The Baltics – Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia

It started innocently: “We've already been to America, so let's go to Russia!”. That was mine and Martin's opinion. And if Russia, then overland and through the Baltic states...

On the right is a map of the trip, done in 30 days (10200km) in the following line-up: students 7 pcs (five and two, 1974-1976), cars: 3 pcs (1981, 1985, 1988), loads of food and very little money.

It started innocently: “We've already been to America, so let's go to Russia!”. That was mine and Martin's opinion. Well, and if you're heading somewhere unexplored, then by car and with more people. A car may sound like a soft option, but you take everything with you. Food for the whole time, accommodation, a bed, a safe box, and when shit hits the fan you floor it and in a while you're home. Besides, anybody who wants to see the whole world (like me…) knows damn well he hasn't got enough time for it. By car you can definitely fit in more in a month than any other way. On top of that, petrol in Russia works out at about 8 crowns a litre…
So in the end there are seven of us, three cars and one tent. Two sleep in the cars, the rest in the tent. Food worked out for the whole trip is in the boots, just in case… Martin and I call our expedition a trip to Russia, the others a trip to Scandinavia via Russia. We'll see… Two cars, in the line-up me + Petra (Opel Kadett 1.6i estate, 1988, unleaded petrol) and Martin + Lenka (Audi 80, 1981, LPG), set off on 16 July towards the Polish-Lithuanian border, thanks to the massive floods first north through Germany, then east through Poland. The third car leaves only on Friday and at a considerably faster pace (Andrej + Péca + Ziky - Opel Rekord 2.3D, 1985, diesel). All cars equipped with a CB short-wave radio, channel 24, planned meeting point Sunday - Malbork, contact to be made by radio.

And this is already the diary, fairly terse at the beginning…

In the evening we switched on the CB and waited for Andrej to come on. The first sentence that came through went down in history: \"So, Kořus, forfucksake, are you there or what?\". \"Forfucksake\" and \"Let's roll to hell…\" were the most frequent catchphrases from then on...

In the morning Andrej got up ungodly early, so they were ready for takeoff sooner and went ahead.
After breakfast we set off after them and found each other on the airwaves on CB channel 24 about ten kilometres before the place where Andrej was waiting.
It was a petrol station and Ziky and Péca had been taking turns in the loo there for an hour, because they were charging the camera battery. We loaded up 40 l of petrol in jerrycans there, because we had no idea what petrol and at what price there would be in the former Soviet republics. Then we ate again, so Andrej set off ahead once more. Poland was already losing the features of a Central European state here and emptiness, even a bit of poverty, was beginning.
We caught up with Andrej a bit before the border and together we hid the radios and antennas. We had no idea what awaited us at the border, so better to be inconspicuous.
At the border there was not only a proper queue of trucks (most of them with used cars, mainly mid-range and upper class), but also a solid queue of passenger cars which wasn't moving at all. The Poles crawled under the seats and into the boot, but our mess put them off so much that they didn't dig through it. A bit further on there was another booth where they checked the vehicle registration and sent us to the next booth. There, to our horror, a Lithuanian explained that our green card is useless in Lithuania - Latvia and that we have to pay insurance with him. For the car and 2 people for 2 days 10$. (Interesting maths, he told us in their funny money and in marks and dollars it came out in whole tens for him...)
In the next booth there were already Lithuanian customs officers, (all soldiers with guns) in one booth they checked the passports, outside the car and in another booth the registration papers.
Right after the border Martin stopped by some kiosk on the sand so we could put the CBs on. Immediately about four grubby swarthy teenagers pounced on us, saying they'd wash our windows. Before we managed to fit the radios (Andrej was cursing a blue streak and simply shooed the brats away) they'd smeared water all over our windows. We gave them some Polish funny money (me about 15 crowns) and Andrej and Martin drove off. All those bastards pounced on me, saying it's not enough, that I should give them more, they were climbing into my car and going on about giving them something. When I said I'd give them chocolate, they said yeah, a whole box. They pissed me off big time, I almost had to run over their legs so they'd let me go. A truly impressive entry into Lithuania. My anger lasted all the way to Kaunas. We drove through it, after a bit of wandering we found the centre and parked. Andrej and co. came out with the fact that Kaunas doesn't interest them and that they want to drive on. So we agreed to meet before midnight somewhere around Lilaste (beyond Riga in Latvia). Then we split into two groups, one guarded the cars and the other went for a walk. After the experience at the border we couldn't leave the cars alone for a moment. While parking behind one building some old bag started yelling at Martin out of the window and poured a mug of water, probably, over him.
Kaunas has a pedestrian zone about 2 km long in the centre, in the middle a double row of trees and benches, along the edges little shops and so on. At the start of the pedestrian zone a beautiful white Orthodox church of unbelievable size with the classic round Russian turrets. You weren't allowed in it in shorts and a cap, which a beggar woman at the door pointed out to me as I was leaving. I had a cap and shorts. At the other end of the pedestrian zone there was a turn-off to a nice modern bridge and the other way to some kind of fortress on a hill. Everywhere loads of gorgeous girls in miniskirts, frequent sightings of Škodas and Czech buses. At the newsagent's Czech Disko biscuits. When we were in the car-guarding phase, a bunch of individuals similar to the ones at the border were hanging around there. Then we set off for Riga.
At the Lithuanian-Latvian border a similar situation to the previous one, 1st booth the guy who lets you into the border zone, 2nd booth passport check, 3rd booth registration papers check + issuing of some kind of slip, 4th booth stamp on the slip (that one I drove past) 5th booth collecting the slip 6th booth passport and contraband check.
In Riga we found the centre quite easily and parked in front of a hotel. It was 9 p.m. Again we split into 2 groups and walked through the centre. The atmosphere of the city excellent, again crowds of gorgeous girls, clean, tidy, the car fleet about like ours, but few brand new cars. On the square a stall and a big area of little tables with parasols, Budějovický Budvar (0.3 l for about 50 crowns).
Already in the dark we set off towards Lilaste, where Andrej was waiting on channel 24.
Getting out of Riga, though, is a task for a killer. In the whole city we didn't find a single direction sign. And we did drive around it nicely. Luckily one of my lights wasn't working, so the cops nabbed us, I changed the bulb and Martin asked the way. They were terribly nice and in the end they agreed that at the seventh set of traffic lights turn right and after fifteen kilometres there'd be a sign. Surprisingly there was and around midnight we caught Andrej and he navigated us to him. We just parked by a dirt track in the grass, dropped like the dead and slept.

Andrej set off ahead right after we woke up. It was only over breakfast that we discovered we'd taken over the access road to some houses. A Kamaz truck with gas cylinders drove around us across the field without hesitation.
After breakfast we loaded the stuff into our red hornet and ourselves into Martin's car and set off back to Riga. Leaving an unattended car in the middle of a former Soviet republic was quite a risk, but we didn't feel like going back with two cars.
We found out that the street where we'd parked the day before and from which we'd wandered around for 2 hours leads absolutely straight from the centre all the way to Lilaste. By chance we grabbed a parking space in the same spot and this time we left the car there alone. We set off together, but on the square Martin and I were photographing one castle-house and the girls ran off on us in the meantime. So we looked around the centre by ourselves (the big cathedral, a postcard seller who knew Švejk, beautiful old house-castles, another Orthodox church of giant proportions).
We met up again at the car and set off after Andrej. He was supposed to be waiting by the sea on the beach, just before the Estonian border in Ainaži. According to the CBs we found each other, but there was no beach there, so we rolled on.
At the Latvian-Estonian border the circus with slips of paper and stopping at 6-7 different booths 2 - 1200 m apart repeated itself. Soldiers everywhere, behaviour like under the totalitarian regime, they copy everything three times into grubby notebooks, occasionally an antediluvian computer. Their favourite place to search is under the front seats. We had loads of cardboard boxes with unknown contents in there, but apparently they weren't interested in them - with Martin he found (he was about 155 cm, so maybe our height pissed him o...) the Zlatopramen beer mats that Hanzl gave us for the journey and he was terribly interested in what they were.
We wanted to have a look at a beach somewhere before heading inland, so for about 20 km we waited for a suitable turn-off to the sea. Then in some village we turned off and through a system of dirt tracks we got, on the third attempt, onto one that led through the reeds to the sea and a sandy beach. It looked like it was only worn in by walkers, but I saw car tracks there, so we gunned it. It was a rally, but we made it to the water in one piece. There was a sandy plain of hard-packed sand there, so we pulled out two frisbees and went wild. It was already too cold for swimming, so nobody felt like it. In the distance you could see a hideous Russian housing estate. Soviet tower blocks are even worse than ours.
Soon hunger drove us back to the cars and as usual we amused ourselves with quotes from Cimrman. An Estonian old man came charging at us from the sea and in Estonian (something like Hungarian crossed with the noise of a tracked excavator) started cussing us out about something. We stood there around him in a huddle and listened to him very seriously. Whoever the old man was looking at would nod at him and put on a contrite face and the others could hardly hold back their laughter. After my line “I'll hit him with the flat of my sword, right,” keeping a straight face was a superhuman feat. Even so we only burst into roaring laughter once he was out of earshot. We couldn't calm down for ages and we'll regret till we die that Ziky didn't film it. Then we jumped into the cars and disappeared just to be safe. Together we drove to Tallinn and found a suitable place to park, surprisingly for free.
We headed into the centre and the girls got a bit ahead of us. Before we caught up with them they were already being pestered by three drunk Estonians. The smallest of them was just circling around Petra, so I grabbed him by the shoulder and yelled something at him. I surprised even myself with the force of the attack. When the Estonians saw Andrej with Péca and the others behind me, they backed off and then trailed after us like a bad smell for a while. It looked like a fight, but then some cops walked past and there was peace.
On the square in Tallinn there's a medieval castle. Ziky was filming it, and since he makes “witty” commentary on everything, he wanted to know what castle it was and he happened to ask me. He shouldn't have done that. I told him it's the medieval castle Carlos from the 13th century and he repeated it into the camera in a serious voice. Since then we call him “Kafka Carlos”.
Above the town there was one more castle, a hostel and the town walls. On the way back we came across a road roller, so I got a ride.
It was the first time we'd left all the cars in a city to their fate, so it was a bit nerve-racking, but everything was “okey”. From Tallinn we wanted to get all the way to the Russian border, but when we had to wake each other up over the radio right before the ditch (the passengers were asleep as usual), we found a turn-off into a field, drove a bit along a dusty dirt track and crashed out there in the field. It was not far from the village of Kunda.

The continuation is Russia.