Tallinn, Estonia - Day 70 : National Identity in the Baltic States

I have often clubbed Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as the 'Baltic states' and could barely tell them apart on a map. As I discovered on this trip, these countries hold fiercely independent identities forged together only in recent history by having been part of the Soviet Union.

The population composition differs vastly - Lithuania has a large Polish population, Latvia has a large number of citizens of Russian descent and Estonia holds more cultural similarity with its Scandinavian cousins across the Baltic Sea than it does with either Lithuania or Latvia.

To a visitor such as myself, the Lithuania and Estonia capitals - Vilnius and Tallinn seemed hip, vibrant and even compensating for its lost years of European kinship. In contrast, Latvia's communist past still holds sway over its' capital - Riga, evident in its ubiquitous Stalin-era architecture and a looming sense of misplaced identity.

Unlike Lithuania or Estonia, little Latvia is struggling with its new found political independence. Whilst part of the USSR, Riga served as a strategic seaport for the USSR with the Soviets establishing a large number of factories. Understandably it was Latvia that felt the pains of jump-starting its economy after the Soviet Union fell, unable to employ the thousands that were once gainfully employed in state run industries and beaureaucratic offices. As a Latvian acquaintance said, "Today Latvia is showing all the symptoms of the 'new country disease' ... excessive government control, corruption and fiscal mismanagement". Another young Latvian said that her parents feel a sense of nostalgia for the Communist days, "Back then atleast everyone was employed and there were no criminals on the street."

After years of mandatory Russian, the Baltic states are using their respective languages to assert their ethnic identity. In Lithuania 'language police' are tasked with the job of ensuring that street signs, books, menus and official documents are written only in Lithuanian, despite its large Polish population that would have a preferred a dual language system. In Latvia, hiring is unofficially dependent on your fluency in Latvian, very odd considering that present 30 year olds in the workforce studied Russian as their first language in public schools till the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 80s. And then there is the 50-60 set who have spoken Russian all their lives being forced to conduct all their legal and official affairs in Latvian.

These measures may be seen as necessary to renew their national identity, but personally, I see it as totalitarian and contradictory to the very ideals of democracy that these countries are emulating.

Tallinn, Estonia - Day 69: White Nights

Situated at a longitude of 59.417 degrees, Tallinn is the northern most point that I have ever traveled to. It is very disorienting to have the sun set only close to midnight. We took a walk out today at 9:30pm and that's how bright it was. There's a clock in the background to prove it :)

Tallinn, Estonia - Day 68 : 4000 kms from the Black sea to the Baltic sea

View Road Less Traded in a larger map

We walked along the Tallinn harbor today and saw the Baltic Sea. It's a great feeling of accomplishment to have traversed 4000kms from the Black Sea (Odessa, Ukraine) in the south to the Baltic coast in the north. I would be the first to admit that it has sometimes felt exhausting but that doesn't take away from how much we have loved the romance and adventure of extended travel.

Riga, Latvia - Day 66 : Angry Riga rain Gods !

It's been raining for 3 days now and we haven't been able to see the beautiful old town of Riga as much as we would have wanted to. We attempted venturing out in the rain but all it did was make me hungry for warm food!

Riga, Latvia - Day 64 : Communist era apartments

We got to Riga yesterday and have been staying with our friend Sergey's aunt. Sergey's family has been warm, hospitable and the best hosts despite not speaking a word of English.

The apartment itself has every modern convenience imaginable, but from the outside these apartments tell a very different story. Rows of concrete apartments buildings stand tall and straight, devoid of any color, architectural style or embellishment. The windows are evenly spaced and shaped, every building has the same number of floors and looks exactly like the one next to it.

A young woman (a friend of the family's) - let's call her "M" told us these apartments were built by the communist government to serve as accommodation for factory workers. So for example, a Soviet electronics manufacturing plant would allocate apartments for its employees in these buildings based on their rank and tenure. Chaos followed the fall of USSR - factories got privatized often in fire-sale prices and apartments such as these became 'private' almost overnight. If you stayed in a state-owned apartment at the time of the fall, you became the default owner by virtue of being the residing tenant. Today, these buildings look dilapidated and in need of repair if not a complete facelift.

In recent years Latvia has seen a real estate boom fueled in part by families looking to upgrade to newer apartments but also by the U.S phenomena of 'easy' home loans for an individual of average means. The economic crisis has hit this little country hard, unemployment is at 14.5% and the real estate market has tanked. Here is a recent story by PBS which our Lithuanian friend Ivona helped translate/produce. The morning that we left Riga, a TV news report stated the government was about to pass a budget to avoid immediate bankruptcy.

Vilnius-Dauavpils - Day 62 : Meeting Daniel

Today, we took a 2 hour commuter train from Vilnius to Daugavpils a border town in Latvia which is also the second biggest'city' after the capital Riga.

On the train we met Daniel, an 8 year old Russian boy who spoke conversational English. When asked how he had learned English, he said, "I watch English movies and music videos". In 2 short hours he engaged us with a game of cards, stamped us with temporary tattoos, wrote us our names in Cyrillic and tried his hand at portrait photography.

Vilnius, Lithuania - Day 62: Quirky city

Vilnius is such a quirky little city. 2 things I absolutely loved about it:

1. Most shops in Vilnius have pictographic panels showing store timings. So a hair salon will have images of scissors next to their store hours or a shoe shop will have pictures of black stilletos alongside weekday hours and red stilletos alongside weekend hours. And this idea extends to bookshops, banks, restaurants and souvenir shops.
2. The district of Užupis, is a small patch of land that has declared itself a Republic. It's like NYC's Willamsburg, a small conclave of artists, hippies and by some accounts, 'a ghetto peopled by prostitutes, alcoholics and other miscellaneous misfits'. It has it's own flag, president and even a constitution that is nailed to a street wall that's full of idiosyncratic articles.