Baltic Cities: Part I

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It was time to leave Sweden, and plans to go to Norway weren't looking so good. The weather there was turning bad, and my best option was tenting. I decided to go east instead. I'd had thoughts of going to St Petersburg, but hadn't planned anything. Getting information from the ferry websites was like getting blood from a stone, but eventually I had a half-baked plan and a set of ferry tickets.

The first stop was Tallinn, capital of Estonia - a city with a lovely little 'old-town' - the remains of a fortified (walled) mediaeval town, with the main city set outside that. The restored city walls dated back to the 15th century, and looked cool. I only had a few hours to look around, then onto another ferry and over to Helsinki, Finland. While I was there, Helsinki was invaded by a Russian girl's marching band. The obvious response was for me to invade Russia.

The ferry to St Petersburg (previously called Leningrad, if you're older than Dickie) is a 'loophole'. Visa-free visits to St Petersburg are allowed for up to 72 hours if you take the ferry from Helsinki. Since it's difficult for a NZ passport-holder to get a Russian visa, it's a very convenient loophole, and by far the easiest way for me to visit Russia.

St Petersburg is an exceptionally beautiful city (at least the city centre) but unfortunately with a fairly ugly port (apart from the fascinating remains of the Kronstadt fortress).

Entry to the port is along a lengthy dredged channel up the estuary of the Neva river.

The first views of the city are the depressed docks and nearby industrial zones. Worldwide, dockside warehouses became redundant when containerised cargo took over in the 1970's. In more buoyant economies, these warehouses have been converted to apartments, shops, restaurants and regional council depots. But in more stagnant economies, the warehouses have become dilapidated ruins.

The city centre was a different story though. Early morning rain cleared to turn on a sparkling city. By coincidence, it was also a day when untold couples were getting married. Every second park, scenic spot and and church had a wedding party. There are also loads of canals running through the city, so if Venice sinks, St Petersburg could be a ready replacement.

I was only there for a day, then back to Helsinki, which was being invaded by dozens of gymnastics teams from all over the world.

From Helsinki, a couple of ferry trips took me to Riga.

Riga is about the size of Christchurch. In spite of the tow being over 1 000 years old, the city and buildings don't look so old. Partly that's because it's a city that has got in the way of nature and history from time to time.

A flat city next to a river, it's had it's share of floods in the last millennium, and it also got in the way of Peter the Great, Napoleon, Stalin, and Hitler - coming off second-best each time. Not too much has been spent on renovation, so many buildings still sport charcoal stains from one war or another. I liked the place. It carries a few injuries, but no obvious grudges. In the few days that I spent there, I visited a couple of pine forests just out of town. There's a close correlation between pine forests and mass murder in this neck of the woods. A couple of centuries ago, when the Baltic coastline got deforested, a lot of sand-dunes got exposed and started to erode. Pine forests were planted to stabilise them. Then, when the bad guys rolled into town, and wanted to do some mass murdering, they looked for quiet spots where it would be easy to dig mass graves. Forested sand dunes were just the ticket.

There's a bit of that close to Riga, including one of the biggest open-air mass-murder sites from the Holocaust (the Rumbula 'forest') https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumbula_massacre if you're interested.

The 'forest' wasn't much though. A few hectares of trees reduced by urban encroachment and a clutter of memorials, sculptures, seats, parking area... anything except 'forest'.

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