RE: Eastern Europe

That looks like my kind of place to travel. Nothing like
having the old soviet nostalgic feeling. What about places
like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?

I’m not really fond of them, and Estonia is actually one of my least favourite countries. While these countries do their very best to deny their Soviet past, the local police forces are just as corrupt if not worse than the nastiest Russian Militsioner to name but one thing.

Estonians are a rather closed and IMHO even unfriendly, humourless people. All too keen trying to be Scandinavian (which they are not, first of all because Scandinavians are friendly and helpful), absolutely discriminating their large Russian minority (also true for a lesser extent for Latvia and Lithouania), but Tallinn is not much more than a cheap bar for alcoholic Finns.

Latvians are a bit more friendly, a bit more open, and Riga is IMHO the nicest city in each of the three countries. Nevertheless, it’s a country where you have to be very cautious for polite criminals and criminal policemen. And while Riga is nice and fun to hang out, and you can get lucky in some other cities, there are still too many dreary, unfriendly and absolutely boring places like Daugavpils there (don’t ask… i had to spend a night there twice on two separate occasions :'( )

Lithouania is IMHO the most ‘open’ country of the three, and the one least in denial of it’s past – even though you will come across the occasional group-bashings of Russian and Belorussian traders which visit the country.

All three definately have quite a bit of that Soviet-nostalgia within their borders, but they all deny that and will definately try to keep you away from it, or at least from noticing it. And their population all seem to miss that joyfully-cynical-fatalistic spirit you can find amongs so many other former Soviet peoples (of course amongst the Slavic peoples, but it’s also quite common with Caucasian and Turkic peoples as far as i have experienced).