The Rough Guide to The Baltic States (Rough Guide Travel Guides) (Paperback)

by Jonathan Bousfield (Author) "From the UK and Ireland the most convenient way of getting to the Baltic States is to fly - there's a reasonable choice of direct..." (more)
Key Phrases: beaver trail, forestry museum, singing revolution, Old Town, World War, Baltic States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Introduction

The Baltic States – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – are far from being the grey, Soviet-scarred republics that many people imagine them to be. For a start, they’re graced by three of the most enthralling national capitals in Eastern Europe, each highly individual in character and boasting an extraordinary wealth of historic buildings, as well as an expanding and energetic nightlife and cultural scene. Outside the cities lie great swathes of unspoiled countryside, with deep, dark pine forests punctuated by stands of silver birch, calm blue lakes, and a wealth of bogs and wetlands, all bordered by literally hundreds of kilometres of silvery beach. Peppering the landscape are villages that look like something out of the paintings of Marc Chagall, their dainty churches and wonky timber houses leaning over narrow, rutted streets. As you’d expect from a region periodically battered by outside invaders, there are dramatic historical remains aplenty, from the grizzled ruins of the fortresses thrown up by land-hungry Teutonic Knights in the thirteenth century, to the crumbling military installations bequeathed by Soviet occupiers some 700 years later.

Although the half century spent under Soviet rule has left Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians with a great deal in common, they’re each fiercely proud of their separate status, and tend to regard the "Baltic States" label as a matter of geographical convenience rather than a real indicator of shared culture.

The Latvians and Lithuanians do at least have similar origins, having emerged from the Indo-European tribes who settled the area some two thousand years before Christ, and they still speak closely related languages. The Estonians, on the other hand, have lived here at least three millennia longer and speak a Finno-Ugric tongue that has more in common with Finnish than with the languages of their next-door neighbours. In historical and religious terms, it’s the Lithuanians that are a nation apart – having carved out a huge, independent empire in medieval times, they then converted to the Catholic faith in order to cement an alliance with Poland. In contrast, the Latvians and Estonians were conquered by Teutonic Knights in the thirteenth century and subjected to a German-speaking feudal culture that had become solidly Protestant by the mid-1500s. From the eighteenth-century onwards, the destinies of the three Baltic peoples began to converge, with most Latvians and Estonians being swallowed up by the Tsarist Empire during the reign of Peter the Great and the Lithuanians following several decades later. Despite their common predicament, no great tradition of Baltic cooperation emerged, and when the three Baltic States became independent democracies in 1918–1920 – only to lose their independence to the USSR and Nazi Germany two decades later – they did so as isolated units rather than as allies.

The one occasion on which the Baltic nations truly came together was in the 1988–1991 period, when a shared sense of injustice at what the Soviet Union had done to them produced an outpouring of inter-Baltic solidarity. At no time was this more evident than when an estimated two million people joined hands to form a human chain stretching from Tallinn to Vilnius on 23 August, 1989, the fiftieth anniversary of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact – the cynical Soviet-Nazi carve-up that had brought the curtain down on inter-war Baltic independence. Baltic fellow feeling became less pronounced in the post-Soviet period when each country began to focus on its own problems, and it’s now the differences – rather than the similarities – between the Baltic peoples that most locals seem eager to impress upon visitors.

How different they actually are remains open to question, with both locals and outsiders resorting to a convenient collection of clichés whenever the question of national identity comes under discussion: the Lithuanians are thought to be warm and spontaneous, the Estonians distant and difficult to know, while the Latvians belong somewhere in between. In truth there are plenty of ethnographic similarities linking the three nationalities. A century ago the majority of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians lived on isolated farmsteads or small villages, and a love for the countryside, coupled with a contemplative, almost mystical feeling for nature, still runs in the blood. Shared historical experiences – especially the years of Soviet occupation and the sudden re-imposition of capitalism that followed it – have produced people with broadly similar outlooks and, wherever you are in the Baltic States, you’ll come across older people marked by fatalism and lack of initiative and younger generations characterized by ambition, impatience and adaptability to change.

The Baltic peoples today are also united by gnawing concerns about whether such relatively small countries can preserve their distinct identities in a rapidly globalizing world. The rush to join NATO and the EU has been broadly welcomed in all three countries, not least because membership of both organizations promises protection against any future resurgence of Russian power. However, locals remain keenly aware that they can only be bit-part players in any future Europe. Lithuania has a population of 3.8 million, Latvia 2.3 million, and Estonia only 1.4 million – hardly the stuff of economic or cultural superpowers. Combined with this is a looming fear of population decline in countries that share some of the lowest birth rates in the world. Such anxieties are particularly strong in Estonia and Latvia, where the indigenous populations are in many towns and cities outnumbered by other ethnic groups – particularly Russians – who were encouraged to move here during the Soviet period. Only 55 percent of Latvia’s inhabitants are ethnic Latvians, and the figure in Estonia, at 65 percent, isn’t much better. Eager to immerse themselves in the new Europe and yet profoundly concerned with the need to preserve their national uniqueness, the Baltic States find themselves at a challenging crossroads.

About the Author
Jonathan Bousfield is also the author of The Rough Guide to Croatia and co-author of Rough Guides to Austria, Bulgaria and Poland. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Rough Guides (May 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1858288401
• ISBN-13: 978-1858288406
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #785,453 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written guide, but needs more details, September 26, 2004

By	Traveling the world (Heading East...) - See all my reviews

The Rough Guides are usually written in a colorful, well-researched manner that makes them a joy to have along in order to learn about the places you are visiting while exploring the area, and this book delivers along those lines. Also true to Rough Guide form, however, the book lacks important details regarding transportation: how many buses, how often, where to buy tickets, best routes, etc.

The Baltic countries have experienced a major boom in tourism since EU membership in May 2004, and hotel rooms are booked far in advance. As such, Rough needs to expand their listings to include a larger percentage of hotels. In August 2004 we found all the hotels listed in the Rough Guide fully booked in all 3 Baltic capitals! Admittedly, we did not plan very far ahead, and to be fair to this book, we did not find a major guide with more complete hotel listings.

The Listings section in each chapter also provides a handy reference. In general, however, Rough should expand this section to make it really useful, as listings are a bit limited. They should also start adding sections such as: Cyber cafes with digital photo downloads, Where to buy a GSM SIM chip, and similar sections for the digital traveler, to really make the listings complete.

In each major destination, this book includes walking tours with some interesting information on buildings, churches and monuments, intertwined with history and cultural observations that makes for enjoyable reading and walks. We were glad to have this book along.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars All Europe in miniature, May 30, 2008

By	J. L. Albee "Faulkner Wannabe" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Rough Guide to The Baltic States - 2nd Edition (Paperback)

Any author of a travel guide to the Baltic States is left with a formidable task: Words and still photographs don't do justice to these truly exceptional destinations. Add to that the daunting task of trying to keep listings current for three of the most dynamic and popular tourist destinations on earth. In particular, the capital cities are booming with prosperity, largely based on the tourist trade, and institutional details change constantly. Faced with these difficulties, this guide is still the best of the bunch. Bradt does a nice guide to the capital cities, but that doesn't help much for people interested in such lovely places as Kaunas and Tartu, or the idyllic rural settings outside the cities. This book crams an enormous amount of material into a dense, compact package. Despite one reviewer's claim to the contrary, Rough Guides are smaller and lighter than the Bradt guides. You'll need to buy three of those to gather the equivalent content offered in this book.

Tallinn, Riga and (especially) Vilnius are so startling upon first sight, no amount of historic or cultural context is going to give you the blast of adrenaline you'll feel as your taxi scoots you through the town square on the way to your hotel. You simply have to see and feel these places directly. That said, Rough Guide has made (in this updated edition) a dedicated effort to improve the quality of the pragmatic material in the book. You're still not going to find the details of bus routes and timetables, but the hotel and restaurant listings are up-to-date and accurate. True to Rough Guide form, however, the author reveals his love of all things historic and cultural, which fits nicely with the book's standard format.

A few words of caution: Remember, these three small countries are shaking off the communist experiment, and that takes some time. While the old town centers are generally restored, there's still a palpable grit to the Baltic States. Don't expect Vilnius to look like Vienna, or Tallinn to look like Prague, or Riga to look like Stockholm. These towns are far smaller than their central European and Scandinavian sisters, and they're ringed by nasty industrial suburbs that can (but shouldn't) put you off. I mention this because the guide doesn't make this observation. Also, don't buy this book if you're looking for a photo essay. Rough Guides are all about words and simple maps. Go to Flickr if you want a nice preview in pictures.

From the medieval Protestant alleys of Tallinn to the baroque splendor of Catholic Vilnius, this guide's got your back. But as another reviewer noted, these destinations are among the most popular in the world (the wonderful combination of beauty and affordability), so sit down with this book and do your homework BEFORE you get on the plane.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Better left at the library, November 25, 2007

By	G. Zielinski - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book provides some interesting background information about the countries, but was not organized very well to serve as a reference on-the-fly. While you may be interested in reading about Latvian daina song-poems from your living room before leaving on your trip, you'll find yourself cursing all that information when you're just trying to find some specific tip on bus routes to the ethnographic museum. If your itinerary is going to focus mainly on the capital cities, as mine did, I would highly recommend the book Bradt Baltic Capitals. It was infinitely more useful than the Rough Guide, cheaper, and half the size and weight.