The most ironic was the mosque in Sarajevo, which we couldn't see in 1991 because it was being renovated--and then was destroyed in the war less than two years later. Hopefully this will remain unique in our experience.
At any rate, we Americans dropped into the Estonian Raeapteek to get some medicine using our Finnish phrase book and ending up with Danish medicine. How cosmopolitan!
On the same street is the Meremuuseum (Maritime Museum or Sea Museum), housed in the Fat Margaret Tower. The tower is called that, incidentally, because it housed Fat Margaret, whose mouth was known to be deadly to anyone within range. Fat Margaret used to look out from the tower in the 1500s. She was a cannon, by the way.
The focal point of the Estonian Maritime Museum--or at least the first item you see, and a very eye-catching one--is a big brass deep-sea diving suit made in Tallinn. There are also maps, figureheads, models, dug-outs, compasses, and ships in bottles. Mark says, 'Somehow maritime museums are always interesting, even if it is only commercial fishing, but certainly more so if it is warships. The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, is one of the most fun museums I've ever visited. This one in Tallinn conjured up memories of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA.' The final exhibit takes you up onto the roof of the tower to watch what is going on in the shipyards just a short distance from the tower.
After the museum we went to the concert hall and got tickets for Friday night's performance of Verdi's TRAVIATA for 40 EEK each (about US$3). This seems like it is going to be a major Verdi trip: counting cassettes, LA TRAVIATA will be the fourth opera we will have heard and three are by Verdi. As it happens, Mark is a big Puccini fan. Had we stayed one more night in Estonia we would have seen their production of LA BOHEME, but we decided not to, since there wasn't enough to do to fill the extra day. Also, we would also have to wait until the afternoon on Sunday to sail to Helsinki (there don't seem to be Sunday morning sailings).
There is a grocery store just next door to our hotel. We went in. The store works like our delicatessen, with everything in cases or on shelves. You ask for what items you want. Prices are considerably higher than at the kiosks.
We went back to the nearest kiosk to get a 1.5-liter bottle of soda which is 11.5 EEK (about US$0.90), rather than the 15 EEK in the store (we don't remember exactly--15EEK would be about US$1.17). The brand of soda we like is Dutch and is called Hershi. They have a very good lemon soda. We got back to the room about 17:45. At 18:00 our trip was just about half over.
Well, the evening was spent log-writing and reading about Estonian history. Mark summarizes the history as follows: 'Up until they got plucky in 1917, their history was a lot like Lithuania's and Latvia's. They were always grabbed by the greatest power at the time: Teutonic knights, the Danish, the Russians led by Peter the Great. Then in 1917 they won their freedom. Hitler and Stalin agreed that Stalin would grab them. The sweethearts had a tiff so Hitler marched in. Hitler lost, so Stalin got Estonia back. In 1988 we had the 'Singing Revolution.' That's when a Soviet bloc country starts waving its own outlawed flag and singing its own outlawed national songs. Estonia once before sensed when Russia was not really able to fight very hard for its claims on Estonia. They sensed it again and by gosh it wasn't easy but they were right again.'
'It is tough to tell in the Baltic states when the failed freedom movements ended and the successful freedom movements began, so it is tough to say which country really led the others to freedom. But they all went.'
Mark continues, 'Gorbachev just told the mob that the Soviet Union would be better off if it had only believers. And the crowd cheered. Gorbachev said that anyone who does not believe in the Soviet cause may now leave, and suddenly he found himself standing all alone.'
'The truth is that the world may never know if communism works, but the Soviets and the Chinese have shown that a badly-run feudalism called 'communism' or anything else isn't going to cut the mustard any more,' Mark concludes.
Mark wanted to watch a movie at 22:30 the way he had the previous night, but they turned out have be a documentary about the 'Righteous Gentiles' of Scandinavia. Mark thinks the people most revered by Jews are the great Rabbinic teachers and the righteous Gentiles who risk their lives to save Jewish lives. As he said in his SCHINDLER'S LIST review, it is unfortunate that the world gives such ample opportunity to people to be honored in this way.
They interviewed a Norwegian minister who smuggled Jewish children on his back across the Norwegian-Swedish frontier. When they would cry for their parents he would tell them to be quiet or they would wake the birds. When asked if he wasn't frightened for his own life, he said of course he was frightened, he was no hero.
Mark, however, writes, 'I am sure I am not alone in respectfully disagreeing. Unfortunately, I had to get up early the next morning so I could watch only a half hour. I think it was Hannah Arendt who pointed out that Hitler might have been right about saying something there was special about the Nordic types of Scandinavia and Holland, since those were among the countries whose people fought the hardest to save others from the Holocaust.'
May 19, 1994: We had to get up early. No problem. The sun woke us at 5:30 though we slept well up to that time.
We missed breakfast but we had the yoghurt and fruit left over from the previous morning.
Mark reports, 'Last night's news had the story of Yassir Arafat telling a South African rally that the jihad will continue, then backpedaling, saying that he meant a peaceful jihad. I am concerned that the signs all point to the current 'land-for-peace' deal as being treated as an appetizer. From the stone peltings it seems to involve more land than peace.'
So we set out early for the train station. We had a bit of difficulty finding the right window, but it was easy after that. Evelyn was going to buy tickets to Tartu, but Mark drew a diagram indicating two-way tickets and that was understood and allowed. Rail fares are as cheap as operas here. A three-and-a-quarter-hour train trip costs US$1.64.
Finding the train was a bit more difficult. Trains are listed only by their final destination (and origin), so you need to look at the route map (luckily there's one posted), figure out which destinations' trains go through *your* destination and which of those you want to take. Ours was listed as Tallinn-Valga and once we knew that, it was easy to find the train.
The Estonian countryside looks a lot like the Latvian countryside. It has a thick growth of trees. Perhaps there are even fewer buildings to see.
We wonder if the forests are getting thicker as the years go by. We are cutting down rain forests very quickly and that has been calculated to lead to a certain increase in the atmosphere. We have heard that the increase is slower than anticipated. It is thought that what may be happening is that the forests are taking some pollutants as fertilizer and the excess carbon dioxide and are growing much more thickly. Nature may really have more balance mechanism than we realize.
Well, it looks like a nice day. Yesterday was gray and ugly all day, but only a few little sprinkles of rain came. We had a little rain in Riga but we have been fairly lucky so far.
Mark reports, 'There is a small but widespread movement to return to aspects of older pagan religions much like what we see in Britain and the United States. We have a good friend who is a neo-pagan. At one point I assumed this meant that she believed in ceremonial magic, since she did call herself a witch. I don't know if she does believe in ceremonial magic deep down but a lot of (otherwise?) rational people do. In fact, depending on what you count, most people do. If you believe prayer achieves results (as most religions do) or that wine turns into blood, or that people can change themselves into deer, or that atoning for sins gets you written in a Book of Life, or that Elijah comes to your house to drink wine, you believe in ceremonial magic in some form.'
In any case, the belief in the old 'pagan' ways is coming back to the Baltics. It is something the people of the Baltics can claim as being their own. You see oak leaf motifs returning to decorations. There are knitted sashes worn on special occasions. One of the leaders has said, 'God is a Latvian--at least our god is.'
Hint: when riding a train, bus, etc., to someplace unfamiliar, try to ride near the front so that you can see the names of the stops *before* the train or whatever stops to let people off. We sat towards the back and ended up reading the names of the stops after the train had started up again. This wasn't a big problem, since we knew about when we should arrive in Tartu and it was big enough and popular enough to be obvious. (Dozens of people got off there.) We arrived about 10:15, a little earlier than expected. (We had read it was three and a half to four and a half hours by train, but maybe the trains go faster now.)
Tartu is a university town. We can tell you what we saw, but only one or two sites were really of great interest.
Tartu University was founded in 1632. Now 8000 students go to the university. Evelyn described it as the 'Amherst of Estonia' and sure enough, on the Raekoja Plats (Town Square) was a store called 'Amerest.' The 'Insight' guide tour starts on the Raekoja Plats at the Town Hall, a pink-and-white building and dating back to 1798, and also mentions the many neo-Classical buildings which would be quite attractive if they got a fresh coat of paint. Also on the square is the Barclay House which was built on a marsh that has since dried, making the whole building lean noticeably (sort of the 'Leaning Building of Tartu').
Next on the tour is the University administration building. It is yellow with six columns and was completed in 1809. Now here Mark and the 'Lonely Planet' guide disagree. It claims the columns are Corinthian. The caps are simple geometric shapes, making them Doric columns if anything. Doric columns are plain, Ionic have scrolls, and Corinthian have fancy decorations like leaves.
We went on to the next building on the tour, a 15th Century church that was closed for renovation with a big fence around it so you could see only a bit of the outside with some terra cotta statues.
There were some other sites of lukewarm interest. We passed the police station. There 192 local citizens were rounded up by the Communists. Each and every one was a threat to the perfect workers' state so all 192 were killed. Between Hitler and Stalin the Baltics must have been horrible in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
We continued on the tour, hitting a department store. The selection turned out to be better than what we saw in eastern Europe in 1991, but it is still small by Western standards. Evelyn read that the Communists used to tell their people that Western store shelves were so full because nobody had the money to buy the items. We guess you needed a lot of faith to be a good Communist.
Next to the department store was a new-style grocery. It is one of the kind where you pick up the goods yourself and take them to a central cash register. (The department store was the older kind where a clerk gets what you ask for.) Self-service is a new concept here. Obviously it employs fewer people, so in countries with guaranteed employment (like Communist countries) it's a negative thing. It makes life easier if you don't speak the language, though, and we bought some food for the trip home, including some cheap Russian halvah. It turned out to taste as if they had mixed peanut in with the sesame. In any case, it tastes more like peanuts than Joyvah at home, but it was for a pretty good price. The grocery store even had an electronic scanner.
We also went to a more traditional market and get some pictures of people selling meat. |
