Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania always go hand in hand. Each has given his personality to the group of Baltic countries. Are together, to make more noise, separately because they are only heard in Eurovision. All three overlook the sea with his back to Russia, to its Soviet history that is far away, Like their wars.
Tallin
We came from kyiv, With the euphoria of having won the Eurocup. We leave Ukrainian avenues to land in Tallin, a city where charm has been walled and where magic lasts a walk. The capital Estonia has that medieval air to shoot the traveler's imagination, which aims to go back in time while tasting a good salmon dish in a restaurant full of candles.
Tallin has some Scandinavian, A Germanic point, A Russian past and a universal future, Because prosperity arrives by plane in the form of a tourist. We take a morning to get lost several times through the old town. In the afternoon we already knew the labyrinth of Callejuelas, Princess Churches and Torrels.
The Plaza Mayor Market shows without reservations that intention to travel to the past, to rescue medieval scenes, With typical products, sugary almonds, Wood and ladies sizes with old dresses trying to reconcile with the first spirit of the city, And by the way, dizzy the visitor with the spell of a dead era, that leaves thousands of euros in the streets.
I have concluded that inside the temples, The traveler manages to escape the postcard image and discovers the intimate essence of a place.
We visited Alexander Nevski's cathedral, With its black domes and its interior recharged with orthodox and faithful frescoes lighting candles. I have concluded that inside the temples, The traveler manages to escape the postcard image and discovers the intimate essence of a place. Devotion cannot be marketed. Prayers are not sold.
As the city ended on each walk, We decided to rent some bicycles to border the coast. Green roads accompany a sea walk to which seagulls are left over and is missing beaches. Since the distance, Tallin wore his needles next to the port where cruises docked. Is the summer of the Batic Sea, The cheerful face and shorts. In winter I imagine another countenance. We leave the city by bus, Like who ends a story.
Riga
Ten minutes were enough to understand that Riga has more reality. It is the largest of the Baltic capitals and here there are traffic lights that order the big avenues. We need a street to guide ourselves through the old town, that is not as defined as that of Tallin. Its architecture concentrates a whole collection of art nuveau buildings, The squares are wider and the streets are more straight than in Estonia.
Dasting women managed to mislead glances and facades lost their battle to earn tourists' interest.
We decided to climb to the tower of San Pedro, Because vertigo combines well with perspective. From there we observe a capital that alternates stone churches, Some glass skyscraper and solemn bridges that cross the Daugava river. The squares were full of people. Dasting women managed to mislead glances and facades lost their battle to earn tourists' interest. The blonde hair and clear eyes upset the squares and nobody remembers since Latvia was besieged by the communists and punished by the Nazis, In a macabre game for submitting the beauty of squares and people.
I didn't want to miss Riga's night and I found a night already invented. There is live music as in Dublin, alcohol on terraces and sexual claims. The night makes Riga a European place without further ado, that turns off its history and its haughty bearing, So Baltic.
Inside I felt an intruder, Perplexed and excited stroke in the time ship.
The hangover takes me the next day to a park full of people. Everywhere there were ladies dressed in traditional costumes, White dresses and scarves covering silver hair. But there were no foreigners there. Music took me hypnotically to a shed. Inside I felt an intruder, Perplexed and excited stroke in the time ship. A hundred people, of all ages, They danced to the sound of old songs. The men played drums, The women instruments that I had never seen. A kind of harp on a wooden table. Young people were looking for their dance partner. They corresponded to a gesture and then everyone shared the track with a solemnity that seemed much more medieval than all medieval churches in Latvia. Then I thought about the nightclubs of the previous night with their needle heels gogós and it seemed impossible to be in the same city.
On the way to the bus station I was glad I walked that park. I wasn't sure what I had witnessed but I knew it was something genuine and during the trip to Lithuania, I thought, I dreamed- With those chords and those dances and those gestures.
Vilnius
… And we arrive in Vilnius, What they say there. And it was very hot. The streets where the ice is installed in winter were now curds of terraces where visitors were looking for the shadow refuge. The enormous and very white cathedral could barely be contemplated without sunglasses and a square, A group of teenagers participated in an aquatic battle in a source. Vile seemed like a peaceful city, Without tourist tumult, jovial, But without excess and beautiful, With the disorder of the churches of different creeds, The hills breaking symmetries, The cobbled pavement announcing the passage of a woman with heels.
Vile seemed like a peaceful city, Without tourist tumult, jovial, But without excess and beautiful, With the disorder of the churches of different creeds
Lithuania retains some more trait of its Soviet past, But like Tallin or Riga, He has insisted on looking in the mirror in Europe. Half an hour from the city another bus left us to a trakai castle walk, How interest lies in your environment, In the middle of a lake where the blush families bathe on Sundays. There are boats and restaurants, There are piers and bikinis, and ice cream and crushes and smile stalls. But there is also an atrocious past. No one dares to remember that Lithuania, The Nazis exterminated hundreds of thousands of Jews. There were still no concentration camps when the murderers entered Lithuania to eliminate one of the world's greatest communities in the world.
Maybe Vilna try to dust horrors in cheerful pastel placitas, Selling Ambar, postcards and a promising future to its inhabitants.
Maybe Vilna try to dust horrors in cheerful pastel placitas, Selling Ambar, postcards and a promising future to its inhabitants. And that is what we see today: freshly painted streets covering the wounds of the past.
Europe has not been driven, walks. We travel from one city to another, Without designing routes, with the intention of stopping only in their old helmets, To absorb the most friendly scenes they want to tell us. We accept the deal, We let ourselves with coffee in coffee, Plaza in Plaza, Because this continent is enjoyed by its places. But surely when winter arrives, When there are no tourists to 30 degrees below zero, Lithuanians look at the black and white photos again, To remember its history, And inside the churches candles are lit by their dead.
