Vilnius, Lithunaia

Spent the last couple of days in Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania.  It is a nice city built in a pretty area of rolling hills.  I did all the touristy stuff I could stand including a trip to a nearby town with a genuine castle which was cool-but-not-that-cool if you know what I mean.  I found myself in a bit of traveller haze like I was just going through the motions and not really even taking in what I was seeing.  What finally snapped me out of my haze and back into the joy of seeing new places was a visit to the Museum of Genocide Victims that is housed in former KGB headquarters in Vilnius.  The museum is built right into the headquarters.  Many of the rooms have been converted into exhibits, but some of the rooms themselves are exhibits as they have been maintained or recreated as they were during the Russian occupation.  In the basement are the actual cells, interrogation rooms, and yes, execution chamber used at the time.

Sorry no pictures except the funny lady who worked at the hostel who put on this mask, prompting us to watch the movie "V for Vendetta" (not the other way around).

Riga - Jurmala - Riga. Latvia is OK

Last full day in Riga.  I decide to take the train to the seaside town of Jurmala about 30 minutes from Riga.

If your beach experiences are full of Hawaii and California, then, no matter what proud locals tell you, do not expect too much of Latvian beaches on the Baltic.  Actually the town was quite nice.  Small and walkable with lots of pleasant streets and the seaside community feeling not too overwhelmed by tourists and hotels.  The beach was even pretty nice (although I prefer waves and water temperatures warmer than my refrigerator) with soft fine sand and plenty of room for everyone.  While I was here I was able to witness the (not so) famous gerbil children of Jurmala.  I took a video for you:

Back in Riga, I visit the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia.  It is closed, but they have some outside things I can look at.  I have been to the Holocaust Museum's in both Washington and Jerusalem so there is not much more that can shock me, but every time I visit a new country and see how much they suffered I am embarrassed that I need to be reminded again.  I also think how much our leaders fail us when they lead us into war and killing and torture.  I also think how much atrocity is still being committed right now in places on this planet.  The holocaust was terrible and should never be forgotten, but what about all the suffering in Rwanda, for example.  Would we stop another holocaust if we saw it happening?  I guess not.  What the hell are our leaders doing?  Making laws that help corporations get richer - including sometimes from the very wars and conflicts that cause the suffering.  They are not doing what is best for our people or any people.

I am glad I gave Riga a chance.  It is still way down on the list of places i would live, but I am glad I visited.

Riga - it doesn't suck as much as I thought

So I have a full day here.  Not feeling very motivated I waste a lot of the morning and finally I decide I should do something.  I see that one of the attractions is the Riga Auto Museum.  I like cars and also it is way outside of the city center so I will get to see another side of the place.  This proves to be a very good decision.  After figuring out the bus routes and the mysterious ticket buying procedure, I head out to the museum.  After a long wait for the bus (damn it, I would choose a weekend, busses don't run as often) I hop on and the bus ride itself is almost worth the trip.  It's nothing special, but I get a long slow tour of the real Riga.  I pass the outskirts of town and see what that looks like and then hit the suburbs.  The suburbs have that same soviet era look that apartment blocks in Russia have.  You just need to see it, but it proves that strict utilitarianism mixed with poor maintenance can be really soul crushing.  Still I feel that I get to see a bit more about what life is like here.  At least on a weekend.

I get to my stop, get off the bus and look around.  I can't see the museum, so walk around a bit. I must be close because I can tell I am on the outside of a racetrack of some kind and I can hear something - motorcycles? - racing around at high speed, but I can't see in at any point so I decide to just go to the museum.  I walk around and I can't find the museum, so I walk into a place that i think is a cafe or something attached to the racetrack but it turns out to be a little indoor go cart type race track where you can pay to drive around the little track.  I am tempted, but it's way outside my budget (as if budget had any thing to do with this trip) so I just ask for directions.  Turns out I got off the bus one stop too early and I have to walk about 500m up the road.  I find the museum and it's actually really cool.  There are not nearly as many cars as the one I went to in Blackhawk, CA, but there sure are some interesting ones.  Here are some pictures and some comments (if you don't like cars, skip the rest of this post):

Early subcompact car.  Here in europe they have smaller cars and they multipurpose the engines for more things.  for example, the engine in this car was taken from this:

Ok. I made that up, but I swear to god the sewing machine was in the auto museum.

Here's some more pics:

really early motorcycle

BMW with the characteristic sideways cylinders to reduce kidney punishment

Russian 'chaika"

Also, here's where the russian superman changes:

Tallinn to Riga, Latvia. Riga sucks

Tallinn to Riga. Bad day.  Started ok as I woke up in plenty of time, had a nice breakfast and walked out of the old city of Tallinn to the tram stop to catch the tram to the bus station.  At the tram stop I realized i forgot my phone - which I am using as an e-reader while I travel.  I had to run back to the hostel to get it.  Well whatever you call it when you kind of rumble along as fast as you can with your backpack.  Anyway, I managed to get to the bus as it was finishing boarding, hot and sweaty and stressed instead of relaxed and fresh.  Oh well.  The bus ride to Riga was pleasant and relaxing.

Arrived in Riga, Hate it almost from the start.  Something in the air.  Then I change money at the bus station and they have a good rate and no commission.  Maybe Riga is looking up.  Get to the hOstel to find that I've lost the money I've just changed.  My fault.  I put it in the pocket with the directions to the place I was staying instead of where I usually put money where it will be safe.  I'm sure the money just came out and dropped one of the many times I checked the directions.  Not a giant tragedy, it was only about $40/€32. Still I manage to blame the loss on Riga so I hate it even more.  Check into my hostel, settle in and walk out to explore.  Like Tallinn, the tourist industry is centered about an "Old Town"  which is partially a neat cobblestoned are full of old buildings and interesting architecture and partially a crazy bar party area.  I sat down at one place where a nice sounding band was playing and actually ordered a beer.  The beer was bitter and the band stopped playing 2 sips in.  I walked towards the river and I saw this graffiti on the wall in a side street I was passing:

And it got me to thinking.  I mean the basic sentiment can be found almost anywhere.  It's a byproduct of the fact the people with any kind of power typically abuse that power in such a way as to cause serious resentment at the very least.  While I have never heard the sentiment expressed with the leading adjective "curb" before it could just be local or something new or I could just be out of touch; and besides, it clearly was just there for emphasis.  Then I got to thinking about the etymology and history of the word "fuck".  I was taught that it was an ancient word for intercourse at use at one point in the british isles and then when one conqueror or another was waltzing through england they outlawed the language and so the word became a swear word.  The internet does not support that exact story but it also does not know the exact origins except that it pretty much agrees that sexual intercourse is among the main meanings.  Then it struck me what a weird social/psychological phenomenon it is that we use a word meaning sexual intercourse as a swear word.  I'll skip over all the problems it probably causes as far as people's confusing motives and feelings around sex in general.  Just think how silly it sounds to substitute the meanings (even given that fuck is often used as a verb and intercourse is not):  "Go have sexual intercourse with yourself", "Sexual intercourse you", "there's no sexual intercoursing way" etc.

Anyway, the graffiti didn't help me like Riga any more.  I got to the river and watched the sun go down over a pretty bridge and that helped a little.

A Day in Estonia

So today I walked around Tallinn all day. I had breakfast in a place recommended in my Hostel.  Not bad.  Then I walked around an older part of town.  I saw some old battleships, a prison (more on this later) and many soviet era buildings.  It was a real contrast to the newer section of town I saw on the way from the bus stop, in the a modern clean section of town, to where I am staying in the Old Town, which is touristy and historical.  I also walked through the "Russian Market," a weird flea market type place with lots of cheap used clothes and many shops with all sorts of old soviet era stuff from suitcases to pins to military jackets and much much more.  Mostly junk, but some neat stuff.  Especially glassware and other items that might be useful today.  I would definitely shop there for fun once in a while if I lived here.

The upshot of the run down part of town and the russian market was to remind me of this thought I've been having about when governments fail their people.  I plan on posting it sometime in the near future.

So the prison.  Of course I wandered in from a strange direction and ended up in a small alley that dead ended on the wrong side of the prison with no way to get to the entrance.  There I saw a small shrine that said in French and Estonian (ok I assume it was Estonian) something like 'in may 1944, 868 people were deported from this place.  in august only 22 of them were still alive.'  It was a beautiful sunny peaceful day but for a moment I felt a dark shadow from the past reminding me of all the atrocity that we are capable of and have committed and probably will commit in the future as we seem not to be able to learn the lessons we need to respect everyone and give them a chance.  Sorry that seems almost cliched from someone like me, but it's good to be reminded of these things from time to time.

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In reference to my last post, sure enough, Tonya didn't like her picture so I wanted to make it up to her by posting a good picture (to me, that means one without me in it).  Also she didn't like my joke about not knowing what a gulag was.  So to avoid her actually sending me there, I would like to tell all the world that
a) Tonya knows what a gulag is and
b) If you don't hear from me for a while, someone please contact Tonya and ask her what gulag she sent me to and try to get me out.

St. Petersburg - Tallinn - Helsinki - Tallinn

So I left St. Petersburg on tuesday May 22.  Mostly because my visa expired and I didn't want to be thrown in the gulag.  I said that to Tonya (who I was staying with) and she didn't know what I was talking about.  I am still unclear if that's because she didn't know about it, that's not what it was called, or it never existed.  Here's me and Tonya in St. Petersburg:

We both hate this picture.

I took the bus to Tallinn, Estonia.  The only thing I knew about Estonia is that I had a friend in high school whose whole family was absurdly proud of being Estonian.

The border was this ridiculous exercise in getting off the bus.  Gathering your luggage.  Going through Russian border control.  Getting back on the bus.  Driving 500 meters.  Getting off the bus.  Gathering luggage.  Going through Estonian border control.  Back on the bus.  A day later I went from Estonia to Finland to Estonia and nobody even asked to see my passport (they barely asked to see my ticket).  I am starting to feel that all this border control is just to make small officials feel important.  I am pretty sure any real border violations (which would be what? smuggling?) do not happen on the bus line.

Anyway it is such a difference between Russia and Estonia.  Estonia is almost western europe.  Clean and modern.  Russia has just not been well maintained and it looks shoddy and old.  I have a lot of thoughts about this, having experienced it elsewhere in the world.  I hope to share them in a later post.

Then I went to Finland for the day to visit a good friend.  As always, I am so impressed with how clean and well ordered Helsinki is.

Sorry my thoughts are so scattered.

Here's pics of the ferry ride and my friend in Finland.

Speaking of Ferries and Minna, we actually met on a ferry from Haifa, Israel to Cyprus (her) and then Greece (me).  We sailed away the day the shooting started at the Dome of the Rock in 2000 that ended the uneasy peace that had allowed me to travel from Egypt to Jordan and then Israel in the days before. Good timing.

If this blog doesn't get more interesting soon, (and better written) I will be very disappointed in the author.

Starting in the middle

Hello.  Welcome to my travel blog.  It's a little about my travels and mostly about my thoughts that I have while traveling - because you can find out more about the places I am going with a simple internet search than I could type in days and days.

In the old days I maintained an email list (ha that was the old days) and I would send mail to people.  This trip I tried to just post on facebook, but not everybody has facebook (gasp) and it doesn't really allow for  deeper thoughts to be shared (that character limit thing).

So time to try a travel blog.  We'll see how it goes.  If you know me, you know I already have taken a summer trip through Europe and then a year long excursion around the world - mostly designed to keep me in summer weather for an entire year. Essentially you are coming in on the middle of my travels.

I am currently in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Sitting in the soon to be kitchen of my host here (she is fixing up her new flat (that's an apartment, americans) and the kitchen has no appliances except a refrigerator and a 1 burner plug in portable stove which doesn't turn off and needs to be unplugged when not in use. She also has a microwave and we have been able to do fine as far as food preparation.  We do have to clean up in the bathroom as facebook friends will know.  Here's the kitchen for you visually oriented people.

Here is a picture from the opposite angle:

Here's the bathroom picture:

Anyway, i will be here another week and then I will leave for Helsinki finland to basically have dinner with another friend before I hop the baltic on a ferry to Tallinn, Estonia.  Then I will wander down through Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland to Germany where I will stay in a friends house and use that as a base for some European excursions.

I will try to post here enough to make it interesting.  I will try to be interesting enough to be worth reading.  If not, well, it's your time after all ;)