Riga - as captured by Zenit 35mm film camera

When we were doing our brief internet research on what to do and see in each city that we planned to visit I stumbled across a photography tour in Riga. It gave us the opportunity to use the old Soviet Zenit 35mm film cameras, so I was hooked from the start. The photos below are scans of the negatives but I haven't cleaned up the digital files yet (something to do on a rainy day) so their quality isn't the greatest but you certainly will get a feel for the city.

The camera

Soviet market

Closing time

Berries everywhere

 Moscow road (literally runs direct to Moscow)

Warehouse area (currently being rejuvenated as Riga is European culture capital for 2014)

  
In the park

Riga - Latvia

Maps really do come in handy (so does stealing free wifi)

So you can't say that you can't teach old dogs new tricks as this time we were prepared, a paper map of the city AND a digital map on the tab. I had a ball park mental image on the map of where we were walking to, even being able to point to that unlabelled road on the map but the other Spaz wasn't so sure. Thankfully there is lots of free wifi to steal or piggy back onto in the Baltics. A quick 2nd look and off we set for another hour long walk to the hostel. I should add here that my pack was 11kg when we left Sweden and by the time we got to this hostel it felt like 111kg :-( again we arrived sweaty, checked in, cleaned up and headed out to explore.

Before I tell you about our lovely time in Riga I should share some details about where we stayed. It was a lovely hostel that probably really wants to be a B&B. It had been open 3 weeks when we got there. As you would expect for something open 3 weeks, it is really clean. There was one problem for us, we were in a twin room (not the problem), the problem was the bathroom which was a 2m by 2m glass box in the corner of the room. Now don't get me wrong I am not a prude (yes I am Australian and they are a bit prudish) but there are limits to what I need to see the other Spaz do in the bathroom. Clear glass from the ceiling to the floor does not make a bathroom. I find this a weird thing to have in a twin room also as I often travel with friends and we get a twin room to save costs, I love my friends but again I don't need to see them in the bathroom.

The harbour in Riga was hosting the Tall ships festival so there were many boats with their numerous masts protruding high into the sky. We walked around the old ships for a while and spotted the Götheborg. I had travelled for days to see the ship from my home port. She was sitting impressively amongst some Norwegian and Russian boats. The Latvian police and military put on a display too. Whilst I could have had a cliched photo of me trying to hold some massive machine gun, I was most impressed with the bomb squads display. The maneuverability of the robots and the kevlar suit the 'lucky' human observer gets to wear were fascinating.

Old town in Riga was pretty, some very old churches, some amazing buildings and small little narrow streets were fun to explore. The museum of the occupation of Latvia was really interesting, and as a bonus it was available in 3 languages, importantly for me English was one of them. It told of the second world war through to soviet occupation and finally liberation. Communism was just as crippling to the country as Nazism. I need to read up more on why and how Russia came to occupy the Baltic states after the war!!!

Freedom monument

Getting some luck

Due to the soviet occupation there were numerous families that owned Zenit cameras. These are 35mm cameras (SLR) that are direct 'knock-off' of the Canon AE-1. If that made no sense to you then don't worry, basically we took some 50 year old film cameras for a walk around Riga on a tour we did. We spent some time out at the soviet market, then we headed to old Moscow road before returning back to town. Both the other Spaz and I have 72 photos each of Riga, some in focus, some over or under developed and some are just stunning. Film cameras capture a depth and feel that I have never been able to replicate with a digital camera. There is a whole blog post of photos we took on the tour, too many favourites to put here.

Soviet occupation also gave Riga electric cable buses. I haven't seen these in any country except former soviet states. We rode them home a couple of nights and in the tradition of our trip .... but pushing it further this time .... what you need a ticket ?!?! We are now public transport fugitives in 3 cities or 2 countries.

beer happiness

pancake happiness

Upon leaving the hostel to go to the bus terminal to catch a bus to Tallinn we caught a tram, what you need a ticket to ride a tram too ?!?! The bus station was next to the russian market which was convenient as we had a 4 hour bus ride, 3 Latvian lats (A$6) and were in need of some food and water for the trip. We got 2 massive pizza slices (not really pizza, more a bread roll with lots of vegetables and cheese on top but the size of a a very large piece of pizza), 2 danish like pastries, 4 nectarines, 1.5L of water, a 500ml bottle of coke and we still had 0.4 Latvian lats left, awesome!.

The Swedish gate

To make us even more happy, without knowing it we had booked ourselves onto the Lux bus for our trip to Tallinn. Oh you couldn't wipe the smiles from our faces when we took our seats in the first row behind the rear door, oh so happy, the Lux bus  :-)

Vinlius - Lithuania

Vilnius and Lithuania (sort of...)

After 10 hours on a bus we got off at the Vilnius bus terminal. It was 5am 'our time' and our continuing bus to Riga was leaving at 7am. It was a good thing that we went into the bus terminal as otherwise we wouldn't have noticed that the time had changed, we were now on eastern european time and not central, yay only a 1 hour to wait for the bus to Riga. The bus terminal was a pretty miserable place but it was 6am their time and it was all closed.

So when we went to book this epic 17 hour bus journey from Warsaw to Riga we tried to book the Lux bus but unfortunately it was sold out (wide seats, free tea and coffee, free wifi, easy to see why it was sold out), so we were stuck with the equivalent of a local public transport bus for this epic journey. This bus was still better than all of the grayhound buses I ever took across the US, this one had climate control at least. To rub salt into already numb bums, sore legs and aching backs, whilst we were waiting the hour for our connecting bus to Riga a Lux bus pulled in. Boy oh boy I so wanted to get on that bus! It looked so spacious and comfortable.

I would like to say that I saw some of Lithuania but alas no. I managed to nap/sleep on the bus in the morning on the way into Vilnius and I dozed/napped in the morning on the bus to Riga out of Vilnius. The only highlight of this part of the bus trip that I remember is the passport control check (a policeman on the side of the road stopped the bus) and our bus drivers massive nicotine addiction (at any chance he would step off the bus and light up a cigarette whether it was a 2 min or 10 min stop). So I think that this means we will return to Lithuania at some stage. I do still really want to trek out to see the 'Hill of Crosses'.

Warsaw - Poland

Maps can be handy

So when we booked the hostel I didn't downloaded a map of Warsaw to our trusty travel toy, the tab, no that would have been far too sensible. We were sent instructions on how to get to the hostel from the train station in a text message so why do we need a map ?!?!?

So after purchasing 2 tickets for public transport we went looking for the infamous bus number 120. Alas, no number 120 bus never turned up at the train station even though we found a timetable for it so we chose to walk. The instructions we were sent told us what stop to get off the bus at so ... with a quick photograph of a map found at the station with the phone (thanks to modern technology) we pounded the footpaths of Warsaw. Approx. 40 mins later, with much sweat we found the hostel and checked in. 20 mins later after showering we were finally ready to explore Warsaw.

Warsaw isn't as well set up for tourists as Krakow. Nearly all signs are in Polish, there is very very little in English or any other language which was a bit of a shame when we went past some historical sites. We spent the afternoon roaming around town, heading out to see the tomb of the unknown solider and the lovely park surrounding it, then strolling back towards old town via the opera/theater district. As our tour guide the next morning stated (we did the free walking tour, best 2 hours spent in old town), old town is a bit like Disneyland as the reconstruction was completed in the middle of the 1950s. World War II saw 85% of old town and the nearby ghetto area destroyed. Old town had some walls survive but there was absolutely nothing but rubble in the ghetto area.

Yes that is just 1 ice cream and it is the length of my wrist to elbow

A muppet??

Tomb of the unknown soldier

In Warsaw we learnt about the Warsaw uprising and the underground network of polish civilians that acted as an armed resistance militia to try and fight off the Nazis. Unfortunately we were a bit early in visiting the Museum of History of Polish Jews, officially it opens next year, I imagine that the displays will be great then but we only got to watch a few black and white movies from the 20s and 30s of Jewish life in Warsaw. The walk between this museum and the next took us through the ghetto area, all nice 1960s style soviet housing blocks. All very square, very minimal concrete buildings. The Warsaw Uprising Museum had a massive line that took an hour just to buy a ticket. It was well worth it. After a long day on our feet we found a little cafe well off the tourist path to have a late lunch, interesting mix of cultures, basically an asian noodle house but polish style, weird but good when you are hungry. We walked back to town via the last piece of the ghetto wall that survives. It was incredible to see a 2m brick wall with barbed wire on top divide a street in half. We then went and saw the final insult to the Poles, Stalins gift of the culture center. It is just like the seven sisters in Moscow, all identical Stalin buildings.

After some random walking in the general vacinity of a park we stumbled past a great little impromptu cafe for the summer.

I ate my way through Poland

LOOK Squirrel :-)

At 5pm with the public transport tickets we purchased on day 1 we jumped on a bus to the bus terminal. We never did validate those tickets (second city where we have abused the system). At 7pm we boarded a bus to Riga stopping in Vilnius for a couple of hours, or so we thought ........

Krakow - Poland

The tour begins...

So we set off on lovely sunny Thursday afternoon for the airport to begin our Poland, The Baltics and Finland tour. Two trams had had a collision in town so we ended up on bus instead of taking the tram to Central station. While in line for the airport bus we observed our first 'people are STUPID' moment ... there are two airports in Gothenburg and for some people finding out which bus to get in is just too difficult. Some people just shouldn't be allowed to travel! Our next 'people are STUPID' moment was whilst we were in line waiting to board the plane and suddenly 10 people leave the line as they wanted to go to Milan and not to Krakow. I repeat, some people shouldn't be allowed to travel.

We landed in Krakow without a hitch and caught the shuttle bus from the airport to the train station. The train ride into town was a bumpy experience. We then had our first abuse of the local public transport system on the trip. We purchased a couple of tickets for the tram, jumped on and made our way to the hostel (apparently you need to validate your ticket on the tram, who knew?). It was a great hostel! There were only 6 rooms in the place, full of couples or families, so nice and quiet and the free breakfast was awesome too :-) We now have a great contact for when we go to St Petersburg. We spent the rest of the day exploring a little bit of old town and stopped by the large market square for dinner. We observed on the rest of the trip that most tourists don't leave market squares to eat and that they basically just eat a burger and drink beer when they are out exploring the world, a bit sad. However, on the market square in Krakow you get to listen to a trumpet player playing a tune called the Hejnal, played on the hour, every hour, every day, throughout the year. Impressive!

Swallows circling the church steeple where the trumpet player appears every hour

Our first full day was spent exploring the Wawel Royal Castle. We went into the cathedral of Pope John Paul the 2nd and explored the Crown treasury and Royal armory as well. Poland is still a very Catholic country, over 85% practicing and JP2 (I'm down with him as I visited his airport and cathedral and saw heaps of statues of him so I can call him that now) is held in very high regard. Dinner was a treat of local fair, dumpings that reminded me of dim sum and a potato pancake with spicy goulash (Placki ziemniaczane z gulaszem na ostro). It was a delicious! 

Venison

Pheasant

Dumplings + potato pancake

Concentrating on the audio guide

We decided to not take a guided tour of Auschwitz but to do it by ourselves instead at our own pace and I think we made the right decision. We got up at 6 so we could get the bus at 7 to be there a little after 8. The bus to Oświęcim we took was a small minibus that had only us and a couple of locals on it. We basically had the place to ourselves for the first 2 hours and it was really noticeable when the tour groups arrived, lots of large groups pushed through each of the displays. We spent about 4 hours at the main camp and then got the shuttle bus out to Birkenau or camp 2 where we spent another 3 hours. I had a bit of a hard time dealing with parts of Auschwitz, particularly the rooms full of the possessions of people who passed through the camp, their glasses, their shoes, their luggage and then the cabinet of kids clothes, so so sad! I am even a bit teary now writing this. Birkenau was also difficult as the shear size of the place is horrific and knowing the number of people who came here and that were never sent to work but went straight to the gas chambers is just horrifying. Also this is where the 'medical' experiments were conducted. I hope that I taught a rude Frenchman a lesson here but really I doubt I did. He told me off for standing right where he wanted to take a photo, seriously if you didn't learn about tolerance whilst visiting here then why did you come, what did you get out of it ?!?!

Auschwitz (camp 1)

Birkenau (camp 2)

Birkenau (camp 2)

The road walked to the gas chambers

As a contrast to the day we had we decided to lighten up our day and stopped on our way home to have a coffee and cake before chillaxing in the hostel before dinner. We then went out to a great restaurant called Chimera. I had half a pheasant and the other Spaz had venison, all with matched wine. Awesome!

Our final day in Krakow was spent in the salts mines, literally. We went 135m underground and walked through about 3km of the 240km of mine tunnels. Some of the art sculptures, cathedrals and chapels that the miners had carved were fantastic. We also saw the enamel factory where Oscar Schindler (yes that one from the book and the movie) used (didn't pay them but fed them at least) but saved (literally their lives) many Jewish people. It has been turned into a very good museum.

The morning of our final day was spent eating bagels (we were in the Jewish part of town, disrespectful not to eat one) and walking through the new Jewish cemetery. There were lots and lots of graves to people lost in the concentration camps. After lunch on the next day we got on the train to Warsaw (4 hours). The train ride was fantastic, each carriage was divided into compartments for 8 people. The train passed through rural farming land and past some lovely old churches. In a couple of years I imagine that the train ride will be half the time as there were new tracks being laid along the entire route for a high speed link.

Memorial in the ghetto

The new Jewish cemetery

 Poland did try to make the House of Spaz welcome :-)

Thanks for making us feel welcome :-)