Travel The Baltic for Holidays WHILE Finland elects to regard
herself politically as a part of Scandinavia, we of this country generally group her with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in what we call the Baltic States. And for holiday making you can take Finland by herself or you can include her in a general itinerary with the other countries.
It was to Finland that I first went, landing at the place that they used to call Abo and that now is Turku. All the Baltic countries have signalled their new status by changing their place-names, and while the new Finland is officially bi-lingual there is actually little Swedish spoken outside the strip of coast-line that in the old days made a sort of Pale. I was a little anxious about it, I remember, because I know no Finnish at all and only about half a dozen words of Swedish ; neither can I speak the German that all the books set out as a lingua franca of the North. And then I went through Finland perfectly easily on English. It is per- haps the most highly educated country in the world, and every other Finn speaks at least a little of our language.
Probably the usual way of reaching Finland is by the weekly boat from Hull. It leaves every Wednesday and, with nearly a day's break at Copenhagen, berths at Helsingfors on the Monday ; the agents arrange for hotelaccommodation and for all sorts of " stop-overs " and tours. Or another way is by train to Lubeck or Stettin and thence by boat, while there is of course the train journey across Europe to Tallinn and then a four hours' crossing to Helsingfors, the Helsinki of the new regime. But I went from Stockholm ; a boat leaves at 7.30 every week-night and you are at Turku next morning with the added novelty of having somehow slipped into Eastern European time. They are small but very comfortable boats, and for hour after hour in the morning you will be threading the famous archi- pelago ; as seen from the deck it feels exactly like running between the narrow banks of a twisting river.
Then my first impression of Finland_ was of .an almost n super- atural cleanliness , and • general tidiness: There were no dock-side slums ;. there are no slums in Finland. The:•whole country has the social _atmosphere of a particularly- cultured -.Garden City; and every Finn will be , anxious to show you the New Architecture. But if you want antiquities there are the Castles and Cathedrals of -the old Swedish days ; or for sport,there are the ,famous rapids and there is .magnificent fishing, and you can be taken by the Finnish Touring Association to the. Arctic _Circle and see the Lapps andthe Nicinight Sun. Incidentally to, the remotest motor-car and the last rest-hut all will be:arranged to perfection, and at the Tninimum of reasonable, cost ; the country is. anxious to, attract the' tourist. If the Finns .owned the actual North pole,„ then they would pnt,an interpreter. there ; furthermore between Visitors he would be responsible for the proper polishing of that Pole. It is an efficient country. Also out of twenty countries in Europe. that I more or less know, it is the only one where a tip of mine was ever rejected on a railway restaurant-car. The extraordinarily correct :lady waitress' handed': me back my tip as though it had been something obscene.
From modernist Helsinki with its miniature sky- scrapers and its general air of being a sort of ultra-refined and miraculously silent Chicago (in Finland it is .a penal offence for a motorist unnecessarily to sound his horn), four hours across the Gulf took me into another world. The great Russian Cathedral in Tallinn is empty today, and nobody speaks of the city as Reval and the old Russian and German names have gone ; but Estonia for all that is still half-Russian in its outlook. It is a jolly, roistering country where casinos might count for more than culture ; also for the Englishman it is an uncom- monly cheap country. There is a whole string of watering-places that used to be the fashionable resorts of the old Russian. Court ; today there is no Court and the hotels for the short but warm Baltic summer season will welcome the' foreigner for very little money indeed. It is a poor country, and, though it has grown up and educated itself very marvellously in about fifteen years, there is not much money and prices are low. Once I wrote Ei story on Estonia and afterwards had a letter from a strange young lady. She was a London typist and had been inspired by my story to try Estonia instead of East- bourne for her summer holiday. She spoke only English but had managed perfectly, and indeed had come back engaged to a promising Estonian. I mention the point less from literary pride than to show that an Estonian holiday might be far easier and far cheaper than it sounds.
For those who do not mind a long train-journey Tallinn can be reached in roughly 33 hours from Berlin with extremely cheap sleeping-cars, or there are boats from Stettin or Stockholm or Denmark. But that girl had probably gone by Baltic steamer direct from London ; so she Would first sight the towers of Tallinn from the sea, and the sight is one of the finest that I know. It is a wonderful city with a wonderful history, and it is in a way a good thing that there has not as yet been the money for the sweeping away of all those lanes round the old fortress part. And then- Riga in the adjacent country of Latvia is a capital curiously different. The " Park of the North " they used to call it, and it was and is a Gay City, and with its massive buildings and huge squares it stands out as a great modern centre. There is one of its churches with a huge spire, and it is the tallest spire in the world ; and everything in Riga seems built to correspond on lines of CzaMike amplitude. The tourist on one of the Baltic boats will probably see both Riga and Tallinn, the Reval that was.
But Kaunas in Lithuania, the old-time Kovno and our fourth Baltic capital, is not so grand. It is only a " temporary capital," they say, and their maps mark Vilna and a large strip, of their country as " temporarily occupied by Poland."- But -there are ph ce ; to see in Lithuania, and' there is a miles-long strip of sand-chined coast that makes a chain of little watering-places with forest and sea and perpetual summer-bathing, but with No Moto-rs Allowed. The Lithuanians go there, and the Germans from across in East Prussia, but so far no English. It is probably too cheap for us.
With four countries and all sorts of ways of getting to each it is difficult to set down fares. But from London to Riga is roughly £20 second-return by train and less, of course, by sea. Or a bit of a Baltic trip can be had from as low as £12, there-and-back by sea and using the ship as a hotel; or, of course, one can pay more and get a good deal more comfort and a longer stay. These tours cost almost what one wishes. Then ashore the Tourist Association of Finland arranges outings at about £1 a day " all in," with railways, hotels, and everything else included. And in the other countries travel would be still cheaper, though with less efficiency of management.
These Baltic States are new countries, offering new holidays at cheap-price rates to people anxious to adven. ture upon new paths and new experiences.
JOHN GIBBONS.
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