Day 10: The Last Day

On the final morning we made our very last walking tour together as a group. We walked around the newer part of the city and stopped in Tallinn's Freedom square. At this site we stopped to listen to a presentation on the cyber attacks. It made me think about what freedom really means. It seems to me that these days freedom is increasingly ideological and increasingly difficult to protect. The more interconnected we become in terms of communication and technologies (globalization of course), the more notions of independence and freedom are required to change. We are never free from the influence of one another, neither individual people, cultures, or governments.

Tallinn's Freedom Square.

Afterward, we took a bus out from the center of the city to see the housing built in the Soviet times and get a better understanding of what life might have been like for the Estonian people during these difficult times. I understand poverty. My family was on food stamps when I was young, so perhaps some of the other students were more impacted by this excursion. However it was definitely valuable to see how people were living and how it was designed in such a way to keep segregation within the city between the Russians and the Estonians. I could certainly feel how dreary and depressing this place must have been. It is no wonder this area had extremely high crime, domestic violence and alcoholism problems.

Soviet neighborhood just outside of Tallinn's center. 

Especially the topics of the last day caused me to reflect on the theme of transition we had been discussing for the past nine days. Although a period of transition provides many opportunities, it presents an equal number of challenges. The political changes are easiest and come first, these lead to economic reforms and then social changes follow behind. The most difficult aspect of transition is changing the mindsets of the people. The only hope for these transitions to occur successfully is by showing support for the people who are going through them. The first step to doing this is learning about the people and their cultures. This (among countless other benefits) is what academic travel provides.

On our final day it was hard to say goodbye. It is always difficult to end such a wonderful experience, and perhaps I am more sentimental now because it is my second to last travel... but regardless it was one of the best academic travels I've had. Great food, caring friends, exciting learning opportunities, beautiful sights and incredible fun, and last but certainly not least a wonderful professor who made it possible and tied it all together. 

Thank you! 

Day 9: Tallinn

We arrived in Tallinn on the evening of the eighth day, and I must admit I slept extremely well that night. We had been promised a very nice hotel by our professor and he certainly did not disappoint; the Hotel Telegraaf was splendid. Not only were the beds extremely comfortable, the breakfast was luxurious, and the spa was incredibly relaxing. We also had two special and unexpected events while we were there. The first was that we just happened to be staying there at the same time as Lenny Kravitz (we shared a Turkish bath!) and secondly we got to see the crown princess of Sweden! But celebrities aside, Tallinn was not what I had expected. 

Oldest medieval house in Tallinn.

On the first morning we had a walking tour of the old part of the city. We had heard a lot beforehand about what a technologically advanced city it was, thus I was not expecting to have arrived in such a beautiful medieval place. It was touristy, but very very charming nonetheless. And what else would you expect from a city that has several cruise ships of tourists passing through each week?

Orthodox church on Toompea Hill. 

We admired the architecture and then paid a visit to the Estonian Parliament (Toompea Palace). This did in fact show to us the modernity of the city that I was expecting. I think it is remarkable that all voting in Estonia takes place electronically; it seems very progressive and efficient. This political decision clearly shows how committed Estonia is to promoting their 'Internet industry'. However, I believe there is a downside to having so much of the country's important information located online and dependent on the Internet - this is precisely why the cyberattacks of 2007 were so significant for Estonia; provoking a move by the NATO to establish a cyber defense headquarters in the country.

Inside the Estonian Parliament. 

The color scheme in this room (above) represents the colors of the Estonian flag. Blue for the sky over the native land, white for the purity of the people, and black for their attachment to the earth. 

Following this visit, we made our way to the President's house and made a stop at a beautiful look out point that really should not be missed by any Tallinn visitor. Beautiful photo opportunity.

Panoramic view of old Tallinn facing the Baltic Sea. 

The handsome men of our group.

The President's office. 

Day 8: Free Riga

On our third and final day in Riga we finished up our tour of the city, but we also had the privilege of visiting an new art exhibit a day before it was set to open. The exhibition put on by the Goethe Institut in Riga is is titled Weltstadt. This exhibit showcases cities around the world and explores the themes of "Who develops and builds the cities?" and "Who creates the cities' futures?".
Riga was of course one of the featured cities, and its place in the exhibit discussed the "Free Riga" movement, which Davis is an active member of.

The "Free Riga" movement has popularized a discussion about what to do with all of the abandoned buildings and 'spaces' in Riga. The movement is about trying to benefit not only the property owner, but also the local community by finding better uses for these spaces. For instance, turning an old warehouse into a community center could benefit the families and children of the community, create a few jobs, but also benefit the property owner by reducing taxes and helping to maintain or even improve the condition of the building. The project is designed as a win-win situation for all stakeholders involved, even the government.

"The exhibition builds not only a bridge between past and future, but also in between the multilayer urban spaces, on various continents and its involved actors. Empty Spaces, the Riga based Weltstadt project, focuses on the transition, the urban shift from classic industrialization times city textures towards new forms of settlements, urbanic spaces and its architectural realization. Abandoned spaces and buildings are tremendously dominating certain central areas of the European Capital of Culture in 2014. The working group has devoted itself to create an awareness about these left-behind post-industrial, post-soviet as well as Art Nouveau and wooden buildings with a high heritage value."
(http://blog.goethe.de/weltstadt/archives/156-Weltstadt-Exhibition-in-Riga.html)

"Occupy Me" stickering campaign.

Stickers were placed on abandoned houses in Riga to capture 

the attention of citizens in the community, generating

intrigue for the Free Riga movement.

The Free Riga movement recognizes that there is great potential for such neglected sites and does not intend on letting that potential go to waste. The project also draws connections to some of the other Weltstadt projects around the world. For me this was extremely interesting, as it also drew a parallel to the city of Detroit, where I am from. Detroit has been known recently for its extremely high number of vacant buildings and homes. These buildings have even brought photographers into the city just so they can take pictures of what has been called "ruin porn". And just as Davis has been working to put these empty spaces to better use, there are many people who have similar ideas for Detroit, my father being one of these people. My father, Jamison Brown, is a landscape architect who has big plans for how Detroit can transition from what once was an automobile-friendly city to a more people-friendly city through improved utilization of these spaces. Fo example, turning some of these abandoned areas into public parks.

As we saw again and again on this trip through the Baltic States, difficult economic transitions necessitate social transitions, calling for new and unconventional approaches to doing things. For some people, like Davis and my father, this is obvious, but for many others this is a difficult concept to grasp, making for a slow transition process.

Day 7: Davis and a Visit to The Marketplace

On the second day in Riga we had a fantastic guide named Davis. His personal anecdotes and intelligent commentary brought so much life to the tour. He began the tour by making a very interesting comment about how he was born in the year 1984, and just as George Orwell had predicted, "big brother" was always watching. Having been born at a time when Latvia was still a part of the Soviet Union but then still being young when Latvia gained its independence in 1991, Davis was able to offer us the unique perspective of someone from the first generation to grow up with the transition from the Soviet era to the modern era of Latvia as an independent state.

Once the highest tower in Riga. 

The first story he told us was about his father. He said that in 1980, just a few years before Davis himself was born, the Russian government sent about 2,000 young Ukranian women into Riga to work in factories. What was the significance of this? It was a political move in the name of 'russification' - the assimilation process in which communities (voluntarily or not) give up their culture and language in favor of the Russian one. In this case, Russia killed two birds with one stone. The young Latvian men inevitably married the beautiful, young Ukrainian women who had been sent to their country. As intended, the couples were forced to speak Russian together because that was their only common language, and thus their children became a whole small generation of Latvians who grew up speaking Russian as well. Davis mentioned that he was lucky that his father had married a Latvia woman, otherwise he said he would have been among this group of children. This of course was just a small element of the russification process, yet it clearly illustrates just how well the process worked. The Russians may be criticized for a great many things, but we can't say that they weren't ( and aren't) meticulously strategic thinkers with very creative ways of promoting their agenda.

Dried fish at Riga Central Market. 

We talked about these things with Davis until he brought us to the central market, which was definitely a highlight of the trip. As I mentioned before, Riga is part of a trade rout that is important for Northern Europe. The covered marketplace was built in 1922 when the Riga City Counsel decided that for health reasons the market should be moved from its original location along the Daugava river where it had been since the 1500s. The marketplace can hold over 3,000 stands and it was constructed out of old German Zeppelin hangars. Another UNESCO World heritage Site, Riga Central Market was bustling with life when we visited on a Sunday morning. Unfortunately, we were told that due to the modern supermarkets, Riga Central Market has been suffering quite a bit financially. Sadly, the loss or deterioration of such cultural artifacts is too often an unintended side effect of transition - especially transition to an economic system that values privatization. 



Afterwards, we also visited "Stalin's Birthday Cake" for a panoramic view of the city.

Stalin's Birthday Cake 

Rachel and I... as usual :) 

Day 6: RIga: Blackheads and Art Nouveau

October 26th was our first day in Riga. The activities of the day didn't quite go as planned because there were a few issues with our guide, but despite that, we were able to take a preliminary tour of the city. Most notably we saw the House of the Blackheads and we visited the art nouveau district.

House of the Blackheads 

The House of the Blackheads was originally built in the 1300s by a guild of German merchants known as the Brotherhood of Blackheads. However, it was bombed in 1941, thus we visited the reconstruction which took place in the late 1990s. The Blackheads were among the elite in Riga during the middle ages and through the 1700s. They represented an important group of merchants in terms of the trade happening between cities in the Hanseatic League. Even today Riga has an impressive covered marketplace that is an important point of commercial trade for locals. (We visited the market on our second day).
       Unfortunately we could not take a tour of the house because the President of Latvia was residing there at the moment because there had recently been a fire at his palace. Merely the idea that the president's home could fire was a bit shocking to some of us on the travel. Compared to the President of the United States, of course this sort of thing is completely unheard of. Our guide, Davis, on the second day in Riga, told us that there had been a whole crowd of people out on the president's lawn watching it burn. Just imagining it evokes quite a powerful image.

Our group walking through a square. 

After learning about the Blackheads Brotherhood. We took a walk over to Riga's art nouveau district. About 40% of the buildings in Riga's central area represent the art nouveau style of architecture. Moreover, this area showcases some of the most lavish and ornately decorated art nouveau facades in all of Europe; thus they have been given UNESCO world heritage protection. In Riga, the art nouveau style was a way for the newly rich entrepreneurs and professionals who had been educated in St. Petersburg to express their wealth at the turn of the 20th century. On these buildings we can see everything from images representing nature and mythology, to the columns of the Parthenon, to the sphinxes of Egypt.

Art Nouveau District

Before the luxury clothing brands and automobiles, the most common way to communicate wealth (and power) to the community was through the construction of large and elaborate structures; making sure the population knew how important you were.

Day 5: From Vilnius to Riga

For the first part of the morning we finished up our tour of Vilnius. We saw the main cathedral as well as the place in the square where the 600 km human chain of the 1989 Singing Revolution began (or ended depending on how you look at it). Unfortunately I did not take any pictures because my back was injured that day. But I find the story of the Singing Revolution to be quite an amazing one. I can't imagine how all of those people, under intense surveillance by the KGB and without the means of communication that we have today, were able to organize such a massive and coordinated protest. It is a beautiful example of the power of people coming together to affect political change. It also speaks to the power of song. In the Baltic countries, songs were a means of maintaining unity and national identity during decades of occupation. Using song, the Baltic peoples peacefully demanded that their right to be independent of the Soviet Union be recognized. And they were heard.


On the ride to the Riga we stopped at one more castle...

Trakai Island Castle, Lithuania

One of the best parts about academic travel is making new friends. But especially in senior year, spending time with some of your closest ones is unforgettable. 

Day 4: Vilnius - The Old City

In Vilnius we stayed at a former convent that had been converted to a hotel; that really set the tone of the old part of the city. There had once been hundreds of places of worship in Vilnius, today there are still over 50. We spent the better part of a very cold morning visiting a few of these different churches. As in many other old European cities, religious sites are very important and can help to understand the city's history. We visited a Uniate church, a Russian Orthodox church, Catholic church, as well as a Protestant church. The Uniate church combines Catholicism and Orthodoxy by recognizing the Pope in Rome but incorporating many orthodox rituals. This type of religion really only exists in these regions of Eastern Europe, such as the Baltics, where Russian occupation has occurred. The other thing I found very interesting was the fact that historically, the Baltic countries, Lithuania in particular, have long standing pagan roots. Despite all that has changed through centuries of occupations, by the Swedes, the Germans, and the Russians, the pagan heritage of the Lithuanian people is still visible today. Not only do they still celebrate events of nature, such as the summer solstice with their Midsummer festivities, but even in their adoption of Christianity, syncretism was required. In order to adopt the Christian saints, they had to be understood with the mentality that they served as replacements for the pagan gods and goddesses that the people were familiar with. Even in one small chapel we visited, the entire ceiling was covered in natural themes representing Lithuania's pagan traditions.

Gate to the outer part of the city. God's eye protects all within the wall.

Carvings of pagan woodland spirits outside a craftsman's shop.

Day 3: From Minsk to Vilnius

Day 3 was a long day of travel, but I had time on the bus to reflect on the previous two days spent in Minsk. What I think I found the most interesting was the way in which all of the people we spoke to in Minsk spoke about their country. They have a very strong sense of nationalism. I expected this from the Belarusian professor we had dinner with on the first evening, but I had not expected to hear it so much from her students. I was surprised that the younger generation would still be so loyal to their country and their government. Our tour guide, for one, was about 22. She never blamed any problems of the country on the Belarusian government, or the Soviet leadership when she was talking about its history. Although it is hard to distinguish whether she spoke in the way she really felt, or if she was afraid to tell us her true opinions, the nationalistic perspective was very transparent. As we found out, she works for a government run travel agency, thus I would suspect that she is only allowed to present the history of Belarus and the current state of Belarus from a very specific and controlled point of view. Of the two students we had dinner with, the male student, expressed some desire to travel to other parts of Europe, however, the female student did not. She said that her country was beautiful, and there is "a lot of nature and the climate is good for the health", so there is no reason to leave. I found the climate part of that statement hilarious, but her making that statement showed me just how easy it is to control people and make them believe what you want. When people hear the same message over and over, eventually they can't resist its influence. 

The lengthy process at the boarder crossing exiting Belarus served as a final reminder of the highly bureaucratic system we were leaving behind. 

On the drive we were also able to make two short stops to admire some beautiful castles.... 

Rachel Aferzon in front of Bolshevik Palace.

Palace inner courtyard. 

Can me and Luka. Can you see the ghost? :)

Mir Castle 

Day 2: Visit to Khatyn Memorial

On the second day we visited Khatyn Memorial. All I can say is that I was extremely moved, even to tears at one point. The story and pictures speak for themselves.

The memorial is located on the site where the village of Khatyn once stood before the entire village was massacred. In 1943 there were 26 houses and 156 villagers. One day a Nazi battalion stormed the village, forced everyone into the barn and then burnt it to the ground. Those who managed to escape the burning building were shot. The Nazis then looted and burnt down the rest of the homes in the village. Only one adult survived.

 The "Unbowed Man".
This sculpture shows Khatyn's only survivor holding his dead son in him arms. 

This memorial serves not only as a reminder of the tragedy of Khatyn, but also as a symbol for the other villages in Belarus that were attacked and all of the deaths that occurred during this period. It remembers not only the Jews that were killed, but also the Belarusian citizens. All in all, over 2,000,000 people were killed in Belarus during the Nazi occupation; about a third of the Belarusian population at the time. 

Red for the blood that was shed. Black for the death and the ashes. 

When we examine transition, it is important to think not only about where we are going, but the past we are coming from. We must not forget the past but kept it in our memories so that we do not repeat it and so that it can be learned from. Injuries of the past must be remembered because they can motivate hope for a better future.  

The everlasting flame. Their memory will never die. 

Day 1: Goodbye Freedom, Welcome to Minsk

Minsk is unlike any city I have visited before. I had many thoughts and expectations about what it would be like before we left; some of those thoughts were proven true, while others were proved to be exactly the opposite. The people, for instance met my expectations. People on the street just pass by each other without acknowledgment. Smiling at a stranger, even from a shop owner to a customer is an exceptional event. I knew that was to be expected but experiencing it was something completely new. I had never been somewhere before where I felt that I was not necessarily a welcome traveler. 

What I definitely had not anticipated was the size and feel of the city. All of the buildings put up during the Soviet times were enormous and the streets were very wide. The effect this has is to make a person feel very small. I had expected Minsk to look more similar to other European cities, but it wasn't so, it felt almost like a large US city but with significantly less inhabitants. However, I was also surprised by the pedestrian friendliness of the city planning. The sidewalks were wide, the metro and the bus systems seemed very efficient as well. However, it reminded me that this city was built for functionality with streets wide enough for tanks and military vehicles, and to make sure it would be easy to facilitate the movement of many people from point A to point B. 

Pictures from Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus. 

Notice the size of the people...this building, the Parliamentary Palace and the statue of Lenin are quite impressive. Technically, you are not even allowed to take a picture of the Parliament unless Lenin is in it.

Red Church of Simon and Helen is in the background. The glass dome in the foreground is actually part of the ceiling of an underground shopping center.