Bumbling around the Baltics

[kileskus]

Vilnius – Kaunas – Klaipeda – Riga – Cesis – Tartu – Narva – Tallinn (and some small towns in between)

This is a write-up for a trip I did in September and October. I’ve been living in my hometown Montréal on sabbatical so that’s where it originates and ends.

Most of my leisure travel since the pandemic has been on Canada’s national railway (VIA Rail). I might do a thread of mini-reports for those trips and talk about VIA’s loyalty program. Having gone coast-to-coast as well as north to the ‘polar bear capital of the world’ (though sadly it was the wrong season for bears), I'm in the highest tier of their loyalty program.

So this was my first real international trip since Jan 2020 and I planned for it like I'd never travelled before. The title’s not just kitschy alliteration – I didn't pack appropriate clothes, nearly missed my flight out of Montréal, family business popped up, and I often chose the day an attraction was closed to go there. But I hope you learn something from this and that it inspires you to visit the Baltics if you haven’t already; I think it’s a great destination for culture, history, alcohol, and European comfort at a much lower price.


The view of the Lithuanian Baltic Sea and a bit of Kaliningrad, from the sand dunes of the Curonian Spit

I’ll also add some linguistic notes. I started, but didn’t finish, a degree in linguistics, and was particularly interested in comparative linguistics and the relationship between geographic boundaries and what I call socio-linguistic boundaries, the situations in which certain languages are used or taboo. You can skip these if you’re not interested, but anyone who would like to discuss the languages more or has their own observations, please comment!

 

[kileskus]

Part 1 - in which I wonder if I'll even make it to Lithuania

YUL – YQB – LGW (Air Transat, economy)

If you’ve ever been to Montréal, you’d know how bad the construction is. There’s always works going on at any given major road, and half the municipal police force is engaged in redirecting traffic.



There’s a bus that runs from downtown to the airport, the 747, like the plane. As far as I can tell, the bus comes and goes as it pleases, which you could probably say about several bus routes in Montréal. I was planning to get to the airport 90 minutes before check-in closed.

I actually arrived 20 minutes after check-in had closed. Check-in lady was unimpressed, but after calling in a senior colleague and seeing that I was flying HLO with an onward international connection, they let me through. Her colleague took me on a mad dash through priority screening lanes, and I was the last passenger to board.

I forgot to take photos so excuse the text wall. The flight to Québec was about 27 minutes flying time, and the plane for London departed at midnight. After boarding we got a chocolate. Dinner (served at 2 a.m.) was a standard hot meal along with a bread roll, butter, a salad, and a dessert. I slept through breakfast. A drinks service came by regularly. Although the food wasn’t remarkable, I was impressed by the two meal services along with drinks and a snack for a 6-hour economy flight departing at midnight.

The in-flight entertainment centre contained a decent selection of games, music, and films – foreign, Canadian, and Québec.

What really impressed me about Air Transat was the customer service. The flight attendants were all fluently bilingual, friendly, and attentive. I would say the customer service in economy class exceeds that of Air Canada’s.

Air Transat was voted North America’s top leisure airline in 2021, and with its range of destinations, reasonable prices, in-flight service, I’d be happy to fly with them again anytime. And I would recommend them as an option to consider along with AC for anyone travelling economy in Canada, although they do not have a loyalty program.

Fun fact: Air Transat was co-founded by the current Québec premier, François Legault. He led the province through the pandemic and introduced the notorious bills 21 and 96 on laicity and the French language respectively.


LTN – VNO (Ryanair)

I was in London for a day and a half. As this was less than two weeks after Queen Elizabeth’s passing, all the royal estates were closed to visitors. Buck House was at half-mast.



I nearly missed check-in for the flight to Vilnius as well, but the plane was later than me. We arrived in the evening. There’s a taxi stand at the airport but also a bus that goes directly downtown for a fare of 1 euro.


The flatness you see arriving in Vilnius pretty much describes the geography of Lithuania and Latvia, which is part of why hill forts play an important role in the pre-modern history of the Baltics

Next post will have the actual stuff about Vilnius. Thanks for reading, and remember the Montréal traffic if you ever happen to be there and are taking a flight out!

 

[RooFlyer]

‘polar bear capital of the world’

Churchill? Would love to read all about that.

If you’ve ever been to Montréal, you’d know how bad the construction is. There’s always works going on at any given major road, and half the municipal police force is engaged in redirecting traffic.

So nothing's changed in 30 years then? Taber-wit! I used to pass through regularly when I lived in northern Quebec for a year.

 

[craven morehead]

Vilnius – Kaunas – Klaipeda – Riga – Cesis – Tartu – Narva – Tallinn (and some small towns in between)

This is a write-up for a trip I did in September and October. I’ve been living in my hometown Montréal on sabbatical so that’s where it originates and ends.

Most of my leisure travel since the pandemic has been on Canada’s national railway (VIA Rail). I might do a thread of mini-reports for those trips and talk about VIA’s loyalty program. Having gone coast-to-coast as well as north to the ‘polar bear capital of the world’ (though sadly it was the wrong season for bears), I'm in the highest tier of their loyalty program.

So this was my first real international trip since Jan 2020 and I planned for it like I'd never travelled before. The title’s not just kitschy alliteration – I didn't pack appropriate clothes, nearly missed my flight out of Montréal, family business popped up, and I often chose the day an attraction was closed to go there. But I hope you learn something from this and that it inspires you to visit the Baltics if you haven’t already; I think it’s a great destination for culture, history, alcohol, and European comfort at a much lower price.

View attachment 312327
The view of the Lithuanian Baltic Sea and a bit of Kaliningrad, from the sand dunes of the Curonian Spit

I’ll also add some linguistic notes. I started, but didn’t finish, a degree in linguistics, and was particularly interested in comparative linguistics and the relationship between geographic boundaries and what I call socio-linguistic boundaries, the situations in which certain languages are used or taboo. You can skip these if you’re not interested, but anyone who would like to discuss the languages more or has their own observations, please comment!

Sound interesting. I'm dialing in to follow

 

[kileskus]

I used to pass through regularly when I lived in northern Quebec for a year.

Do you work in the natural resources industry?

I haven't been to northern Québec, only as far as Lac Saint-Jean since that's where the train line ends, but would love to visit and see what it has to offer in terms of nature/adventure and culture.

 

[kileskus]

Part 2 – Vilnius

(The route I took in Lithuania is pretty similar to JohnM’s trip there, from which I learned a few things I hadn’t noticed. I’ll avoid rehashing things he’s talked about.)



There are two important personages in Lithuanian history to keep in mind as you explore the country: Grand Duke Gediminas and Grand Duke Vytautas (the Great). The former founded the city of Vilnius and under his rule it became the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, taking that seat from Kernavė. His symbol, the columns of Gediminas, is something you’ll see a lot on buildings and in coats of arms around the country. It was used as a symbol of resistance against Soviet occupation as well. It’s said to come from the gates of Trakai castle.



The main hill overlooking the city, and the tower on it, are named after Gediminas.



From Gediminas Tower you get wonderful views of the whole city and its red roofs, like the pic above.

Vytautas was one of Lithuania’s greatest military leaders. When he was 12, he was in Kaunas when the Teutonic Knights burned the city down. He vowed revenge upon them. As Grand Duke, however, he did accept Christianity and allied with the TO in return for their support of his political machinations. But after the internal fighting had ended, he turned his attention to fighting the TO and he led Lithuanian forces in the Battle of Grunwald that saw the TO relinquish most of their influence on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.


A wood carving of Vytautas. Wood carvings and wooden crosses have a long history in Lithuanian culture

There are statues to him everywhere and many institutions are named in his honour. Many Lithuanians are named Vytautas, after him. He has a distinct face with strong features – you’ll come to recognise him after the first few days in the country. Kaunas, where he made that vow as a 12-year-old, is Lithuania’s second-largest city. I’ll talk about it in another post.



The Hill of the Three Crosses is the highest point in Vilnius and provides a great view of the city. The crosses were originally erected in memory of some monks who were killed by pagans in the 14th century. The crosses were removed during the Soviet occupation, and a new set were erected after independence.

Something that caught my eye when I was walking around the old town was this plaque:

The French writer Stendhal stopped at this house in December 1812 during the passage of Napoleon's Army as they were leaving Russia. Lithuanians had a generally positive view of Napoleon at the time, thinking if he won the war that would remove or lessen the burden of the Russian occupation at the time. Stendhal was an administrator in the army. More relevant to us, there's a condition called Stendhal syndrome that's named after him. It refers to the feeling of palpitations, dizziness etc. when you see a great work of art or some other kind of impressive object or monument. I don't think I've had it before but I've definitely had moments of great awe when travelling.

 

[kileskus]

Part 3 - Kernavė

A short trip away from Vilnius is the Kernavė town and archaeological complex, a UNESCO world heritage site. I left early and took a marshrutka for about 30 minutes. Marshrutkas in Lithuania, as in most other post-Soviet countries, are a very affordable and convenient way of travelling to smaller towns or the countryside. Vilnius has a central bus station where all marshrutkas depart from, so you find out which stand you need to go to, then tell the driver your destination and he’ll enter in the cost on his calculator and show it to you.

The autumn morning fog in Lithuania is incredible, the most beautiful fog I’ve seen anywhere.


The thin, wispy layer of morning fog. The image is from the marshrutka so it's pretty blurry

Kernavė was the capital of Lithuania until it was destroyed by the Crusaders in 1390. The town was built by the River Neris and featured a complex of four hill forts. Hill forts are a typical defensive structure in the Baltic countries where the tribespeople would build a wooden fort on top of a hill from which to observe and repel attackers. The actual forts themselves no longer stand in Kernavė, nor in any of the other hill forts that I’d heard about in the three countries, but the hills are obviously still there.

I was the first visitor to arrive and was personally greeted by the groundskeeper, who was also I assume the parish priest. We had a pleasant chat and he left me with, “Look at the fog! What beautiful fog!”




At around 10 a.m. though it had dissipated to be replaced by sharp but not-warming sunlight. I sent my ex a photo and said the Lithuanian fog reminded me of her, the way it was gone too soon. She hadn’t considered me very funny when we were together and she wasn’t about to start.


The fording point of the river where the Teutonic Knights crossed to attack the town

There is an open-air exhibition as part of the archaeological site with reconstructed houses and workyards and actors dressed in period clothing who demonstrate their crafts.




Afterwards I went to the café across the road and had cepelinai, traditional Lithuanian dumplings. These were made of venison. It was a warm and hearty end to a long and fairly cold day spent outside walking.


Next post will be about Trakai and after that I headed west towards Kaunas.

 

[VPS]

excellent photos

 

[RooFlyer]

Do you work in the natural resources industry?

Used to; I lived in Chibougamau for a year. Can't say I enjoyed it much.

Am thoroughly enjoying this TR on a country I want to visit.

 

[kileskus]

Part 4 - Trakai

The town of Trakai is reachable by a short marshrutka ride from Vilnius. It’s notable for the castle with its surrounding park and the Karaim community.



The castle was one of the most important defensive strongholds against the Teutonic Knights. It was destroyed by the Order but rebuilt later. It was used as a prison at one point and then was besieged during the 1654 Russo-Polish war. (Something interesting I learned this trip was that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth maintained separate armies after their union, which makes their military achievements – the victories against the Teutonic Knights and Sweden, the capture of Moscow, their control of large parts of Eastern Europe – even more impressive.)





The island itself forms a park that you can have a stroll around after visiting the castle and the exhibits inside it.


The Karaim are an ethnic group of Turkic Jews, and Trakai is the “spiritual centre” for Karaites in Eastern Europe. They were brought here by the Grand Duke Vytautas in the 1200s.


Traditional Karaite houses are made of wood and have three windows facing the street and sometimes along the side

There’s an ethnographic museum and a Karaite church but both were closed and reception at the visitor centre said there’s no word yet of a reopening for the museum.

Trakai kenesa (Karaite church). One of the stone pillars of the gate is blocking the third window facing the street

Their cuisine is especially known for a meat pastry called kibinai, and there are two restaurants in town that serve traditional Karaim fare. I had some kibinai washed down with shots of mead. Mead to Lithuania is like Riga Black Balsam to Latvia, you have to try it if you come here and it can be found in restaurants, bottle shops and grocery stores.

 

[kileskus]

Part 5 - Kaunas

Kaunas is a city in central Lithuania that had served as a temporary capital during the interwar period. It started off as a castle against the Teutonic Order:



It was here that a young Vytautus the Great vowed revenge against the Order.


Jan Styka's painting 'Vytautas's Oath'

The city lay along the boundary between Russia and France during the Napoleonic Wars. There was a Russian fortress here and Napoleon passed through on his retreat from Moscow. Under Soviet occupation it became a focal point of resistance, with underground organisations being formed here and acts of protest such as self-immolation occurring.

Not surprising then that there’s a large war museum here, named after Vytautas the Great. They have a vast collection of weapons, medieval and modern, from Eastern Europe and around the world. I spent a few hours here and it's worth coming to Kaunas just for the museum if you're interested in military history or Lithuanian history.





The museum also houses the remains of the plane Lituanica. A few years after Lindbergh’s flight, two Lithuanian-born American pilots wanted to achieve a non-stop trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Kaunas in an effort to stimulate interest in Lithuania in the burgeoning aviation industry. They raised money for the plane and modifications from expat communities in the US, and also took on a consignment of mail to help fund the effort. After 37 hours and 11 minutes’ flying time they crashed in what is now western Poland, and the wreckage was brought to the original destination of Kaunas.



A replica of the plane is in the Lithuanian Aviation Museum, also in Kaunas. I didn’t visit or actually do much at all because of the rain. My shoes were like sponges. I spent the rest of my time in Kaunas looking through the newspapers I’d bought to dry my shoes out with. One of them was a local Russian-language bulletin and it surprised me how anti-Kremlin it was. The lack of regional dialects in Russian and the emigration patterns of russophones makes Russian-speaking communities in the former USSR more susceptible to Moscow’s propaganda (this is even considered a national security issue in some countries), but this newspaper was quite vehemently critical of Putin’s regime.

Next post will be about Klaipeda and the Curonian Spit, where I finished the Lithuanian leg of my trip.

 

[kileskus]

Sorry for the slow updates. I returned to Australia several weeks ago but my bags didn't, so I’ve been busy settling into a new job and becoming acquainted with the Montreal Convention. I do plan to finish this, though my memories have faded and my notebook and souvenirs were in the lost luggage.

Part 6 – Klaipeda and the Curonian Spit


Klaipeda is a city on the Baltic coast. It used to be governed by Prussia and was where Frederick William III and his wife fled to during the Napoleonic wars. They stayed in the town hall.



After WWI, Klaipeda Region was allocated by the Allies to Lithuania. In 1939, a few months before the invasion of Poland, Germany demanded that Klaipeda Region be returned or else the Wehrmacht would invade Lithuania. The Lithuanian government conceded the area.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact originally assigned Lithuania to Germany, but its control was later transferred to the Soviet Union. So while Klaipeda remained German, the rest of Lithuania fell under Soviet influence. Which is ironic if you consider that Klaipeda today is the most Russophone city in Lithuania, though the architecture is very clearly German and different to the rest of the country.



Its main economic value is the port. Two important products caught at the port were amber and marine lichen. The Baltics are the world’s largest producer of high-quality amber, and among them Lithuania produces the lion’s share. There are a few museums/galleries dedicated to it around the country. Marine lichen was used as fertiliser to help grow crops in the region’s largely sandy soil.


Across the Curonian Lagoon from Klaipeda there’s the Curonian Spit. There’s a ferry to a town called Smiltynė, and then from there you can take a bus through the park. Some notable stopping points are Amber Bay, a soundcatcher in the forest where you can listen to the birds, and the town of Nida, which has a few historic and ethnographic sites and from which you can easiest visit the sand dunes.

The road the bus takes goes inland, cutting through mountain pine forests before winding back to the coast. While a lot of these forests have been existing continuously for centuries, some are from reafforestation programmes overseen first by the Prussian government and now by UNESCO. Deforestation had destabilised the sand dunes so that whole villages could become submerged by sand overnight. Traditional houses on the spit had doors made of two parts, so that if the lower half of the door were to be barred by rising sand, residents could exit through the upper half of the door.



Nida is a couple of kilometres away from the Kaliningrad side of the park. The main attraction is the sand dunes



There's also an interesting cemetery for the Kursenieki, a Baltic ethnic group only extant along the spit. Their headstones have the shapes of animals, flowers, and hearts.


There's a museum of amber where you can see examples of the different types of amber, their usages in Lithuanian culture, and purchase pieces. Amber has healing and spiritual properties; Lithuanian boys used to go to the seaside to gather it and would only propose to their sweethearts once they had enough amber to make a necklace from. Warriors were sometimes sent off with it (in their eye sockets, no less) to help protect them in the afterlife.


Another distinct aspect of the Curonians was their seafaring culture. The fishermen had distinct houses


and weather vanes that they'd put on their boats. The design of each weather vane would be unique to their owners and represent things such as where they were from and what values they had.



If you’re into hiking or cycling, then I’d definitely recommend staying at least two days here. There’s a lot of hiking through the old growth to be done and even a stroll along the coast can take some time just to enjoy it. If you’re ever in Lithuania, think about dropping by. It’s not that far from Vilnius and it’s truly a memorable experience nature- and culture-wise. I regrettably only gave myself a day – then it was on to Riga.

 

[kileskus]

Language notes - Lithuania

Lithuanian is considered an ‘ancient’ language as it most closely resembles the original Indo-European language, so linguists study it to try to get an idea of the origin of and relations between modern IE languages. It is related to Latvian but otherwise to no other language. Here’s an interesting presentation on YouTube about Lithuanian's antiquity.

In the presentation the relationship between the Baltic (Lithuanian, Latvian) and Slavic languages is described. The two groups started off in the same geographic region and it’s hypothesised there was an older Proto-Balto-Slavic language. Often when languages share a common predecessor, the words in which you are more likely to see similarities are those that apply to everyday life, describing concrete things or common concepts shared by those societies. A simple example would be the word ‘father’ across the I-E languages. By the end of my time in Latvia, I was able to understand some written everyday communications that I saw, partly from pattern recognition but also from previous study of Slavic languages. This was interesting to me because I at first assumed it was borrowings from Russian from Soviet occupation, until I noticed similarities in words describing common concepts (e.g. friendship, freshness) that would have far pre-dated the Soviets. Apophenia, though, abounds when comparing languages, and as the presentation says, establishing genetic relations between languages should be based on shared grammar rather than vocabulary.

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What the video doesn’t go into much, but the comments do, is that there are two main dialects of Lithuanian in the country and sometimes they might have difficulty understanding each other, so they speak a standard Lithuanian, especially in Vilnius.

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A fun thing I noticed: ryto = morning and rytus = east. Likewise, vakaro = evening and vakarus = west.

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Despite the outspoken support for Ukraine, I had no issues speaking Russian here. Lithuania was subjected to the least russification among the three Baltic countries, has the lowest rate of fluency and the fewest unilingual Russian speakers, but most over the age of 40 seem to understand it at least, and outside of Vilnius you’ll have more luck with it than with English.

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On the topic of Ukraine, I came across a plaque in Vilnius

dedicated to Taras Shevchenko, as well as a statue of him. This plaque quotes him: "Vilnius is dear to my heart."

Shevchenko is Ukraine's national poet and the founder of modern Ukrainian literature. He lived under the Russian Empire's rule of Ukraine and was originally a serf belonging to a rich Russian. He displayed a talent for drawing that was noticed by his master who, while they were living in Vilnius, allowed him to study drawing at the university. Later, in St Petersburg, his artistic talent was so respected that several artists raised funds to buy his freedom. For the rest of his life he was a fierce champion of Ukrainian independence and language, and wrote poems in the Ukrainian vernacular. For this he was imprisoned a few times.

Lithuania also has ties to another national poet: Adam Mickiewicz, who lived in Vilnius and Kaunas.

 

[kileskus]

Dunno the etiquette regarding reviving threads but thought I'd finish this before my next trip in a couple of weeks. It's been a full year though so memory's hazy. If anyone's still following along, I finished talking about Lithuania and am on to Latvia now.

Riga
I took the bus on Lux Express from Klaipeda to Riga. Lux is headquartered in Tallinn and services the Baltics, Russia and Finland. I found it a convenient and fairly comfortable (they even have seatback entertainment!) way to travel between the three countries.

I arrived in the evening so first order of business was a drink.

A coughtail made with Riga Black Balsam, which is a must try in Latvia the way you have to try mead when in Lithuania. The original liqueur might be a bit bitter if you're not really a drinker, so you can try the sweeter, flavoured varieties first, like blackcurrant or cherry. They also have chocolate bars infused with it that you can get at supermarkets.

Riga is a party city in general and you'll meet a lot of students from all over Europe. I fell in with a trio of Russians whom I'd found sleeping under a blanket on the ground outside my hostel (they were merely "enjoying the fresh air" they told me) and had to forego a few museums due to hangovers.


The city square

Riga was part of the Hanseatic League, a confederation of city states from Germany through northern Europe to Russia that traded with each other. As the League and its traders were predominantly German, it led to linguistic, artistic, and religious spread throughout the region. This can be seen for example in the architecture, with the Brick Gothic style. Riga Cathedral, a Lutheran church, was built in this style.


Throughout the city you can also see the warehouses that were used to store goods before trading. These often have some kind of carving above their entrance that was used in lieu of house numbers to identify the proprietor of that business for trading purposes.

This warehouse has a dove as its marker

Another interesting landmark is the national Academy of Sciences headquartered in a Soviet-style building that is reminiscent of Stalin's seven sisters in Moscow

The Academy of Sciences + someone's head. There used to be a star at the top but of course that was taken down. It's pleasantly ironic that an institution of progress and modernity be housed in an edifice originally dedicated to a regime to whom science was subjective and ideological. I didn't know at the time that there is a panorama deck open to the public from which you can get a good view of the city.


The freedom monument commemorating the 1918-20 war of independence. From the 1700s Latvia had been a part of the Russian Empire. It was mostly treated as a farming colony and there was limited migration between the two countries. Latvians were conscripted into the Russian army during WWI. After the war Latvia declared independence and the Soviets invaded, but a peace treaty was eventually signed that recognised an independent Latvia.

Later, the Molotov-Ribbentrop act would allocate the Baltic countries to the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, and the USSR invaded. The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia is a must-visit in Riga and it tells the story of Soviet occupation. Stalin's industrialisation policy saw a lot of Russian migrants enter Latvia, which had already lost 35% of its pre-WWI population, either from direct casualties in the war or emigration in the ensuing period of unrest. The demographics changes in the first half of the 20th century are still seen today - ethnically speaking less than half of the Riga population is Latvian.


Despite the high proportion of ethnic Russians and russophones in Riga, the sentiment towards the 'motherland' is cool at times. The medical museum happens to be across the street from the Russian embassy, which I discovered when I went to the museum and found a protest and this banner outside.

A day trip to Cesis next before heading to Daugavpils, the other major Russian city.

 

[Scash]

Just stumbled across your TR and loving it. Amazing photos and detail in your reports. Would love to visit the Baltics and will plagiarise your report for ideas .

 

[kileskus]

Cesis

Latvia has a pretty comprehensive and modern train system. The trains are clean and spacious and you can pay by credit card upon boarding with myki tap on-like machines.


An interesting structure I saw from the train window. Otherwise the scenery is pretty flat and unremarkable.

The trip takes 1.5 hrs. Cesis is Latvia's second oldest city and is where the Latvian national flag finds its origins. The legend goes that in 1279 in a battle against the Teutonic Order, a wounded Latgalian (one of the tribes that became the modern Latvians) chief wrapped himself into a sheet which became stained with his blood. They then used that sheet as a banner in their subsequent battles.

The medieval castle was built by the TO and has been burned a few times in pre-modern times, by themselves to prevent it from falling into the hands of Ivan the Terrible and later by the Swedes and the Russians. It was partially rebuilt for private residence and then later turned into a museum.


The walls of the castle with a view of the old town hall behind. I didn't take pictures inside because it's dark for most of it - they give you a lantern to help you light the way.



The view from the castle. Cesis is part of Gauja national park so lots of natural beauty and hiking trails just a little out of town.

Just outside the castle is a museum called Burning Conscience that tells about the Soviet and naz_ occupations of Latvia and the oppressions endured by the local population and also their resistance. A great little museum - I was actually leaving the castle in the opposite direction and some lady on the street ran after me to tell me about it.

 

[kileskus]

Daugavpils

3 hours by train from Riga, Daugavpils is located in the south-east near the borders with Lithuania and Belarus. Through the centuries it has changed name and hands between the Teutonic Order, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and naz_ Germany.

The TO founded the city first to have access to the Daugava river. Later, Russian Emperor Alexander I built a fortress there that helped fight off Napoleon. The complex is pretty big and the buildings are mostly preserved in their original architectural style.


A view of some of the ramparts of the fortress




The coughnal


The officers' quarters

During the naz_ era the fortress was the site of the Jewish ghetto. At that time, over a quarter of the Daugavpils population was Jewish. The naz_s and local Latvian collaborators put them into the ghetto where they were made to do hard labour and eventually the vast majority of them were executed. (The participation in the Holocaust is a contentious topic in Latvia and in the diaspora. It was often a case of the 'lesser of two evils', and which between the Soviets and Germans held a greater promise for independence and freedom from repression. Riga sees a yearly SS veterans parade that is routinely denounced by Israel.)

Nowadays Daugavpils is predominantly Russian with political inclinations that occasionally cause Riga a headache. Last year, the federal government created a list of Soviet monuments they wanted taken down. On the list was the memorial to the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet term for the Eastern Front) in Daugavpils.

It was a rainy two days when I was there. I asked this gentleman how often he came to the memorial, he said every day. I regret now not asking him his story. I don't know if the memorial is still there or not. I've seen and heard over the past decade of the de-Leninisation in post-Soviet countries, but war memorials have a deep cultural and personal meaning. It's hard to speak about this in the current geopolitical situation, but I have looked at this picture a lot the past year, and thought about my great-grandpa's name that is on one such memorial.


On a couple of streets around town you'll also see the old plaques with Cyrillicisation of street names. These have mostly been taken down in Daugavpils and around the country since independence in 1991. That metal bar above the street name marks it as a Jewish house - I've seen them above Jewish homes in Ukraine and Lithuania too but can't remember what they're called.

Another landmark is Church Hill, where four churches of different denominations, Eastern Orthodox, Old Believer, Catholic, and Lutheran sit within close proximity of each other.


The largest Orthodox church in Latvia


The Old Believers' church. In 1562, Patriarch Nikon, with the tsar's approval, made several reforms to Russian Orthodoxy to bring their practices in line with Greek Orthodox practices. While most went along with these changes, some rejected the reforms and insisted on following the old practices; these 'Old Believers' were severely persecuted by the state. Today, outside of Russia Latvia has the greatest number of Old Believers.

Nearby at the Russian cultural centre there are a couple of exhibitions, including one on Russian Orthodoxy and Old Believers.


A Russian Orthodox mitre. These were adopted from Eastern Orthodoxy, where bishops wore mitres to represent crowns after the fall of Constantinople.


A lestovka, an Old Believer prayer rope used when one couldn't make it to church. Lestovka comes from the word for stair/step as the rope has 109 'steps'.

I finished off my Latvia trip the way I started. Daugavpils is in the Latgale region and the Latgalians have a form of moonshine called shmakovka. Made from barley, wheat, rye, or other local grains/fruits/berries, it's aged in barrels for three months and then stored in ceramic. There's a shmakovka museum in Daugavpils that goes through the production process and cultural significance in great detail, though it insists the whole thing is a secret since shmakovka is apparently illegal to make. I did a tasting at the museum and bought a bottle for the long bus ride back to Riga and then to Tartu, Estonia.

 

[kileskus]

Language notes - Latvia

The trains don’t have English announcements so you might have to listen closely for your station (if you don’t use a map/timetable on your phone). I think the main pronunciation differences to keep in mind are that ‘c’ makes a ‘ts’ sound and whenever there is a bar across a vowel such as in Rīga, that means the vowel is elongated. Riga sounds like Riiiiga, the ‘i’ is at least 3 times longer than it is when we say it in English.

The suffix ‘pils’ that you will see at the end of many city names means ‘castle’, which attests to the importance of defensive structures usually from the Teutonic era in the formation of towns and cities.

Latvian and Lithuanian are the only languages in the Baltic branch, but Latvian has been influenced more by other languages. First, its proximity to Estonia has led to some Finno-Ugric influence, such as in vocabulary and in the stress on the first syllable of a word.

Second, there is a strong German influence. This comes from the Teutonic invasion of Latvia (Lithuania withstood the attempted invasion much longer), the Hanseatic League, and the fact that for many centuries German was the language of government, education and the church whereas Latvian was the peasant language. This is similar to how, post-1066, the English nobility spoke French and French has considerable influence on English vocabulary. Some examples are ‘to build’: Lv būvēt, Middle High German būwen, and ‘tavern’: Lv krogs, Middle Low German krôch.

From Russian imperialism through to the end of the Soviet Union and extending to today, Russian has had a strong influence on the linguistic situation in Latvia. There are some loan words, though again care needs to be taken to distinguish between loan words from imposed concepts as opposed to words evolving naturally from the shared Proto-Balto-Slavic predecessor. Until the early 2000s Russian was more spoken in Riga and some other large cities than Latvian was, and the proficiency of Latvian in the population continues to be a source of much handwringing. Since the war started last year, the government has been whittling away at schools that teach primarily in Russian.

Finally, Latvian has also borrowed from Lithuanian, over the course of centuries as natural neighbourly exchange but also more recently as part of attempts to ‘purify’ Latvian and remove the aforementioned influences of foreign languages by replacing it with Baltic words.

Latgalian is spoken in the Latgale region and is mutually intelligible with Latvian. It is considered by many of its speakers to be a separate language but is officially recognised as a dialect. It has seen a resurgence in media and popular culture the past couple of years. As the region had changed hands between the Russian Empire and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before joining Latvia in 1918, Latgalian has more Russian and Polish influence in its vocabulary.

 

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[kileskus]

Tartu

I returned to Riga to take the bus to Tartu, the second-largest city in Estonia. (The Estonian government is considering building a rail line between Riga and Tartu, but nothing has been formalised yet.) Tartu will be the 2024 European Capital of Culture and is well worth a visit if you’re in the Baltics.



A university city, Tartu is home to scientific and technological innovation, classical and neo-classical architecture, and several museums and festivals.


The town hall with the famous kissing statue in front of it


Typical architecture


One example of the numerous pieces of street art around

There is a hill-park owned by the university that provides the opportunity for a pleasant walk and views of the city:


On that hill is the old University of Tartu observatory. This, as commemorated by the stone double-triangle monument, is the start point of the Struve Geodetic Arc. This is a series of points that form a triangulation network used by Russian scientist Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, who was director of the observatory for several years, to measure the meridian arc, and later used for mapmaking of the Balkans. There are 265 points in total from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea, with 34 of them, including this one, on the UNESCO World Heritage list.


Walking around you occasionally see wooden houses that are similar to traditional Estonian houses in villages. This was my favourite:


The Estonian National Museum is located in Tartu and not in Tallinn. It chronicles the history of the Estonians and Finno-Ugric peoples and has a lot of ethnographic artefacts. There are also exhibits on the Soviet and post-Soviet eras with a focus on Estonian technological developments. The fun part about the museum is that information is provided on tablets. Your ticket contains a chip and you can tap it on these tablets like so and have the text of that particular station saved to your ticket, which has a link that you can access later to read the texts that you saved:


The KGB Cells Museum is in the basement of the former KGB headquarters in Soviet Estonia. It has preserved the cells used to hold KGB prisoners as well as some of the interrogation and torture equipment. There is a lot of text and artefacts related to the history of the KGB, the Soviet occupation of Estonia, and the Estonian resistance movements.

An interrogation chair


A bust of Barclay de Tolly, he of the scorched earth policy who along with Kutuzov led Russia’s fight against Napoleon in 1812. He was born in today’s Lithuania and grew up not far from Tartu. His mausoleum is in his hometown. It’s a short drive according to Google Maps but I didn’t manage to go.

All in all an interesting city to visit to learn more about Estonia, with a relaxed feel and friendly locals and international students to hang out with. It can be done as a day trip from Tallinn or Riga though I stayed two days and didn't feel like that was enough. Definitely come by next year if you're in the Baltics and try to catch some of the capital of culture events.