Klaipeda, Lithuania: If you approach Lithuania by ship, it doesn’t bring you to the capital of Vilnius, which is inland. Klaipeda is the port on the Baltic Sea and like Baltiysk, Kaliningrad, it lives behind a barrier island which is treed and seemingly relatively permanent.
These barrier islands effectively create protected ports where no cove or inlet exists, so long as a gap exists so ships can get behind the island. One suspects dredging is required to keep the gaps open.
Lithuania is a pleasant land, forested and green. We learned the name means Place of Rain, and sure enough we were rained upon, briefly but with vigor. Klaipeda is Lithuania’s seaside resort and it being August was crowded with local tourists enjoying the mostly fine weather. If you know CA’s Bay Area, Klaipeda is Lithuania’s version of Santa Cruz or SoCal’s Malibu.
The country is clean, has some nice freeways, seems orderly, and appears to have no homeless or other obviously dysfunctional population. Unlike the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, Lithuania doesn’t seem much militarized. Perhaps it should be more so as it lives in a dangerous neighborhood.
We were told the local language has much in common with Sanskrit, which seems far-fetched on its face. For sure it doesn’t seem to share cognates with Latin-based languages or with English.
