Estonia
One of the many 36-hour trips via train we took when in the USSR was to Tallinn, Estonia. A fellow classmate, Matt, had helped host an Estonian women’s soccer team that had come to his home town in Minnesota, so we had people who could show us around and house us. Actually, my memory of my time in Estonia is very hazy. I don’t even remember if we stayed there overnight. I think we did, although that wasn’t the norm for our trips. The only other thing I remember besides some of the women we met from the soccer team (tall and blond), was that we went to a party of sorts where they had homemade beer that was being dispensed from a plastic container and rubber hose. Perhaps we were shown more of the town, but I don’t have any pictures and can’t remember anything else.
The one Baltic country that I did not get to go to on during my stay in the USSR was the one I wanted to visit the most – Lithuania. I wanted to go there because supposedly that is where some of my ancestry is from on one side. Actually, it seems like I have ancestry from all over that area – Byelorussia, Lithuania, Austria-Hungry, and Poland. My mother’s mother’s family even traced one of their relatives to Italy, so maybe I am 1/32nd Italian and that’s where my fascination with Tuscany, Vino Nobile de Montelpulciano, the Italian Language, and espresso all come from!