Talinn, Estonia

We went to Finland within hours of having arrived here. We had to drive through Latvia then Estonia to get there. Since the drive was rather long, we stopped in Estonia for the night before going on to Finland. Although these pictures are from early October, I'm just posting them because I couldn't get pictures on before. The picture on the left is a building over 500 years old that is still in use now. It is a restaurant and we had dinner there. They had advertised a fencing match as dinner entertainment but, much to our grandsons' disappointment, the fencers never showed. Instead there was a belly dancer. Had the boys been 10 years older I'm sure they wouldn't have been so disappointed! The picture on the right is an interesting contrast: a city wall built in the middle ages through which you can see another restaurant which is considerably newer. They're EVERYWHERE! At the bottom of this page you can see our little group (minus the photographer, Russ) standing in front of an overview of the capital city, Talinn. It is one of the oldest cities in Europe and is located across the Baltic from Helsinki, Finland.

Things foreign, things familiar

Leaves fall from trees in Lithuania just as they do in NY or Utah or anywhere in the world that has different seasons. And children love playing in the piles of fallen leaves as in the first picture of our grandson Nicholas jumping into a pile he had just helped Grandpa rake up.
Halloween isn't celebrated in Lithuania but Americans have fun with it even when they're away from home. Rather than going to trick-or-treat from house to house, or in some LDS communities, trunk to trunk (for the safety of the children), the embassy's CLO (cultural liaison officer) planned fun things for the children here. First, they were bussed to the embassy from school in their costumes then went trick-or-treating door to door throughout the embassy. In the second picture, the American Ambassador Cloud (that's his last name) and wife, Mary, are joining in the fun to hand out candy just before the ambassador had a 4:30 meeting. From here the kids went to the "Marine House" which is a house (duh!) in the embassy compound where Marines (another duh!) live while stationed here as inside security. (Outside, at the gate, are Lithuanian security officers.) The CLO had set up all kinds of Halloween games, Halloween twister, that video dance craze that our daughter Lisa is so good at, a ghost pinata, little pumpkins in hay that the kids had to pick up without using hands, and a curtained-off haunted house complete with an inhabited coffin! For "dinner" the kids had "mummy fingers" (hot dogs wrapped in tortillas because they don't have hot dog buns here), McDonald's burgers, and fries
(cold, but the kids ate them anyway).
The last picture is taken at Gruto Parkas. An enterprising and wealthy Lithuanian set up a park on his estate that includes a playground for kids, a small zoo, and lots of statues from the Soviet era that were torn down and sometimes nearly destroyed spread out on a pleasant wooded walking trail. There are placards everywhere describing where the statue was originally placed and a brief history of the person. The intent was not to glorify these people but to remind people of what once was in the hopes that Lithuania will be able to remain forever free, never so cruelly dominated again. It will be good when enough time has passed that people can remember the cost of freedom and be happy and grateful, as I hope all Americans feel about the USA. Our tour guide on our walking tour of Vilnius commented at one point that "all Lithuanian holidays are sad and depressing". Americans should be appropriately somber on Memorial Day but I'm grateful for the joy of the Fourth of July and the peaceful, homey gratitude we feel on Thanksgiving.

A Day at the Beach

The picture in the middle is the beach on the Curonian Spit off the coast of Lithuania. The picture at the bottom is a closeup to prove that we were really standing on a sand dune. I found the little retaining walls (to hold the sand) made of interweaving branches to be ingeniously resourceful and very picturesque. The Spit is interesting because it is very long (about 100 miles) and goes from several miles wide to a matter of 100 yards wide. It was, long ago, a series of small islands but the sand eventually built up to form this narrow peninsula that begins in a small broken off part of Russia just to the southwest of Lithuania and on north to just across from the port city of Klaipeda, Lithuania. So there is actually a Russian border crossing in the southern end of the spit. We didn't go that far. We reached the north end of the spit by driving our car onto a ferry that crosses every 20 minutes with a fee to get out to the spit but no fee for the return trip. This is a fairly popular tourist area (especially with Germans as this has been a part of Germany in the past) but usually in the summer. The Baltic Sea in November is far from enticing! It was choppy and dark and we could only imagine how cold it must be. From the top of the sand dune we could see across the bay to the mainland of Lithuania on the east and the expanse of the Baltic on the west, with an offshore oil rig in the distance. We wanted to go to the maritime museum and to the aquarium but both were closed- not surprisingly considering the absence of any tourists besides our little band. Nearly all of the restaurants and shops were closed. Finding bathroom facilities became interesting. There were no gas stations. There were a couple of WC (water closet for the less traveled readers) buildings which were closed. This spit is a national park so I'm sure they just close them down at the end of the season. Next to them stood single port-a-potties that were open. However, they looked to have been neglected for quite some time. The boys chose trees in the open air instead. Louisa and I decided we didn't need them so badly. Soon after we had stopped, we came to an small open bus station with a large WC sign on the side. Hallelujah! For a mere 1 lita (about $.35) paid to the cashier in the terminal we could use a clean, warm toilet. After that we sat in the car in an empty parking lot near the sea to eat the lunch we had brought with us. After lunch we went to a statue park.

The picture on the top is on "Witches Hill", a walk through the forest with wooden statues. Louisa is standing in front of a malicious looking ogre. The statues throughout the fairly long walk made me think of Grimms fairy tales and Hansel and Gretel- stories that can be frightening for children. I wondered if this kind of culture developed from the long nights and dense forests of this area of the world causing fearful imaginings in children and adults alike.

HIll of Crosses

One of the places we visited on our way to the coast was a place called The Hill of Crosses. It started simply enough many years ago as a place where friends and families of fallen soldiers placed a cross in memory of their sacrifice. At that time it contained only some thirty crosses. When the Soviet occupation came, it was decided that this outward diplay of religion had to be removed. They used bulldozers to clear the hill. In defiance, the local people would sneak in at night and replace them at great risk to themselves as it was at times guarded by army troops. This happened repeatedly until the Soviets finally gave up. It has since become a symbol of solidarity and defiance and now contains innumerable crosses. These pictures show just how massive it has become. People from all over the world now come and place crosses here including the Pope. It still is a statement of faith in Jesus Christ and was completely overwhelming to me. (Russ) There are places where there are literally mounds of small wood crosses. (shown in the picture above) The hill itself is not particularly large or worthy of note but the tributes are beyond description. Not all of the crosses are wood. Some are metal and a few are crocheted or of strung beads.

It worked again!

Here are the pictures I promised in the last blog of the cemeteries all decorated. We went in the evening and found the candlelight quite picturesque despite the fact that we were walking amidst graves. It was rainy and cold but quiet and peaceful.

All Saints Day

Imentioned before that Halloween is not celebrated here but All Saints Day, Nov. 1, is. The picture on the left is the traffic jam we sat in for probably close to an hour just outside a moderately sized city approaching the cemetery. People of every age and description flock to the cemeteries with flowers and candles. The picture on the right is people waiting for busses to pick them up. In the background you can see the hordes of people in the cemetery. If I can get the browse window to open to allow another picture, I'll post pictures taken in a cemetery.

I still am having no luck overcoming my problem with adding images to my blog. So I thought I would talk a little about the Lithuanian language. It's in a separate language group from most European languages. It's in a group with only two other languages:Estonian and Finnish, I think. Most of the basic words are totally foreign to me. However, thanks to international communication and recent innovations, there are some words I recognize on signs: internetas, computeriai, autoservisas, and I saw an advertisement for something with a picture and the name Charlesas Dickensas. Can you guess who that was? Thank you is spelled something like aciu (with a scidilla or little curlique thing under the c) and is pronounced like you would sneeze achoo! To say a casual goodbye would be iki (like icky). So we're managing to pick up a few words despite not really knowing anything.
I mentioned that the milk tastes different. A major food item here is potatoes. They do things with potatoes I have never experienced before. They make a kind of dumpling with potato starch. I would have to see a cookbook with instructions to understand. Anyway, they use a lot of cream and real butter. In fact, at a restaurant I order a stuffed chicken breast thinking it would be safely mild. It consisted entirely of a chicken breast wrapped around a cube of butter, covered with a dough then deep-fried. Lots of FAT!! I think the relative poverty as well as the need to stay warm has had a lot of influence on what is considered traditional Lithuanian fare. Rye is used in most of the breads. Oh, and for something also very different, we went to a Chinese restaurant. I ordered egg-drop soup (by the English description on the Lithuanian menu) and was surprised at the flavor. The broth was basically sugar water with the expected egg and corn in it. I added some soy sauce to try to make it a little saltier but it didn't help much. I ate it anyway because I was hungry and it wasn't awful- just not what I expected. Cheeses and processed meat, especially pork, are common items. Cabbage and carrots are probably the most common vegetables. Mushrooms are grown throughout the countryside and are available at little roadside stands, along with apples. The bakery sections of the grocery stores have all kinds of wonderful looking treats. We haven't tried many of them but the ones we have tried often have sweetened sour cream and cheese in them.
We're going to continue working on this popups blocked problem because that seems to be the source of our inability to post pictures.