Klaipeda, Lithuania
A morning at sea gave us an opportunity to prepare for our afternoon in another Baltic state, Lithuania. Lithuania shares with Latvia a language from the Baltic group, a small sub-set within the Indo-European family of languages. In this respect these two Baltic States have more in common than with their northern neighbor Estonia, where the inhabitants speak a non-Indo-European –language, designated Finno-Ugric. To this, however, this being the Baltic, we must add further complicating factors. Whereas Latvia and Estonia to the north are predominantly Lutheran, Lithuania shares Catholicism with its bigger southern neighbor, Poland. Commonalty comes from without: Tallinn, Riga and Reval (the German name for Klaipeda) were founded as “German” cities at the time of the Hanseatic League; German in speech and culture that is, even though there was no single country called Germany until the middle of the nineteenth century. More recently, Russian cultural influence has been dominant, with high percentages of Russian speakers resident in these Baltic States.
Klaipeda itself is but a shadow of its former self. It suffered a major fire in the nineteenth century and subsequent German rebuilding was largely destroyed in the Second World War. We used Klaipeda as a port of entry for a number of optional tours into the countryside. The longest of these visited the Curonian Spit, a remarkable sandspit that is on the UNESCO world heritage list. Having arrived by ferry, we took a walk through a pine forest decorated with wooden sculptures celebrating Lithuanian folklore, visited the picturesque fishing village of Nida, with its colorful weathervanes, before finally visiting the old Curonian Cemetery. The latter was situated next to a Lutheran church, a reminder of the area’s German heritage, although Nida now has a modern Catholic church where most of the population now attends for worship. The cemetery had Christian burials but also non-Christian ones, a reminder that Lithuania was the last European country to adopt Christianity and that animism is but a recent memory. Burial grounds here, as in the other Baltic States, are set in woodland and are places of family celebration.
Another popular excursion was to the Amber Museum at Palanga. This part of the Baltic is celebrated for its amber and the museum houses a fine collection of celebrated pieces. Of particular interest were the pieces containing fossilized insects, some so old that they have since become extinct, raising intriguing Jurassic Park possibilities. Baltic Amber was widely distributed in Prehistoric Europe from Ireland in the west to the Eastern Mediterranean, casting an interesting light on the culture of prehistoric societies. These items were, presumably, for cosmetic use; they are in a different category than flint axe-heads or obsidian, which had a utilitarian function. The appeal of amber continues as some eager shoppers demonstrated.
Finally, a visit to the Vente Cape Ornithological Station, with its attractive old lighthouse, provided an opportunity to see white-tailed eagles in the distance and the work of local banders at close quarters.
