Rolling Home

Although this is the slowest and most expensive way to go home, I don’t regret taking the ship. Much more still than the international bus it is a world of its own – and you have freedom to move around. As we were made to board in time for a departure at 3pm, but we even miss the usual time (5pm) due to delays of cargo loading, I happen to see the end of the last Harry Potter movie (with Finnish subtitles) when I check the channels available on the TV in the cabin. After a while I am joined by an older Russian woman, the third bed remains unoccupied. She doesn’t speak German or English and I think she overestimates my Russian, half of her questions I have to answer with “I don’t understand”. As the small inside cabin is a bit claustrophobic I spend most of the time out on deck although it gets quite cold in the damp cool air and the wind. But I enjoy both the views of the skerries around Vuosaari Harbor and details of the ship and the way the small engines juggle the containers onto the upper cargo deck. As it gets darker the harbor lights are impressive, too, so I certainly am not bored.

I go to bed early and sleep for twelve hours in the completely dark in-cabin which nearly makes me miss breakfast. The Russian lady in my cabin offers me one of her many breakfast eggs, they are small and freckled, and it’s only when I already cracked one open that I realize they are raw. I feel it would be awkward to refuse now, so I do as she tells me and open it at the top, put in salt and empty it in one go. It doesn’t really taste of much, so, not all that bad. I take breakfast at a window table with a view over the grey sea below a cover of heavy clouds. Quite dark for nearly ten. But then again, while the time on the boat will remain Finnish we already entered the Central European Time zone, so actually it’s before nine. And I see a rainbow which seems to be really close by. What a nice start of the day.

I stroll around on the ship after breakfast, read a little and talk to a Russian woman who spends a lot of time on adding decorations to her daughter’s ice-skating costume in this unheated ‘lounge’. At lunch an overly exact Finnish couple really does me a favor by driving me away from my table – I hadn’t known there are fixed assigned tables and, of course, there are free tables all over the place, but they insist this number is theirs and I am invited by the woman at the next table to join her. So I meet Katrien from Belgium and we spend the rest of the day together. As usual on these Scandinavian ferries there is a free sauna and whirlpool, it’s quite empty and we spend about two hours there. Being truly Finnish this sauna is close to 100 degrees and during breaks there is the quite special opportunity to step outside in the middle of the sea. We spend the rest of the evening in the restaurant and bar area, you don’t have to buy anything to sit there and it’s somewhat warmer than the “lounge”.

 

Time passes easily with reading, writing, sharing pictures, talking – and listening to a group of German seniors. When we get closer to the coast it’s also warmer outside. I guess the bright white blinking we see for a while belongs to a lighthouse on Rügen, the biggest German island and popular weekend resort for many people in my region. And there are birds now! Seagulls floating in and out of the light cones of our windows somehow make the air seem like something they swim in. We slow down and nearly stop altogether when Lübeck already is in sight. Then, like the seagulls, but much quicker and muck bigger, another Finnlines ferry dashes past the window, some minutes later followed by the Nils Holgersson, a big ferry going to Sweden. Now our ship gains speed again, we had to wait for our slot at the quay. After a last waiting period during which the trucks disembark from the first cargo deck, a port bus takes us to the “Hafenhaus”. Back on solid ground is also back to reality: The worker driving the bus tells the steward who accompanies us about the pending labor dispute at the port. I had planned to take the train to my parents, but luckily the offered to give me a ride, so they have already spent some time here watching the ship tracker. It’s nearly midnight and I’m home.

Changed Plans Once More

Usually I find travel information on the internet quite reliable, but in this case it’s not. I wanted to take the ship on Sunday which, as it turns out, doesn’t exist. I consider flying, but on such short notice it’s intolerably expensive, so I have to leave on Saturday, which means I don’t even get to visit two bigger museums I had on my list. Well, I definitely have to come back here anyway, preferably at a time with either more snow or more sun. This first Saturday in November is All Saints in Finland, an official holiday, so there is not much traffic when I take the 45 minutes bus ride through Helsinki’s outskirts to Vuosaari harbor on this grey day.

Light and Dark

Apart from the physical darkness that already covers most of the day I get to think about light and dark in different countries’ history. As a German born in the 1980s, history has had a dark tinge for me from the beginning of my thinking. My country’s history is inevitably connected to the guilt of two world wars and especially an incomprehensible genocide. And we deal with it, too much so, as some see it. The second country I formed a strong bond with is Latvia where history is blackened mainly from the other side. Throughout all times Latvia has been independent for 44 years now, from the Russian Revolution in 1918 till the Soviet occupation in 1940 and since the renewal of independence in 1990. There are many days when Latvians fly the flags at half mast or with a black ribbon to remember the victims of genocide, war and occupation. In Germany we still have a slightly disturbed relationship with our national identity and our flag. I’ve always been really interested in history and how it is dealt with in the present. Even with quite a bit of background knowledge and having read about other and better times, too, I think I still can say grief and humiliation are central issues when dealing with German or Latvian history. Humiliation by the ancestors’ guilt and grief over the millions killed two to three generations ago, grief over a thereby broken relationship with one’s homeland. Humiliation of the victim and grief over so many people killed or torn from their home and families or forced into exile. The positive side may be that, hopefully, the best is yet to come. Both my countries had their peaceful revolution when the Cold War ended. I am a bit too young to fully remember that change of times, but I know that even a year before the Wall came down practically no one thinking about Berlin and Germany and Europe and the world being ripped in half would have imagined they’d live to see the Iron Curtain fall. And while in Germany and in a different way also in Europe we are still working to “rejoin what belongs together” as we say in Germany, Latvia is working to develop as a small, yet independent state inside a cooperative Europe, independent especially of Russia, where it never belonged.

In Finland I encounter more extreme views of history. One of my hosts is originally from Cambodia. To her genocide is not history in the sense that it is something that happened at the time of her grandparents or even earlier.

Finland on the other hand seems to be the first country I get to know better that doesn’t carry a trauma on the front page of its history. In that sense this dark country is a bit lighter than many. I gather that though Finland was not independent for most of its history and also was at war during WWII, it got around to having a narrative of sacrifices made for a cause that still counts as a good one till today. And not in vain. This small country succeeded in driving out both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and finally gaining independence. Having a history with a most important event to be proud of is an unusual thought for a German.

PS

As I am posting this ten days after returning home and one week after 11/9, THE fateful date of German history (proclamation of the Republic in 1918, Hitler’s unsuccessful Munich Putsch in 1923, the Pogrom Night in 1938 and the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989) we are shocked, sad and angry about a hideous crime against the memory of Greifswald’s Jews. In many towns all over Germany so-called Stolpersteine  (“stumbling stones”) mark the houses where Jews used to live until they were deported and killed or forced into flight or suicide in the 1930s and 1940s. Small brass squares in front of the houses they last lived in state their names, year of birth and some details about their fate like date of deportation and date and place where they were killed. Last week, on that very 9^th of November, the eleven stones in Greifswald were broken out of the pavement and stolen. History is never over. And we must be vigilant and fight for what we believe is right. As Brecht put it, the womb is still fertile. As strange as it seems there is a bright side to this shocking incident: We talk about it much more than we’d have done otherwise this year. Now there are flowers and candles at the sites where the stones are missing, demonstrations of solidarity, services press and TV. Not the best marketing for our region that something like this happened. But it backfired and I'd like to see as a reason for hope.

Design

On the next day Helsinki in fall shows its unfriendly face. It’s raining all day long; needless to say it never actually gets really light. I just wanted to quickly buy my ferry ticket and then use the dark day for a museum and a trip to the Arabia factory, but getting the tickets literally takes hours (more about that later) and I’m really unnerved when I finally get them. The nearby Academic Bookstore has at least some effect in cheering me up, first and foremost because there are JUST BOOKS. A small corner in the front for post cards, a small corner in the back with plastic figures of some comic book heroes and apart from that the whole room is packed with tables and shelves filled with BOOKS. No calendars, reading marks, note books, sweets and worthless decorations that tend to fill the ground floors of most big bookstores I know.  I realize how the tables and the only shoulder high shelves can be distracting, but it is also calming to just float around in a sea of books. Books in Finnish, Swedish, English, German, Russian, French. Two gallery floors hold children’s books and non-fiction and make the room even brighter. I take a look at the Finnish children’s books and talk a little to a young mother glowing with happiness who for some reason came here with her son who is six days old and doesn’t yet look as if he has really arrived in this world.

Iittala window decoration

After quite some time at the bookstore I take the tram to Arabianranta, the part of Helsinki northeast of the center where the factory of the long-standing ceramics and design company Arabia is located. The huge complex also holds and Iittala outlet and the Aalto University Aalto University founded in 2010 as a merger of three universities, among them the University of Art and Design Helsinki. It is named after Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), for many THE Finnish designer, but I also hear critical voices of people who don’t like his architecture and even less the protective way his family prevents changes to any of the buildings he designed.

I take the lift to the top floor, through its windows I get a short view of the inside of the university library, and visit the Arabia exhibition. Outside a curtain of rain hangs in front of the wooden villas nine floors below, up here I am on my own enjoying a handy introduction to the company’s history and the development of their designs and designers. You can also take a factory tour here, I don’t have time for that, but there are some examples of the making of a pot or a plate, from the mould to refining to coloring to glazing. Simply beautiful.

 

Anyway, about design. While Finland was more or less a developing country until the mid 20^th century – that’s what a Finnish lady told me on the ferry back home and others said something along the same line without putting it quite as drastically – it is now regarded as highly progressive in a friendly and thoughtful way, maybe it missed out on the 1960s’ aggressive belief in progress as a straight line heading to the sky, but that is just my wild guess. In 2001, however, Germany was shocked by our high school students’ poor performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) held by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Finland scored highest in all subjects examined in the first three studies and competes for the top position with Shanghai and South-Korea in more recent studies. Emphasis was put on high standard education for students from all parts of society and creative ways of problem solving obviously prosper in this environment.

Helsinki is the World Design Capital 2012 , one of the reasons I wanted to come here this year, even in November. In Germany I get the impression that for many people design is a synonym for unnecessarily expensive versions of necessary items or absence of necessity all together. My impression of Finland is that people here have a broader and more practical understanding of the concept. At least this country and its 5.5 million inhabitants have a surprisingly high output of creative fashion and interior design which is valued at least all over Europe. And apart from the costly brands I see a lot of creative solutions to everyday problems, a small example my mother got me when my parents went to Finland five years ago: a small (elk-shaped…) wooden fork you can put between a pot and its lid to prevent both overboiling and excessive loss of heat.

In Helsinki I find a lot of recycling design and also a small kiosk design agency that concentrates on locally manufactured material for their products. Maybe the way how there is usually a thought or two put into how most ordinary things that you have to deal with quite often in public transport, shops etc. should look like in order to work better (that is, in order to let you instantly understand how they work) is one of the reasons why Helsinki is a very welcoming place and modern in a good way.

Helsinki

I return to Helsinki and find the regional train to the CouchSurfing hosts’ home and the way to their house without problems. I’m afraid I didn’t pay for the ride, though, as I didn’t understand the vending machine on the train and it was rush hour, so it was really crowded and the conductor who also sells tickets didn’t make it to my cart.

My hosts are really enthusiastic about CouchSurfing – they host virtually all the time. I feel welcome at once in this cheerful family and we spend the evening in animated conversations about our countries, history, what to see in Helsinki, art and much more.

The main thing I do on my first full day in Helsinki is walking around the city center around the Esplanade. It’s not always sunny, but it doesn’t rain, there are quite many people in the street, calmly hurrying towards their destination, not so many tourists, of course. I like the architecture, the broad streets. I can see why Helsinki is called the smallest metropolis in the world, it surely has a cosmopolitan air to it. At noon I meet Liza from the US who also stays with my hosts in the Music Center. The building is futuristic and a bit puzzling on the first sight, but after some orientation we find our free organ concert. I am quite fond of organs and this high square room holds one organ in the center of each wall, quite astonishing. I think I never saw such big instruments outside a church. After a short introduction in Finnish a young woman plays Bach and Buxtehude. The acoustics of the room are perfect.

 

 

Walking made us hungry and we find a university cafeteria. As we aren’t students of Helsingin Yliopisto (University of Helsinki, one of the few Finnish words I manage to remember) we have to pay the full price, but 7 Euros seem OK considering the general price level. As I heard from friends who spent their exchange year here it’s just normal that you can find not only a vegetarian option, but also vegan and lactose-free food. The full meal includes salad and bread, a warm dish (I choose fish pasta, good choice), a glass of water and a glass of juice or milk. Milk is a popular drink here and most people seem to prefer fat-free milk instead of that containing 0.4% fat. I never imagined it’s even possible to take all the fat out of milk… (And I personally don’t like the watery look or taste of it.)

In the afternoon I stroll around a mall to see what is different from German malls (there are some different foods in the supermarket and there is a Moomin shop, almost everything is expensive, and, not necessarily different, but remarkable, I get to taste some truly luxurious cupcakes which are vegan!). After that I visit the Amos Anderson Art Museum, a smaller museum for modern art, Panu’s father was involved in a current exhibition and so I got a free ticket! The exhibition Boutique is a collection of collaborations between artists and designers. I don’t know all that much about modern art, but I can say I like these installations and videos. I also like the paintings by Fanny Churberg which I can see on another floor and the founder’s interiors. Although it’s not a big museum I am quite exhausted and it’s pitch dark already. I decide to take a look at the Cathedral, the most frequently photographed building in Finland and return home. When I walked from the port I got a glimpse on the cathedral at some point, but it doesn’t fail to impress me now when it suddenly enters my view.

 

 

 

Brightly lit it resides above Senate Square, I have to take a lot of pictures, too. I climb the steep stairs and find the door open. Moreover, the boys’ choir is rehearsing and obviously it’s OK to sit down and listen. About 60 Cantores Minores aged from around eight to 15 in their ordinary clothes need a strong leader, but when they sing they sing very well. I look around the huge wide room and find it to be an attractive combination of magnificent gold decorations and wide areas painted in plain white (or light blue, it’s hard to tell). When the rehearsal is over I walk around a little and when I turn around the gigantic organ really strikes me with surprise. I’ve never seen a curved organ. It looks as if it could fly.

 

 

On my way home I try to walk a different way to the station and find myself in something that feels like an ancient cave. I've heard that large parts of public life happen in tunnels like these to avoid the cold.

Train, Turku and More Family

I reach the monumental train station in time to buy a ticket from the machine and find my train on a track outside of the hall. I am really impressed by this train. It’s called intercity train, has two stories and very comfortable seats.

At the end of each cart there is a phone booth – not one with a phone in it, of course, but if you wish to talk on your mobile you should do it in there in order not to disturb others. Nice thought. Fitting with my idea of Finns being a people that values quietness. I am even more astonished when I see the speed on the screen overhead, 140 km/h or more and it moves so smoothly through the winter landscape of rural Northern Europe that I can make some notes and my handwriting looks no different from usual, no involuntary scribbles or erratic lines. Maybe this is also due to the fact that as a former part of the Russian Empire Finish trains run on broad gauge railways. The two hours to Turku pass by easily with some writing and enjoying the view. Sometimes there are rough stone walls close to the railway which must be covered with water trickling down in many places in warmer times, now icy covers hang across it. Unfortunately I can’t take pictures of it so close to the window. I take photos of the landscape instead, it’s definitely wide enough. Even though there is some sea in between, I think the change in landscape from Lithuania through Latvia and Estonia to Finland is quite gradual. The main new aspect here seems to be that everything is wider, the houses further apart, longer stretches of the same, fields, forest. I don’t know if Southern Finland actually is even less densely populated than the Baltics, it looks like that to me.

 

My host brother picks me up at the station in Turku. We haven’t met for several years, but I don’t feel that at all. A brother stays a brother. Before we go home, he takes me to the cathedral which is still the main church of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the seat of its achibishop. This is a remainder of the times when Turku was the Finnish capital. The church is an impressive building with columns so high they make the whole room look light and elegant although it is built from massive and quite big stones. For some reason I didn’t take pictures, but you can see some on wikipedia.

After a 15 minutes drive outside of town we reach Juho’s home. He and his fiancée, their little son and a huge St. Bernhard’s dog live in a serial house close to a forest. We spend family time playing with my active little nephew, do some shopping at the mall and a quick sightseeing tour around Turku (including the castle, the port and the hospital where Juho and Annika work) and a lot of delicious Finnish food. Apart from reindeer with cranberry jam I get to know something new: Karelian pie. It is rice porridge baked inside a thin layer of rye dough and you eat it with a mix of boiled eggs and butter. Writing this down I can relate to Juho saying it sounds really strange when you describe it like that. But that’s what it is and we like it. And so do I. Before I leave on the next day Juho and I take a little walk with Reino in his buggy and the huge dog. The sun is shining and I understand I could have used sunglasses, at this time of the year the sun is blinding if you see it, of course, as it never rises very high. I see there are even sunglasses for babies, Reino is not a big fan, but he goes along with it.

Up North, to a New Country!

Monday I hit the road again. As always when I leave Latvia I feel a little sad, but the predominant feeling is a strong urge to come back as soon as possible and I already try to find a place in my calendar. I definitely plan to spend a part of my practical year here, but, of course, I have to come back before that.

This bus is not empty and the seats are quite narrow, so this ride is not too relaxing. Through the window I notice varying amounts of snow on the trees and meadows along the road. We pass through Salacgrīva, a small coastal town not too far from Limbaži where I spent my exchange year. The market square is close to the road and I remember the St. Michael’s market quite exactly eleven years ago at the beginning of my exchange year when everything was still new and incomprehensible to me. Seems like another life.

I’ve been to Tallinn only once before, also during my exchange year. This year I don’t have time to see anything of the city, it’s dark throughout my stay and in the evening there is a chilly drizzle. So I spend a relaxed evening with my host cousin at her apartment, she studies opera singing here. The ferry to Helsinki leaves at eight and you have to check in one hour before that, so I have to get up fairly early. I am rewarded with a quiet winter morning, just enough people outside to ask for directions when needed, and a magnificent pink sun rise over the harbor. Once on board I find a seat opposite a big window and just enjoy the view. The ship is quite full, mostly middle aged Russian women, each with two huge trunks. I wonder if they go to work in Finland and take their food with them to save money. Russian is the predominant language around me.

Once more I pass one of these unnoticeable borders – and I enter a country I haven’t been to before! I have one and a half hours to get from the quay to the central station, even with the backpack enough time for one kilometer, so I can walk around a little to get some first impressions of Helsinki. Road signs are in Finnish and Swedish here, which helps to learn some Finnish and makes it easier to know I’m on the right way. After passing the Uspenski Cathedral, the largest Orthodox church in Western Europe, I also happen to walk past the presidential palace as the change of guards.

There were free maps of Helsinki on the ferry, so I know the tourist information is right on my way to the station, on the Pohjois Esplanadi (Northern Esplanade), a central axis of the city center. The Esplanade Park was established at a turning point of Helsinki’s history, large parts of the city had burnt down in 1808 and the city was to become the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland inside the Russian Empire in 1812 (big anniversary this year!), so there was need for a new town plan. The park used to be exclusive for the gentry in the beginning, but was opened for all members of the society in the course of time. During WWI it even served as a vegetable field, quite a history.

I collect some material at the tourist information to read on the train and enjoy some window shopping at stores of some of the most famous Finnish design companies like Marimekko and Iittala.

Last Anatomy Lecture and First Snow

Maybe it was the upcoming sudden change of seasons that made me feel temped to start hibernating, but I get a grip on myself and leave the house in spite of hail, snow and strong winds on Friday to join my brother in his anatomy lecture in Pardaugava (meaning the other side of the river Daugava). The sun pays us a short visit when I reach the neighborhood where Latvia’s University’s institute for anatomy resides in a villa close to a lake and park part of which is called Victory Park. A huge socialist monument honors the fallen of WWII, a lot of flowers now covered in snow are piled up in front of it. Everything is very light and clean in the fresh snow bright golden leaves on the trees all around and for a short while a white and blue sky.

When I get off the bus I am not quite sure if I understood my brother’s instructions correctly and I am actually a bit late so I ask a girl for directions to the anatomical institute. She’s going there, too, so we hurry through the snow and puddles, trying not to get our boots too wet. I am glad that now after more than one week and three days before leaving my language has obviously recovered so far that she doesn’t recognize me as a foreigner right away. When I meet my brother in the corridor and change into German and then back to Latvian to ask her if she also studies medicine and explain my visit, she is surprised. And when she tells me she just started this year I see the same expression of pride and fear that may be universal to new medical students.

As there are only 35 people on my brother’s course, their lecture is held in something looking like a huge living room with rich ceiling decoration and a big fireplace in which the furniture (except for the piano) has been replaced by a lot of chairs with writing pads attached to them. The Muslim students skip class because of ‘Aid al-Adha, the teacher makes fun of her own English, unlike in Germany the students have to wear white coats even for listening to a lecture, the information on the canalis inguinalis is familiar territory. All together I think I get a good impression of what studying in this program is like.

 

On the way back home through the wind and snow I buy my tickets to Helsinki and spend a relaxed evening with my host mother at home, my host father has a gig with his band. When I go to bed I open the window for a short while. The air smells of burning wood (everyone started heating by now) and snow. The door in the yard plays the first line of “Pūt vējiņi” the unofficial Latvian national anthem as someone pressed the correct code to enter the house. Latvian winter.

Birthday and Some Quiet Days

My birthday is a Sunday. We get up fairly early because I want to go to church and my brother has set the breakfast table with flowers and a typically Latvian chocolate cake he bought for his last money. It is delicious and very nourishing… Between breakfast and church the Riga’s Heating repair guy who doesn’t speak Latvian turns up. Then Gunnar and I walk the few meters to the Old St. Gertrude’s Church and as the sermon gets long and longer I feel a little bad about making him listen to such a long service in Latvian, but he is nice enough not to complain. Although this service is Lutheran and we are Lutherans, too, there are some differences to German services. More standing and much more kneeling than in Germany and you get communion given into the mouth, not into the hand.

 

After church my parents call and I get my stuff packed because I move to my host family today. We walk there to have a late lunch. By lucky coincidence my younger host sister who lives in England is there, too and my older host sister, her boyfriend and their little son are there, too. It’s a complete family reunion and I am really happy to be back again.

My host parents’ place is my longest stay on this trip. I walk around in Riga a lot (see the current head picture of the blog) and here, too, I get the impression that Latvia is recovering from grim years of crisis that forced many people to emigrate to Western Europe. There are hardly any unoccupied shops and I even see more expensive stores than before, Finnish, German, American and British brands, new shops selling art works and decoration made in Latvia and a lot of organic food stores that haven’t been around two years ago.  I know it’s not yet back to as good as it was, but the worst, hopefully, may be over. The atmosphere in the old town, at least, is cheerful with many people in the street and a band in funny dress up playing loudly and happily.

 

The closest I get to visiting our old home in Limbaži is a short visit at my host aunt’s place in the county side. I really like the green hills covered in forests, fields and some gardens. Apart from that I read, play with the cats and meet some German friends who also spent their exchange year in Latvia, one of them returned after high school and studies here now and my best friend also came to visit her host family just now. It’s a connecting of worlds to have lunch with her and my host father and to visit my brother together. After all, we know the world IS small…

Back in Riga, Home and Another Home

The international bus station looks the same as last time, it’s Thursday afternoon and both the station and the nearby central market are very busy. The weather is nice and I decide to walk to my brother’s new home. First of all I get some typical Latvian ice-cream (it’s called marmalade, the best way to describe it is cream ice with pieces of different kinds of chewy fruit jelly in it) at my favorite ice-cream place – it’s sunny and quite warm, after all – and enjoy the walk past the Freedom Monument and all these familiar places in spite of the huge backpack.

 

I meet my brother at the corner of his street. He shares an apartment with two other students, a German from his course and a Spanish architecture student on Erasmus exchange, so the languages at home are both German and English. As they all just moved to the freshly renovated appartment some weeks ago with the 20 kilos allowed on a plane and one or two packages sent by the parents the rooms look even bigger than they are. My brother is glad to finally have bought a bed, a desk and two bookshelves. They got a used kitchen table, fridge and washing machine, so the basic needs are covered, three chairs thrown out by the hospital complete the furniture. The living room is empty except for a fireplace and a drying rack – we could play hockey there, they say. While the fifth floor gives you daily exercise and makes it tough work to acquire a washing machine it also gives a lot of light with windows to both the first and second yard and nice views across the roofs. The house also is part of a very good neighborhood and part of the medical faculty is just around the corner, so this flat is about as good as it gets.

On the other hand, of course, being thrown into a completely foreign country AND start med school at full speed at the same time can also be quite stressful. Luckily they have found a woman who helped them with finding the flat and the used furniture – and with all incidents when they meet the language barrier which happens often enough when arranging things like internet connections and other additions to thenew flat. The caretaker speaks a little German and is really surprised to one day meet someone who speaks Latvian in this place when he comes in early to fix something. “Ah, you are German? And you speak Latvian? You learned it within one year?? Well, that is good, some people live here for forty years and don’t speak it!” The usual reaction… I feel Latvian enough to be annoyed by Russians living here and at least pretending not to speak Latvian. And to ignore the fact that I really don’t speak enough Russian to understand explanations about heating systems. I also get irritated by some of my brother’s class mates’ annoyed remarks about what they think is typically Latvian. I understand, of course, that it can be a normal stage of getting used to a new place, but it still hurts my feelings.

And I see it is hard for foreign students studying in a program designed for foreigners to overcome this phase of looking at the country they live in from the outside without really understanding.
Through my host family my brother has at least some connection with Latvians apart from his teachers and the caretaker.  I also force him to sometimes say some things in Latvian – and realize some things for the first time myself, for example that “five” and “milk” are nearly the same word in Latvian.

Back on the Bus

In the morning there was fog so thick we couldn’t see to the other side of the street, but two hours later the sun is shining from a light blue October sky. Alice and Léa head south to Warsaw and at half past ten I get on the city bus one last time back to the international bus station.

While the conductor is Latvian the driver speaks Russian without opening his mouth for the announcements. The ride will take four hours, OK, I don’t need to know much more. Once more there are only a few passengers and it’s very quiet. I read and write a little and take some pictures that get a little blurry, but I like to catch the impression of the landscape and the sunny weather.

While I was asleep when we crossed the Polish-Lithuanian border, I enjoy entering Latvia without even slowing down now in broad daylight. I always flew to Latvia before it joined the EU, but I know these two borders made the 24 hours bus ride from Berlin to Riga even longer. Now only abandoned barracks and empty multiple lanes remind of that. We just pass them and some meters on a sign announces that we now are in the Republic of Latvia. A lot of road repair is underway; I take that as a good sign concerning the Latvian economy.

Sunny Southern Latvia

More Art, More Lithuanian Food

The weather doesn’t improve, so we walk up and down the old town again on the next day inspite of the grey sky. We pay the “Republic of Užupis”  another visit. The quarter Užupis  (meaning beyond the river, in this case the Vilnia, the smaller one of Vilnius’ both rivers) used to be a really run-down neighborhood . After the independence many young people, especially artists moved there due to the low rents and independence was declared on April 1^st 1997. In many respects this is obviously 15 years are sufficient for gentrification to kick in, the usual development. In summer the atmosphere is probably more tangible. Anyway, lots of unrestrained open air art, a backpacker-Jesus by the riverside and especially the constitution put up on mirrors in many languages along one street give me an idea of this strange little republic’s soul. While the display of artistic and general freedom here feels playful to me, Užupis also seems to hold strong connections with Tibet, a place where freedom is not a matter of play up till today. There is a square dedicated to Tibet’s freedom, symbolized by colorful wooden birds and prayer flags in the trees, and there is a version of the constitution in some language I’m sure is Tibetan.

Another street (on “this” side of the river) with walls decorated all over is the Literatu gatve (Literates’ street)  which carries symbols, pictures or quotes of important writers, most of them Lithuanian, but some internationals like Günter Grass and Jean Paul Sartre have made it here, too. But it seems to be a general feature of this city. There are artworks integrated into many buildings and streets, many renovated buildings deliberately display patches that function as windows onto what they used to look like earlier.

 Literatu gatve

A museum is a nice opportunity to avoid occasional rain, the exhibition of the treasures of a Russian fashion collector illustrates how there is not too much new in the fashion you see today, at least outside the most extravagant designers’ shows. Especially the 1960’s dresses would be very wearable 50 years later.

After a lunch of fried Lithuanian cheese we meet Virginija to visit some other parts of the Old Town and even the sun shines for a while. The Gate of Dawn is the last remaining gate and holds a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. With the light colors and the golden adornments I think it really fits is name.

 

 

On the following walk Virginija shows us many small places we might not have noticed otherwise.

Like a cellar pub selling beer of many different small Lithuanian breweries.

Like a center founded by a couple returned from exile who dedicated their lives to Lithuanian traditional arts, especially weaving. There are woven skirts characteristic for every district in the country. The center teaches the art of weaving to children, reproduces old material and develops modern applications of the old art that requires so much patience.
Like the quite recent frescos in a part of the University that are impressive in their color of dark red and black and in the strength of Lithuanian myths forcefully present still in the late 20^th century and up to this day.
And we visit a friend of Viginija's who is the librarian at a newly founded modern arts' center. Art is really alive in this city.

We finish the day at a restaurant specializing on traditional Lithuanian food. The rooms are decorated with old furniture and kitchen appliances and are named after different regions. We eat Cepelinai, heavy filled potato dumplings in the form of a Zeppelin. Delicious and very nourishing, the right thing after a long sightseeing day.

Amazing Trakai

Léa and Alice have a car and I join them on a day trip to see something of Lithuania beyond Vilnius. And Trakai is something worth seeing. About half an hour’s drive from the capital it is a small town beautifully situated between lakes that used to be the political, military and economic center in the 15^th and 16^th century, as the Grand Dukes spend more time there than in the official capital Vilnius. Their fully reconstructed castle is the main sight now and while it must be bustling with tourists in summer it has its own charm on this foggy autumn day.

Trakai from the terace at Uzutrakai

 

The shore is lined with cafés most of them offering Karaite cuisine. Members of this small Turkic people still live here and have an active kanessa (temple of the Old Testament based Karaite religion) both in Trakai and in Vilnius. We have to try some Kabinai, too, of course, it’s pastry filled traditionally with lamb, but you can also get chicken or cabbage. It’s really delicious and gives us strength for more walking and exploring as there is a more recent place called Uzutrakai (“beyond Trakai”) on the other side of the lake. A small winding road bumping up and down across the hills eventually takes us there to explore a mansion with a baroque style garden with a lot of statues (we discover to at least partly be only one year old) and a great view over the lake.

The house is probably used for concerts sometimes. A group of men is working in the park, cutting the grass and climbing the high trees to cut down some branches. We stay on the ground and take a walk around the park with its bridges and autumn colors and just enjoy the fresh air.

Arriving in Vilnius – One Day Like Two

After waking up and getting off the bus, I hurriedly change into my winter coat, it’s 7:30 in the morning and about 7 degrees.  I find the bus easily, buy a ticket from the driver without speaking and sit down for 40 more minutes. Listening to the continuous announcements and reading the signs in the street I start to get a feeling for this language that doesn’t really sound foreign to me although I don’t understand anything.

It still is really strange for me to speak English in the street in Eastern Europe. I usually go to Latvia where I never need it or I stayed with people who speak the local language and were fluent in English or German themselves. It feels more appropriate for me to ask simple questions in Russian although I don’t really know more than some sentences. Enough to find my host’s house, anyway. After a warm welcome and some tea I leave for a first day of sightseeing and getting to know the city. Only once it crosses my mind that my (now I have to say former) class mates start the clinical years of their studies.

I spend most of the day walking up and down the streets of the old town. The sky is grey, but it’s not cold and it doesn’t rain, so the weather is nice enough to just take in the city by walking, it’s also small enough to more or less walk the Old Town’s edges in a short time. And I feel I would fall asleep if I sat down after the night on the bus. I’ve been to Vilnius for three hours before when I changed buses on my way from Riga to Bydgoszcz two years ago. It was so hot then that I couldn’t enjoy the city. But still it’s not completely new to me and it also doesn’t feel foreign. There really seems to be something like Baltic everyday culture, it surely doesn’t feel Latvian, but not all that far from it. The main difference seems to be that houses are a bit lower than in Riga and the decorations are of another style. Sometimes it even reminds me of pictures of Southeast Europe. Also there seem to be more churches. Maybe I’m just more aware of them as they are catholic and more decorated. In spite of the grey weather I get the impression that this is a lively city with a lot of bigger and smaller things going on, strong creative energy and quite a lot of young people around.

 

Archbishop's Cathedral

 

In the afternoon I am joined by my host Virginija and two French girls who just arrived at her house, too. So I get some more walking this time with some insider information about both landmarks and small details that I would not have noticed or at least not understood on my own. She shows us the “Miracle” stone in front of the cathedral, this is where the Via Baltica of the Singing Revolution started that eventually brought freedom to the Baltic countries, a development that was hoped for in the way you hope for a miracle throughout Soviet occupation. Now there is the tradition in Vilnius that you have to stand on this stone and turn around three times and make a wish. It will be fulfilled. We’ll see.

 

 

Bus Across Poland

After an extended late Sunday morning breakfast I arrive at the international bus station 15 minutes before the bus to Vilnius is supposed to leave. Unfortunately the bus is caught somewhere in Berlin traffic, so it’s more than one hour late, so I get to exchange impressions of and experiences in the Baltic countries with a German guy waiting for his Lithuanian wife returning from her home country.

 

After the conference with so much input and external structure the bus ride is utterly relaxing. It is completely booked, but only a few people got on in Berlin, I have a window seat on the first floor, there are only ten more people on the whole floor, it is very quiet. It’s quite nice to have absolutely nothing to do, no appointments to keep. I get to read a lot of magazines I took along and just look out of the window at the very flat German and Polish landscape, sometimes a stretch of forest, sometimes apple plantations with small trees overloaded with red fruit. One of the articles I read is on travelling and understanding between different parts of the world as well as changes in travelling due to technical developments. I think about this blog and how it’s often much easier and cheaper to buy tickets online these days and how the offline infrastructure is reduced in favor of the digital option until it’s not an option anymore. I decide that like it or not, some travel experiences just aren’t the same as 20 years ago just like our lives are very different from the way we lived in the 1990s…

Read on the bus: Free magazine to be found in the more expensive and presumably faster German trains, neofeminism, protestant magazine that sometimes comes with some big newspapers

 

Another article is about the author’s search for the maid her mother’s family had during the war, a young girl forcibly taken from a Ukrainian village. Though those who have their own memories of that time are dying out, this cruel injustice that wasn’t even recognized by the German side for a long time will remain an issue between my country and our neighbors to the east. Both the suffered and the caused pain are passed on through the generations and there is no way not to deal with them especially in a more and more closely intertwined macro-neighborhood such as the EU.

Somewhere in the middle of Poland

 

The bus feels like a space ship to me, probably a transit phenomenon as I won’t get off in Poland this time. I get the chance to start adjusting my language. The conductor speaks Russian, Lithuanian, Polish and (some) English. The announcements are made in Russian and (very shortened) in English with a heavy accent. Once we stop and I feel I should understand the announcement this time, so I ask the girl sitting near by, for some reason in English, she isn’t comfortable. I tell her in Latvian I understand that language, too, as I had heard her make a phone call in Latvian while reading a Russian magazine. She is surprised and happy and tells me that we stop for 15 minutes. Everyone leaves the bus at this small parking place in the middle of Poland. There is a vending machine and I find some Polish coins in the paper bag holding the remaining coins from my last trip to this region, but I don’t understand the instructions on the machine. I ask the guy waiting in line behind me, he understands enough Polish to help, as he sees the Latvian coins in my collection he switches from English to Latvian. It is a bit weird to speak Latvian in a third country and between other languages. When everyone returns to the bus a young guy politely offers to let me enter first. OK, now I know I’m back in Eastern Europe, it feels like home.

We arrive in Warsaw after 10pm. I’ve never been here, the tall buildings with huge advertisements in front of the dark sky are a sharp contrast to the dark forests and meadows we passed before. After the second stop every seat in the bus is occupied. I chat with two Lithuanian guys who spent the weekend partying in Warsaw and will be back in time for work on Monday as we will reach Vilnius at 7:30am. After a while the Russian, Polish and Lithuanian conversations die down and everyone tries to sleep in their seats.

Berlin in Fall

Even after I knew I wouldn’t take my intermediates, plans continued to change, originally I planned to go round the Baltic Sea clockwise, possibly including Sweden. But then I stumbled across the final conference of a research project concerning mental health and migration to be held in Berlin on the second weekend of October. So I adapted my plan to see my parents for two days, continue to Berlin to attend the conference, and take the night bus to Vilnius.

Homebase: Hamburg

 

Berlin is unusually charming this weekend, mild temperatures, blue skies and trees blazing with changing leaves. After I arrived even later than planned on Thursday (thanks to German Railway), I leave Dana’s place in Moabit with all my luggage including a new green backpack and a cotton shopping bag holding my winter jacket as I will spend the next two nights at another friend’s house. The bus station is next to a bridge crossing an entrance of the Westhafen (western harbor), smooth black water still covered in some morning mist. After storing my bags at the central station I take a short walk to the lecture hall next to the hospital.

View from the Wall memorial at the Invalidenpark in Berlin

 

Although there is a huge construction site covering more or less the whole area between the central station and the Charité University Hospital, the whole city seems calm to me. I realize Cairo has more or less established itself as my benchmark for big cities, so every place with multi lane crossroads, but less traffic, shouting and blowing horns feels tidy and quiet to me.

The conference is aiming at the center of my research interest and I’m not disappointed by the talks and discussions. Some information on the project dealing with epidemiological differences between Germans, Turks in Turkey and people of Turkish descent living in Germany, their different illness models and access to and usage of the health care system can be found here. I successfully invite one of the professors to hold a session at my university in a Global Health course some friends and I are developing and I get an internship at the Charité for next year, so it’s been a 100% success.

On Saturday night Susanne, Hanne another friend of theirs and I have dinner in a new Korean restaurant in their neighborhood. The owner also is an opera singer and she agrees that it’s a quite courageous thing to start a new restaurant in Prenzlauer Berg, as there are so many places to eat in this area and competition is tough. I never ate Korean food before and find it quite different from Chienese, Japanese or any Asian (or other) cuisine I know, but very delicious. Susanne has to finish my fish soup, though, it is too spicy even for me. I in turn finish Hanne’s cabbage wraps and the evening passes in an animated exchange of travel experiences from different Asian countries. And I definitely recommend Kochu Karu, delicious food from best ingredients with a charming owner, a kitchen behind glass and a very balanced interior combining an old fashioned ceiling with plain furniture from light wood blocks and a custom made painting all around the three walls that tells the story of a tiger carrying great food from Korea to Berlin.