Politics, Vilnius, Linguistics and the Economy « My Trip to Latvia

It takes me a long time to write these posts, and I only just now understand why. I don’t want to have it be just “I went here, then I went there.” I hope to be able to process what I’m seeing and learning here and to speak about it in a way that might help you to better share my experiences.

Yesterday I went to Vilnius, Lithuania with Marina, Misha, Tanya, Lena and Nastya. Vilnius is quite an ancient city, and I have always heard about it’s magnificent “Old Town”, which was once a huge center of Judaism in Europe.

Marina, Nastya, Tanya and Lena in Vilnius

There were a few option:

a) just to look around aimlessly — which I always enjoy, frankly. :-)

b) take a tour bus, which had a choice of languages, both Russian and English

c) that I could get a guided tour in English

We decided that perhaps “c” was best, because the tour bus didn’t really go much into Old Town. Once you’ve seen it, you can understand why. Many of the streets can barely accommodate a couple of bicycles side by side much less a tour bus. I was concerned that everyone else would be quite bored, but Marina assured me that they could do shopping and look around on their own. Some things can be purchased much more cheaply in Lithuania than Latvia. Marina told me that many people come from Latvia to Lithuania to buy cars.

We looked around for someplace not too expensive to have lunch, but Vilnius center is quite a fashionable place, so affordable options are very limited. We decided to try MacDonald’s. I thought it might be interesting, as all fans of the movie Pulp Fiction will understand, to find out what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in Lithuania. It turns out to be a “Big Tasty”. I also figured that it’s got to be better than an American MacDonald’s. I was wrong there. :-)

MacDonalds menu

Lena, Misha, Nastya, Marina and Tanya at MacDonalds

The tour guide was very knowledgeable – at times perhaps a little too verbose. She spent the first 30 minutes (I’m not exaggerating) of a walking tour at the starting place, just talking about the history of Vilnius and Lithuania. Lithuanians are justifiably very proud of their rich history. The tour guide claimed that the Lithuanian language was the oldest Indo-European language, and I wondered about the accuracy of that statement. According to Wikipedia, it’s probably the closest language to what Indo-European sounded like. Lithuanian and Latvian are the only two surviving languages of the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. Lithuanian has many cognate words with Sanskrit and Latin; these words are descended from Proto-Indo-European. Wikipedia has a quote from Antoine Meillet, “Anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant.”

Vilnius Old City

I had asked the tour guide if she could talk about the Jewish history in the old city, which she was able to do. Unfortunately, there is nothing left to see of the Jewish section. The Jewish buildings were destroyed and the synagogue bombed in the war. There are new buildings there now, but they did not attempt to recreate the style of buildings that would have existed.

After the tour, Marina asked me if I preferred the Old City in Riga or the Old City in Vilnius. Almost without thinking, I could honestly answer Riga, but it took me a while to figure out why. The old city in Vilnius while quite real still has an almost Disneyland aspect to it. It’s very, very clean and beautiful and very touristy. The old city in Riga still has boarded up buildings needing repair, streets almost impassible due to bricks and debris, but it’s very real.

Latvia is the poorest country in the EU and it’s economy suffers greatly. Yesterday a new mayor was elected in Daugavpils, and my cousins have hopes that he might be able to help their local situation a little. Latvia decided not to lower the minimum wage, as they had planned to do, because of threats from the EU to withhold money if they approached their economy in this fashion, telling the Latvian authorities that they should not start by penalizing the poorest people in the economy first. What a refreshing notion, after having 8 years of an American administration who felt that the economy would be best served by lowering the taxes for the richest people. And look how well that plan turned out! And still, some in congress (you know who I mean) feel that the only way out of our economic crisis in America is to maintain those idiotic policies that got us here in the first place.

They also said on the news last night that it is expected that 40% of the hotels in Latvia will need to close due to lack of tourism. I worry greatly for Latvia and it’s people. Vishki, a once thriving town even after the war, became something close to a ghost town 20 years ago because of a lack of a local economy. Young people left to find work. This could be the fate of Latgale, or even Latvia entirely if their economy doesn’t recover soon. This is a beautiful place with wonderful people. But что же делать? What is there to do?

It was a very long drive back, but Спасибо большое, Миша и Марина! Thank you very much Misha and Marina for the day in Vilnius. And Julia had some great food waiting for us on our return. This is a cold borscht (борщ Borsh in Russian) that Julia made. It was very tasty (очень вкусный) and theraputic after a long day.