The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Why Riga and Vilnius make a perfect pair
As a new rail route links the two Baltic hubs, Jane Knight plans a weekend getaway that combines the light and dark of two storied cities
Idon’t normally take pictures of trains I am about to board, then compare them with those taken by a stranger seated beside me in the carriage. But this train, running between the Baltic capitals of Riga in Latvia and Vilnius in Lithuania, was special. As the Lithuanian conductor told us (in his unexpected Devonshire accent), there hadn’t been a rail link between the two cities for 20 years until Lithuanian Railways started operations on December 27.
My Swiss neighbour, Markus Specker, had bought tickets for the first service. “I fell ill so I delayed my trip until now,” he said. “It’s not that I’m a train buff – I just like travelling.”
Me too, especially when the fourand-a-bit-hour link means I can easily see the highlights of two Baltic capitals in one long weekend, flying from Stansted at silly o’clock on a Friday to Riga (well, 6.45am), catching the 3.28pm train the next day to Vilnius, and returning from there to arrive at Stansted at 11.45pm on Sunday. The very comfortable train journey only costs €24 (£20.50), and both cities are easily navigable on foot.
Alas, Riga and Vilnius remain much maligned when it comes to seeking out the “beautiful corners” of Europe. With Lithuania and Latvia both former Soviet Socialist Republics (gaining independence in 1990 and 1991 respectively), their capitals are too often dismissed as a pair of bland post-Communist wastelands – all brutalist housing blocks and grey, angular sprawl – when, in fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The medieval heart of Riga, with its cobbled streets, narrow alleyways and hidden courtyards, flourished when it became an important Hanseatic League trading post. Highlights include three connected medieval houses known as the “Three Brothers”, and the ornate House of the Blackheads, the headquarters of a guild for unmarried merchants.
After ticking them off, get a bird’s eye view of the city’s red roofs. You can see them from the top of gothic St Peter’s Church, but instead of paying the €9/£7.70 fee, go instead to the Radisson Blu Latvija hotel and take the glass elevator up to the Skyline Bar, for a superb view over the golden dome of the Nativity of Christ Orthodox Cathedral and across the old town to the river.
Just a short walk away is Albert Street, whose houses drip with ornamentation. There are carved sphinxes outside doors, lions atop towers and theatrical elements everywhere. Riga has the highest concentration of art nouveau buildings in Europe, and at the end of the street, one facade reminiscent of a wedding cake stands next to another that looks more like a gingerbread house.
If all this talk of cakes makes you hungry, there is plenty of good food in the city – so much, in fact, that Michelin has just unveiled its inaugural selection of restaurants there.
For superb seafood, you can’t go wrong at nearby Tails, a hip hangout with snazzy music where even the butter is shaped like little fish swimming across a scallop shell. For more traditional fare, Milda near the river has an incredible porcini soup served in a loaf of bread, which I followed with the tastiest of traditional cabbage rolls stuffed with buckwheat and pumpkin purée.
What’s more, if you want to stock up for the train, the station is near one of the largest covered markets in Europe, set in five pavilions that were formerly Zeppelin hangars.
Before leaving, though, I chose to explore a darker side of Riga, also shared by Vilnius. Both cities (which were part of the Russian empire before the First World War) were occupied by the Soviets at the start of the Second World War when the Nazis invaded, decimating their Jewish populations, and again from 1945 until independence in the early 1990s. Both saw mass deportations to Siberia, and a reign of terror by the KGB.
In the KGB headquarters, the Corner House, I followed the grim journey taken by some 48,000 people, from the registration room through to the interrogation room and on to the overcrowded, overheated cells and finally the execution room, where coloured dots marked bullet holes on the walls.
Suitably sobered, I boarded the train for Vilnius, and that evening arrived in a city filled with a riot of pastel-coloured buildings and 52 churches.
Its golden age started with 14th-century Grand Duke Gediminas (you can take the funicular to his hilltop castle). Following a series of propitious marriages, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, becoming the largest country in Europe by the 15th century.
Vilnius’s old town is now an architectural jigsaw of gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and classical buildings, many converted into enticing gift shops, cafés and restaurants. My hotel, the Pacai – set in a beautiful building dating from 1677 – was not far from the Church of Saint Casimir, converted into a museum of atheism under Soviet rule.
“I remember going there once a week as a child and being taught God didn’t exist,” said my guide, Asta.
It is a reminder of Vilnius’s own darker side, which can also be explored in Lukiskes Prison, built in 1904 for 600 inmates but which housed more than 10 times that amount under Stalin. Today, you can see their grim living conditions as well as spotting the locations where some of the hit series Stranger Things was filmed, checking out a fake Vladimir Putin in a cell and even taking a sauna in a newly opened pod in the prison courtyard.
Vilnius, which once marketed itself as the G-spot of Europe, is clearly a quirky city with a sense of humour. Be sure to cross the Vilnia River to the republic of Uzupis, the haunt of artists and intellectuals, which celebrates its “independence” on April 1. The 41-point constitution inscribed on a wall states that “everyone has the right to die, but this is not an obligation”, and “a cat is not obliged to love its owner but must help in time of need”.
There was time for one more unusual offering before leaving for the airport and home. In Restaurant Lokys in the old town, I tried traditional zeppelins – potato dumplings filled with meat or curd and shaped like the airship – as well as the local speciality: cold beetroot soup.
The dish arrived looking like Barbie’s favourite meal, but tasted absolutely amazing. It was a good lesson, perhaps, in not judging a book – or, indeed, a Baltic city – by its cover.