorious sunshine on the first really hot day of our trip, which meant that all of the pavement cafes were open and teaming with a mix of very well heeled locals and very unsteady on their feet Stag dos. We visited the Orthodox Cathedral and saw the preserved bodies of three fourteenth century martyrs in a glass case – they are in pretty good nick considering that they are seven hundred years old (people really were tiny back then). Michael went to the Museum of Genocide Victims, including more reconstructed KGB cells; a padded cell with straight jacket; and a solitary confinement cell in which the KGB made people balance on a dinner plate standing in a bath of ice cold water. I decided that I couldn’t take another museum of death (the tally in the Baltics has been high – there being a museum of Genocide / Illegal Occupation / the KGB in every town - and the Polish death camps are still to come). So instead I went for a wander around the city. Vilnius is having a lot of money spent on it and there are some amazing buildings – I suspect that in 10 years time it will be a popular destination (and for more than just the Stags).

Post Vilnius we had more wild camping in the forest (wolves were heard but thankfully did not eat us) and then we went on to one of the strangest places we have ever been – the Soviet Sculpture Park, aka “Stalin World” (www.grutaparkas.lt). It is like a theme park in the forest comprising a huge number of statues of Stalin, Lenin, Marx and their chums. They were all removed from town squares post-independence; had no home because the Lithuanians hate them; and so were loaned to a mad man who usually sells mushrooms for a living but decided that running a theme park based around the evil men of Soviet history might be more fun. There is a fantastic selection of statues, which we viewed whilst listening to Soviet military tunes being piped through tinny speakers attached to death camp style watch towers. There is also a great range of USSR kitsch for sale (shot glass in the shape of a Russian army boot bearing the faces of Stalin, Lenin and Marx, anyone?). From there we dived deeper into the forest on the way to Poland.