Baltic Adventure by Land, Sea and Air, 3

LONDON, BREMEN, COPENHAGEN, STOCKHOLM, RIGA, TALLINN, HELSINKI, LÜBECK, COLOGNE

Part 3, The Former Soviet Baltic States

(see Part 1 here)

(see Part 2 here)

The Night of Three Rooms

Our hotel in Riga, the Radison Blu Latvija, was built in the Soviet era as the Intourist hotel, the only one in town where foreign visitors could stay. Two blocks from the KGB building the rooms will have been bugged and visitors could be followed and spied-upon to ensure that the Soviet state was safe from foreign interference. It had been thoroughly refurbished and the KGB has moved out, so we felt quite safe (not that our conversations would have been any risk to any state, capitalist or communist!), but there were other problems which led to an interesting start to the night! We went into our room and inserted the key card into the slot and the lights came on ... then went out fifteen seconds later. We tried it several times but could not keep the lights on, so we went to reception and they kindly allocated us another room across the corridor (I thought, if the KGB are listening, that will confuse them!).

All was well and we went off for a walk around Riga, returning later to the hotel for dinner and then retiring to our room for a shower, the clothes washing and bed. Once in bed we realised that we could not silence the air-conditioning, or so we thought, but on opening the window we then twigged that the racket was coming from outside where everyone's over-worked air-con seemed to be blowing out into the night air. We were given yet another new room, but this one was three floors higher and so we had to travel in our nightwear, carrying our luggage and our wet washing via the lift to the new floor at about half-past eleven at night, much to the amusement of other passengers in the lift. At last we could go to sleep! And there is no way the KGB would have followed all those moves ...  The view from the room in the morning sun was fantastic, across the trees in the park with the golden domes of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral beyond. We went down for our breakfast and prepared for our first day out in Riga.

Our guided tour of Riga was partly by coach and mostly on foot and began with a visit to some of the finest art nouveau architecture in Europe. This was built pre-communism as apartments for the middle classes and there are street after street of buildings too many to record. It was explained to us that during the Soviet era these apartments were further divided and shared between several families, many of whom were moved in from Russia and one of whom was probably the original owner of the flat who now became an unwilling tenant of a shared part of the same flat. Our guide said that everything was then painted in "ugly grey," "ugly green" or white. I speculated that she had missed out "ugly brown" but presumably she knows her own city!

We moved on to the city centre where we saw pre-soviet, soviet and post-soviet buildings, monuments and churches of several denominations.

Although the country's independence from Russia dates from the USSR's collapse many years ago and it has been an EU and NATO member state for almost as many years, there remains a substantial Russian-speaking population there, and anyone who attended school before independence knows the Russian language, but anyone who attended school afterwards learnt English instead.

I really enjoyed exploring Riga, a beautiful city which has been through a lot of violent history but whose recent freedom was won peacefully and whose beauty is now restored. It remains, however, on the front line where the increasingly threatening Russia faces NATO, and there were German and Dutch senior troops staying in our hotel. Everywhere we went there were Ukrainian flags alongside the Latvian and EU flags. Russian street names were being expunged and the street where the Russian embassy is located had been renamed to Ukrainian Independence Street so that all the letters to the embassy had to carry that expression! This attitude to Russia was a theme throughout our visits to Riga, Tallinn and Helsinki, all of which are capitals of nations on the NATO border with Russia and who have often suffered from their relationship with Russia in the past.

In the afternoon we set off to do our own exploring and following the recommendation of both our local guide and our Tour Manager we started at the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, a repurposed soviet building which previously celebrated the USSR. What we learnt there about suppression of religion and other freedoms would apply equally in Estonia. The three Baltic states plus Finland were caught between the two empires of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and those trying to govern the country were heroes or villains to one side or the other from week to week, as were those trying to serve in their armed forces. A lot of people died and lot were imprisoned and many were deported to Siberia, of whom some returned and some did not, but those who did came back to an unfamiliar land.

The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia: the black soviet architecture was thought to be appropriate to the subject

Gluttons for punishment, we moved on to the former KGB building, now run by the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, and it was very chilling indeed. The only public entrance to the building, known locally as "The Corner House" was on a street corner not far from the Intourist Hotel, and it was in the entrance lobby that citizens could enquire about the fate of loved ones arrested by the KGB - whether they received an answer was another matter. We were taken to the reception area where detainees would be brought in via another door where their clothes would be divested of belts, laces or anything else that could be used to take their own lives and returned to them before they were taken for questioning and then improsoned in inhuman, cruel conditions I shall not describe here. You have to see the place for yourself. Do do the guided tour: the free public exhibition tells you a lot, but the experience of being in the cells makes sure you'll never forget. One did not have to be a criminal to end up here: the police and crime system was quite separate. This was a political matter, a matter of state security (as perceived by the government of the USSR). We were beginning to see that the USSR was not so much a "union" like the USA or the EU but an empire where nations were occupied and conquered rather than applying to join.

Back on the street it was sunny and hot and we put the chill and the smell of the KGB behind us as we walked back to our hotel to shower and prepare to go out for our evening meal at Domini Canes, a restaurant recommended by our Tour Manager and at which we had booked a table earlier in the day. It was here that we tried the local tipple Black Balsam. We discussed this with the waitress and ordered a blackcurrant flavoured balsam each, and she kindly brought us a shared sample of original Black Balsam to try. It was OK, actually. Probably quite good for a sore throat, too.

The following morning, Wednesday, a new month, a new capital, we moved on by road to Tallinn in Estonia, another former soviet republic which rejoiced to be an independent EU and NATO member state, yet still on the front line with Russia. The journey mostly followed the Baltic coast, but about a kilometre inland and through managed forests, so we did not see much of the sea. We stopped twice: once for a WC break at the former border post (both countries are in the Schengen area) and a meal stop in the town of Parnu, which was a charming place with a high street full of bars, cafés and restaurants. We found a small back-street café mostly frequented by local people and had a sandwich and coffee there.

Tallinn was another gorgeous city with a medieval Old Town whose walls were largely intact. There seemed to be more Ukrainian flags than Estonian in some streets.  Our hotel, the Radisson Blu Olümpia, was built when Moscow hosted the Olympic Games and the sailing events were held in Tallinn, then part of the USSR. This was in the 1970s and although it has been substantially updated since then there were photographs in the reception area of how it used to look when first opened - very reminiscent of British buildings of the same era; think Birmingham New Street railway station before its 21st century rebuild!

After finding our rooms and leaving our luggage we were met by a local guide with a coach and taken on a tour of Tallinn. It has a history as a port of the Hanseatic League and therefore ancient connections with Germany, Denmark and Sweden as well as Russia and the other Baltic states.

As usual on this trip the meal on the first evening was an included buffet dinner at the hotel and was of a pretty decent standard. The full day in Tallinn was a completely free day after the hotel breakfast and we wandered into town with a view to buying gifts to take home for those who had kindly looked after things for us while we had been away, to exploring some of the history of the city and taking coffee and marzipan at Maiasmokk Café where we had seen marzipan novelties being hand "painted" on our guided tour the day before.

We bought the gifts and while in the shop browsed among the very attractive pure wool sweaters, buying one each to take home. Trying them on was a bit of a trial in more ways than one in the heatwave Tallinn was experiencing at the time. We thought it might be wise to take these back to our hotel room rather than trail our shopping around the city for the rest of the day, after which we set out again and visited the Great Guild, now housing a Heanseatic League museum,  Maiasmokk Café where we had coffee and shared a piece of marzipan curd cake, and the Church of the Holy Spirit. The interior of this church was absolutely amazing, well worth a visit and the small fee they charge to keep numbers down, and amazing when you consider what this nation and city have been through since this ancient church was built.

Back at our hotel we went for a swim in the hotel pool, high up towards the top of the building with stunning views over the city. A fifteen metre pool, it was ideal for a relaxing swim both to make a change from all the walking we had been doing and to cool down from so much time in the sun. Taking it easy, we dined in the hotel restaurant that evening and then prepared to move on the following day. There was much more excitement to come, and our mode of travel was to change yet again: we had done rail, air and road; now we moved on to sea.