It’s been a whirlwind couple weeks since our last update. We’ve been aggressively country hopping lately and it’s put us behind in our blogging. Many apologies to all of our loyal readers. But I digress …

We left off in Kiev, Ukraine. For certain reasons that need not to be mentioned, we stayed in Kiev for four days, which was probably two days too long. The city isn’t exactly great for foreign tourists (many sights and exhibits are only in Ukrainian or Russian) and with the local walking tour company bailing on the English speaking public three days in a row, well, it left us with some more time than we needed. Luckily, we did get to meet a local, Helen, who took us around town one afternoon and helped us get a better understanding of Kiev and its inhabitants. We checked out the Chernobyl Museum and would recommend it if you don’t plan on taking the guided trip out to Reactor #4 yourself (yes, there are tour companies for this). There are some fantastic Orthodox Christian churches to see and some weird Soviet-era monuments. However, the most visited attraction is the Lavra Cave Monastery. Note to Ukrainian Tourism Bureau: You should not allow non-Orthodox tourists such as us to peruse the holiest location of the Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Talk about awkward. Since we were entering a holy site, Adena was prepared and covered her head, shoulders and knees with pants. I was wearing my very cool and functional cargo shorts with optional zipper pant attachment.  We stumbled our way down a hill to a ramshackle building and bought our obligatory holy candle to light the way through the caves. The caves are home to famous monks in Ukrainian Orthodoxy who have been mummified and can be viewed through glass cases. We didn’t get more than a few steps in before an aged, bearded monk began yelling at us in Ukrainian. This occurred after we followed behind a group of Ukrainian tourists and hoped to blend in with the pack. We legitimately had no idea what he was saying until a local made a gesture to our pants. We hurried back out to the entrance of the lobby and oddly enough and without hesitation both tied on wrap around skirts around our waist. Our thinking was that Adena was covering her knees and I was wearing shorts to my knees; therefore, one of us must be doing something wrong, so why leave anything to the imagination and both wear skirts! Once we were inside we realized that this was WAY too holy of a place for tourists to visit as believers were intensively praying and kissing each mummy before moving on to the next one. The caves are hot, narrow, a bit claustrophobic and not really a place to be for two Jewish Americans to spend a morning. Regardless, when we exited we noticed that all men were wearing long pants and all women wear wearing skirts (not necessarily to the knees) or dresses. After some later googling, we found out that it was mandatory for women to wear skirts, regardless of length (only in Ukraine can you wear a mini-skirt to a holy site). Therefore, I unnecessarily wore a skirt and Adena shouldn’t have been so conservative in her leggings. So confused …

After Kiev, we hopped a flight to Vilnius, Lithuania. We had about 24 hours in Vilnius, but wish we stayed longer. Vilnius was a surprisingly picturesque city. We visited a KGB Museum, which was the former KGB prison that is fully intact. It’s a spooky place and reeks of terror but certainly a unique place to visit. If that didn’t depress us enough, we took an early train ride out of town the Paneriai Forest Memorial. In this beautiful forest just a few miles outside of Vilnius 100,000 people (70,000 Jews or half the population) were executed during WWII. It’s incredibly hard to fathom that the city the size of Manchester, NH could be exterminated in such a small area and so close to a large city, but the Nazi’s had a few advantages. Apparently, the Russians had previously dug up huge pits that were intended to be used for oil storage, but this never materialized as the Russians retreated before implementation. Instead, the Nazi’s converted these huge pits into mass graves, which afforded them an easy place to dispose of bodies. Secondly, some ethnic Lithuanians actually aided the Nazi’s in their efforts. This place felt different than Auschwitz, almost worse since it was just under the noses of the nearby city. In 30 minutes time, we replicated the train ride and walk through the forest that thousands of people were forced to do from Vilnius that immediately led to their death. No work camp, no ghetto, just gun shots. Today, the forest is again a beautiful place, but the train tracks are a stone’s throw from the graves and a reminder of its horrifying past.

Mass Grave

Grave and ladder for bodies

Road to Panerai

KGB Prison

Next up, we bussed north to Riga, Latvia. Riga’s main attraction is its overwhelming Art Nouveau architecture, which absolutely lives up to its hype. While the Old Town was again a beautiful place to visit (noticing a trend here?) we wanted to see the real Riga and decided to take a bike tour with E.A.T Bike Tours. We spent the entire tour outside of Old Town visiting the “Moscow Suburbs”, where concrete buildings look like they haven’t been maintained since the fall of the Iron Curtain and old wooden houses are still standing. We cruised around places that we definitely wouldn’t have felt comfortable walking by ourselves, but that’s part of Riga and we wanted to see it. There is quite a bit to see in Riga and would recommend a few days there.

Our last stop on our Baltic tour was Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn, like the other Baltic capitals has a beautiful Old Town. The weather was rainy and cool during our visit and we had a bunch of errands to do before our next stop. Plus, our accommodations consisted of a converted office in an apartment building equipped with fluorescent lighting, a huge desk with an old computer monitor and ‘Visit London’ posters hanging on the wall. Maybe it really wasn’t converted at all.  These factors probably contributed to us ranking Tallinn as our least favorite of the Baltic capitals; however, the Baltics were more impressive and interesting than we imagined and wished we had more time to explore them.

After Tallinn, we took a ferry to Helsinki, Finland, where we scheduled another ferry for later that day to take us to St. Petersburg, Russia.  Helsinki … skip it if you can. Super expensive and boring, but a great way to get to Russia without a visa! More on this in our next post.