Ainazi

August 6th. The bus for Tallinn leaves at 7 AM. I want to make this segment of my journey overland as I am curious to see what the countryside looks like and, more than that, what it will be like to cross such an obscure border. I have a fascination with such places. It is a beautiful summer day. The road leaves Riga and continues north along the coast. Ainazi (ponounced: EYE-nah-jee) is the last town in Latvia before the Estonian border. It's a really small town. (This is not my pic (and my thanks to whomever took it.) This is what an obscure border town looks like. It could be anywhere, actually. The bus stops for the usual formalities. Two female passengers carrying CCCP (Soviet) passports are hauled off. I am sure this is just retaliation for the decades of mistreatment the Letts and Estonians endured from the Russians. Still, it isn't fair since these people probably had nothing to do with that. I wonder what language the border guards converse in. Latvian and Estonian are totally different. The obvious common language would be Russian (which everyone was forced to learn in school) but somehow I doubt they want to resort to that. Perhaps these guards are recruited locally and speak both Estonian and Latvian. Perhaps they are practicing their Klingon skills...