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Note: You can email me about any of the topics I write about on these pages, via the link on the top-left of this page.
Note 2: Some pictures made with my phone, of many of my trips of which I've not uploaded a lot of pictures from my main camera here yet, can be found on my VK page where I give more views/information on various topics related to life in the countries that I visited. See: http://www.vk.com/w.h.scholten
The purpose of this trip in 2017, was first to go visit a friend in Poland, then to see if my wish to live in Ukraine (because I never liked it in NL, and I don't like the personality of most people in NL), was not too 'rosy', and thus to see if my wish will not change, or that perhaps it would be a better option to go live in Lithuania or Latvia, as a traveller whom I met in Kharkov in 2016 suggested to me as being the better option than living in Ukraine, because in Lithuania and Latvia there are most of the things I like in Ukraine, in particular nice parks in the cities as in Ukraine, and lots of space, and lots of nature in general. But in LT and LV there is the advantage of being part of the EU so I could easily move there... The latter is definitely a plus point, but all in all these countries are quite different from Ukraine and don't give the same feeling.
By the way, last year already I tried to get a long term visa for Ukraine but got no reply from the embassey here in NL to emails, and a non-useful reply by phone. Some people then said "They likely don't know the rules themselves..." ;-). I was then told by some people whom I met in Ukraine, that getting a long term visa is quite difficult unless you get a job from an already established company in Ukraine, and told me about an option of esp. starting a business which comes with several requirements, but also of 2 other options. More on this topic perhaps elsewhere later... So yes, moving to Lithuania or Latvia would be far easier.
Crossing the border with Eastern Germany, the roads were immediately worse and next to the highway is a long fence for more than an hours driving. I was told this is to prevent animals (deer, wild pigs), from crossing the road to prevent accidents that otherwise happen regularly. Of course the fence works both ways and gave me a feeling of being 'only allowed to be on the road'...
Pronounced a bit like 'Wrotslaw' this city has interesting old style buildings and bridges which I was told were all German built (ca. 1910-1920 or thereabouts).
I liked the museum with large panoramic painting of a battle (which originally hung in Lvov (which was then not part of Ukraine), later after rearranging borders etc. after wars and the soviet system, it went to Wrotslaw during the soviet time. It reminded me of a painting in the historical museum in Kharkov, where the curved painting is connected with real objects in the foreground and this gives a feel that makes it as if you are looking at something real instead of a painting. The tours are normally presumably in Polish as it was when I visited, though in a room with diorama of the battle, with LEDs lighting up to indicate position/movement of troops, the talk was in French. In any event there are little speaker devices that you can take with you which tell you what the painting depicts, in many languages (incl. Dutch)
I walked and bicycled through most of Wrotslaw and recognised the 'Reneg' area from a documentary. It was nice, but none of it grabbed me with a feeling of 'cool' that I often have in Ukraine...
Next we went by car to a camping near Chalupy, on a peninsula with outermost town 'Hel'. From Chalupy I then bicycled 'to Hel and back' ;-) (60 km total) There are some old German fortifications/remains of bunkers that you can visit, and there is a bicycle path, though not very good (more on this later)..
There are a lot of cars, and with the fact that people generally ride quite a bit faster than the speed limit, means in Poland it's noisy just about everywhere, similar to in Germany. Well, I didn't get to the small villages/towns far away from highways, except those in/near the peninsula where we camped but where it was quite busy anyway, and in the small towns in the area of Gdansk/Gdynia, so likely my experience is not representative of the whole of Poland.
I rode next day from a bit before Gdynia to Gdansk via Sopot, then after some sight seeing in Gdansk, back to Gdynia and from there I took the train back to Chalupy (bike ride of 70 km). The bicycle path and noise were annoying: shared bicycle paths with pedestrians means you can't ride at higher speed (25-30 km/h or even more: forget it!) and you need to watch out all the time. Bicycle paths in Poland are further a nuisance because often you need to switch to the other side of the road when e.g. a shared path becomes a path only for pedestrians. Still, many cyclists then continue to ride on the sidewalk which makes the situation more confusing for me. By the way, riding with a bicycle on the sidewalk is prohibited in NL, we have no shared bicycle path/pedetrian sidewalks. Conversely, in NL pedestrians may walk on bicycle paths or other roads where cars and bicycles may ride (cars up to 60 km/h) if there is no sidewalk, which is mostly the case between cities so only relevant if you want to walk long distances or if the bicycle has e.g. a flat tyre. For me riding in Poland is better along with the cars in various places instead of using the bicycle paths, as then I can ride faster.
In Gdansk in the old part of the city, you see buildings from the Hanse era, so German style and again these do not grab me, but worse is the feeling that many buildings look like new. I think they are actually completely rebuilt or the facades were renovated such that they are (at least from the outside) too perfect for old buildings... I saw some evidence for this in a building of which there were only 4 walls with the facade having been renovated looking like new. In another case I saw just the facade still standing... There is a lot of building going in Gdansk of new buildings and rebuilds!
After riding back to Gdynia I took the train to Chalupy, which has a bicycle section for about 6 bicycles which can be hung by the front wheel on a rack. When I asked a conductor if this was the right train the response was quite annoyed and just 'tak' (yes), hmm, as mentioned elsewhere, I've encountered more curt and unfriendly behaviour in Poland and Lithuania and Latvia than in Ukraine, so what are the travel writers doing, just making up stuff? I am sure they are not right about lots of issues, but you can read about that on some of my other pages on travelling and my critical book review of a Dutch book on Ukraine.
Now more on bicycle paths, or rather the sounds used to indicate that you may ride. These are used along with the normal indicator, a green light: Usually it is a ticking sound, as in NL, but in Poland in various places the sounds are a brief melody, which is annoying as it can stay in your head and if you hear some sounds your brain will start to analyse whether it is a melody from green light somewhere close to you even if you are not close to any intersections/traffic lights.
And now something completely different: When I was shown around Wroclaw, there were lots of tourists and my 'guide' thought they were all Germans. Apparently many Germans come to visit Poland, and according to him, which didn't surprise me from what I had read in the travel guides about e.g. Ukraine, to see "What they had lost" ;-) However, one couple whom he thought were Germans (they were not Polish as can be seen from the face), were actually Dutch! (Which I could tell, as later I heard them speak :) ). In the German language travel guides to Ukraine and other countries, there are often references of sites to be seen such as graves of Germans, but also settlements of German ancestry etc.. Why would anyone want to visit either of them if there is nothing special about them for that country? Just because they were Germans? Perhaps what I will mention further (about a seller whose attitude towards me changed dramatically when I changed from talking in English to Russian) is important to many people: the desire to see something that you recognise, in language, in heritage, etc. and that even when they are in foreign lands...
Busses and trams are the way to get around in the city, or bicycle of course. To travel long distances, there are compfortable touring busses, or you can use the train.
It's a 10 hour trip time as the clock goes forward 1 hour in Lithuania.
On this bus trip I watched out as in the previous on to Wroclaw, what nature is like in Lithuania, it didn't grab me as in Ukraine. Possibly a factor in this is that the land is fairly flat.
After a while the bus went through Kaunas and I like the style of buildings which seem unusual for a reasonably sized city. You can see this also a bit in Riga where there are a lot of old style 2 storey buildings made partially from wood.
Vilnius: At first it looks nice, from the bus station which is close to the railway station, old nice style buildings, some parks, which are ok, but not as good as parks in Ukraine. I missed esp. enough trees in some of them, to sit in the shade on a sunny day!
I made long walks in this city, and really the only part worth visiting is the old city. I found that Vilnius is really noisy from traffic, just about everywhere...
Lithuania is a bit more like Ukraine than Poland, with some nice style old buildings, bad sidewalks, but most of the cool stuff from Ukraine is missing (style of churches, war monuments, cool signs when entering a region or city, statues, mosaics on buildings and on older bus stops...). In Vilnius there are lots of new buildings outside the old centre, in a style by the 'Godawful school of architecture (R)' 😉 The latter is not just so in Lithuania, it can be seen in many countries, including NL. When I was in Vilnius I thought about ugly modern buildings that "They are ugly now, and they will be ugly in a 100 years", it's not simply a matter of taste... After my trip I wanted to tell this to someone in NL, who made the same remark, before I could tell my comment! ;-)
I posted some example pictures of this already on my VK page, including an exhibition centre with before it 2 large black block type structures, the right one of these having a small part that is a screen with information. What is the point of these monstrosities?
When I asked people if they spoke English, the answer was mostly "no", but I think they just didn't want to do any effort...
One older woman in a supermarket even got quite annoyed when I started talking in English as I wanted to order several types of food, and then when I switched to Russian she was very friendly. This was really strange, perhaps it is to do with familiarity, seeing some connection: "ah, someone who speaks Russian, cool", or something like that.
The castle in Trakai is apparently the most photographed place in Lithuania. Well, it was ok, but I must say that I like more e.g. the palace in Sharivka (Ukraine) for its looks and the really nice and quite big garden... (see my VK page for a picture). The town itself is small and it was interesting to see the styles of detached houses there, similar to some of the houses that you see in Kaunas and Vilnius...
I didn't try enough, but I did try a few such as meat balls with potato inside them. Perhaps I will try more next time I come to Lithuania, and then I will write down the names too :)
Here as in Poland I noticed fences on long sections along the highways...
I could at some point visit Kaunas, and the park near the smaller town Rumšiškės... And likely people there behave differently from in Vilnius, as the smaller the city, the more friendly people are, in many countries. But more on this further down this page.
Most common seems to be the trolley bus for within the city, and for long distances touring busses by e.g. Lux express, Ecolines, Eurolines. To go from Lithuania to Latvia you need to take the bus as there is no direct train connection.
Again I looked at what the landscape is like, and comparing Lithuania vs. Latvia. There was a border check, hmm....
When I arrived it was the day at which the summer solstice fest is held in Latvia, I didn't think about it while travelling but realised something was up when I saw women with flower wreaths in their hair. It looks really cute :) I like this as well in Ukraine where girls wear traditional clothes and flowers on various festive days. I made some pictures in Riga in the afternoon of 2 students, but I promised not to post until and unless those girls had a look at the pictures to decide on which (if any) they would like to see posted with this travel report. The next day I made another picture of a girl whom I met in the hostel wearing also such a flower wreath, and her friend. See my VK page for that later picture. I made a few pictures of the festivities (people drinking, dancing, eating and listening to live music and warming themselves near the fires from stacks of wood) with the phone as shown on my VK page, but pictures from phones are not great at night, so I will likely also upload there some pictures made with my rx100 camera later.
The fist day in Riga, I saw nice old style buildings, cool parks and of course women with flower wreaths in their hair and from all that I got a feeling of liking it in Latvia a lot more than in Poland and Lithuania. Also because it is fairly quiet, for big city, noise from traffic is far lower than in Vilnius. I mentioned this to the 2 students (with the flower wreaths) and they had also noticed that "for the biggest city in Latvia, it's really quiet". When walking around, it was curious to me that on the street almost everyone speaks Russian... It gave a feeling of being familiar/comfortable there which may have positively influenced my view in Latvia whereas in Lithuania most people I talked to seemed to find answering a question a waste of time, or something. I later thought that it could be better instead of asking whether they speak English or Russian, to just start asking a question in English or Russian and just see what happens and switch to the other language if needed (older people likely speak Russian, younger people likely English), so if you get no useful response in English, then switch to Russian and vice versa... To me this feels rather an impolite thing to do (to not begin with asking whether they speak English or Russian), but it's possibly the optimum and will avoid hassle for yourself. Contrary to what is written in one of the 2 travel guides that I read, German is not a good option in Lithuania (nor in Latvia), few people speak it. In a hostel I talked about this and other issues with a few people to get a better view of the situation: In Lithuania, (and Latvia?) education can be in many languages, you just need to pass the final exam on Lithuanian.
About dancing: After having been to the summer solstive fest, I mentioned a comment that I read that people in Latvia apparently like to dance a lot, to a fellow traveller. He then said that he had not seen passion when people dance in eastern European countries that he visited (contrary to say, South America, where he is from). Well, passion is just the part of emotions that are unrestrained, it's a sign of a different type of personality. It doesn't mean that there is no emotion in the dances, and there need not be a clearly expressed passion in the dancing as the emotions are just expressed differently in a style that fits with the personality of the people...
In the hostel I talked to an Italian girl, a teacher, who worked here on an exchange program, and she mentioned that in Latvia there is a appreciation for being Latvian, with care for traditions, whereas people in Italy only complain about their country. What?! And what about the good food, good weather, beautiful nature and esp. in Rome innumerable cool old buildings/monuments? Apparently that doesn't help. It is similar to what I thought about of the situation in Ukraine when I first visited that country, I felt that people have a lot that they don't appreciate (which was almost certainly caused by financial woes in Ukraine, which causes a lot of people to want to leave Ukraine; that situation is incomparable with Italy) and this changed in 2014 after the Russian takeover in Crimea... So that had at least one positive effect.
With the train to Sigulda, which was 'back to Soviet times', as one of my companions to the park remarked, however, the train may be spartan (which to me it doesn't matter) but it has fast wifi, so not quite!
There are great views, long climbs and descents on wooden staircases on the sides of hills to reach e.g. old castles and you can take a open cable car up/down one of the hills. Then there are still more things you can do such as bungee jumping. It's quite a big park and to see it all (walking) you likely need at least 2 days.
I tried:
- "Medus kuka", a sort of cake with honey and sour cream. Tasty but very sweet, and so I needed to drink a lot of tea (without sugar) with it!
- "Maizes zupa": a desert from fruits, it reminded me of the filling of a apple pie in NL, it didn't appeal to me.
You need to look hard to find some old soviet soft drinks, I found them in more supermarkets in Latvia than in Lithuania. I like Targun and Cream-soda...
Issues of life in Latvia, that someone else mentioned, are: corruption, and negative attitude of people. She made an interesting suggestion, that people in government should be really well paid so they won't be corrupt. However, the type of people that gets into almost any position of power is the type of person who is never satisfied. If he has 1 million, he wants 10 million, if he has 10 million he wants 100 million, etc. And so that suggestion doesn't work, but the suggestion was to me of interest as an example of women in eastern Europe being more philosophical than in western Europe... (as I experienced a lot in Ukraine)
Some old buildings in Riga are in a not very good state and the local government made a law to make sure house owners and in particular speculators who only buy and wait for an increase in value (for rebuilding or renovating or even just the ground value I suppose) and leave the buildings decaying, will not do that, by making tbe property tax double the normal amount if the building is not well maintained. An interesting solution!
In Riga you can get around mostly by trolley bus or by tram. For long distance travelling, you can take the train or touring busses from the bus station (get tickets a day in advance or more to be sure of a seat).
In June it gets to ca. 20-25 degrees in Poland, then from end of June it gets hot with 30-40 degrees for 2 months or so. I like that :) In Lithuania it is a bit less hot and more variable in weather, and in Latvia that is even more so the case: I was told that weather in May and June is quite variable, in July it is hot and in August variable again. I already knew Estonia has weather more similar to in NL which is why I didn't even plan to go there, it would almost certainly be pointless for my purpose.
Coincidentally, I got talking to a sailor from Estonia, who was on leave for 2 months, who travelled on the bus as I did from Gdansk to Vilnius (after which he would continue on to Tallin, and then to his city), and when I told him of my plans, he offered me to go fish with him and relax for 2 months on the north of Estonia on one of the islands where he lives! :) It would be interesting, and something really different, perhaps it would be cool but I had other plans, and I don't really like fishing. The hospitality is great, people are generally far more hospitable (and more helpful) in the countries that I visited in Eastern Europe, than in the Netherlands. The issues that I had in Latvia and Lithuania (and in Ukraine from time to time) are I think caused by a mix of issues (such as language, stress/no time when they are working, and sometimes just meeting the wrong people) but the positive cases are always really positive.
From talking to travellers in hostels who are from Lithuania and Latvia, it seems in Lithuania and Latvia there are similar economic difficulties as in Ukraine, such as not being able afford a place to live, on a regular income, which means you need to share housing. I was also told that in smaller towns there is worse poverty. You can see this from state of houses for example but I'm not so interested in gathering material things so I suppose it is possible that I don't notice it enough sometimes and regard it as simply 'simple living', and simple living appeals to me actually.... I've not seen the (offensive) display of wealth as happens in Kiev in Ukraine, this is for me a plus point for LV and LT.
In western and eastern Europe there are a lot of bus companies, and it's a lot cheaper than by plane though travel times are a lot longer. You can have a look at comparison sites such as:
Direct sale of tickets by various companies:
You can go to a print/copy shop to print out pdfs of bustickets which is usually required by the bus companies, or you can even order the bus ticket in such a shop and print it out, as I did in Riga (cost me only 3 cents..)
Poland is the wealthiest of these 3 countries, with the best roads/sidewalks and state of buildings, but along with that too many cars and noise...
In Latvia and Lithuania in cities the parks are not nearly as good as in many Ukrainian cities, there are almost no classical style (usually italian designed) old buildings, almost no statues (and then mostly modern/abstract that I don't like), there are no cool entry signs at cities and regions, there are no war monuments with airplanes, boats, tanks, no mosaics on buildings nor bus stops, though I did see some murals (paintings) on sides of a few buildings in Vilnius, the weather is much worse in summer, nature is too maintained, there are almost no rolling hills and in general nature is less interesting. Interestingly, economically it is apparently not much better than in UA from what I found out talking in hostels with travellers who live in Latvia and Lithuania...
I was in Kaunas only briefly, which looked much nicer than Vilnius so it could be interesting in the future to go there and see life/parks/buildings in a smaller city, and then to an even smaller town Rumšiškės and the park near Rumšiškės (see http://www.llbm.lt/) . In buildings/parks but also behaviour of people I liked it more in Latvia than in Lithuania and Poland, although my experiences are likely not quite representative of the entire countries in the aspect of behaviour of people as I didn't visit enough of these countries. On this topic: Ukraine is infamous according to the travel guides, for rude behaviour of people in hotels and shops, but I never thought it was that bad (even on my first trip, see further why that matters) and often people were in fact very helpful... In Poland and Lithuania I experienced rude/surly behaviour more in less than 2 weeks than in all my long trips in Ukraine combined, but perhaps this is partly just bad luck, and influenced by something I talked about with another traveller (a world traveller): On a 2nd and later trip you know more what's going on, and what and who to avoid in situations so you avoid getting annoyed...
The purpose of this trip was for me to see if my view of Ukraine is not too rose-tinted, but I suppose everything considered not. I like Poland, Lithuania and Latvia more than NL but I've seen enough here to know that travelling further in Latvia or Lithuania or Poland won't make me want to live there more than in Ukraine, and thus it wouldn't change my wish to live in Ukraine and possibly change/improve the world a little bit around me there. The bad points of Ukraine are all known to me and I don't see all of the good points elsewhere. Travelling in Ukraine I see interesting things that are cool to me, in so many places that it's never boring, which I have not experienced elsewhere. I suspect I might be able to get the same feeling in Belarus and Russia, but would I want to live there, taking other issues of life in those countries into account? I also talked about this topic with the world traveller, who agreed that if you are single (as I am), then where to live, if there is a choice, is about what you like most of all for yourself, but if you are not single then what will give happiness and fulfillment in life, is mostly about family, and then you can live anywhere. I suppose I could even continue living in NL, but I would definitely prefer another country!
Travel report: 11-6-2017 - 29-6-2017 (updated 27-7-2017)