Gertie in Eastern Europe
 

Well, here we are as threatened. I'll start this and see how I go. If you suddenly stop hearing anything it's because I've got tired of the sound of my own voice, found something more interesting to do or gone over the edge.

Easyjet was easy; easier than getting to STN on a Sunday morning. I got myself ensconced in a little apartment in the Old Town steps away from all the action, in a medieval cobbled courtyard full of arty-farty workshops and craft shops. So far so good. Found a supermarket for essentials like tea and red wine, smelly blue cheese and fresh bread. A good start.

But it's COLD, around 10C, not like 30C when I left TX or even 15C in London. (Some Aussies I got tangled up with on the airport bus said they had had 2C in Bath with sideways sleet last week). None of that here: bright and sunny and clear Baltic light, eggshell blue sky, pastel coloured houses, a very pretty city. By 2pm I decided it was warm enough to risk having lunch outside in the sun, but most tourists seem to have been eating and drinking al fresco all day....

Have spent the day tramping around with my trusty Lonely Planet, climbing on bits of the city wall, admiring the bright green trees and early spring flowers, goggling at the Baltic to the north and avoiding large groups of day-trippers from the cruise ships. But Monday the museums are closed: this I found out when some cruisers stopped me and asked why the museums were closed. I must look like a local....? Plenty of churches open though and towers to climb for views. And an organ recital to listen to this evening in a wood-panelled Lutheran church built originally around 1350.

I think there is a lot more to this city, but much of it is Soviet era construction which I can pass on. I gather the Old Town has been tarted up only since 1990. Some of the old pictures are grey and miserable. But they have done a great job in the past 22 years and it's well worth seeing. People have been wonderful, a bus driver even stopped his bus and got out with me to show me the way. Can you imagine that in London? And they all speak English! There is a lot of Russian around though, not only in the architecture and the Orthodox churches, but also in the signs and voices in the street. Outside the Old Town it's all straight wide avenues going on forever like St P along the coast. And of course the old KGB headquarters makes you realise how under the thumb they were.

TBC....

TALLINN

Great report so far. Interesting. i hope you continue.

I assume your first report is on Tallinn, right? My husband was there in the 1970's and loved it. Still raves about it and wants to go back.
And yes, I hope you continue with your report. I'm very much interested in this part of Europe.

Please continue!

Do continue! Just put cotton in your ears to block the sound of your own voice. :) I, too, am interested in this part of Europe!

lol - i wondered if this was some sort of quiz - first person to guess the city gets a prize.

keep going - i want to be able to guess where you go next!

What a great idea! I hadn't intended it as a guessing game, just forgot to preface it with a title!
So in the same spirit, here's the next chunk:

The bus trip along the Baltic was uneventful, smooth, wide roads, no traffic, arrived early. Slight hiccup in that my expensive fancy bus costing a fortune didn't materialise, was replaced by the boneshaker variety and I got a refund but....

Quite an amazing place this. First off is the variety of buildings: the city seems to have been decimated so many times that there is always new stuff going up. As of now much of it is under reconstruction after the Soviet onslaught. And right in the centre are the most beautiful bright green parks. Miles of them. There are spires of every shape and size, domes, towers, steeples, grey monstrosities reflecting Catholics, Lutherans, Nasty Nazis and Catastrophic Communists. The luck of the geographical draw eh?

Cobbled streets, trams and trolley buses, pretty pastel coloured houses, Art Nouveau everywhere. Apparently the most in Europe...got a crick in my neck from constantly looking up. Language-wise, it all sounds like Russian, and I wonder what Latvian sounds like. I think I have sussed the national genetics though: the Latvians are finer featured than the Russians. Most places seem to speak 3 languages effortlessly. Thank goodness one of them is English. Very noticeable though is the generational divide: employees in ticket offices in public buildings tend to be the same Grumpy Old Women I met 40 years ago in Eastern Europe. They snapped and barked at me with ne'er a smile and probably would've sent me to the gulag without a second thought. Note to self: interact with young people if possible; not only do they speak English, they also grew up after customer service had been invented.

Have spent the day walking myself to a standstill all over the city. Done churches, museums, parks, acres of market, Stalin's Wedding Cake (every Eastern European city has one), the occasional coffee shop and restaurant for respite, and lastly the very touching history of the Jews of Latvia. Now it's pouring down and although I have a brolly, have come back to my sweet hotel for a cuppa and a rest.

TBC...

Did you get it?
RIGA

I thought so!

Looking forward to (Vilnius?) next part.

I enjoy your breezy writing style and your choice of details.

You make these cities sound so interesting! Now I have more places to visit on my list.

Can you provide some details as to the places you stayed, prices, restaurants, etc.?

So it's 50 degrees F. in May. Is that the afternoon temp? Hopefully not.

I have a breezy writing style? :)

Places I stayed:
I'm a budget traveller. This trip I'm alone so usually I pay for 2. In Tallinn I used Lonely Planet and stayed in Villa Hortensia. 40 euros per night, nice little apartment with cooking facilities. Right in the Old Town.
Prices in Tallinn were European average, not cheap at all. They use the euro so that was easy.
Public transport is very cheap: 1.60E on the tram, about 6E for the bus to Riga (4.5 hours).
Temperatures were cool. This is a long way north. 10C midday but warmer in the sunshine, cooler in the Baltic breeze. Very long days, still light at 11pm, never really got dark.
Riga: staying in Hotel Edvards. 48E per night. Very central, lovely people. Family-run.
Rain here but warmer than Tallinn. Stormy weather forecast for tomorrow! Likewise long days and light nights. We're almost at White Nights if we were in StP.
Currency is the LAT, 2$=1LAT, So easy to pay over the odds. They don't take other currencies but will accept credit cards.
Restaurants are not cheap at all, US prices or more. Probably much cheaper out of the tourist zone and if you can speak the language which I'm not and I can't.

mmm - don't think I'd have got Riga - i'm a bit hazy on baltic states. we looked at going there, but sadly no local flights and we didn't fancy schlepping up to london just for a long weekend.

nice to see how you are linking them all together.

Thanks for the details!

I predict Lietuva next.

You are all correct and all shall have prizes.

I'm here! This is what this trip was all about. All the other places are just add-ons. Trying to imagine the scenes here in 1812 as the Grande Armee staggered back from Moscow. Lots of back streets and hidden little courtyards, unrestored 18th century churches and what in England would be Georgian streets, make it surprisingly possible. Wonderful to see Where History Happened.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient..._army_01.shtml
http://www.balticsworldwide.com/the-napoleon-graves/



Bus trip here was smooth and comfortable; expensive Lux Express with such delights as coffee, telly, reclining seats. Very testosterone-full, looked like a lot of working blokes. The 2 opposite me consumed 4 large beers and a bottle of vodka en route. I enjoyed the fumes. The road was long and straight, the countryside flat as a pancake. Nothing to stop armies from Berlin and Moscow walking straight in.

This is a stunning baroque city. I am completely blown away. It's not what I expected at all. Masses of churches, curlicues, gilded spires, pink and golden facades, cobblestones, twisty alleyways. There are several large empty spaces in the middle, overgrown with grass, little parks or car parks, where the Jewish ghetto was before the Nazis carted the people off and the Soviets knocked the buildings down. The enigma of absence eh? Man's inhumanity to man always amazes me.

It's chilly, though yesterday's rain has stopped and sunshine makes all the difference. Was out and about at 8am (6C, brrr) to avoid the tour groups and it was definitely parky. Walked all over town for 4 hours. Big market just outside the Old Town with a row of babushkas selling produce probably grown on their private plots. Old habits die hard. I didn't dare approach them after my experience in Riga. Coffee shops and restaurants are staffed by young English-speaking people who were probably my waiters and waitresses in London last year. Some museums and churches have info in Lithuanian, Russian and Polish so I am even more linguistically challenged. There is music everywhere, street players, organ recitals and fantastic choral stuff in the spectacular Russian Orthodox church. The University is a tangle of 'hidden courtyards' with a precipitous bell tower and views to die for.

You have all probably all faded out by now. Enough to say that this is due a longer visit. Luckily (or not?) Ryanair flies from STN.

TBC...

Domus Maria Guest House is 48E a night. It's in a converted (!) convent and is a bit monastic, chilly and austere for me...no surprises there. But it gets good reviews. Prices in town are not cheap, same as for Riga. You pay in Lithuanian Litas or by credit card.

Sorry, done it again.
This was VINIUS

VILNIUS even.

I loved the Edvard, glad someone else is staying there! I also loved Riga, but then Art Nouveau is my favorite period. Looking forward to more.

Great report. Yes, you do have a breezy writing style. I have a hard time reading most trip reports, but yours is a jewel.

Go to the Vilnius Picture Gallery. There is a painting there of Napoleon's Grande Armée in front of the Town Hall in the winter of 1812. The Town Hall looks the same today.

If you have an interest in the fate of The Jewish community in Vilnius, take yourself to the Genocide Museum and marvel at how it is represented.

What countries are Riga and Lietuva in?
Enjoying your report.

"I enjoyed the fumes." Love that quote, gertie. This is the kind of report I most enjoy, light and breezy. More, please.

Thanks for your kind replies. :)

Riga is in Latvia.
Lietuva is the Lithuanian name for Lithuania.

Tragically I missed the picture gallery in Vilnius and although I paced the streets looking for signs of the Jewish community, I didn't see the museum. Shame on me. But thanks for the info, will be there for sure next time....have already seen that Ryanair and more pleasantly Wizz Air fly there.

There is more coming. I was on my feet for most of 12 hours yesterday and although I don't write with my feet, my fingers seem to have come out in sympathy.

We're waiting.....

:)
What a joy the bus was, even though it was 8 hours and I had been apprehensive. 6 euros well spent. We drove along straight straight roads through bright green countryside which must stretch for hundreds of miles in all directions. Very little sign of human habitation, this bit of Europe is quite empty. I have definitely left the Baltic behind and arrived in central Europe.

Too many things to do here and not enough time. Yesterday I spent a Sunday watching Varsovians enjoying their city, walking their dogs and families, eating and drinking and filling the Old Town with colour and style. The street cafes were packed and the streets full of wandering minstrels. Most people seemed to be under 40, i.e. not even born last time I was here. It was their grandparents who scowled and growled at me back in the day. It was beautifully sunny, hot enough for even me to throw off my big sweater and woolly socks.

I was last here in 1972 when all was Soviet grey and the only word I heard was 'Nyet', and now I find this city totally unrecognisable. Last time there had been vast open spaces where the place had been smashed to smithereens, and now it has sprouted with new apartments, hotels and offices. One of the not-to-be-missed newish sights is the Uprising Museum. What an experience. I was there for hours. Because history is written by the winners and the last lot of winners only left in 1989 or so, the real story of the Warsaw Uprising had been obscured by the mists of Soviet propaganda. They have done a magnificent job in the museum. Nearby there are bits and pieces of the old Jewish Warsaw, very tiny bits and pieces because that too was decimated. A new Jewish museum opens next year.

The Old Town has been reconstructed from nothing in the last 60 years, one thing the Soviets got right. You would never know it's a reconstruction, though it does suffer from Disneyfication. I took a stroll across the river to the Praga district which is a real working-class district where real people live. Definitely the place to stay next time. It was hardly damaged in WW2 and parts of it look like the old East End, crumbling red brick which has seen better days, the shop windows still display the stuff they displayed 40 years ago, there are little courtyards behind the tenement buildings, each with its own shrine. We may be all Europeans now, but some animals are more European than others.

Finished the day with a concert by students of the Chopin Music University. Scenic young musicians playing 20th century French music. It seemed the right thing to do in the evening in Warsaw. As museums are closed on Mondays (why do I keep forgetting?), tomorrow I'll be having my fix of the Chopin museum before I get the train to.....

TBC

Krakow next?

Great report--please don't get tired of writing!

The train to Krakow was a joy: non-stop, I had a whole compartment to myself and could sing along to my IPOD without embarrassing myself or anyone else. 3 hours of comfort and luxury, even drinks and snacks to accompany the bucolic scenes out the window.

I was out and looking at the Old Town within minutes, what a beautiful place. So many churches, spires and towers, all kinds of activity in the market square and hundreds of groups of schoolkids rampaging around. And what a huge square…the largest in Europe allegedly. It has been a herculean task to bring half a continent out of the Dark Ages in the last 20 years, but the Poles have done a magnificent job and their two show cities are spectacular.

I spent the next day in Kazimierz, the Jewish neighbourhood which is becoming trendy, full of egdy bars and restaurants. Sinagogues on every corner, Israeli tour groups, a very interesting museum, a cemetery or two, bits of the ghetto wall, and a touching installation of chairs representing the furniture Jews had to get rid of. The Schindler factory, now a museum. No schoolkids.

I rattled around on the trams and clattered over the cobblestones, meandered through the parks and stuffed myself with ice-cream. Gawped at the ceiling in St Mary’s Basilica, listened to the trumpeter, had a posh coffee in the Wawel castle grounds but was put off the cathedral by the afore-mentioned groups of kids. I think every Polish schoolchild was there today.

Finally there was Auschwitz. I won’t say anything. Read Primo Levi.

So glad to hear about the revival of the Jewish quarter! When I visited in 2004 it seemed that it was being swaped by new apartment blocks, and the last remnant of Jewish identity would disappear.

About Auschwitz - it took me at least a week to recover.

gertie, we didn't get to Auschwitz - those chairs were enough for me. very haunting. {i think that it's a personal decision whether to go to a concentration camp, and I wouldn't dream of criticising those who go, i just can't face it myself].

we loved Krakov, but like you never got into the the Cathedral - it was too packed for us.

Another wonderful bus journey but this time over the Tatras mountains on windy roads, past ski resorts mothballed for summer, through spa towns, clipping the edge of Slovakia and into Budapest late evening. Amazingly enough a couple of Americans on my bus were staying in the same hotel and these were super-efficient people: had the route on the metro mapped out and even had little cards with everything written down. I was impressed; we got there in good order and in record quick time.

Spent the first day north of the city, in the Danube Bend area. This includes the old capital Estergom, Visegrad, and a tourist-infested town called Szentendre which had the usual pretty houses, cobbled streets and a large variety of churches. We had a guide who talked the whole time, my ears were ringing, impossible to take it all in. Lovely trip back for an hour by boat, the best bit of all was arriving in the city centre on the river in the golden evening light.

I was relieved to spend the next day all alone to rediscover Budapest. What a beautiful city it is and how much has changed since last time. The queues for the little funicular up Buda hill were so long that it was much quicker (and better for me) to walk. And once at the top it was a battle to get through the crowds and the tour buses. But a couple of streets over there was no-one there and I found a nice lunch spot overlooking the Parliament building on the river watching the little yellow trams rattle back and forth.

I had plans for the final day but the rain was pouring down: only the 3rd day of rain so far so mustn't grumble. It's a bank holiday here too so everything is closed. I have met up with the tour group who I'm travelling with all the way to Istanbul now. 14 of them, a real mixture of ages and nationalities but all English-speaking. I'm not good at group stuff, but this is an easy way to cover a lot of ground and I have already opted out of group activities. We leave on the overnight train for Sighisoara, Romania, at 10 tonight.

Yes, I was surprised by the big increase in tourism in Budapest. Sorry about the rain.

Good luck with the tour. Baaaa.

gertie - we went to Budapest a few years ago in the dead days between Christmas and New year, and though it was touristy, of course, but it was not swamped.

we liked it a lot; the hungarian cuisine is well suited to the winter and museums and galleries are well-heated with free garderobes. [the trick is to wear normal clothes with thick over-coats; then you don't get over-warm inside well-heated public buildings].

we did have some snow, but no rain, thank goodness.

Woke up in Transylvania. How cool is that? Wonderful Saxon villages which have been there since the 14th century complete with fortified churches to keep out the Ottomans. Lots of German speakers and interesting to observe the social hierarchy: Saxons, Romanians, Gypsies. There doesn’t seem to be much integration, a telling comment on present-day Romania. Brasov is split between the historic old city with colourful houses and pretty churches, and monstrous apartment complexes out in the suburbs. We had a couple of scenic castles on the agenda. Royal palaces in strategic locations which are now trading on the Dracula legend and full of unlikely Japanese tourists. In Sighisoara is the house he was allegedly born in.

Outside the towns the countryside is very impoverished, entirely agricultural with horses and carts; it looked especially miserable in the rain. And the occasional bit of left-over communist ironwork which in a few years might be a modern art installation. Of course you always see the worst part of town on the wrong side of the tracks from the train.

And finally to Bucharest. What a city in transition. It’s a complete building site as they try to remove the traces of megalomania from the communist era and restore the ‘Paris of the East’ of the 30s, or even drag it into the 21st century. Dust everywhere. You can see the various stages it has gone through, most notably the little Orthodox churches scattered about, often stranded in the middle of apartment complexes or hidden in courtyards, but getting going again now and full of worshippers. And as for the People’s Palace, what a white elephant, half empty, a warning to any future power-hungry politicians.

Sofia made me realize we were in the Balkans. There was cold wind coming straight off the snow-covered mountains running down the western edge. Reminded me a bit of Sarajevo. Lots of it seemed to be flattened for redevelopment which is waiting to happen. Most of the men look like Balkan gangsters and several of these were taxi-drivers which made for interesting experiences. We approached it through lush green countryside full of derelict houses where people had moved away for lack of jobs. Sofia is a hotchpotch of churches with domes gleaming in the sun, left-over Stalinist monuments and 19th century official buildings. Very few tourists unsurprisingly and very little English spoken.

We had spent several days off the beaten track in Bulgaria, away from most of the tour groups which was very refreshing. We travelled by local trains and buses first through Veliko Turnovo which is an old Ottoman town full of windy cobbled streets which is trying to reinvent itself as an arty-crafty centre. Then to Belogradchik which has spectacular rock formations, caves and a spectacular winery where we spent time tasting, drinking and leaving behind when we left the hotel! Finally to Plovdiv, an old Roman town which is in the process of being tarted up and has the most wonderful Coffee and Ice-Cream café I have ever found.

The last leg of our trip was a sleepless combination of train (probably the last remnants of the old Orient Express sans glamour) a lengthy process of getting Turkish visas at the border at 2am followed by a 4 hour bus journey into Sircecki station Istanbul by 6am just as the sun was rising over the Bosphorus. Took my breath away and certainly made up for all the discomfort.

Istanbul, one of my favourite cities on the planet. I lost my group and spent the next 4 hours bouncing around the Bosphorus on the early morning ferries with the first commuters, having cups of coffee and glasses of fresh orange juice on the quayside, walking across and across the bridge, up the funicular to Galata and on the little red tram to Taksim. Back down to the sea and on the tram all the way to Sultan Ahmet. By now the first bus-loads had arrived and there were already queues to get into the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome was full of tour groups and the business of selling everything to the tourists was in full swing. After a reviving fish sandwich under the Galata bridge I fought my way through both the Egyptian and the Grand Bazaars and found baklavas and chai in the back streets. So many compulsory food experiences here.

We had our last supper in the fish market at Karakoy and next morning everyone moved on to the next bit of their lives. I’m quite glad to have space to myself again, no more group dinners, group hugs, communal breakfasts or crocodile marches through town from various stations. Time to slow down again and please myself. I have to agree that these tours cover a lot of ground in a painless way and are a great way to see a lot of places. But just once in a while.

Journey’s end.

Gertie...Bravo..concise, colorful, informative..what more can we ask for? Happy Travels for a true traveler. Where to next?

Ditto to Bravo, Gertie. Thanks for sharing your sojourn.

Wonderful, Gertie! I have noted your report and itinerary for future travels.

Thanks for the report. Glad the trip worked out for you. I know that post-tour freedom feeling....