I thought before I went much further with writing up my tour of the Baltic States I would elucidate my philosophy of travel somewhat. There have been numerous books on the subject - and I am in the middle of trying to write one which would combine my interests in travel, the Baltics and Poland, politics and history/culture. I am a political animal and can't really escape the "issues" involved in being a responsible traveller around Europe and occasionally beyond. I am however at the same time a conservative Conservative, sceptical of the extent to which climate change/global warming is dependent on man-made factors (a subject for another post of its own) and my belief is that "fair trade" has actually meant that the developing world has become too dependent on cash crops.
Within Europe, the issues are different but similar. What struck me in Riga particularly was the number of businessmen there from Scandinavia and Germany. Call me rather cynical, but the two northerly countries used to be colonies of Germany and Sweden, with the Danes founding Tallinn, from the words taani linn, "Danish city". The countries have come full circle - they may have political and civil freedoms now that they didn't have twenty or thirty years ago, but the economic benefits of capitalism have been largely the result of foreign investment and not indigenous growth. There were a number of indigenous developments, such as the Kolonna firm of parfumeries and hotels (one of which I stayed in in Kuldiga for a more modest amount compared to the normal "boutique" developments). Responsibility here therefore meant that I tried very hard not to buy food produced elsewhere, that was at least marked as local brands, such as the lovely Laima chocolates, Lithuanian baked goods and traditional Christmas sakotis (though the latter ended up as bird food because it was too crumbly to transport home and too rich to eat all at once).
My general method of holidaying is to try and "do" places by fitting in to the locality in which I am rather than skim the surface, do the tourist parts, have a few beers (or Diet Cokes in my case) and flit out to the next hotspot. I devised a few rules in the process for "conservative responsibility" which are as follows:
1. Travel alone. The definition of "alone" varies, but when I did go with someone else - my boyfriend and then my mother - my style of travelling rubbed off on them rather than theirs on me. My mother is also a big fan of exploring and was also a driver, meaning that we got further below the surface of life in a hired car than even I can get without being able to drive. The "alone" is to make sure that you can meet people who will show you life in the country you are visiting, even if they are batty old owls in Prague who take a rather proprietal attitude towards the secondhand books he had given to a nice antique shop to sell and paw you in the process. Although you can hire guides, you get much more of an appreciation if you meet people spontaneously - though perhaps the intimate details of the internal politics of the Latvian hospital (the night staff were all Russians, and the day shifts were taken by Latvians...ge that!) were something that I could have done without knowing on my first trip there.
2. Budget airlines are OK but flag-carriers are now offering better deals in and out of the main Eastern European destinations in competition with Ryanair and easyJet. I have no objection to budget airlines per se or how they have opened up travel to parts of Europe other people haven't reached yet. However normal airlines like Malev, Estonian Air and airBaltic all offer decent rates at holiday times to make them attractive to someone who finds the Ryanair complaints site more interesting than the latest Michael Palin film. Keeping national airlines in business also is in accordance with the idea that the commercial success of Eastern Europe ultimately depends on the Eastern Europeans themselves, and paying slightly more to use struggling flag-carriers. Estonian Air is the subject of a custody suit at present between SAS and the Estonian government, each of whom is offering to buy the other out in order to give the airline - which only has five or six aircraft in total - a needed cash boost. I would rather put money in the pockets of the Estonian government than into Stelios' or Michael O'Leary's bulging moneybags.
Also you have more chance of not being ripped off on board by Ryanair's penny-pinching schemes or suddenly finding yourself stranded due to a tiny pinhole in your passport, and you have the protection of compensation schemes if something goes wrong, which it nearly did on the flight out in November when Tallinn ended up snowbound and the storm progressed to Stockholm, directly in our way.
3. Suitcases, not backpacks. I have never really travelled light; I think I must have been a soldier in a past life because I seem to end up overburdened, even when on a weekend break in Prague (not, I hasten to add, a flying visit - being stranded in Warsaw station one evening waiting to see my mother off back home and the train back to Lodz, on the spur of the moment I bought a ticket to Prague for the weekend and went home just to get an overnight bag...which metamorphosed over the weekend into a larger holdall to hold all the rubbish I found myself buying there).
Travelling with a case forces you to slow down. You quite literally find cities a bit of a drag, but the feeling you get when you dump the case in your room and head off back out is the most liberating feeling I have ever felt, even when I only have one night in a place. Too often it is tempting just to get a taxi, but in my experience walking around trying to find one often brings you to the hotel you were looking for in the first place. You have to plan things better, make sure there is somewhere to park your bags, interact with locals, and sometimes even friendships are made when some lovely lad on the tram asks "Perhaps I can help you?" in his best English. The first trip I made as a student was made possible by the wheeled case, and indeed the trips I make were named for it. I can see that wheeling something like my LGS up the mountains to Macchu Pichu would be a challenge...but I'm game for anything these days.
4. Smart clothes. At all times. It can quite literally save you from disaster - my mother learned not to wear shorts and teeshirts in Latvia when a large alsatian took a chunk of flesh out of her bare thigh in Cesis in 2002. Even the alcoholics who "owned" the dog were smarter dressed than she was. As a tourist you tend to stand out if you dress differently to the locals, and although you can often tell the Latvians from the Russians in Riga by the way the Russians all look like extravagantly made up Slavic tigers (leopardskin coats and pointy boots which would make Santa's elves wince) and the Latvians like sleek, demure and conservative Nordic foxies, they are all dressed up to the nines. Westerners in combat pants and teeshirts and three-day-growth are immediately recognisable, and more of a target. When you are approached by someone asking a complicated question in the local language, like P J O'Rourke in Russia, you know you have arrived. And I don't mean on Ryanair from Stansted.
More later but I think I smell my aunt's moussaka well on the way so adieu for now.
