Just returned from Russia and the Baltics. Why didn't you warn me?

[tinfoilinfor2005]

When I asked for advice before my trip you all gave me wonderful tips. But not one person mentioned that I should pack a bottle of BEANO because it is impossible to travel in these countries without being fed cabbage in some form or another on a daily basis. And beans as well. It is a very musical part of the world, if you get my drift. :)

Seriously, I had a very interesting trip and if I came away with one impression, it clearly was that boy oh boy, things sure are VERY different over there.

[NNadir]

1. What was the most interesting thing you learned?

Besides the stuff about natural gas, I mean.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

2. Wow, hard to pick one...Iearned that

Storks make a clacking noise with their beaks and their nests are huge and amazing...that all the rivers in St. Petersburg smoke in the icy cold of the morning which makes the city look like a mysterious wonderland...that there were by count exactly ten bears in the whole country of Latvia until one was shot last week while I was there...that walking through my grandmother's home town in the "old country" I would hear American rap coming from a nearby restaurant...

etc. etc. etc.

[seaglass]

3. Any pictures of the smoky rivers? It sounds cool. n/t

[tinfoilinfor2005]

4. Yes, some really good ones. Unfortunately I'm computer

challenged. When I get to work, I'll have my daughter post some of them.

[merh]

5. Welcome back.

You've been missed. :hug:

:loveya:

[tinfoilinfor2005]

6. Aw, thanks sweetie pie!!

It really is hard to sum up the trip in a nutshell...suffice it to say that that part of the world remains an enigma. The people are cool and aloof and not quick to smile and certainly their history explains their lack of joviality, but at the same time they are curious and anxious to learn and expand their knowledge and experience. Most are very poor and each day involves simple sacrifices and choices that we very rarely have to make. Example; I can have meat for breakfast today if I give up meat for dinner.

The whole experience was somewhat confusing. The big cities are modern as any big city here in the states, but out in the country life is very much as I remember it here in the late 1940's in terms of living conditions... housing, appliances, etc. But at the same time, the teenagers are all wearing the latest american fashions and highlight their hair, girls and boys. It was like watching one of those artsy flicks that never truly makes sense.

And really odd was the fact that in nineteen days and four countries, I never saw a person of color. Not one. Coming from the country of all colors, this really stuck out. And every once in a while someone in conversation would say to me, "You have the negroes." Which of course is a very odd thing to say or hear, but then again when you look around and see NO color at all, I guess you can understand why they might say that. Just very odd. When I finally arrived in Amsterdam and saw lots of smiling faces of multiple colors in the line for my flight, I felt like I was home again.

A lot of buses and trains and trams and a lot of walking. Walking through towns, castles, cathedrals, museums, etc. And a lot of eating because when you walk a lot you can eat more. And the food is fantastic. No fast food, although that is starting a little in the big cities.

All in all it was quite an experience.

Thanks for your welcome, it warmed me up after being in Zhivago-land! :hug:

[merh]

7. It sound like great fun.

I am so glad you enjoyed yourself. :hug:

I happier still to have you home. :pals: :loveya:

[henslee]

14. Traveling really is energizing, isnt it.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

23. A lot like eating peanuts.

Once you start you can't stop. :banghead:

[xchrom]

8. welcome back!

can't wait to hear more -- it all sounds very interesting.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

10. How kind of you to say that. Oddly enough, interesting is the

perfect word. Last year I was in Paris, and when I returned I was full of exclamations: "Wonderful, Beautiful, Lovely," etc. But the best word for this trip definitely is "interesting".

We started the trip in St. Petersburg which the tour guide explained was the Paris of the North. Having been in Paris last year and now seeing the dirt and the disrepair and the general dismal look of the city, especially Nevsky Prospect, the street which is touted to be the Champs Elysee, I could only scratch my head in disbelief. The museums and cathedrals are grand and kept in generally good repair, and the wealth and riches contained within are incredibly impressive given the poverty and squalor the russian people have suffered for so many years.

I was a little surprised to see a memorial in one of the cathedrals containing the remains of the Romanovs as I wasn't aware of the latest development in the saga of this Czar and his family who were taken away and murdered...(think Rasputin and daughter Anastasia of film fame...). Anyway, their remains were recently found, and Anastasia's were amongst the rest, but oddly, the other sister's remains were missing.

Our next country was Estonia, and the difference between Estonia and Russia are like night and day starting right at the border. Lots of building and renovating and remodeling going on. The town of Tallinn is astounding. It looks just like a village out of Epcot Center at Disney...quaint and ancient and charming, the only difference being that this city was built in the 1200's. And Riga is similar, only a much larger city with a big city flavor. Beautiful.

The cities and towns shown to the tourists are all quite fine. It isn't until you get into the country where there are varying degrees of poverty, and you listen to the stories by family and locals about the war years, which by the way, haven't ended at all. It is still the major topic of discussion for anyone who was alive during those years. The battles are refought daily at the dinner tables, and the wounds remain raw and bloody.

[xchrom]

13. i knew the east was poor.

it's fascinating to hear it from someone who was there.

estonia and the ever present war wounds reminds me of the former yugoslavia.

i sometimes think americans are too removed from certain realities -- we forget that memory in certain parts of the world are powerful, powerful motivators.

i don't know if it's because we all come from some place else or what.

yours is an interesting commntary given we have people who think they can impose a ''reality'' on someone else -- one wonders what it is that some will remember -- beyond al quaeda and shiite fundies.

do you get a sense that there is a pre-russian culture still vibrant in estonia -- or is it fractured?

[tinfoilinfor2005]

15. I can't speak so much for Estonia, but I ended my group tour in Riga

Latvia and then spent a week with my aunt who is Latvian and lives in Jelgava Latvia. Since the ending of the occupation years in Latvia, everything Russian has been erased once again from the culture. The language is no longer taught in the schools and the remaining Russians living in the country are sorely tolerated. But that is where the rub comes in. There remain many Russians because a large percentage of Latvians were removed from the country during the war and replaced by Russians who were in the military, etc. The shoe is truly on the other foot now, so to speak, because while the Russians were in power in Latvia, they had the upper hand and all the perks and bennies, but now everything has turned completely around. So they all continue to rub each other like a size five shoe on a size ten foot and while this is uncomfortable enough as is, picture living like this at a poverty level. The interesting thing is that their elections are coming up in October and there are a slew of opportunists tossing their hats in the ring, all making big promises. And the people are hungry for better things, so the most convincing liar could possibly take the election. I will be watching with great interest.

[xchrom]

17. d'oh! latvia.

i knew that.

did you hear they made news while you were gone re: gay folk?

i forget what it was now -- but they did something mildly regressive.

lol -- or was it estonia -- geez the mind really is the first to go.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

20. No, you're right, it was Latvia and it was on all the news channels

and quite a big deal. It was basically a gay rights march led by one of the local clergy. I live in the Florida Keys where One Human Family is the county motto, so I was a little surprised by all the hoopla. But my eighty year old aunt was appropriately (for a little old lady) shocked by the whole thing, and I just nodded my head and kept my mouth shut. Some things are just better left alone.

[LiberalEsto]

25. I went to Estonia a few years ago

to visit relatives. Estonia is still very much Estonian -- people maintained their culture secretly during the soviet regime.

My 2 cousins and their spouses are very much do-it-yourselfers. They built their own homes, except for the foundations. They did the framing, roofing, wiring, plumbing, heating systems, etc. They both have nice, comfortable homes.

My country cousin grows fruit and vegetables and, with my aunt's help, makes a lot of wonderful food from scratch. Her husband commutes to the city with their 3 kids, who go to school in Tallinn.

My city cousin and his wife both work full time, and the wife's mother lives with them and helps with their 6-year-old.

They don't like to talk about the soviet years much, although they say schoolchildren were able to master mathematics better when classes were taught in Russian, because there is something about the Russian language that is conducive to explaining mathematics. They say education in general was better under the soviets.

My cousins respect Russians who work hard. But like many Estonians they have no use for some Russians in Estonia whom they regard as lazy. There's a certain element in the Russian populace in Estonia that drinks too much, refuses to learn Estonian, and generally wants something for nothing. Russian women are easy to spot because they wear tons of makeup and dress cheap and flashy. The younger generation of Estonians and Russians mingle socially and there appears to be less animosity.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

27. Pretty similar experiences for me in Latvia except for the respect part.

Most of the Latvians were carted off to Siberia by the communist regime, and there is no trust or respect amongst the older generation. The kids do seem to get along alright, but there is still so much simmering underneath. Hard to say how that will all end.

I loved Tallinn. Did you go to the big Medievel restaurant when you visited? That was so cool...hundreds of candles lining all the walls and tables. I told our guide that this would NEVER pass a fire inspection in the USA. They just laughed.

[LiberalEsto]

28. No, I didn't go to the medieval restaurant

In fact most of the time we ate home cooking - which was fabulous, and which I greatly preferred.

The cousins took me to a nice place slightly outside town the first night. One of them joined me for lunch at the Estonian House in Tallinn, which is owned by Viido Polikarpus. Viido's sister Pia is a friend of mine - they grew up in NJ. This restaurant is modeled after the original one at the Estonian House in New York City, where I hung out as a teenager. The food is great - real Estonian home cooking - so if you ever visit Tallinn again, go there.

And one afternoon we had tea at the Oscar Wilde Cafe in Tartu.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

29. Did you go to any of the other Baltic countries?

I didn't get to Lithuania and only missed it by less then a mile, but I understand that it is more similar to Latvia, at least in the language. I can pick up a little Lithuanian when I hear it, but very little Estonian.

[LiberalEsto]

30. No, just Estonia

I divided my time between my two cousins in Rapla and Tallinn, and they took me to my father's home town, Valga, which is at the Latvian border. But stepping over the border would have gotten us arrested at the time.

We also went to the island of Saaremaa, to the seaside resort of Parnu, to Viljandi to visit a second cousin, to my mother's home town of Elva, and to the university town of Tartu, where one of my great-grandfathers was a professor of theology.

It was basically a family visit. I have very few living relatives - my 2 daughters and a brother in the US, and an aunt and two cousins and their 5 children in Estonia, plus a number of more distant relatives there. It was my first time there, and I wanted to spend all of it with my kinfolk, since who knows if I'll be able to afford another trip.

The Estonian language is completely unrelated to Latvian and Lithuanian, which are Indo-European languages like English, French, German and Italian. Estonian is closely related to Finnish, and more distantly to Hungarian and some remote tribal languages in northern Russia. They're in the Finno-Ugric language family. So it was no wonder you had a harder time with Estonian than with Latvian.

My dad was born in Latvia because his Estonian parents, a railroad doctor and nurse - were stationed there in 1915.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

31. See your PM n/t

[NewJeffCT]

9. How was the water over there?

Did you have to drink bottled water or anything like that?

[tinfoilinfor2005]

11. The pipes are original in St. Petersburg and have a nasty discharge

of all kinds of crud, so even the locals are warned not to drink the water or even brush their teeth with it. But you have to be very careful with the bottled water. Some of the mineral water has a high salt content, and they don't tell you that. We had purchased that on the first day and by the third, we all had swollen feet and ankles and some of the people in my tour group had heart palpitations. We finally figured out that it must be from the water and started asking around. It was only then that we were advised to buy the bottles marked Still Drinking Water without the salt and minerals. Once we started drinking that, all the symptoms went away.

[flygal]

12. Interesting

I live in E. Germany and enjoyed reading your posts :) Thanks. I wonder about the mineral water over here, I've been swelling a bit too. I've been to Poland which sounds similar. That's cool you went and experienced something totally different than the usual Euro sites.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

16. This was a trip to see family in Latvia but I combined it with a tour

which came out to be much less expensive than a plane ticket to Riga, especially considering that it included four countries, most of my meals, all hotels, planes, trains, buses etc. It really is a great tour group. I've been on multiple trips with them now and can't wait to go on the next one. But since I knew that St. Petersburg was one of the cities on my tour, I absolutely had to do it in the winter. Can't even imagine seeing it at any other time of the year.

[NewJeffCT]

18. wow, sounds even worse than China

There, you have to boil tap water before you drink it, but at least I could drink it.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

22. My aunt boils her water in Latvia, and we drank the coffee and

tea in all the towns and didn't get sick, and I seriously doubt that it was all bottled water in that case. It was mostly in St. Petersburg where we got all the warnings because of the ancient plumbing in the city.

[Lady Effingbroke]

19. Welcome back!

Thank you for sharing your experiences - you are a wonderful writer. Utterly fascinating!

[tinfoilinfor2005]

21. Aw, shucks...

:blush:

TANKS!

[OhioBlue]

24. thank you for posting details about your trip

it was so interesting!!! A first hand account / observation of the day to day living conditions in another country rather than just the headlines of political issues is fascinating for me.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

26. Then you need to hear the tipping story:

In Riga, ladies sell hot biscuits filled with bacon and onion (called piragi) on the street corners. They are kept in a wagon similar to a hot dog stand wagon. One day I purchased one (fourty cents) and I gave her fifty. As I started to walk away she began to shout at me to take my change. I motioned no, my billfold was already in my purse, to just keep it. Suddenly she started to yell...LOUDLY...that I MUST take the change, which I did. Immediately. The next morning I told my tour guide the story and asked if I had insulted the woman. She said, "No, but the government sends around people who pretend to be tourists, and this is how they check to see if the vendors are ripping off the tourists. She probably thought you were the police, and she didn't want to risk losing her job for a dime." So much for reaping the benefits of the American TIP!

p.s...Thanks for the compliment. :)