An ongoing writeup of my travels - with especial concentration on travelling up through the Baltic countries which is something I had wondered about for years. Written yesterday, smell checked overnight!
I disliked history at school and gave it up as soon as I could, but over the last week I have seen how the history of the last hundred years has shaped these land and been very unkind to them in a way we do not see in Wiltshire of perhaps most of England. These are all lands that were occupied by Germany during the second world war, and were then parts of the Eastern Block - Russian satellites of indeed politically parts of the USSR thereafter. And the destruction and the atrocities of those years are perhaps beyond description, yet are documented in art piece memorials with text in the native language and often in English too.
The history and the dislike of war and persecution remain to this day - and that's a dislike of current Russian activities; in spite of many domed and turreted orthodox churches in Russian Style, the flag of Ukraine is flown in so many places that it leaves you in no doubt where the support lies. On the border of Latvia and Estonia, there are six flagpoles and I'm sure they normally fly three Estonian flags and three Latvian ones. Except at present the two poles closest to the border fly the yellow and blue of Ukraine. This town of Valka / Valga has the border running through it, and the stream that forms the division has a number of bridges crossing it across which people freely walk. One of the bridges has a swing on it and you can swing back and forth between the countries. Photograph to be attached of a couple and their two children on the swing; I thought they spoke good English and it turned out that they should - for they were from Tunbridge Wells.
We complain about potholes in England - we ain't seen nothing! We would grumble if the tread of a step were to be damaged (trip hazard) but here the infrastructure is worn and you pick your way around it. The Baltic states, especially, gave the impression of falling apart with some bright flashes where something new has been built, either from scratch of within the shell of a building that has you wondering how it will be in a decade or so.
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This is supposed (my supposition) to be a railway learning adventure and I will admit to being nervous of the advise for the Baltic states that said "use the bus", further concerned at my Interrail planner failing to even offer me the train for one of the legs, and my map book showing one of the stations I needed to change at as being closed, with lines marked "limited service - not daily" and "only served overnight by the sleeper service to Minsk". But I need not have worried.
* Poland to LithuaniaThe 07:46 from Warsaw Central to Mockava, just across the border in Latvia, now runs daily. An electric locomotive pulls 5 coaches (with numbers 11 to 15 to make you think it'a a longer train) to Bialystok close to the border with Belarus (passenger trains don't carry on to there any longer), where it is replaced by a diesel locomotive than hauls us on over a single track to Suwalki. We pause there again for 25 minutes while the locomotive runs round the train before it carries on up the single line though the forest to cross the border into Lithuania, sneaking though the gap bewteen the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and Russia itself. and so we come into Mockava Station - very much open in spite of what my planner says. And there it terminates.
The tracks look similar but look carefully and you may spot a slight difference - we have arrived on a train on a 1485mm gauge line, but the line the other side of the low platform is 1520mm and so our train would not fit. By this time, there are just a few dozen people on the train and all travelling with luggage. They all chamber down the steps and stand around on a pleasant April day in the sunshire.
The schedule says we spend an hour and fifty minutes near the border, but in practise there's an hour change of the clocks, and so it's nothing like that amount of time. A very modern 3 carriage multiple unit train pulls in, disgorges it passengers and they climb up onto the one we arrived on from Warsaw while we who arrived from Warsaw get on the newly arrived train from Vilnius to return there.
A quiet train from Mockava, but again filled up at the major intermediate station on the way and we arrived in Vilnius at about half past 5.
* Lithuania to LatviaAnd at Vilnius - capital of Lithuania - a problem. The daily train onwards to Riga, capital of Latvia has only recently been re-introduced and it seems that it's very popular. All seats for the following day - Saturday - had been reserved (an reservation with an Interrail pass often can't be done online). The lady on the ticket day suggested I take a bus as there was "no other train" - good stuff, this integrated travel) but instead I opted to drop back a day, travelling half way across Lithuania the next day, and then on to Riga the day after. The 13:19 from Vilnius was stated in my timetable as running daily to Kliepedia on the coast, but it turns out there's a very complex list of days it goes all the way and days it stops short at Siauliai - thank goodness that's as far as I was going; two nights there then (and having to move hotels between!) and a really interesting town to see.
Apparently, it was the first town in the Soviet Union to pedestrianise its main street in (?) 1975 and that was such a success that it was extended a decade later. These days, a significant proportion of the shop fronts are out of use, and many of the remaining ones are bars and restaurants. The first evening I wasn't inclined to eat out, but the second evening I visited the Irish Bar and had a traditional (not sure who's tradition) lamb shank with pickled carrots, roast potato wedges, coleslaw and horseradish sauce, washed down with (several) pints of the local dark beer.
Siauliai was visited by Pole John Paul II and is clearly a city with a deep catholic tradition. It is - or perhaps was - a major destination for visitors; one of my hosts tells me that business dropped with Covid as the visitors from Taiwan and Japan stopped coming, but I rather suspect he's moved from a market in which accommodation was in short supply and people would take anything to a market in which there is more accommodation than needed, and he's one of the ones missing out. I am NOT going to write him a rubbish review (that is reserved for Radisson Blu in Gdansk) but I won't be taking my wife to stay in that apartment. Nice host, interesting product.
And so, Sunday, my train across the border. Nothing really eventful to report - it's a modern 3 car diesel thing run by Lithuanian Railways who start it from Vilnius before 7 in the morning - I picked it up at a more manageable 08:50 and it runs on to Riga where we pulled in to Platform 1 at 10:43. So what about the next step to Estonia?
* Latvia to EstoniaOK - standard advise is "get the bus" but I am not standard. My rail atlas shows one line connection the two countries but cautions "limited service from Valmiera to Valga. My printed European Rai Timetable shows 2 trains a day, one from Riga at 11:10. My Interrail application says "no suitable service" when I try to add it to my pass. And the Latvian Railway website confirms 2 trains a day, though the morning one is 11:00 and not 11:10. It also tells me that it leaves from Platform 11, so I'm thinking a gallop across Riga station if I'm running late, and a lot of explaining to do to the tickets staff.
I need not have worried. It turns out that platforms 10 and 11 at Riga are the bay platforms just up from through platform 1, and the old 8 carriage local dies train in there is labelled as heading for Valga. I climb on - plenty of seats - and for the first time use the "manual train entry" on the Interrail App, noting its caution that you should check the pass really is valid if you do this.
Once we start, the ticket collector (all stations in these parts are open and tickets checked on trains) comes round, takes a look at my pass and then says that everyone on his train needs a (paper) ticket. He looks at my pass carefully, checking I have added the journey, and then issues a ticket with 100% discount to I have nothing to pay. Apologises for the need to faff around.
The train is a slow thing it accelerates from a walk to a canter for a few miles through wooded countryside the slows down for the next station. I was reminded of an article I once read about a train being so slow the passengers felt it must be the last reluctant trip of the driver before he retired. Plenty of space in the train - 4 carriages would have been plenty rather than the eight, and the further on we got, the quieter it got. Perhaps a dozen people got off at Valga at 13:58 - on time - a three hour journey from Riga and just into Estonia. Almost exactly 100 miles - so it's the equivalent distance of Melksham to London.
The ongoing service to Tallinn runs 4 times a day - but none connects with this train from Riga - so I had from 2 O'clock until half past five to see Valga and its sister town Valka just back across the border in Latvia. And so does the ticket collector, as on a Sunday his train sits there for most of the afternoon before returning to the Latvia. As I walked down the street in a very quiet town, the ticket collector was walking that way too arm in arm with his girlfriend who was clearly out with him for the day.
I've written earlier about Valka and Valga as towns. As a railway station it's magnificent. And it was the junction for where the line ran on to and beyond the Russian border. No passenger trains now, but a rotting soviet steam engine on a plinth and an awful lot of tank wagons around; I suspect there is more trade than they would have us believe.
The train to Tallinn is a modern diesel unit, first class in the ends and standard in the middle. My pass is first, but I get chucked out of my seat by someone who has it reserved, and the a helpful passenger informs me that all seats with little red sliders above them are reserved - that's the whole of first class. I suspect she was trying to help save me being moved multiple times, but it could just be that she wanted this scruff out of the posh end of the train.
We left Valga with a healthy passenger load but picked up more along the way until we were full and standing. And the seats were the most uncomfortable I have been in for the whole trip so far. I was squirming by the end of the three hour trip into Tallinn and delighted to have a half hour walk (mainly because my mapping application doesn't show the castle mound, so there was no direct route. I ended up taking the longer but undoubtedly more interesting one around.
Of note - about half the stations have short platforms "zone C if you want to leave the train" and that all appeared busy. And many of the platforms have been rebuilt at a low level, with a low level door on the trains for wheelchair access. Could do wonders ... new stations perhaps at Staverton and Lacock, and perhaps even Corsham and Wilton.
* Estonia to FinlandOK - so that was was a ship, from Terminal D (I walked there from the hotel). Modern fast ferry that runs about every 3 hours and takes 2 on the crossing, then a no. 7 tram into Helsinki
Electronics gone mad at the checkin - machine not people but it kept telling me to go to the counter. Customer service rep at the machine was puzzled - looked OK on her system. Mystery solved at the counter - I had claimed a 5 euro discount on the crossing (discount code Interrail) and they wanted to see my pass.
And so - onwards and northwards. Headed towards Lapland on a train now. Plenty of opportunity to write and I really don't want to get involved in council sh*t this afternoon - that can wait until morning. Oulu where I have a hotel booked is the next stop; I will post with pics from the WiFi there, do council stuff early in the morning and then breakfast with a very old friend of Lisa's and mine from the early days we were courting via a newsgroup.
Edit to add - Images from the post
Click on the map to explore geographics
