Green and blue – part II

 

The Baltic Sea was the main factor, which determined the foundation of cities in the northern cold. This is also how today’s capital of the three countries were founded: Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn. All three cities feature rich and diverse history, with many churches, monasteries and historical city centres. Apart from the capital cities, there are only a handful of other cities which are touristic centres. I should mention Trakai though, which used to be the national capital. The town along the lake, with many islands, has a medieval castle and there’s another one on one of the islands. Apart from the castle, the town also features great view of the old, well preserved wooden houses. Otherwise most towns still have the social-realistic look and feel of the communist era and have not developed into tourist destinations, so only few tourists ever visit them. Visiting such towns make you feel like they are all the same, because they resemble each other a lot. Usually there are a few churches in the middle, belonging to two or three religions. It is surprising, that these churches give the feeling, like they’re competing as to which is more beautiful and richer. The different religions have no conflicts amongst themselves, although there would be three different chirches sharing the same town square. 

 

All of these three lands boast with a lot of water, which often feature also really nice sandy beaches. Apart from the coast, there are also many islands and unusually large lakes, rivers and other waterways. Not to mention that about 20% of the landmass is covered by swamps and bogs. Unfortunately so much water does not make it very hospitable land, that’s why one third of each country lives in its national capital. There are still lonely farmhouses along the lakes and rivers. Some get cut off from other places when the snow begins to melt in the swamps, which is a special and unique experience. We were both really surprised, to find still frozen lakes in the late April and you could still see tyre tracks on ice. During winter these frozen swamps become roads, people use to drive across.  For example, in Estonia, in winter, the lake of Peipsi becomes a road connecting them to Russia.

 

This is something everybody who travels, especially if they organize the trip themselves, must be on the lookout for. As the countries are safe and the people are friendly – except for an occasional problem with communication – there were almost no bad experiences. Still, not all went according to the plan. IT was not a problem to rent a car, but it was not equipped with everything it should have. There was, for instance, no car jack inside. But you’d never notice this, until you need a jack. Driving the bumpy roads along the coast of Kolka far off into the countryside, away from civilization and out of range of the cell phone, something started producing weird sounds and then the tyre gave out. We were surprised by the strange flat tyre with burned parts around it, but decided to go and change it. We didn’t know, what we could have hit in this remote part of the country, to cause the flat, and we also didn’t know how to change the tyre – without the missing jack! We were lucky enough that two locals drove by, so we stopped them. There wasn’t much of a conversation, since they didn’t know foreign languages, but when we showed them what happened, they understood. They started unloading their car to get to their jack. Luckily we did have the spare tyre, but it was half as wide as the original one. It wasn’t meant to take you far and you couldn’t drive fast with it, but we only had one thought – how to reach the nearest town, which was some 50 kilometres away. We’ve made it to the first car shop, where we got a new tyre and were able to go on. Even from this we learned something – when renting a car, always check if it has everything it is supposed to have! And now, looking back at it, we can still get a lough or two.

 

 

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are countries, that have long and seemingly endless roads. While driving the many lakes give you the sense of being beyond time and only slight hills every now and again break the monotonous landscape. But diffidently these countries do leave their mark on the visitors, even if you might not expect it... the lands of straights and water... quite uninteresting to many, so they would not travel there… But once you do travel there, you get to know the better sides of the countries, which never stop. The visitors get charmed by their history, attractions (natural, cultural and historical) and many tourists come home full of awe and with newly gained knowledge and appreciation.