The Baltic States
Pablo//2 min
Last day in Tallinn, and I reckon it's time to talk about my experience in the Baltic states — a few weeks I thoroughly enjoyed.
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are generally known as the Baltic trio, though linguistically only Lithuanian and Latvian are actually Baltic languages. Estonian is far closer to Finnish.
Finland has at various points been considered a fourth Baltic state, but these days everyone agrees it's Scandinavian — it's simply got more in common with its Nordic neighbours.
Trying to generalise about these three countries doesn't get you very far beyond the food, the high proportion of Russian speakers (40–50%), Russian as the inevitable lingua franca, and the beauty of the women.
Hitchhiking works brilliantly in all three countries. People are warm and generous, and even when drivers barely speak a word of English they'll go out of their way to communicate — on one occasion a driver actually rang a friend mid-journey to act as a translator.
In most other respects, especially economically, Estonia is about twenty steps ahead of its southern neighbours. After independence the Estonians bet everything on technology and are now effectively Europe's Silicon Valley. Big companies like Skype were born on Estonian soil.
Estonia has more in common with Scandinavia than with the other Baltics, though its tax system differs from the social-democratic models of Norway, Sweden and Finland — which means prices aren't quite as eye-watering; they're roughly on a par with Spain.
To give you an idea: when I arrived in Lithuania I was eating meals for €3 and paying under €1 for a beer. In Latvia prices nudged up a little — meals around €5, pints between €1 and €1.75. In Estonia I leaned on supermarkets, and a blonde lager came out at around €2.50–3.
Lithuanians and Latvians like to tease Estonians for being slow. Playing table football with a Latvian friend, every time she conceded a goal she'd blame her Estonian goalkeeper. And the Estonians don't even bother denying it — they own the laid-back reputation.
The national hobby in Estonia seems to be sunbathing until you're lobster-red. They're fairly decent at volleyball, especially the women on the beach. Football, on the other hand, is a disaster — and they're the first to admit it.
The most beautiful old town in the region is Tallinn's, by a long way. I'd even say it beats Prague — it's genuinely enchanting.
In Lithuania, basketball is a national religion. I was there in person when Žalgiris Kaunas won the national championship — a massive celebration that ended up thoroughly drenched in rain, with fireworks going off anyway.
But if you're after a good night out, nothing beats Riga. Beautiful, friendly women, cheap hostels, cheap beer. What more do you need? Read more in hitchhiking, dunes and a booze-up in Lithuania and that day we hitchhiked a school bus in Latvia.
