General Archives ⋆ Page 17 of 43 ⋆ The Passenger

July 4, 2019July 28, 2024

Memel

When arriving at Kaunas, Lithuania I had a look on my smartphone and the digital map suprised me: the river next to me which my local guide called Nemunas was labeled as river Memel. A name I had heard before. It is a 937 kilometers long stream that begins in Belorussia and runs via Lithuana into the Baltic sea. In a small section it forms the border between Lithuania and Belorussia – but before reaching the sea it also forms the border between Lithuania and the Kaliningrad Oblast belonging to Russia.

July 3, 2019July 19, 2019

Latvian

The Latvian language belongs to the balto-slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. It is therefore totally different to Estonian (which is a Finno-Ugric language), but rather close to Lithuanian (but locals say they can’t understand each other fully without learning the other language). It is spoken by around 1.7 million people.

July 3, 2019April 19, 2022

Art nouveau

If there is only one thing that you would remember about Rīga, Latvia – then it would be art nouveau. There is a complete quarter full of houses in this wonderful style (located in Elizabetes iela, Alberta iela and Strēlnieku iela) and that is the reason why the city is a UNESCO world heritage site. But you will find also other fantastic architectural styles throughout the city – within the city center you overlook buildings like the old exchange, the house with the cat on the roof, the opera or the academy of sciences.

July 3, 2019July 11, 2019

Getting around

If you’re just visiting the old town and the art nouveau quarter of Rīga, Latvia you’ll probably don’t need public transport. But there are also interesting places like the botanical garden, the zoological garden or the Brāļu kapi memorial cemetery that are a bit further away. Good news: using public transport at Rīga is fairly easy. A hive of busses, minibusses, trolley busses and tramways is waiting for you to jump in.

July 2, 2019March 31, 2023

Deutschbalten

When you’re travelling through Estonia and Latvia you can see many remains of former German residents – like inscriptions on houses. As these regions were never part of Germany, how to explain this? In the 12th century CE the Livonian Brothers of the Sword conquered the pagan Baltic area. With them German settlers arrived known as Baltic Germans (or ‘Deutschbalten‘).

July 2, 2019April 19, 2022

From Tallinn to Rīga

After visiting Tallinn, Estonia it was time to continue my trip to Rīga, Latvia and there are not too many options for that as the railway system is not as good as in other European countries. As often as in eastern Europe long-distance busses replace trains and there is a very good infrastructure for them. You can easily book this trip online with different platforms and operators. And you can choose different quality classes of transit.

July 1, 2019July 9, 2019

Estonian

I really like the Estonian language. It sounds nice, it reads cute and it feels like they have too much vowels in Estonia. Or how do you explain words like ‘bussijaam‘ (bus stop)? Looking at the languages of the Baltic states you can see that Latvian and Lithuanian have some commonalities (even though they are very clearly different languages), Estonian is absolutely different.

July 1, 2019April 19, 2022

Tech-savvy

Starting my trip to the Baltic states at Tallinn, Estonia (formerly also called Reval) was a perfect idea. Relaxed and rather quiet people, a wonderful city with a well-preserved old-town (Vanalinn, a UNESCO world heritage site), the Toompea hill and the parks around it and a tech-savvy nation that makes travelling easy. It already starts with the fantastic and small airport that is really welcoming and the cute Finno-Ugric language.

June 30, 2019April 19, 2022

Cat eyes

When you’re at Estonia and walk around at night you’re required by law to wear cat eyes. A special situation I never had before and they tell you also where to wear them: at knees height on the right side of your body. It is necessary that they are visible from back and front. I learned about this from the travel advice of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany.

June 30, 2019July 8, 2019

852 victims

When preparing for the trip to Tallinn, Estonia the English name for the country somehow had a strange sound for me. But I couldn’t remember why. That changed only when I was standing in front of the memorial ‘Katkenud liin‘ (broken line) – it remembers the victims of a ferry disaster in 1994. The ferry boat ESTONIA sank on its way from Tallinn, Estonia to Stockholm, Sweden and 852 persons lost their lifes.