Forwarded at the request of Katie Kelly:-)
Well, I hope you get this. I've been e-mailing so many
people, including my mother, with no response, which
is kind of depressing. I'm writing to let you know
that all is well. I'm taking a billion photos, so
hopefully I'll be able to create some sort of web page
to document this whole unreal experience. I do have to
say, however, that ever since we've entered Tallinn,
Estonia, a fully Westernized city, the adventures and
weird experiences have been less forthcoming. It's
absolutely beautiful here, but I guess it's because
there are so many tourists here, it's as if this city
were designed for foreigners. So, it's nice and
convenient, but I'm not learning as mush as I was say
in Bauska, Latvia, which was one nightmare of a day
trip. Promise me that you will never go THERE. I'm not
even going to give you directions. Let me put it this
way: Elenka and I were the only, and I mean ONLY women
there wearing comfortable shoes. The stares we got
were never ending. And her friend didn't realize we
were coming, so we had to wait around all day for her.
Our guide book suggested going to the town center, and
from there walking to a castle. At the bus station, I
asked someone where the town center was, and he looked
at me in comical disbelief and said, "Town center?
This is the town center!"
That was just the beginning. We found the castle, and
a park near a river, and lolled around there for a
while, thinking that this was just the type of rest we
needed. It was nice to lay in the sun and dry out for
a little while. We headed back to the "center," but
were then followed by this parade of nine year old
boys, one with a stick. Normally, I'm not afraid of
nine year old boys, but I've never actually been
threatened by them, either. They trailed behind us,
laughing and giggling, recognizing immediately our
comfortable shoes and natural hair coloring, and began
pestering us for money.
That, plus all of the stares, and really no where to
go, made for an incredibly uncomfortable experience.
When Elenka's friend Kelly, another Peace Corps
volunteer finally arrived home, we were both pretty
grateful. NO ONE offered to help us, but just watched
us from their windows.
Now, Riga, the state's capital, on the other hand, was
marvelous. There was kind of a mixture of neo-gothic
artitechture with this art noveau style. Really
wonderful, and I got tons of pictures.
Tonight Elenka and I are meeting these two women we
met on the bus. Their story is amazing. They were best
friends over sixty years ago, but because of all the
different occupations, either by Germany or Russia,
Uta, now probably about 67 years old, and her family
escaped first from Latvia, but then again from Poland
several years later. She eventually migrated to
Buffalo, NY, where she's been since '54. Yet, she and
her friend Erika have maintained this friendship
through the mail, since they were SEVEN years old!
Well, the most amazing part was when Uta returned to
her home villaga on the Latvian-Estonian border. They
had a Russian translater with them who did not speak
Latvian. They were trying to find her childhood house,
which they eventually did, but it was now completely
remodeled (for lack of a better term), yet it was
still emotional to see. Well, in attempting to find
this place, they had knocked on the door of a house
with a dog barking in the front yard. Eventually, an
elderly woman opened the door, but claimed she didn't
speak Russian (this Russian language thing here is a
rather touchy subject. It's almost best to just grunt
and point, but anyway...). Well, the translater was
trying to explain in Russian anyway Uta's story, and
finally the woman (who really did speak Russian, as
most Latvians do, but just deny it) and said, "Uta, is
that you?"
This was Uta's playmate from over sixty years ago! She
said that all this time, she's wondered what happened
to Uta, and still, to this day, thinks about her
often.
The strongest message I've gotten so far is that
communism is simply evil. It seemed as though the
Czech Republic recovered much more easily than some of
these parts, or maybe I was must much more limited in
what I saw, or maybe I was too young and idealistic to
really comprehend what had happened. The fact that so
many of us could allow ourselves to get emotional over
say, a protest over a shock perch height, and to allow
this of all things to ruin friendships is to me proof
that we really have it too good here. We can't even
appreciate what a gift it is to be able to race our
cars through parking lots. We act as if our rights are
being infringed upon because our cars are misclassed.
"Stop car bigotry!" we scream. Give me a break.
Meanwhile, maybe our cousins or aunts and uncles were
put into a labour camp because they appeared to be too
intelligent. Maybe they made an "intellectual" joke or
something and were now possibly scheming to overthrow
the government.
It's hard to believe that humanity could stoop to
levels so low. I can't even begin to explain it.
Today, Elenka and I were talking to a waitress in a
Caucus restaurant, probably in high school, who's
hoping to study for a year in the U.S. Anyway, on her
neck are these discolorings, scars almost, and Elenka
explained that a lot of children born around the time
of the Chernobyl explosion were born with strange skin
deformities and what-not. Apparently, Estonia was in
the direct nuclear cloud path.
|