Talinn, Estonia, and Riga, Latvia

30 September 2000

I just got back from a trip to Estonia and Latvia with Liz, Nancy, and Steve, three friends of mine. On the way there we chilled on the train and had some cheese and bread and wine and honey and apples. We watched the sun set over a lake in one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. The sky formed a perfect rainbow, glowing red, orange, yellow, and green from the bottom and fading into a deep blue and purple at the top, and the whole thing was reflected perfectly in a huge still lake that we passed for more than a minute.

After we had talked for a while, we went to bed in our four-person compartment. There were customs and document checks at the border, which we happened to reach around 4:00 a.m. They woke us in the most cruel Communist manner imaginable: they turned on all the lights and pumped into our cabin the entire ABBA Gold album at a very loud volume for the entire time they were doing checks. And the checks were ridiculous. One guy came in, inspected our documents, looked through our baggage, and left. OK, fine, back to sleep, even if the lights are bright and Dancing Queen is on full blast. Then another guy came and checked our documents again. Then another guy came and checked our baggage again, including the stuff under the beds which necessitated us bottom-bunk people getting out of bed entirely. Then someone came, opened the door, looked at all of us, looked around the cabin, and then left. Then another document and luggage check to the tune of Take and Chance on Me. This went on for an hour and a half. And you never really knew who was legit and who was not, the uniforms wouldn’t be that hard to forge, but it wasn’t like we could defy anyone. After the checks were finally over, we went through a little no-man’s-land and hit the Estonian border, but their checks were relatively quick and painless.

We got to the medieval Old Town part of Tallinn the next morning, and it was very charming. We walked along little winding cobblestone streets past churches and castles and towers and shops and cafes. Our hostel was on the third floor of a little building in Old Town, and on the floor above our hostel was an Erootika Baar (I’m sure even your Estonian is good enough to translate that).

We spent the day wandering around Old Town, climbing the highest point in Estonia (a 300 ft. hill) and looking over the town, visiting cathedrals, and walking through parks full of lovely trees in the delicate shades of early autumn. I hadn’t realized until then how much I missed the colors of fall after two years in the perpetual spring of California. It was all very charming and magical.

People coming from Scandinavia (Helsinki is only a couple of hours away by boat) generally look at Tallinn and said, “Oh, look at the signs of Russia here, there are a few orthodox cathedrals and some butt-ugly apartment buildings here and there.” But coming from Russia, we were like, oh my god! A luxurious western city with free toilets that have seats and paper and scented soap, restaurants that serve fresh food not slathered with maslo and smetana (butter and oil and cream), cafes with coffee that didn’t taste like barley mixed with dirt, and a general feeling of lightness and relaxation that just does not exist in Moscow. As Liz once said, “All relaxing in Moscow is done with a bit of aggression and a lot of alcohol, it seems.”

Even the towers and stone walls seemed inviting and friendly. There were many narrow cobblestone streets wedged between buildings that seemed to lead to nowhere, and at the end of some of them were archways that led to whole other sections of town. We spent a decent amount of time walking around in circles, but we never minded. One little castle had a McDonald’s sign right in front of it, so it looks like the King of McDonalds or Mayor McCheese must live there.

We had dinner in a Thai food place in Old Town. They gave us large crystal-blue goblets for our cold water, and we talked and drank in the cozy, classy atmosphere. Once Nancy went to the bathroom and came back with a look of revelation on her face. She said, “You have to try the bathrooms here.” I did, and not only was the room huge, not only was it decorated in tasteful blue ceramic, not only was it free, not only did they have toilet paper… they had scented soap and steamed washcloths. I thought, this must be what the bathrooms are like in heaven.

That night we went to a coffee house in the basement of the medieval grey stone town hall (which had a clock tower and drainage pipes that look like papier-mache dragons somebody made in kindergarten), and we don’t know what it was called, but it had 42 types of teas, so we called it 42 Teas. The waiters were really cute, and the atmosphere was like a relaxing twilight with candles reflecting off stone walls and the Brothers Herb playing songs to soothe the soul. It was like a cozy cave full of cute guys, good conversation, soothing music, and excellent tea and cakes. We felt forever happy and at peace. All the senses were pleased and in balance, and the conversation was relaxed and interesting.

Talk turned to physics at one point, and they started asking me questions they’d always had about certain things, and I explained as best I could. That is what I like about physics, the words and images and symmetries, things everyone can understand about their world without resorting to a bunch of nasty math. I started getting excited about it again a little. And it’s nice to know my major is at least good for parties. Ha ha.

The next day we had pretty much run out of Old Town Tallinn, and we weren't sure what to do in the time we had left. We first went to meet up with six friends who were doing a Scandinavia tour and would be in Tallinn that morning, but they never showed up at our café. I suggested we take a bus tour so we could see parts of the modern city. As we were on our way to do that, we happened to run into our six friends at another café (they apparently couldn’t find the right one, or maybe we were at the wrong one), and they joined us.

Our tour guide was a riot. She was a sixtyish Estonian woman who spoke perfect English, and she had a distaste for Russians that she did not try to mask. More of a hatred, actually. But imagine how you would feel if your entire country had been swallowed by a Communist megapower and made poor after it had been one of the wealthiest countries in Northern Europe. Imagine your culture being suppressed, your economy destroyed, your religion suppressed for your entire life and then when you’re sixty, you’re finally free to do what you want. What can you do? It would be like if Arkansas took over Oklahoma and made us use bad grammar and marry our cousins for fifty years.

It was a tragedy for the country, and I am amazed at how quickly they have resurrected their culture and economy. They are still far below pre-Communism standards, and something like 50% of Estonians are still below the poverty level, but they are growing very quickly.

She showed us around the town, pointing out the ugliest apartment buildings and making sure we knew they were Russian. We drove by some parks and the Baltic beach where swans were bobbing up and down on the waves. She told us the swans left during Communism, but they just now came back, she guessed because they didn’t need visas anymore. She pointed to another park and said, “There are a lot of squirrels and deer there, but not so many squirrels as before the Russians came.” She also said to us once, and I quote, “And I know the Russians aren’t so bad as people. Most of them would give you the last scrap of bread from their plates. But then... then something clicks in their mind, and they stab you just like that.” She made a stabbing motion with her hand. OK, so I can understand the Commies stealing all the swans and squirrels, but...

After that we walked around the Old Town with her and she told a few more stories, and then her time was up and she left. We had been so enchanted by our brief views of the beach that we decided to find our way back there. We took a tramway to it and walked along the beach on the fine, cool white sand, and I found a big green bottle and filled it with sand then let it all run out again. Liz and I found a little boy and his big brother playing soccer, and we joined them for a while. The sun set over the sea much like an Oklahoma sunset, with red and orange and yellow at the bottom fading to blue at the top. The setting was timeless and relaxing. I felt like a kid, and all my worries slipped my mind.

We had to catch an all-night bus to Riga that night. It left at 11:00 p.m. and got into Riga at 5:40 a.m. the next morning. It sucked. Two kids cried all night, and another kid was right behind me in his mother’s lap so I could barely lean back, and when I did I still felt bad. I got almost no sleep. There was also no bathroom on the bus, so when we stopped I had to get out and go behind a trash can in a secluded place. I woke up with a neck cramp, a headache, and a bad feeling in my stomach.

We got to Riga before sunrise and wandered blearily around, and the first impression I had was of using the toilet there, which was once again nasty, seatless, and paperless, and cost 30 cents to use. Latvia was a little more Russified than Estonia, which meant bad service and bad pay toilets. Oh well. We soon found the hostel recommended to us by an American woman we had met in Tallinn who was travelling around for a few months by herself. It was seven bucks a night and had a warm shower and decent beds. We felt miserably weary, so we all took naps, but I slept longer than the others because I had a headache and a queasy stomach. By dinnertime I felt good enough to stand up and walk, and we walked around looking for a nice cheap restaurant. We found one with a piano player and a sign that advertised daily specials for about $3, which sounded great to us.

The place had easily the worst service of any place I have ever been. I ordered avocado soup and mashed potatoes and water and tea, easy on the stomach. He said I was not allowed to order potatoes if I didn’t get an entree, so I had Liz order them with hers. So yeah, even if entrees were $3 (which they weren’t) sides were extra. We also ordered a sauteed mushroom appetizer, and after 20 minutes they brought out this awful raw mushroom and onion salad slathered with mayonnaise, and we returned it in horror. They said they were out of sauteed mushrooms. So we said nevermind.

After another 40 minutes, they brought out Nancy’s stuffed chicken in rich mushroom sauce--without any mushroom sauce. Then they came out with Liz’s fried halibut with cream sauce--which had no cream sauce, and was baked into some kind of bread dish at the bottom of a pan, not remotely fried, and probably not halibut. At least my mashed potatoes were good.

When they finally brought my tea out, I took A sip and almost spit it back out again. It tasted like a hot tub. They also kept bringing us stuff we didn’t order in the hopes that we’d decide to pay for it. At the end we went over the bill with a fine-toothed comb and found that they charged about $3 EACH for our bottled water, and the piano playing service was also on the bill.

We wandered around some more and found a deli that apparently had a Holland theme, and it also had bad pastries. It was harshly lit and atmosphereless, and the coffee was terrible. We were definitely back in Communist Land. As we were leaving, I said in a voice like the comic book shop guy from the Simpsons, “Worst cafe ever.”

That night we split a small bottle of Black Magic Balsam, Latvia’s national liquor, which amounted to about a shot each. It's 90 proof, said to have curative powers, and made with all kinds of weird things like wormwood and eye of newt. It’s a sickly brown color and good for clearing out the sinuses. We talked and told stories until we passed out.

The next day we walked around the parks and boulevards of Riga and went up in the tall tower, which cost one Latvian Lat. I asked how much it cost for students, and someone said, “A Lat,” and I said, “Oh no, how much?” Ha ha.

The tower revealed the worst city planning imaginable, but it was amazing to see. Narrow streets and convoluted buildings and irregular courtyards--if I could use one word to describe it, it would be “fire hazard.” But I guess that’s a pretty American attitude.

Then we went to the Occupation Museum and saw pictures and articles and exhibits about what Nazi Germany and Communist Russia did to Latvia. It was pretty sad.

Then we raced to catch the train at 3:00 pm, rode it all night to get to Moscow at 9:30 a.m., and got to class by 10:30. We didn’t miss much, and the trip was pretty cheap. None of us felt like going back to classes and metros and bad coffee and smetana after such a relaxing trip. But soon we were appreciating the charms of Moscow as much as ever.

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