JUNE 3 - It is a cold, cloudy day, but without rain. Janet’s back hurts today, so Odette and I venture forth to have a look at the sights. Take the five minute ferry from the mouth of the Danes River across to the Curonian Spit. The latter is a ribbon of vegetated sand dunes that stretch from here to the Kaliningrad Oblast (A Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland), which forms a large bay in the Baltic Sea. This spit is about 2 km wide, but almost 100 km long (the length of it is split about evenly between Lithuania and Russia).
Our mission today is to visit the Lithuanian Sea Museum. Housed in the center of a restored sea fortress, it is an odd combination of naval history and aquarium.
The fortress that the aquarium resides in isn’t much to look at today (the view is more descriptive from above). Hence I didn’t take any photos of it. It was a polygonal-sided structure, built in 1865 to protect Klaipeda on the west side, but by 1897 was deemed obsolete.
There was a path, however, leading around it to the west, so we walked out that way and to the actual Baltic coastline. Here, unlike the calm embayment with swans peacefully gliding along, it is very windy with a wide beach, dunes, and strong surf.
Later we return to the leeward side through the forest.
Near the Lithuanian Marine Museum there is an open-air museum of traditional houses.
*Šventoji refers to an area just north of Klaipėda along the coast.
Cross back to the mainland and visit the Klaipeda Fortress (originally called Memelburg, as was the city). This mostly destroyed structure houses several museums, all of which are incredibly well presented. I thought for sure Odette would mutiny our visit but she ended up absorbed in the exhibits. These included drawers full of items that could be pulled out of the walls, glass cases of stuff displayed in the floor, and a screen where she could practice writing using blackletter font.
Klaipeda has a really long history, like everywhere we’ve visited in the Baltic States. The area, along with much of the Baltic, was seized upon by the Livonian Order in the 13th Century, though the Lithuanians soon pushed them out (for related, see the history of Šiauliai on Day 55) under the Grand Duke Gediminas. The Swedes eventually put an end to Lithuanian rule, and, as with much of the Baltics, fell to the Russians after that…
Now that we are toward the end of the Baltic States, I want to clarify one point that ties in much of the history of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during the 20th Century. This is the Molotov-Ribbentrop Act, signed on August 23, 1939 between the Soviet Union and Germany. Note the date! Yes, this is only a week before the Nazi German invasion of Poland that set the ball rolling for WWII. This non-aggression act between Russia and Germany was all about deciding which of the two would control what in the Baltic region and Eastern Europe. Obviously Germany did this with an eye to what they wanted to grab from their impending war plans, without bringing Russia to arms against them. The act specified that Russia would have rights to invade Finland, Estonia, Latvia, portions of Lithuania, and eastern Poland, while Germany would get western Poland. An associated agreement in 1941 was made by which Germany renounced its occupation of the rest of Lithuania upon payment by Russia. There was a lot more to this agreement, but the above suffices for now.
From the perspective of Klaipėda, what this meant is that Germany invaded the port city at the onset of WWII, to recoup their loss of the region after WWI. During their short occupation, they, among other things, took away most of the Jewish population and changed all the street names to German ones. By 1941, Germany had already antagonized the Soviet Union enough that it was certain the Red Army would show up. They tried to hold out, but by 1945 they packed up and left. About 91% of the city’s inhabitants left with them. The Red Army arrived to find the place empty, and built it up from that point until independence in 1990. It was only during the Soviet times that the port began to function at any scale.
For the second night in a row, we eat traditional food. Here, it is easy to find.
