A Triple Play Into History

Given their history, it’s little wonder Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians often seem so sour. Bullied since the early 13th century by Germans, Swedes, Poles and Russians, they share a past--particularly their Soviet past--that’s a much-gnawed bitter root.

Of course, there have been Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians who didn’t forgo, especially in World War II, their opportunities to victimize--a thought that lurked in my mind throughout a fascinating eight-day July tour of the republics.

The three sit in a crescent on the east end of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe, between Russia and Poland. Since their release from the 1940-91 Soviet occupation, the Baltic states have been in revival. But they remain far from the tourist mainstream, which was enough of a reason for my friend Francine and me to visit them after stops in Finland and Russia.

Our Baltics tour, a group excursion found through the Internet, began in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. This city, long a center of Jewish learning, was once the “second Jerusalem” for Jews, but the itinerary included nothing about that. So Francine and I arranged for a guide and a driver to fill this void the afternoon before the organized tour began.

The guide, Rita Petrikiene, met us at the airport after we arrived from Moscow, and for nearly five hours led us through what was left of centuries of Hebraic culture--practically nothing.

Our guide’s commentary, amplified by exhibits at the temporary downtown Jewish Museum, was a eulogy: There once were 500 synagogues in Lithuania; now there are two. The Nazis, with local help, murdered most of Lithuania’s Jews. Only marble plaques recall Vilnius’ two ghettos, which were mostly razed during Soviet rule. Renovation is underway in what is left, sectors of suffering being reborn as restaurants, cafes, shops and upscale residences.

(The Holocaust also was visited upon the Jews of Latvia and Estonia, and there is a commemorative Jewish museum in Latvia’s capital, Riga, but we didn’t have time to stop there.)

It wasn’t all darkness in Vilnius. The postwar Jewish cemetery was not in ruins; it was immaculate, tended for the past 50 years by a Russian Orthodox woman, Paulina Shershnyova. With the help of a passing Israeli couple who spoke English and Russian, she told us briefly about her work.

At the Jewish Community Center there was a “gallery of the righteous” commemorating Christian Lithuanians who protected Jews, and another saluting Jews who fought the Wehrmacht either as guerrillas or in a Red Army unit.

We visited the city’s only synagogue the next day. About 25 men were finishing Sabbath services. Some came over to us and expressed either wariness or skepticism about how Vilnius was responding to Jewish revival in the city. For instance, I asked whether they were pleased that the city had put up the ghetto plaques. “Pleased? We paid for them,” was the answer.

One of the men was a Hasid, with side curls and broad-brimmed black hat, from Brooklyn, N.Y. Sent by the Orthodox Lubavitcher movement to teach Judaism to the local Jews, he was more sanguine. “Two years ago we couldn’t even get kosher food here,” he said. “Now we can.”

He said he was doing fine: “People don’t stop in the streets anymore and stare at me as if I’m a Martian.”

On the organized tour, with Petrikiene again as guide, our mostly British group was taken to Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, the presidential palace and the university. The Orthodox churches were, to us, fantastically ornate, though we already had seen some in St. Petersburg.

The most interesting sight, though, was a woman watering flowers inside one Orthodox church. Lacking a spray bottle, she simply filled her mouth with water and spat at the blossoms.

From the bus and during our walks, we could see the old city’s revival. Scaffolds surrounded dozens of buildings. Restoration work was underway or finished. The presidential palace was crisp. (The incumbent is Valdas Adamkus, who emigrated to Chicago in 1949 and was an administrator with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before returning.) A stroll into the adjacent university campus, built around courtyards, was like a walk into an earlier century.

Exploring on our own, we saw poverty. On the same street as the downtown outdoor market, people--mostly women and mostly silent--stood shoulder to shoulder on both the building side and the curb side of the block, hoping to sell their belongings or packs of underwear or socks or cigarettes. They appeared thoroughly dejected; when we passed down the line, nobody even attempted to get our attention.

On the outskirts of the city, thousands live in ugly Soviet-built apartment blocks. The Lithuanians do not seem as bitter as the Latvians or Estonians about their years under Moscow’s rule, partly because the Russian population is a fraction of what it is in the two other nations, but all three have, in effect, lost half a century.

Sunday was a day of lightness. We were taken to the medieval capital of Trakai, where we walked around its island castle and watched people boating and wedding parties being photographed.

On the return to Vilnius, Petrikiene had us buy groceries for the next day at a huge, well-stocked supermarket. The trip to Riga, Latvia, takes several hours, and we would be picnicking by the road.

A Latvian bus and guide, Rasma Cace, took charge of us on Monday. Cace had a Mae West voice and a mordant sense of humor. At the border, when an hour had passed and our passports hadn’t been returned, some of us began to complain. Cace explained that Soviet-style suspicions still abound in the area, that we should eat our lunches and take heart because “we will die like heroes here--without ice cream or water.”

When the bus resumed its northward progress, I took in the emptiness of the countryside. While all three countries about equal Oklahoma in area, they have a combined population of only 8 million (a million fewer than Los Angeles County). The Baltic countries also are mainly flat. If geography dictates history, a robust mountain range on the Russian border surely would have been a benefaction.

Our first stop in Latvia was the 18th century Rundale Palace, designed by Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, the architect of St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace and other czarist retreats. Restoration work here is proceeding slowly, and many of the public rooms are empty of furniture. This at least lets you appreciate the scale of the rooms.

The drive into Riga was past gray, sullen buildings, but as we approached the center it was obvious that the city has an energy and style Vilnius lacks.

Our hotel was a former convent in the old section of town. In the morning, as Cace was rounding us up for a walking tour, a couple of street musicians played “America, the Beautiful” on tuba and French horn. Though amused, nobody in the group tipped them.

Riga is a trove of Art Nouveau architecture. As we hiked the cobblestone streets, with Cace stopping and noting the ornamentation and eccentricities of one building after another, you could see that even apartment buildings could be rendered into artistic objects.

We visited the Dome cathedral, with an hour-hand-only clock on its spire. (Keeping time was an imprecise exercise in those days, so nobody thought it was worthwhile keeping track of minutes.) We also stopped at the landmark St. Peter’s Church and the Powder Tower--the only one left from the city’s medieval walls.

Later that day, a friend of a friend took us to the Motor Museum on the outskirts of Riga. We were lucky enough to have the director escort us through the exhibits of automobiles and motorcycles, including Josef Stalin’s armored car and an unrepaired Rolls-Royce that Leonid Brezhnev drove into a truck in 1980.

On our second day in the country we were bused to Sigulda, “the Switzerland of Latvia,” where we visited another medieval castle and tried, through fog and rain, to view the Gauja River. Cace encouraged us to drink from a spring inside a grotto that, mythology has it, returns one’s youth. Everyone sampled. Nobody shed a year.

Back in the city, we visited and were sobered by the Occupation Museum of Latvia, which chronicles the Soviet Union’s invasion, World War II, arrests and deportations.

On the penultimate day of the tour, the Latvian bus transported us first to Parnu, a pleasant, small port town across the border in Estonia. Drawn by posters for an “international festival of the nude,” we went to the local art museum. We found no beauty, just lots of photographs that proved the efficacy of clothing.

And in one salon there was a coffin filled with potatoes. Three men were uncertainly debating (in English) whether it was a reference to fertility or something. Only one thing was certain: It was a coffin filled with potatoes.

On to Tallinn. The Estonian capital has a rich architectural history. Its walled old city dates back to medieval and early Renaissance days when Tallinn was a vital trading post in the Hanseatic League. Because of the area’s intactness, a walk through it, though disturbed by passing cars, does provide an effect of medieval city life.

Our guide, Kulli Liebert, was all but vociferous in complaining of the Soviet occupation. But the release into capitalism, she joked, was hard for Estonians because they are “so reserved that selling is humiliating.” Perhaps. A souvenir shop we visited was run by an Egyptian.

That evening we took a hydrofoil ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki, where we had begun our trip. Although the prices in Finland’s capital seemed astronomical after eight days of Baltic bargains, there was another vivid difference that we appreciated: We felt back in the mainstream of modern Europe.

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GUIDEBOOK

Exploring Three Baltic States

Getting there: It’s possible to fly independently from Los Angeles to the Baltic states on airlines that have connecting flights in Europe; the round-trip advance-purchase fare this past summer (high season) averaged $1,000. But given the difficulties of language and transportation between Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Americans would do best booking a tour with a knowledgeable agency.

We chose Scantours, based in Los Angeles; telephone (800) 223-7226 or (310) 636-4656, Internet https://www.scantours.com. Our seven-night “Classical Baltic Tour” will cost $635 per person, double occupancy, in 2001. (Single supplement is $276.) That includes lodging, breakfasts, guides and local transportation; air fare is extra.

The Jewish culture tour in Vilnius costs $170 for two.

The hotels and restaurants on our tour were adequate. But anyone with limited mobility should ask careful questions about the itineraries; some walking tours were strenuous, and one of the restaurants was up three flights of stairs.

Arthur Frommer’s “Budget Travel” recommends Vytis Tours, a Baltics specialist; tel. (800) 778-9847. Last summer, Vytis had round-trip fares from New York to Riga for $800; in winter, the price drops to $500.

Getting around: Everyone we dealt with spoke some English, a good thing as the local languages are impenetrable. Free weekly visitors’ guides in English were widely available at hotels and tourist offices.

For more information: Consulate General of the Republic of Estonia, 600 3rd Ave., 26th Floor, New York, NY 10016; tel. (212) 883-0636, fax (212) 883-0648, Internet https://www.estemb.org.

Latvian Embassy, 4325 17th St. N.W., Washington, DC 20011; tel. (202) 726-8213, fax (202) 726-6785, Internet https://www.latvia-usa.org.

Honorary Consulate General of Lithuania, 3236 N. Sawtooth Court, Westlake Village, CA 91362; tel. (805) 496-5324, fax (805) 496-7435, Internet https://www.ltembassyus.org.