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Estonia: northernmost of the Baltic states, three small yet quite different countries emerging from the shadow of the former Soviet Union.
Latvia is so compact you can base yourself in Riga, the
most cosmopolitan city in the Baltic region. Riga between the
wars was a listening post on Russia's doorstep. More than half
the population remains ethnic Russian, their numbers a potent
reminder of the recent past.
Lands of the Lingering Sun With the Soviet Union consigned to bitter memory, the good life is much in evidence in a region where the sun sets some time around ten in midsummer. For these few short months, the bodies beautiful are out in force on the beaches at Jurmala, outside Riga. There's a delightfully European feel about it all: the beachgoers spilling onto station platforms; people snacking on smoked herring; the old-world flavour of resorts once the preserve of Red Army families.
Riga's Riches: This richly rewarding city is a treasure-house
of Germanic architecture, from medieval Gothic to Jugendstil (Art
Deco).
The people of Lithuania were the last pagan Europeans to succumb to the Sword and the Cross wielded by crusading Teutonic Knights, yet the Lithuanians now share a staunchly Catholic heritage with their Polish neighbours - yet not with Latvians, their Baltic brethren to the north.
Vilnius is the capital of a little-known land of Baltic beaches and mystic forests... the Prague of northern Europe, a city of baroque churches, a skyline crowded with spires, domes and the distinctive iron crosses of Lithuanian tradition.Marx to Mushrooms Viliaumas Malinauskas, Lithuania's mushroom millionaire, gathered up his country's unwanted Soviet-era monuments glorifying Lenin, Marx and friends and put them on display in his Soviet Sculpture Museum in the forests of southern Lithuania.
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