Monday, August 22
I’m awake at 0515 (both the hotel wake up call service and my I-phone's alarm work), and out the door of the Viru by 0600 (although a breakfast buffet was included with the price of the room, it didn’t open until 0700). Maps of Tallinn are misleading as to the location of the inter-city bus terminal; a map I received at the hotel indicated that a bus station was located at the rear of the hotel and part of a large shopping mall there. However, Tallinn’s main bus station, the “Bussijaam”, is actually located about 2 km east of the Viru, and is reached by taking trams #2 or #4 to a stop called, appropriately enough, “Bussijaam”; the station is about one city block south of there. I saw trams running during the 5 o’clock hour out of my window, so I made my way to a tram stop, and the second tram through was a #2. I didn’t have a ticket, but got on anyway. A helpful rider told me to put money into a metal box on a pivot for the motorlady (she was in a compartment at the front of the tram separated from the passengers by a metal wall). I put a €2 coin in, and about 60 seconds later the box opened with my ticket and two €0.20 coins change. I validated the ticket, and, maybe another minute later, we pulled up to the “Bussijaam” stop.
I had prepaid €25 for a one way ticket via the luxexpress.eu site to travel in the “lounge” portion of a large inter-city coach between Tallinn and Riga. Our bus was divided into two sections, divided by a glass partition and door. The front was “economy” (at €22); and the rear consisted of two sets of two facing rows, with leather seats, tables in front of the seats, and free wifi. There were only eight passengers in the rear section, so I had unlimited legroom. Boarding started at 0645 for the 0700 departure; I was given a claim check (actually a white sticky with a number on it) when I placed my rollaboard in the hold of the bus. As a “lounge” passenger, the driver hands me a Nestle energy bar and a 0.5 liter bottle of still water.
The bus pulled out at 7 sharp, and started rolling south on Estonia Highway 4 (E67), also known as the “Via Baltica”. The first ten miles or so are a four lane divided highway; after that, a well maintained two lane highway carried our coach all the way to the northern outskirts of Riga, where we joined an expressway headed for the city.
According to highway signs in Estonia, Tallinn and Riga are 305 km apart; in Latvia, the distance is shown as 308 km. The posted speed in Estonia is 100 kmph, and our driver is maintaining that speed, and passing a number of trucks and slower vehicles on the way. If there were villages along the way, the highway bypassed them, and we have a continuous roll until we reach the southwest Estonian city of Pärnu, on the river of the same name, at about 0845; we’ve traveled about 135 km at this point. The inter-city bus station there is on the outskirts of town, as the center of town is focused on beaches on an inlet of the Gulf of Riga. We take a 10 minute break there. Of particular interest to me was that there was an apartment building across the street from the station called “Alameda” (I was born in Alameda, California).
I’m on the bus because there are no inter-city trains connecting Tallinn and Riga. The Estonian railway operates trains between Tallinn and Pärnu, and there was a single track railroad visible from the Via Baltica in both Estonia and Latvia.
Anyhow, about 45 minutes south of the Pärnu station we pass by abandoned border posts and enter Latvia without slowing down; according to signposts in Latvia we are 108 km (67 miles) from Riga. A few km south of the frontier we pass through the small city of Salacgriva, the only town that the Via Baltica, now known as Latvia Highway A1, will pass through until the Riga urbanized area.
From Tallinn south, the terrain is largely flat, with a few small rises. Forests are on either side of the road for most of the trip in Estonia, with a few hay fields north of Pärnu. The forests start to give way to farmland the closer we got to Riga; for several miles the highway actually had a view of the Gulf of Riga, with a row of trees separating the highway from the beaches. There were a number of waysides where motorists could stop and access the beaches. The drive from Tallinn to Pärnu reminded me of large stretches of Michigan highway M-37 extending south from Traverse City in the direction of Grand Rapids, and also US 141 between Green Bay, Wisconsin and Iron Mountain, Michigan.
At about 1045 we reach the outskirts of Riga, and the A2 expressway we were on gives way to Brivibas Gatve (Freedom Avenue). The first sights are somewhat depressing; dilapidated multi-story Communist-era apartment houses line the road. Then, abruptly, they end, and a number of commercial areas featuring large supermarkets appear. A few minutes later, our coach stops in front of the impressive Orthodox cathedral in central Riga, and about half the passengers alight. Our coach restarts, and loops around the center of the city to the east to position itself to enter the Autoosta, Riga’s inter-city bus station, which is located just north of the river Daugava, south of the city’s main rail station, and adjacent to the city’s central indoor market, reputed to be the largest in Europe. On the way, we pass a candidate for the world’s ugliest skyscraper, a 26 story or so “wedding cake” monument to Uncle Joe Stalin built from the ugliest building stone I've ever seen, which today houses the Latvian Academy of Sciences. We park behind the Autoosta at 1120, 5 minutes ahead of scheduled arrival.
As bus stations go, Riga’s is modern and clean, with a number of tourist services, including a hotel booking service; I don’t need that, however, as I booked the Hotel Riga, which turned out to have a great location, across the street from the National Opera and a park on the bank of the old city moat, on Aspazijas Bulvaris. I was a bit disoriented in attempting to locate this hotel, but found a large city map posted on a wall of the station that got me set straight; I was maybe 5 blocks away from the hotel. Using a pedestrian subway beneath the approach to the five span cantilever Daugava rail bridge and the adjacent January 13th street, I found Aspazijas Bulvaris, and, a couple of minutes later, the hotel materialized. This turned out to be a large hotel reconstructed by the Soviets after WWII. For me, it was a bargain at $67 per night (pre-paid on the net); the price included free wi-fi and a large breakfast buffet. Not a plush hotel room by any means, but more than adequate for me.
Again, as in Tallinn, I could not check-in to my room until 1500 (although the desk offered early check in for an additional charge). I left my bags with a bellman and set out to tour the biggest city in the Baltics. Heading through the park across the street, I am immediately attracted to the impressive Freedom Monument, constructed in 1935, and incredibly left unmolested by the war, the Communists and the Nazis. The inscription at the base translates to “For Fatherland and Freedom”. Like Estonia, Latvia had been someone else’s colony for 700 years until declaring independence one week after the end of world war I. Latvia was a victim of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, being absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1940 against its will (with almost all Latvian government officials being murdered by the Communists), then coming under the horrors of Nazi rule days after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, then returning to Soviet dictatorship months after the Red Army defeated the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad.
Like Estonia, I reached Latvia the day after the 20th anniversary of its second spell of independence due to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Many bouquets of fresh flowers, including one ironically sent by the government of Russia, lay at the foot of the Freedom Monument. Two honor guards stood like statues at attention, carefully watched from the side by a sergeant dressed in camos.
In my first couple hours in Riga, I was uncomfortable. I was tired, the city appeared drab, the weather was overcast with a low ceiling and rain showers predicted. Having returned to the USA and having thought a lot about what I saw, Riga was the most engaging and thought-provoking place I visited on this trip, and deserved a lot more time than what I had to give it. I would urge all Americans who travel in Europe to find a way to put Riga on their itineraries.
I found a double deck bus tour to give me an overview of the city while letting me take a load off. I think it cost LVL9.00 (on my visit, $100 bought 49 Lats). Riga had enjoyed two spells of prosperity, in the last twenty years of the 19th century, and in the 1930s (it is claimed that Latvia had the second most successful economy in Europe at that time). Neighborhoods north of the old city had building after building constructed in German Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) architecture, which are prized today. Riga is near the mouth of one of the longest rivers in Europe, the Daugava (known as the Dvina in Russia and Belarus), and grew wealthy due to its port. It was an extremely important city to the Russians during their illegitimate rule of Latvia; so much so that, today 40% of Riga’s citizens are ethnic Russians, compared to just 42% ethnic Latvians (the rest comprising a hodgepodge of various ethnic groups from the old Soviet Union).
I’ll write more about Riga’s old town in my narrative of my touring on early Wednesday morning; for me, the most profound thing in Riga’s old town is a stark, ugly two story modern building called “The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia 1940-41”. Every freedom loving person alive needs to visit this place; it tells a horrifying story of the effects of dictatorship, tyranny, communism and Nazism. At the time of the Soviet occupation of Latvia in June, 1940, Latvia had a population of 1.5 million. The Soviets commenced political persecutions of government ministers, military officers and other persons posing a threat to them. A full 0.8% of the people in the country, over 15,000 souls, were kidnapped by Stalin’s thugs the night of June 14, 1941, most never to be seen again. A few days later, Latvia fell into the hands of Adolf Hitler as the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union and captured the Baltic States, present day Belarus and Ukraine (Riga was captured on July 1, 1941). Prior to WWII, Riga had a significant Jewish population; an estimated 70,000 Latvian Jews were exterminated on the orders of Hitler, Himmler and their SS henchmen.
The museum includes a mock-up of a Gulag concentration camp barracks, constructed based on descriptions of the survivors. In many cities in Europe, one can visit a museum where medieval instruments of torture are on display. Short of visiting Dachau or Auschwitz, this is as instructive as it gets about what happens when freedom disappears and tyrants take power; this could happen again if freedom loving people lose their vigilance. The museum also explains how the Soviets consolidated their control over Latvia—the class warfare, the propaganda, the abolition of private property the use of schools as indoctrination mills, the changes in culture (art, music, architecture), the secret police, the incarceration, torture and murder of political opponents.
I had gone around Riga almost non-stop for 5 hours since arriving. I got a phone call from California, where it was 7 am (it was 5 pm for me), and had to get back to the hotel to take care of something. The timing was good, as it started to rain; I worked for a few hours and hit the hay at 9 pm, in anticipation of the bus trip to Lithuania in the morning. There were only three channels of TV available in my room, none of which interested me. One of the incredible features of the internet is the ability to listen to streaming radio stations from around the world; one of which is WCBM AM 680 in Baltimore, Maryland, “the 50,000 watt towers of freedom”—it got a rating in Riga, Latvia this night.
Here is a photo gallery devoted to the Freedom Monument and to the Occupation Museum.
http://pangborn76.smugmug.com/Other/...820312_ZT47RJk