We flew for 1.9 hours from Vilnius to Palanga which is the closest airport to Kleipeda. Kleipeda in turn is the closest city in Lithuania to Kalinigrad. Kalinigrad is a Russian satelite state bordered only by Lithuania and Poland. It has no physical connection to Russia and I liked to call it the Russian Hong Kong.
We rented a car in Palanga and drove along the Curian Spit from Kleipeda on the North end, through the national park, to Kalinigrad on the South end. The spit is a wonderful, if unexpected, natural phenomenon. It is a penninsula / sand bank of approximately 10 km width, which is heavily under re-forestation. Flora and fauna are unbelievably varied. It was extremly peaceful. Except for the fact that Roswitha managed to get pulled over for speeding in Lithuania. Right, she only had a rental car for three days in 2 month, and still got a speeding ticket!
The Curian Spit is the home of Thomas Mann, whose house we visited when we stayed in the town of Nida.
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Kalinigrad is a Russian satelite state bordered only by Lithuania and Poland. It has no physical connection to Russia and I liked to call it the Russian Hong Kong. We rented a car in Palanga and drove along the Curian Spit from Kleipeda on the North end, through the national park, to Kalinigrad on the South end.
The population of Kalinigrad - or Königsburg (King's Castle) - was originally predominately German. The entire area used to be called North East Prussia. Since 1989 many people of German heritage who where moved by Russia to the North East have returned. The area is in serious dis-repair. However, we found the people to be much friendlier than in St. Petersburg. One of the customs guards even gave Roswitha the needle from his hat, since he had never before met an Austrian before.
Immanuel Kant lived and worked in Kalinigrad. We saw pictures of his home in one of the exhibits.
Overal the visit to Kalinigrad was extremely depressing. The path to capitalism and improved standard of living seems to be long and steep. One of the highlights was to use our ATM card to get rubels out of a teller.
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The flight from Palanga to Riga took 1.6 hours on a wonderfully sunny day with feathery clouds.
Our visit to Riga stood completely in the shadow of the Annual Meeting of the European Bank. Fearing intrusions like the ones at recent World Bank meetings the police was out in huge numbers. We saw almost no locals except as sales or wait personell, or selling tickets to museums, churches, etc. Unknowingly, we were lucky to get a room. We only figured out the special circumstances when we saw all the suits and badges. The local currency - one Lats - was worth app. 4 US$, which made prices look cheap, but if you did your math, everything was shockingly expensive. To this day we do not know if the high prices we encountered in this town where due to the conference, or if they are typical. The police precautions were either unnecessary or paid off. It was a very peaceful time in Riga.
The buildings in Riga where already very well restored. Downtown is very walkable and compact, clean, fresh, open and western. We only saw very few construction sites. It was quite a contrast to Kalinigrad.
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After a 1.9 hour flight from Riga, we arrived in Tallinn just ahead of a serious front. We ended up staying an extra 4 days after we visited St. Petersburg. This was not all bad, since it allowed us to get the compass at least rudimentary fixed. On the flight from Riga I noticed that the liquid in the compass seemed to be less than it used to be. When we returned to the plane after three days, it was entirely empty. The only mechanics available only spoke Russian, and I only spoke English, German and a little Japanese.
So with lots of charades, grunts, drawing, and some supplies from my emergency medical kit, we were able to make the compass functional enough to fly to Berlin, where we were able to get it fully repaired.
Tallinn for me was the city of towers and winds. The city wall is still mostly intact and has at least 7 towers. The downtown square as well as the small curvy roads in old town have many outdoor and downstairs restaurants. We were suprised to find a local desert wine which was quite good.
In search for lodging we also visited the hotels built for the 22. Olympic Summer Games in Moskau in 1980. Part of the games were held in Tallin.
On a clear day one could almost imagine to see Helsinki, which is only about 50 km straight North from Tallinn.
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On to St. Petersburg