Visits to Baltic Nations of the Former Soviet Union now Part of European Union

 

Visits to Baltic Nations of the Partitioned Soviet Union now 

Part of Unified European Union

Sachi G. Dastidar

Our visits included the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. My wife Shefali and I entered Estonia from Finland via a ferry from Helsinki. That journey was quite enjoyable as hundreds of visitors were heading to Estonia for that trip.

In all the former Soviet Republics we used the local public transportation as much as possible, except for places where the only option was taxi or tourist vans. We also traveled from country to country by bus, exiting Lithuania by bus for Warsaw, Poland. We left Poland by high speed train for Berlin, Germany.

All three states had friendly population with new identities. My knowledge of some Russian helped a bit, although people spoke Russian on the street but there were no signs of Russian language in public. One of the biggest pleasure was when a local bus driver at Tallinn Port bus stand refused to take us to our hotel on his route, a 5-minute ride, while insisting us to take a non-existing taxi, a woman of the bus rebuked him in Russian, pulled opened the door and invited us to the bus. She showed us our hotel when the bus stopped 50 feet away.

Like tourists we visited historic and interesting places, including beaches, parks, museums, downtown and lot more. Here are few of the places we visited:

Estonia

  

 

   
 

Lithuania

Here are some pictures from Lithuania

 

Museum of Genocide Victims