t.o.t.: the baltics

We went on a Baltic cruise in early July. The 9-day sail took us from Copenhagen, Denmark, to a north German coast town, to Tallinn, Estonia, St. Petersburg, Russia, then headed back west to Helsinki, Finland, Stockholm, Sweden, before returning back to Copenhagen, Denmark.

How was it, you may ask. Then here's my super shallow take on the 6 cities we visited:

Copenhagen
Was a very walker friendly city, and the two hotels we stayed in (one before the cruise the other after) were excellently located. We walked our way to the royal palace, the cathedral, the little mermaid, the shopping district... almost all the attraction points I pre-planted on my Google maps, and the city was bright and sun-shiny and blue-watery everywhere. I felt easy coming back to visit again some day.

Berlin

Was 3-hour bus ride away from the north German coast town our ship docked. It's a serious city, with drab buildings and dense Cold War and Nazi histories behind, but also very cultured and vibrant with numerous museums and nouveau sky scrapers in the reclaimed heartland of the city since the fall of the Wall.

Tallinn

Was an unpretentious nice little town that seemed like bringing everyone's life back to the good old (medieval) time, when in reality theirs is a country with a female president and fast becoming the first e-country of the world!

St. Petersburg

The big-brother city of them all: Extravagant palaces, grand museums, tall cathedrals, endless streets... and gray skies, that seemed to cast a sullen pall on its residents, though I respect and admire the gritty spirit the Russian people must have had, well kept underneath their solemn expressions for centuries.

Helsinki

Another nice little capital city like its cross strait neighbor Tallinn. Just wished we had had more time strolling and enjoying the lovely tree-lined esplanade park at the heart of the city before being rushed back to the ship.

Stockholm

Was another sun-shiny, blue-sky-ish, watery, jovial city I liked. Have a yacht, cruise the river, walk the park, visit a theater, dine at a waterfront restaurant, and the day is still young--the sun won't set until 10 pm! Won't you love living in the Nordics, when it's summer time?

Europe is an interesting old-world playhouse for human mixture and political conflict studies. Even around a bleak "backwater" little sea like the Baltic (in contrast to the warm, big, civilization birthing Mediterranean), we have had the Viking brothers the Danes and the Swedes vying for supremacy, expanding to convert and conquer the pagan Finns and Estonians in their own version of Christian crusades, before the power of rising Russian Empire put them in check, while merchants of cities around the region continued to do commerce and prosper under the protection of a German organized league of trade for centuries.

But early Russian polities were established by the Vikings between the 8th-11th centuries, Catherine the Great of tsarian Russia was 100% German, and even though geographically Finland sits right next to its Scandinavian neighbor, ethnically and linguistically the Finns are related to the Estonians across the strait, who in turn are related to the Hungarians in Central Europe...

On a more personal level, one satisfactory thing I got to do in this trip was to visit the birthplace and memorable spots of my hero Danish Christian philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard in Copenhagen. Sitting at the bench opposite his statue in his memorial garden, watching some teen-age kids playing lawn bowls in front of it, care-freely and as-life-goes-on-ly, I wondered if he's still pursuing the incomprehensible, eternal truth he did all his life up there...