Was There Any Chance of Wolves?

Anonymity is a blessing in the short term. It’s true that it means you’re far from family and friends, but it also means never having to be anywhere at a particular time and doing exactly what you wish without consultation; it’s a bit like growing up and no longer being answerable to parents. Anonymity is a key component to the traveller’s freedom, the treasure of the road.

It was the first trip to Latvia, one week, and the day arrived for that fateful tour to Bauska. I’d taken up residence with newly met locals Dzintra and her daughters, Antra and Anta. Bauska was the plan for while they were busy with school, university and work.

The largely flat Latvian countryside has something in common with Bangladesh: there are a good number of palaces from the lord-and-peasant past, what in Bangladesh would be called a rajbari. Near Bauska is one such place, Rundales Pils, a baroque palace built for the Dukes of Courland from 1736. It was the goal.

Indeed the journey was completed easily and the palace was impressive. It was on the way home again to Riga when things went wrong.

With the blessing of anonymity there was nobody to ask whether it was a good idea to take a little walk in the countryside in the belief it would not be difficult to find a different way back to Bauska town for the bus. Besides, there was a footbridge over a small river made of oil drums tied together, floating and with planks on top, which really needed to be crossed.

Entirely without care I found myself of a picturesque stretch of dirt road, entirely straight, walking merrily. But it was a strange phenomenon for the road seemed to lengthen with each step. An hour passed, then two, and all the while there were open fields without a single house in sight. Could such a scene exist in a country as small as Latvia? More disturbingly, not a single car had passed by.

There are Latvian rivers with fishermen. I just didn't find any.

There comes that point when you wonder if turning back wouldn’t be more sensible, but the oil drum bridge already seemed distant and surely it wasn’t really possible to be lost in Latvia.

The road continued and so did I.

Early evening arrived and with the sun my confidence in direction gradually set. That point comes: ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ I started to contemplate sleeping in a field and waiting for morning. Was it dangerous to sleep in a Latvian field? It’s true the country was called the wild east back then, but surely that meant human society, in the cities. Was there any chance of wolves?

Okay: worst scenario, Latvian field, one night. I kept walking.

At about the stage where my legs felt they might refuse to go on, something exciting happened. I came to a road junction. There was no house or car, and only more fields, but for the first time in several hours I had a choice: left, right or straight ahead? On my first day in Latvia I’d made a choice for the left; this time I chose right. And I walked.

Lithuania wasn’t far to the south and with all that time for thinking I wondered how I would know if I accidentally crossed the border. Would unintelligible Latvian sound any different to unintelligible Lithuanian, in the event I met someone, somewhere?

There are houses in Latvian villages. I just didn't see any.

A few minutes later something more exciting happened. It was a sound: the oil and metal rumble of a car. Sure enough, it came along kicking up dust: a kind of red sports car. Normally it’d be courteous to stand to the side and politely flag down the vehicle, with acknowledgement it was a favour if they stopped. But the situation was not normal.

I stood road centre, hands out in a kind of ‘halt’, like a dacoit or a police officer. The car had no choice.

Inside was a couple. It was strange because when he decided to stop rather than run me down, she was rather angry about it. I’m not sure which language it was they spoke, but it sounded like Russian and there was clearly some kind of domestic dispute going on. ‘What are you stopping for you idiot!’ I imagined her yelling. She really was screaming at him.

‘What do you expect me to do, leave him here?’ I imagined him replying, marginally more calmly.

‘You never spend enough time with me! You are always with your wife!’ Or perhaps she was the wife. Whatever the specifics I was sure of one thing: I was getting in that car, whether the lady liked it or not. It’s not that I’m in the habit of interfering in other people’s domestic upheavals. It’s just that, at a minimum they could take me to a main road, wherever that might be, hopefully still in Latvia.  I could only say ‘Riga’.

Laugh if you will but after all that walking and after all her screaming the main road was but a few hundred yards further.  It was a very short ride indeed.  She was pleased I got out; the guy was nice about it. ‘Paldies,’ I said, Dzintra-taught, ‘Thanks.’

It was dark when I stood on the side of the highway.  There were cars but nobody was stopping; who could blame them?  So I walked a bit, and I’d been sure to get the sports car driver to indicate the Riga-direction of the road when he’d dropped me off.  After some time there was a bus shelter and I thought, ‘Would it be safe to stay one night in a Latvian bus shelter?’ It seemed unlikely anybody would stop before morning.  Personally I would’ve favoured the field with whatever risk of wolves there was.

Well fortunately there’s this little thing called public transport, and fortunately the international express services between Riga and Lithuania used that route.  They don’t officially stop except in major towns, except that, fortunately and like in Bangladesh, they do. They will pick up the odd stray like me for a small fee. A bus stopped and I was saved.  I was so relieved that I’d be making it back to the city that from my pocket I pulled out a few coins at random and proudly presented them to the driver.

This would have been a better road to get lost on, on account of the passerby and the house.

Latvia was using lats then, and it would have to have been one of the world’s strangest currencies, because the exchange rates gave it a huge value, with one lat worth more than one British pound I believe. The consequence was that travelling in Latvia was a tiny brown coin affair with everything seeming to cost umpteen centimes; with a whole lat it felt like you could purchase a small condominium, perhaps off the plan. 

The bus driver was a good fellow, for I hadn’t even counted what I’d dumped into his hand, so grateful I was at having been saved. There’d been a few too many tiny brown coins involved; he gave some back.

If the moss grows on the north side, Lithuania is to the south.

It was funny, that first week in Latvia. It was odd to be far from home, where I should have enjoyed the full benefit of anonymity, to have had that plaguing thought the whole time: Dzintra would be worried. By the time I reached the apartment it was approaching midnight. I rang the bell.

Well, the door swung open and there was an enormous hug. ‘I was so worried about you!’ she said, ‘If something happened… I don’t even know your surname! What would I tell your family and how would I find them?’ After that, I wrote my full name and address on a piece of paper. Needed. Multiple Lives. Latvia gets one.

Post Latvian apartment, you can take accommodation in a construction site, an Arctic cupboard or alternatively, set up your own guest house...


For the start of the Latvian story, you'll need to visit The Latvian National Academy of Science


Or follow the Baltic Way, along the sea on a trail of amber...

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: Was There Any Chance of Wolves?

Potato and Toothpaste Travel

Amber is fossilised tree resin, a yellowish, pellucid gem washed ashore by the waves of the eastern Baltic Sea. Sometimes there are ancient insects within it, or parts of leaves to decorate it. Amber is a souvenir-laden Cretaceous traveller, and precious. Amber is said to be protective, happy-go-lucky and helpful in making the right choices. In Latvian, amber is called dzintars, from which the name Dzintra comes.

I’d nearly not stayed there but fate granted a second chance. As I’d walked away north on that day I’d randomly met Dzintra at the doors of the Science Academy in the Latvian capital, I thought to kick myself for turning down her offer to stay at her home and worse, for not getting any contact details. I knew enough to know I should know more.

It was in the days before mobile phones. My only hope might be to try to re-find her at the Academy, but I didn’t like the chances of dealing successfully with the German-speaking Russian receptionist. It was a very big building and we hadn’t even exchanged surnames.

Yet there was a sliver of hope: I was due to meet her daughter Antra on the following morning. Dzintra had said there was a castle not too far from Riga, that it was worth seeing and I could take the train there. Without any alternative plan it certainly sounded like a plan. She had to work, she said, but if her daughter was not busy with university she could meet me at the entrance to Riga station at 9 a.m. because her daughter would enjoy the trip too. Maybe.

‘How will she recognise me?’ I asked. It wasn’t as if I stood out in the Latvian crowd.

‘She can find you,’ Dzintra assured.

It wasn’t a meeting arrangement to inspire any confidence but there was only to wait and see. What did my intuition say? Unfortunately, it said nothing.

Anyway, there was a more immediate and pressing concern: would I really find the private apartment I’d left that morning, without really taking in properly where it was?

Eventually I did happen to happen upon the right street.

At 9 a.m. on the following day, at the busy Riga station, I thought it quite impossible anybody could find me in the crowd. But sure enough, as I stood waiting, a young woman approached, saying cautiously, ‘Excuse me, you are Andrew?’ It was Antra.

‘How did you recognise me?’ I asked, quite shocked.

‘You look like a foreigner,’ she said, ‘a bit lost.’

The day at the castle was like a meandering flute melody, made easier by Antra’s English skills. The offer to stay was repeated by the daughter. This time I accepted. I fetched my luggage from somewhere North Riga and returned the house keys to the apartment’s owner. By evening I’d been whisked over the Daugava River and up that flight of stairs in the middle block of three.

Events in the Stalin-era apartment were amusing. There was quite a bit of fussing that went on, unexpectedly, over Dzintra’s dinner.

‘Did you eat?’ I heard her school-going younger daughter Anta, ask.

‘I had my dinner,’ Dzintra replied.

‘What did you eat?’ the daughter pressed.

‘Oh, you know…’ the mother said.

‘What about your dinner?’ her older daughter Antra also asked, upon coming home again later.

‘Yes, I ate.’

‘It wasn’t only potatoes, was it?’

‘No,’ Dzintra said, calling me as a witness.

It brought a smile to see the two daughters questioning their mother in the way a mother might normally question a busy daughter. It wasn’t that Dzintra suffered any horrible malady; hers was rather a wonderful disorder: she was a nomad at heart, a jajabor and it was this affliction that encouraged her to save.

About the potatoes: they were cheap and plentiful, a ready match for the generally modest public salaries of Latvia. Well back into the Soviet era potatoes had allowed Dzintra to put a few roubles aside, as she could, as a travel fund. And what did it matter if dinner meant potatoes, now and then, if one could dream of a pending destination? That was the pay-off.

I agreed to help Dzintra with her English: she was nervous although she shouldn’t have been. With the world’s most delightful accent she could have, frankly, gotten away with anything. And she did.

‘Latvians eat much potatoes,’ she told me once.

‘Many,’ I corrected. ‘Many potatoes. Potatoes are countable.’

‘Not in Latvia!’ she said.

If I’d been more observant I could have seen that jajabor sparkle in her eyes when we’d first met, but it was the potato-talk that confirmed her status. Travel hadn’t been easy in the Soviet era but she’d managed to join tours to various places across the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc. Later, she’d visited a relative in Melbourne and her apartment featured Australian souvenirs as evidence. The extended trip was also there in Anta’s English accent: it seemed so out of place in Riga to be hearing the Australian sounding English she’d been young enough to absorb.

‘Most Australians had never heard of Latvia,’ she said, ‘So I would explain where it was.’

But it was her tour to Poland that took my fancy. ‘Toothpaste was always more expensive in Poland,’ Dzintra said, so she’d stocked up and seen Warsaw and Krakow on a finance of Soviet toothpaste, stopping off at a Polish market between sites to pay for the trip.

Passion for anything is rare in this world and I admired hers. It was clear we were predestined to get along. It’s perhaps the reason why every minute we’d spent together felt as a month.

She spoke of her daughters, Antra and Anta, explaining that the elder Antra was supposed to be Anta except that Antra’s grandmother was fond of the letter ‘r’ and changed her name; so Anta was born later. 

She spoke of the other family member, the cat called Puncis which in Latvian means stomach; an accurate name for the robust feline that lounged about. 

We spoke of Australia and many other things besides, as the hours meant years.

And of course more than anything we spoke of travel. It’s a well-known fact that the next best thing for any traveller is to receive another traveller in their home city. It brings with it as close as can be the feeling of travelling, without going anywhere.

‘You can’t leave Latvia without seeing a Latvian forest,’ Dzintra said and I could hardly disagree.  I had no experience with Latvian forests.

‘I have a small car,’ she said, ‘It has some mechanical problems, so if I take a day off work, and it might not get us all the way there and back again without breaking down, but would you like to take the chance?’

We left in the little grey Ford that whistled along to every gear change for the length of the chat and laughter that was the way to the Latvian forest and back again.  I’d say the whistling Ford enjoyed the day out too; it didn’t break down.  And there was another trip to Jurmala and the Baltic Sea, so I could see a Latvian beach.

The days of my planned week in Latvia passed quickly in the way only enjoyable days can. Everything went well, more than well and without complaint until... Well I wasn’t to know how it would be, taking myself off for a day, independently, on that fateful tour to Bauska… It seemed such a simple idea.

But the amber wasn’t with me then.

The story continues here: Was There Any Chance of Wolves?


The first part of the Latvian story is here: The Latvian National Academy of Science.


Follow the Baltic Way, along the sea on a trail of amber...




Or something different? Head for Bangladesh!

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: Potato and Toothpaste Travel

The Estonian Incident

Angla Windmills

It’s fair to say I never left Estonia, at least not technically. According to whatever records there are I’m still there, continuously since 1997. It’s not really a problem as such, and Estonia is certainly a pleasant enough country to be in, except that when it comes right down to it, when it comes to the actual being there, I’m clearly not.

In northern Europe and the smallest of the Baltic States, with a population not much beyond 1.3 million, Estonia is mostly flat, with pine forests, bogs, fields and numerous lakes to satisfy the eye; not to mention the rustic islands along its rocky Baltic Sea coastline. In winter it’s considerably cold but in that part of the world one of the joys is the changing seasons: the longer days, the shorter days, the noticeable difference every day. By summer, when I was there, the country is green, warm and all that is hospitable.

Photo: Liina Guiter

Estonia used to be a part of the Soviet Union until the bloodless Singing Revolution led to independence in 1991. The country joined the European Union in 2004.

There was certainly no plan to remain in Estonia. Rather I was to spend a week’s holiday before continuing south for a second week in Latvia; then home to Australia. Circumstances took over: blame it on the friendly relations between Estonia and Latvia, blame it on that Latvian cowboy or the Swedish pensioners’ bus; there was little opportunity for a graceful exit.

It was easy to assume Estonia a safe country, since a common means of getting around was to hitch-hike, standing along the road somewhere waving down passing traffic. Even single girls did it so it can’t have been entirely dangerous.

In the short week of my Estonian tour, I’d gotten a lift from the ‘Master-Road-Builder’ of the island of Saaremaa; several times with a brother and sister from Finland who happened to be plotting a roughly similar vacation chart to mine, and even though their car had a suspension problem which meant if I sat in the back it occasionally scraped along the road; I’d once found myself in a plush Mercedes with a driver who looked slightly like a Russian mafia don; and there were those lovely Lithuanian lawyers who’d required my Australian Driver’s Licence as evidence that it was really possible someone could be from somewhere so far away. Meeting many people, it was a good way to get around.

On the day of the incident I was heading to the Latvian border at Valga, with hopes of reaching the Latvian capital of Riga by day’s end. The Baltic States are small, so even though Riga is in the centre of Latvia, more or less, it’s still only a few hours’ drive south of the Estonian border.

Farmhouse

The car that’d stopped was a nondescript Eastern European model; in it were a couple: he was Russian and she Estonian. As neither spoke English all I could communicate was ‘Latvia’ which meant ‘please if you wouldn’t mind dropping me somewhere by the border I’d be most appreciative.’ They seemed to understand. I was laughing to myself that there were three people in the car with three languages when we stopped to pick up the fourth language: Latvian.

I can’t say it’s ever been on my life’s priority list to meet a Latvian acoustic folk guitarist, but I’m glad I did. Equipped with guitar, a small bag for luggage and a straw hat in the cowboy mould, he was on his way home to Riga from a folk festival in Finland. His hair was straggling; it matched the straw of his hat.

Anyway the guitarist gentleman had stood on the verge of the road as I had done, and waved down the same car. From that point on there was speech: he could not only speak Estonian, since his wife was Estonian too, but also a little Russian and a little English. I was able to make the couple in the front understand I was from Sydney with the help of his translation.

Better still, he organised for us to be dropped off closer to the border rather than in the town, and since from where we did get out there was no border in sight, he was able to ask directions. It was countryside without much sign that a new country was nearby. I relied on Latvian assistance as my new friend chatted with farmers, took directions from old ladies and confirmed them with kids on bikes. He did all the talking.

After a short while we left the main road, on instruction, and walked down a dirt lane which can’t have been more than a few hundred metres in length. Although the area was rural there were a few cottages on that road with well-kept gardens. About halfway along I noticed a small barbed-wire fence, no higher than the knee and almost decorative if barbed-wire can ever be considered so; and conveniently was a little purpose-built gap road centre, person-sized, so we were able to continue along the road on the other side. ‘It’s a short-cut,’ he’d told me. ‘That fence wasn’t by any chance the border was it?’ I asked. ‘Welcome to Latvia,’ he said.

Photo: Jaanus Järva

Now what do you do when you’ve just crossed a border technically illegally? The problem: I needed my Latvian visa stamped or there would be problems at Riga Airport for the flight home. I explained the matter and my interpreter said not to worry. We came to another main road and about fifty metres to the right was the Latvian entry post; even if we approached it from the wrong side.

Now speaking his mother tongue, Latvian, he explained the situation and the border guards were obliging: they stamped me in. It left me technically still in Estonia with no exit stamp, but to exit properly I now would have had to leave Latvia, re-enter Estonia, re-leave and re-enter; which would have meant the cancellation of my Latvian visa since it allowed only a single entry. More pressing, we were in the countryside without transport.

‘Try that bus over there,’ the border guard had told my guitarist friend. There was a lone tourist bus, as it turned out, stocked with a Swedish pensioners’ group. We found the tour leader, a middle-aged lady, and my Latvian friend proceeded to ask for a ride in Latvian, of which she understood not a single word. I’d been feeling linguistically useless all afternoon. I tapped my friend on the shoulder, ‘now it’s my turn,’ I said.

I could have asked in English, but having spent a year in Norway I can speak reasonable Norwegian, which is mutually-intelligible with Swedish. ‘Can we possibly get a lift to Riga?’ I asked. ‘Are you Swedish?’ she said excitedly. ‘No, I’m Australian and I’m speaking Norwegian!’ Sure enough we had our ride.

And so in a single moment I chose both to stay in Estonia eternally and take the Swedish bus to Riga immediately, if you get my drift.

Photo: Lembit Michelson

On the way to Riga two things happened: the Swedish tour leader explained that her daughter was a week away from departing for Australia for a year. Amazingly, she was to stay in a suburb of Sydney about five minutes drive from my family home. Within the month, in Sydney, there was a phone call. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘we’ve never met but I believe I met your mother on the Latvian border.’ There’s a sentence I’ll never use again! Within the month my very accommodating mother was fussing over what to make for dinner for our new Swedish guest. ‘What do the Swedish eat?’

The second thing was that my Latvian guitarist friend mentioned to me that since him and his wife lived in a Soviet-built apartment block, and since those apartments are small, he’d bought a second one. ‘Whenever you are in Riga it’s yours,’ he’d said. So on my first night in Latvia I had my own apartment, and I could well have stayed there subsequently, had I not perchance met my Latvian friends the following day.

Photo: Sven Zacek

I don’t suppose the Estonians really mind that their paperwork says I am still there. On the one hand, all the Estonians I met were nice enough not to fuss over such a thing, and on the other, that border post is no longer even there: as of 1 January 2009 crossing points were removed between the two countries in line with the European Union standard.

Photos courtesy of http://www.visitestonia.com/

Photo: Sven Zacek

You could also read what happened the day after the Estonian incident or just more generally travel south to Latvia, perhaps to find out if they have wolves there.

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: The Estonian Incident

Article Index: The Baltic Way

Articles in Amber: from the Baltic States

Estonia

The Estonian Incident
It's fair to say I never left Estonia, at least not technically. According to whatever records there are I'm still there, continuously since 1997. It's not really a problem as such, except that when it comes right down to it, when it comes to the actual being there, I'm clearly not.  More...

Latvia

The Latvian National Academy of Science
Be free. Align yourself with the rhythm of the world to go far. Be as the jajabor, the nomad. Arrive somewhere from the soul, due to the appealing curl of its name or because it feels right or because we know nothing. Go because the time has arrived, sense it.  More...

Potato and Toothpaste Travel
Amber is fossilised tree resin, a yellowish, pellucid gem washed ashore by the waves of the eastern Baltic Sea. Sometimes there are ancient insects within it, or parts of leaves to decorate it. Amber is a souvenir-laden... More...

Was there any Chance of Wolves?
At about the stage where my legs felt like they might refuse to make steps anymore something very exciting happened. I came to a road junction. Still there was no house, no car, only... More...

Turning from the East, Turning to the West
The middle-aged truck driver had a round enough figure and when he bent to check out the mechanics of the broken down truck so it happened he had a split in the back of his pants all the way down the seam; perhaps his village grandmother didn’t sew.  The other truck driver laughed at him and so did I.  As there were... More...


Lithuania

Welcome to Vilnius
Autumn: the tracks appeared to trace a stream below, or several but as the train meandered along hillsides direction was difficult to contemplate.  The morning was reluctant and the wooded valleys were almost drained of colour.  In the yellow of the... More...