When reading this text please keep in mind that it is written after more than a month after the actual experience of this leg, so some details might have gone hazy and some interpretations a bit subjective.
I order too bring a whiff of “freshness” to it I will reproduce unedited a short note I made when still in Vilnius and then come back on it from the perspective the time interval and further experiences have opened to me.
“Vilnius does not crack it for me. Rather small and unimpressive wooden houses most of them in bad shape, roads mostly rotten with every pale of wind bringing up dust clouds belonging more to prairie ghost towns, covering in it’s eye irritating haze people more preoccupied by their new Merks, Beemers or Lexus-es, than the way the place they live in looks and feels like. This has always been an accurate telltale sign for me: the bigger the discrepancy between the apparent and most often ostentatious signs of wealth people give away and the care they show for the aspect and feel of their surrounding habitat (urban or rural alike), the more that community can be considered “primitive” and still far from an understanding of what the concept of “quality of life” really means.” This is what I was writing with a bitter feeling one late evening in a pub in Vilnius. Bitter because I was recognizing here the same plague haunting my home country as well, the rudimentary need of people that have been until recently poor to confirm and express their new found wealth more by “flashing gold” than by improving their general living conditions, starting with how clean their streets and houses are and ending with care for their elders and underprivileged.
Well, as it turned out to be, the very next experience taught me (again) the lesson not to express harsh judgments. I was doing Vilnius wrong in appreciating it like this, at least before having made the experience of Riga.
The economic and cultural capital of the former Baltic region, the capital of today’s Latvia greets the inquisitive traveler with plenty of signs of it’s former economic stature in the area. More ample and stylish buildings and a lingering air of high middle-class well being set it higher on the scale of patrimonial heritage than Vilnius. Unfortunately the positive difference ends here. All what I noticed rather primitive in people’s mentalities in Vilnius were to be found double folded in Riga. Even more numerous luxurious cars complemented by almost always empty would-be classy and expensive shops offering top international brands more often found on the high streets of posh European capitals, projected on the same backdrop of a rather derelict city. To me at least it screamed (Russian) mob money laundering paradise. By looking at local old people (this time not the ubiquitous east European gypsies) begging at street corners, by noticing what people generally bought in supermarkets and by stumbling on the crooked cobblestones of the pavements, it was obvious that the flagrant signs of immediate (and probably undeserved) wealth of some, was just monkey show-off. Not to mention that it seemed that even less people bother to gather a minimum of English vocabulary as to let them have the most basic interaction with the visitor from abroad. So compared to this, Vilnius with it’s endearing remnants of a free zone in the heart of the city, populated by artist and people of free spirit and conducted by rules originating on the principles of tolerance and love of the hippy epoch, deserves an apology from me.
Fortunately in the double-edged story of the former soviet Baltic states there is Estonia and Tallinn. The healthy influence of Finnish breath and a small but well chiseled population make all the difference. The place is clean and welcoming, people in the street even if not fluent willingly try to converse with the foreigner and spontaneously convey a sense of civility and courtesy absent in the first two other capitals mentioned before, making for an overall positive immediate experience. Visiting the old area of the city does noting else but enforce the good impression by it’s well preserved and actively restaurated architectural heritage and by the relaxed and even friendly atmosphere in the streets and places of congress (public piazzas, pubs, etc.)
So with a “one in three attempts” good experience under my fading Anaqee tires across the Baltic states, it was time for me to face the approaching midnight sun and take the ferry to Helsinki. And I did so being happy that Tallinn was the last of them allowing me so to leave with a light and smiling heart.
I order too bring a whiff of “freshness” to it I will reproduce unedited a short note I made when still in Vilnius and then come back on it from the perspective the time interval and further experiences have opened to me.
“Vilnius does not crack it for me. Rather small and unimpressive wooden houses most of them in bad shape, roads mostly rotten with every pale of wind bringing up dust clouds belonging more to prairie ghost towns, covering in it’s eye irritating haze people more preoccupied by their new Merks, Beemers or Lexus-es, than the way the place they live in looks and feels like. This has always been an accurate telltale sign for me: the bigger the discrepancy between the apparent and most often ostentatious signs of wealth people give away and the care they show for the aspect and feel of their surrounding habitat (urban or rural alike), the more that community can be considered “primitive” and still far from an understanding of what the concept of “quality of life” really means.” This is what I was writing with a bitter feeling one late evening in a pub in Vilnius. Bitter because I was recognizing here the same plague haunting my home country as well, the rudimentary need of people that have been until recently poor to confirm and express their new found wealth more by “flashing gold” than by improving their general living conditions, starting with how clean their streets and houses are and ending with care for their elders and underprivileged.
Well, as it turned out to be, the very next experience taught me (again) the lesson not to express harsh judgments. I was doing Vilnius wrong in appreciating it like this, at least before having made the experience of Riga.
The economic and cultural capital of the former Baltic region, the capital of today’s Latvia greets the inquisitive traveler with plenty of signs of it’s former economic stature in the area. More ample and stylish buildings and a lingering air of high middle-class well being set it higher on the scale of patrimonial heritage than Vilnius. Unfortunately the positive difference ends here. All what I noticed rather primitive in people’s mentalities in Vilnius were to be found double folded in Riga. Even more numerous luxurious cars complemented by almost always empty would-be classy and expensive shops offering top international brands more often found on the high streets of posh European capitals, projected on the same backdrop of a rather derelict city. To me at least it screamed (Russian) mob money laundering paradise. By looking at local old people (this time not the ubiquitous east European gypsies) begging at street corners, by noticing what people generally bought in supermarkets and by stumbling on the crooked cobblestones of the pavements, it was obvious that the flagrant signs of immediate (and probably undeserved) wealth of some, was just monkey show-off. Not to mention that it seemed that even less people bother to gather a minimum of English vocabulary as to let them have the most basic interaction with the visitor from abroad. So compared to this, Vilnius with it’s endearing remnants of a free zone in the heart of the city, populated by artist and people of free spirit and conducted by rules originating on the principles of tolerance and love of the hippy epoch, deserves an apology from me.
Fortunately in the double-edged story of the former soviet Baltic states there is Estonia and Tallinn. The healthy influence of Finnish breath and a small but well chiseled population make all the difference. The place is clean and welcoming, people in the street even if not fluent willingly try to converse with the foreigner and spontaneously convey a sense of civility and courtesy absent in the first two other capitals mentioned before, making for an overall positive immediate experience. Visiting the old area of the city does noting else but enforce the good impression by it’s well preserved and actively restaurated architectural heritage and by the relaxed and even friendly atmosphere in the streets and places of congress (public piazzas, pubs, etc.)
So with a “one in three attempts” good experience under my fading Anaqee tires across the Baltic states, it was time for me to face the approaching midnight sun and take the ferry to Helsinki. And I did so being happy that Tallinn was the last of them allowing me so to leave with a light and smiling heart.
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