A quick stop in Riga

After 6 days in Estonia, it was unfortunately time to leave Tallinn. The good news, however, was that we were headed for Riga, Latvia, en route to Moscow!

Our trip to Riga was in many ways an afterthought, but it ended up being extremely enjoyable! Originally, when my parents were planning our trip, we had expected to go straight from Tallinn to Moscow and on to St. Petersburg, Russia, but it turned out that the train took too long, and there were no direct flights; everything went through Riga. The quickest option included a 6-hour layover, which was just ridiculous, so instead of sitting around for 6 hours, I arranged with AirBaltic to split the flights over a 2 day span, so we had 27 hours in Riga. This ended up working great, as we got in early on Wednesday and left Thursday afternoon, and managed to squeeze seeing a ton of sights into just over one day.

We started our day by going to the top of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Riga, where we had an incredible panoramic view of the city.
After seeing St. Peter’s Cathedral, my parents and I strolled back towards our hotel, which was just around the corner from Riga’s Domed Cathedral, where we met Tom and Lucy Sponsler, Fulbright friends who I had met back in August in the Bay Area, and all headed to lunch. Tom is a law professor teaching at Riga’s largest university, and he and Lucy had invited me and a bunch of other Bay Area Fulbrighters to their house in Moraga, CA back in August. Having met back in California, it was very fun to all get together in Riga—not only to see familiar faces, but also because I knew that Tom and Lucy would get along well with my parents. We got lunch at a Latvian place called Lido, all had a great time.


Tom had a class to teach shortly after our lunch concluded, so after gaining as much insight as we could into Riga and the "sights to see" from Tom and Lucy, we parted ways and checked out more of the city.

Highlights included walking through a MASSIVE market that spanned 5 former airplane hangers, where one could buy anything from fresh vegetables, seafood and fruit to fake designer goods, antiques and even underwear.
Again, here we got to see real Latvians in action, not the pre-packaged ones that are designed specifically for tourists. This was my kind of place, even though I chose not to buy pigs feet or jellied eel.

After successfully navigating the maze of vendors, we had a lovely stroll through one of Riga’s many parks, walking along a river that was home to paddle-boats, canoes and gondolas that clearly hadn’t been in the river a few weeks before. Just like in Tallinn, the weather was gorgeous, and the people walking around the city also radiated with energy, just like Tallinn had the past few weeks.

As Tom and Lucy had told us, part of the energy was obviously attributable to the fact that Riga was playing host to Hockey’s World Championships while we were there. In fact, in one of the parks they had set up a giant TVand were broadcasting all of the hockey games for people that could not make it to the games. The day before we arrived, Latvia played a make-or-break game in order to get to the next round of the tournament and won (!) and the city erupted. A lot of the energy carried over to our day in Riga, as was evidenced by general jovial spirits and many Latvia hockey jerseys being worn all around the city.

Our walk through the park took us to Alberta Street, a 2 block stretch that is famous for its unique buildings with art nouveau façades. Lucy had recommended we check it out, and we were glad we did.Here you can see the figures and faces that make these buildings different than others in Riga.

As the day wound up, we walked back towards our hotel, cleaned up, and then went back around the corner to the Domed Cathedral where we heard a tremendous organ concert along with saxophone and bell accompanists. The organ in Riga’s Domed Cathedral’s is apparently “renowned throughout Europe” (it sounded great, but I’m not an expert by any means), and all of the selections sounded good. I particularly liked when the organist would play the ultra-low tones that make your body (and the church) rumble. There’s something about feeling music within me that I just love, and this was no exception.

After the early-evening concert, we wandered around the old town near our hotel a bit more, looking for both an Internet café and a place to grab a bite to eat. We found an Internet café first, and as we were asking the prices, a woman who was just leaving the place said, “Hey, you’re Americans!” And just as she had done with us, we identified her accent as American, and we got talking as we all left the place.

It turned out her name was Ilze, and she was a American (from Iowa) with Latvian heritage who had recently moved back to Latvia to take care of some family business. As we were walking and talking, we asked her for a suggestion on a place to eat, and she enthusiastically suggested a garlic-themed restaurant called Kiploku Krogs, that we just had to try. So when we asked how to get there, she offered to walk us there, and we continued talking, which was nice, so when we arrived, we asked if she’d like to join us for a drink. She gladly obliged, telling us more about herself and about Riga, and asking us about what we were doing, and the conversation was just great. So as we talked and had a beer, we invited her to stay for dinner (as she had recommended the place, after all), and she accepted and was extremely appreciative. She was tickled that strangers could and would be so kind (her words), but we were also happy to have made the connection we did, not to mention ending up at a place that real Latvians enjoy going to. So, taking her to dinner was no problem, and we were glad to do it; it was fun for everyone.

After dinner we said goodbye to Ilze, and after checking out the big screen showing hockey for a few minutes, we called it a relatively early night, as we had to pack up our stuff for Moscow and see some last-minute sights the next day.

We wrote a few postcards, walked around town a bit more and I even found an unsecured wireless network (thank you OptiBet!) so I checked email and signed onto Skype just in time to get a call from my buddy Joe Barbato who is about to graduate from Wheaton in a few days. It was great timing on Joe’s part, as it was was 3am for him and 10am for me. So when he (and the people he passed the phone around to) heard that I was sitting on the streets of Old Riga talking to them, they were just blown away. I can only imagine how I would have felt if I had been on the other end of that call, and it was just so great to hear from them, knowing that they were thinking of me at such a joyous time. Big shout out to you Joe, and to all of Wheaton 2006!! Congrats guys, I’m thinking of you all!!

After momentarily tying up our ends, we spent the last of our Latvian Lats on a taxi to the airport, checked our bags, and boarded our Fokker 50 to Moscow.

We knew Moscow was different, but little did we know how different it would be when we’d disembark.

More soon...

Saaremaa

On the morning of Day 3-- we all met for breakfast before arranging for a rental car to meet us at the hotel, and then driving across Estonia to Saaremaa, Estonia's largest coastal island, from where I am writing to you now. Our drive through the countryside was beautiful, and even though it was the means to the end of getting to Saaremaa, it felt like a great thing to do in its own right. Castles and churches (in varying conditions...some well-preserved and others run down) scatter the countryside, not to mention many farms that pop up all over the place amidst dense forests and countless rivers. Estonia truly is a beautiful country-- and this assessment applies to more than just Tallin's Old Town.

We made relatively good time down to Virtsu, where we caught the ferry across Suur Väin to Kuivastu, the port on Tallinn's 3rd biggest island, Muhu. We took our own 'scenic route' around Muhu, meaning that we just followed random roads on our map around the island to see some more countryside. Because the island isn't huge, it wasn't like we were really going out of our way to drive along the coast (which was beautiful, by the way), and we even found a geocache!! [note: it just blows my mind that people even on the Estonian islands are participating in this game my parents love, but that's the nature of the Internet-- creating a global society. Very cool in my book.]

After driving around Muhu, which was completely desolate because it was Sunday-- the locals were in church and the tourists had all gone home (we seriously felt like we were in the Twilight Zone because it was beautiful and one would expect a place like this to be packed with tourists, like the rest of the world), we took the bridge across Väike Väin to Saaremaa, and continued our journey into the capital of Saaremaa, Kuuressaare, where we were staying at the Hotel Rüütli.

We got settled in the hotel, and got set up in a room with our own personal sauna (!) and an amazing view of a medieval castle that was just breathtaking. The castle was literally in our backyard, as it was just a short walk (~3 minutes) from our hotel. We could see this castle from our balcony!
The castle was extremely well preserved, and we went and checked it out the next day, but for the moment we took it easy, unpacked, and had a sauna in the private one adjoined to our bathroom. Talk about living it up!!

After introducing my parents to Estonian sauna, we ventured into the center of town to get dinner, and we ended up at a place called "La Perla," an Italian restaurant in the center of town that happened to be run by an American guy who used to work in Tallinn and had retired to Saaremaa! As both he and all of us were surprised to run into another American, we got to talking, and when I told him I worked with the e-Governance Academy, he told me he knew two of my colleagues, Ivar and Nele!! [If you haven’t yet realized, Estonia is a small country, and it’s a small world in general.]

The next day we walked over to the castle where we found a geocache someone had hidden (YES!), and after marveling at the magnificence of the castle and how well it has been preserved, we explored more of the center of town. Many cute little shops with traditional Estonian handicrafts (kasitöö) like knit sweaters and socks as well as wooden serving utensils and carvings.

Later in the day we drove around the island, with the goal of seeing some windmills, which are the traditional symbol of Saaremaa. We figured that we’d better see some if Saaremaa was known for them, so we picked up some sandwich makings and drove to the middle of the island where we saw 5 really well preserved windmills, although none of them were in working order. We even got to go up inside a few of them to see the inner workings.


It was fun to see the countryside as we drove across Saaremaa, and what made the trip even better was that we had the place to ourselves. Literally. It almost felt a little “Twilight Zone”-ish to have no one around while having such beautiful weather in such a nice area. But the occasional car passed to let us know that we were, indeed, still in the real world, and that we were just fortunate to have such little traffic on and around the island.

After checking out the windmills, we were smack dab in the center of Saaremaa, so we decided that it would be a good idea to see some more of the island, so we engaged in my favorite type of sightseeing: pick a place on the map and just go there, without knowing what we’re getting into. It’s really fun, actually-- sometimes you end up at magnificent places, other times you end up at quite normal places, but no matter what, you see the countryside and what is more, you see real people living real lives.

I can’t stand being a tourist when I travel, so getting out of the city center is the best thing for me to do. It’s just terrible when people can instantly identify you as a non-local, and thus continually peddle their wares to you in a slightly harassing way. So getting off of the main drag was good, and plus, having my mom, the extreme geocacher, with us, we found spots outside of town that had caches, and ended up seeing a great deal of the island.

On Saaremaa, we found something like 5 or 6 different caches, and I had a great time driving (for the first time in 8 months!) on both paved and unpaved roads, at times even abandoning our map to pursue single-track “roads” (since it was a stretch to call some of them that), that weren’t on the map and we only knew to go on based on the direction my mom’s GPS was pointing us in. We had a great time geocaching, not only in terms of finding caches, but more so because we got to places that we would never have arrived at otherwise. For instance…

We called it an early night after checking out the hotel pool (with waterslide!) and taking another sauna in our room (my parents might be hooked now...), and the next day we headed back up to Tallinn, which, despite being a foreign city, felt nice to return to. There’s something nice about returning to home base.

Check out all of Saaremaa photos here.

Tuesday night, back in Tallinn, my parents and I got dinner with Trudee and Andrew, two of my fellow Fulbrighters, at Kathmandu [LINK?], our favorite restaurant in Tallinn. Yummy food and an early night, as we had an early flight to Riga the next morning…

More from here soon!

Parents in Estonia

As I mentioned in one of my latest posts, my parents are here visiting me in Estonia!

Our trip has been fantastic so far. We started in Tallinn on Thursday, May 4th, and hit the ground with a running start. My parents, despite having been up and travelling for more than 24 hours straight, wanted to get started sightseeing right away.

I met them at the airport, called us a cheap taxi (rather than just grabbing one at the airport that would undoubtedly rip us off, as they do all tourists), and we headed to their hotel. I set them up at Hotel Olümpia, which is only about 2 blocks from my apartment, and to our delight, we were able to get a room with an absolutely amazing view of the entire city. Even I hadn't seen a view like this, so it was a bonus for me as well.

After marvelling at the view and sending a quick email to my sisters, we dropped off their bags and walked by my apartment en route to the old town, where we got sandwiches and fresh squeezed juice from my favorite place.

After getting our food, we sat out in the sun on Raekoja Plats (Town Hall Square) and just caught up, which was really nice since it had been 8 months since I'd seen my mom and dad. It was hard to believe that it had been so long since we'd seen each other, since we're able to readily keep in touch with email and with Skype.

After scarfing down our tasty sandwiches, I gave my folks a walking tour of the city, where we hit up all of the viewing platforms on Toompea-- the hill on which the upper part of the old city rests. We saw all of the important sights around Old Town, including a variety of churches, courtyards, towers, and sections of the old wall. We meandered along the narrow cobblestone streets in the Old Town, and it seemed like every other comment my parents made was something to the extent of how cool the city was. It made me really happy to show them around and to hear their excitement about where I had been living since last September.

Tallinn really is a diamond in the rough, but people have been starting to discover it. So just as I've been glad to live here before it is fully discovered by the rest of the world, my parents were glad to visit at this time. I know that when I come back in 5 or 10 years, the city will be dramatically different, and it's very possible that some of the city's charm will have been lost to globalization, or just that there will be MANY more people around, which will detract from the atmosphere we all have loved on this trip. Despite some small tour groups that are around the city, we really have had a lot of it to ourselves, which my parents have loved.

After seeing the old town, we wandered around a bit more of central Tallinn and I showed my parents my office in the e-Governance Academy, the opera house and national theater. Before too long, it was dinner time, and I picked a place that is just a stone's throw from Raekoja Plats, called Peppersack. The food was wonderful, and in many ways resembled a medieval feast. Yum!

We finished dinner around 9ish, and because it's getting to be summertime, the days are getting longer, and it was still quite light out on our walk home. In fact, the sun was just setting behind the Russian Orthodox and Lutheran churches in Vanalinn (Estonian for Old Town), so instead of heading straight for my apartment, I walked my parents back to Olümpia and came up to their room, where we had one of the most amazing sunsets of my life. Check it out:

Day 2 centered around a trip to Kadriorg park, where we began our day by checking out Tallinn's brand new art museum called KUMU-- which is an abbreviation of the Estonian words for Art Museum: Kunsti Museuum. The museum was fantastic, and I recommend it to anyone who either lives in Tallinn or might visit. The museum catalogues Estonian art throughout history, which was fascinating given all of the different occupiers that Estonia has had over the past 500+ years. Most interesting to all of us were the pieces from the periods of Soviet occupancy, and the pieces from directly after these times. It was obvious from seeing these pieces of art that expression and innovation were severely repressed during Soviet times, and that after Estonia regained independence, people made up for lost time.

What was also interesting to see were the works that Estonians who had managed to make it to cultural centers like Paris were turning out in comparison with those that remained in Soviet territory. Those who were expats were experimenting with impressionism, cubism, and the like, whereas Estonians in Estonia were creating Soviet iconography, undoubtedly influenced tremendously by the political climate of the day (and who knows under what conditions the works were created-- by force, perhaps?). So what we found in KUMU were two strains of Estonian art of the last century-- one that was obviously repressed, and another that was highly experimental. Very interesting.

After seeing KUMU, we wandered through Kadriorg park, enjoying being outside in nice weather and seeing the trees that were almost ready to sprout their buds. Just outside of the museum is the presidential palace, home to Arnold Rüütel, and next door to this palace is Peter the Great's former summer palace, complete with statues and scultured gardens. Here are my parents in front the gardens:

After seeing the gardens and walking through a bit more of the park, we walked to Lauluväljak, which, in Estonian, means "song grounds." Lauluväljak is a massive outdoor amphitheater where all types of concerts are held throughout the year, including Tallinn's big choral festivals. In fact, Lauluväljak can hold 15,000 singers and an audience of up to 100,000 people!! Check it out:


One of the highlights of the trip has been going geocaching with my parents in a variety of locations around Estonia, including Lauluväljak. Now, for those of you that don't know what geocaching is (cuz I sure didn't until my parents first told me about it), geocaching is best described as game based around GPS (Global Positioning System) technology, played by people around the world.

The way it works is that people create what are called "caches" (sounds like "cash" but plural), which contain various trinkets and a log book. After they create a cache and hide it so that "regular people"--a.k.a. non-geocachers-- don't find it and mess it up, they use their GPS unit to mark the exact coordinates (Latitude/Longitude) of the cache, and they post this information online in a geocaching forum. Finally, we, the end user, look up the location of caches that are nearby where we are, and we go hunting for them in real life, using our GPS unit.

When we find a cache, we exchange a trinket with whatever's in the cache, which can be anything. People usually leave tokens that reflect where they have come from, so my parents like to leave bicentennial 50 cent pieces that will be fun for other people to discover. What I really like to leave (and to find!) are "Travel Bugs" or "Geocoins." These are items with unique codes that you enter on the geocaching website and track the progress of online, so you can see where the trinkets you have left and have found travel around the world. My parents loved bringing the Travel Bugs they'd found in America to Estonia, just because they know how much the original owners of the Bugs will like finding out that their item is way the heck out in Estonia, and wherever else it may travel. So we live a little vicariously through others. But regardless of what you find in or take from a geocache, you write a note in the log book, and later log your visit online at the geocaching website. It's a great game in that it often takes you to very scenic locations that you otherwise might not get to, and it bridges the gap between the real world and the online world-- connecting you with people from all over the place who all love being outdoors and enjoy a type of "treasure hunt."

So after geocaching at Lauluväljak, where we found a geocoin from Finland(!), we walked back toward the center of Tallinn along the beach boardwalk, and then stopped by the bus station to pick up my Russian visa. After freshening up at our respective residences, my parents stopped by my place and we all walked back into the old town, where we had a lovely dinner at Controvento, an Italian place on a tiny cobblestone alley. Again, as my folks were still adjusting to Tallinn time, which is 10 hours ahead of California, we called it an early night, especially as we were heading to Saaremaa, Estonia's biggest island the next day.

Here are the photos my parents and I took from Tallinn!

Fulbright Award Given to former President Bill Clinton

For anyone interested, a few weeks ago the J. William Fulbright Prize was awarded to Bill Clinton. This is just a quick post in case anyone is interested in seeing the video of the awards ceremony. In total, the video is about 1 hour long, and President Clinton speaks for about 30 minutes. He talks about his relationship with Senator Fulbright (which is a great story), about the importance of international understanding in today's world, and about the Fulbright in general. His speech is great, and in many ways flies in stark contrast to some of the things being said by the current administration. I recommend everyone view it if you can spare the time.

To read more about the award, click here.