The Baltics

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I last left off in Tallin Estonia. Tallin was great, it is a real carnivores delight. Everything is meat, meat and more mystery meat. Step outside the old town and you start to feel that everything isn't all that super.

As our tour guide Lowry put it when asked "it is safe enough around here isn't it?" the answer was No. Despite breaking away from the Soviets in 1991, the Baltic states have been left with a bit of a social issue. Russians are a major portion of the population and a lot of them are still loyal to Russia and dont want to be part of the independent baltic states. So they pass their time by drinking lots of vodka and going around bashing people. Apparently they leave tourists alone in general though.

In Latvia, the Riga tourist book did however say that drinking in the street is illegal and suggested putting your vodka in a mineral water bottle. Thanks for the tip I guess.

Riga prides itself on its nightlife. So off Lara and I went to see what was so special about the nightlife. As it turned out the nightlife largely entailed girls dancing on the bar while you are trying to order and overpriced beer that was conveniently left off the drinks price list. It isn't the bucks weekend capital of Europe for nothing.

Having seen enough of the nightlife, we headed out of town to a mountain area with a bobsled track. The bobsled track actually has Sarajevo, Yugoslavia down the side of it and is supposedly the 1984 olympic track. A$10 later we were hurtling down the track with our hearts in our mouths. Pretty cool, Lara was still shaking a good 15 minutes afterwards.

From Latvia we headed to the Curonian Spit on the border of Lithuania and Russian, Kalingrad. Here we cycled the UNESCO listed spit, climbed the Lithuanian Sahara (Gray Dunes) and recovered with a couple of Lithuania's finest at the supposed best pub in Lithuania.

The bus to Klaupeda on the Lithanian coast was one of the more memorable bus trips I think Lara and I have ever had. The cities in the Baltics would have you think that these countries only contain beautiful people. This bus ride proved different. Stopping throughout the countryside we picked up drunks, thugs with black eyes, snoring old Russian ladies, a handicap girl who had a dog hidden in her handbag, as well as a good number of what appeared to be homeless people. And just for good measure the bus took an hour longer than it was supposed to.

We are now in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. This place is pretty out there. It has an independent republic (The republic of Uzopio) right next to its old town. The hippies declared independence in the 90's and their constitution includes everyones right to pat a cat. We also went to see the statue of American rocker Frank Zappa this morning.

All in all the Baltic states have been great. My personal highlight is dinner each night which entails huge portions of animal with a decent dose of outstanding local beer to wash it down all for around A$10 per head. It still amazes me that is was only 16 years ago that the Soviets were still destoying this place and its people.

On to Poland tonight.

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Comments

[Harry]

Baltics surprises!
Hi Christian! I have enjoyed your stories so much.......thanks for keeping us updated. Your bobsled ride with Lara sounds awesome even though the speed was scary - better than Luna Park!!! Your bus ride was exciting,meeting the locals.....and some dodgy characters(haha)