ll politics is local.” So Congressman Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, the late, Demo- cratic power broker, once fa- mously observed. Although the legendary New England but- tonholer’s succinct aphorism originally con- cerned an election he’d lost in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1930s, his words con- tinue to resonate. As they did recently when I set off by Jaguar XJ from a rock-music festival in Latvia to catch up with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia, the smallest, most northern and most thriving of the three for- mer Soviet republics on the Baltic Sea. Ilves and I had a political connection, once. While it had been some time, it was very local. How’s that? The Jaguar part is easy: the carmaker sent an XJ—my current most favorite touring sedan—overland from its German headquar- ters, through Poland, to meet us in Riga, Lat- via, a handsome port city at the mouth of the Daugava River. From Riga, we’d drive an hour to Salacgrīva to catch my musical charges, OK Go, performing at the Positivus Festival, a multiday, open-air rock event. Then it was on to Estonia, where we’d JERSEY BOYS spend a few nights in Pärnu, a sleepy seaside retreat on the Gulf of Riga, before heading to the country’s capital, the quaint, walled city of Tallinn. Afterward, we’d travel back to Latvia for a few days of castle hopping, before rounding out our whirlwind, 1000-mile Baltic Far left: Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the presi- tour with twenty hours in Lithuania, birth- dent of Estonia, at his farm with the XJ. place of my paternal grandmother. This page, counterclockwise from top: A Many surprises lay in store for our in- horse-drawn cart in Latvia. Dining Esto- trepid trio of English speakers—me, photog- nian-style. Rock fans in Salacgrīva. The rapher Martyn Goddard, and my bon vivant beach at Pärnu. A collection of Soviet- college chum, Richard Hart, a former New era momentos/propaganda. Russian Orleanian who, like us, enjoys new places, vodka in Tallinn. The XJ outside the Hotel strong drink, and four square meals a day. Telegraaf in Tallinn. Eastern Europe gets a bad rap in the United States, even among those who’ve never been there, so a little look at the facts, up close and personal, couldn’t hurt. Among the things we didn’t anticipate: the

photography by the incomparable and affable martyn goddard

80 Automobile | December 2011 December 2011 | A utomobilemag.com 81 year-old a second five-year term in August. Ilves today, like the Ilves of our youth, would be considered fairly liberal in the United States, but by European standards he is a pro-Western moderate whose pop- ularity is partly the result of the compara- tively strong condition of the Estonian economy through the global downturn, the country’s entry into NATO, and its re- cent admission to the Eurozone. He has been a vigorous advocate for technology— the country has been referred to as E-sto- nia for its universal Internet access—and press freedom. And although hurt by tight natural beauty and abundance of un- credit and the worldwide recession, the spoiled lands, the quality of the roads, and country has less debt than most of Europe the general ease of transit. The people and employs every programmer it can look great, too: fit, well-dressed, hand- mint. With his wife, Evelin, Ilves reads and some. Then there was the unexpected ap- travels widely, often visiting other heads of peal of the architecture, along with the state, and, we discovered, he is something hospitable kindness of persons who once of a regional sex symbol. Not bad for a guy lived behind the Iron Curtain, individuals from New Jersey. Clockwise from top left: Ilves ponders the fate of who we in the West were taught to imag- The roads in all three countries we’d Europe in the twenty-first century. Life inside the ine as grim, boring, and unfriendly, but ancient walled old city in Tallinn recalls centuries visit are lightly trafficked, and although who proved anything but. Still, for sheer past; an outdoor-themed restaurant serves medi- they are humble in scale—nary a multilane improbability, the Estonian president’s eval fare. A sculpture of Johann Voldemar-Jannsen, to spoil the scenery—they are, in the main, story gave everything and everyone else a who is considered the father of Estonian journalism, modern and well-maintained, with sweep- run for their money. stands in the center of Pärnu. ing curves that perfectly suit the sharp- Toomas Ilves’ father, Endel, fled Esto- handling XJ, its lively V-8 engine, and its nia as a young man in 1944. Acting on a tip, six-speed automatic transmission. To be he left the same family farm to which we’d sure, there are more dirt roads than we’re been invited—near Abja Parish, some forty used to; fortunately, the XJ’s cosseting miles inland from Pärnu—just ahead of occupiers. But the young man, a member itician even then, this tall, long-haired ju- suspension—perhaps its strongest point, Russian troops marching in to reoccupy of a land-owning family, would have found nior—with a fashion-forward penchant for along with its supremely comfortable inte- the country. the Communists just as brutal. In due tweed sport jackets—managed, while at- rior—proves up to the task. In 1941, Estonia had been annexed by course, they’d confiscate all 200 acres of tending to his official duties, to humor an After a wrong turn sends us two miles Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Although the his family’s farm. awkward, argumentative cadre of young down a rocky, overgrown cart track, we fi- Nazis’ stay was memorable, it wouldn’t Thus, when their eldest son, Toomas student loudmouths whose tedious num- nally locate Ilves’ farm, reclaimed after the last long, and, having already declared it a Hendrik, was a boy, the Ilveses quit Swe- ber included yours truly. fall of the U.S.S.R., nearby. Overgrown and Soviet state in 1940 (Estonia had been part den and headed not home, but for Amer- The student leader offered unexpected undertended during the Communist era, of the Russian empire before declaring its ica. Settling finally in the sleepy hamlet of moral support for our affinity group of the land required years of brush clearing independence in 1918), the Soviets were Leonia, New Jersey—a leafy suburb of downtrodden underclassmen as we intro- to make it the genteel presidential getaway coming to reclaim the country when Endel 8000 souls not even three miles from New duced annoying student resolutions, one it is now. The activity provided a useful escaped to Sweden. Beleaguered Estonia York City—Ilves’ father worked as a sys- after the other, such as a proposal for a talking point with one leading authority would remain under Communist rule until tems analyst and his mother became the moratorium on French class until the on brush-clearing, former U.S. President the fall of the U.S.S.R. in 1991. town’s librarian. Of note here, a few blocks United States announced its withdrawal George W. Bush, on the three occasions he In Sweden, the elder Ilves would marry from the Ilves’ home stood the North from Vietnam. and Ilves met. a Russian exile he’d known in Estonia, American headquarters for what would But Ilves, who could be dismissive, even Sitting in the afternoon sun, I remind Irene Rebane, but there was no thought of become British Leyland, makers, in the withering, to political opponents, tolerated the Estonian president of a day in 1972 returning to his homeland—and the farm day, of Jaguar cars. such amateur theater. With our admiration when he invited me to his old house. That his family had lived on since at least 1763— Flash forward to 1970. The first Jaguar only heightened by his parents’ dark green afternoon, he’d proceeded to blow my The Jaguar XJ’s supremely comfortable chassis after the war. While many Estonians wel- XJ has recently been launched. I am twelve Volvo 1800S and a plain Jane but stealthily fourteen-year-old mind when he spun a takes the cobbled streets of Tallinn in stride, before comed the Nazis as liberators who might years old and have begun a five-year sen- quick Plymouth Satellite wagon, both of transporting our party back to Latvia and Igate Cas- platter by an up-and-coming L.A. band have gone a little far by rapidly extermi- tence at Leonia High School, where I which he used to ferry us around, the boy tle. The restaurant Dzirnavu Krodzins (above, which who’d just released their first record. Dat- nating that portion of the country’s rela- quickly fall under the sway of a sparkling crushes were fully installed. translates to, simply, The Mill Pub) serves traditional ing this moment in time, they were called, tively small Jewish population that the orator four years my elder, the newly Looking back, we see that Ilves’ innate Latvian fare (right), including barley prepared three simply, Eagles. “Wooo, hooo, witchy Russians hadn’t already killed or deported elected vice president of the school’s stu- skill at building unlikely coalitions has ways accompanied, as so many dishes are, with woman. See how high she flies.” That one to Siberia on account of their wealth, the dent council and the class of 1972’s future served him well, evidenced when Esto- tasty pork products. was a winner, I’d opined. These Eagles fel- Germans, too, soon came to be viewed as valedictorian, one Tom Ilves. A skilled pol- nia’s parliament granted the fifty-seven- lows were going somewhere.

82 Automobile | December 2011 December 2011 | A utomobilemag.com 83 gamalls, although some Estonians we met were anxious to show us a glittering mall that opened adjacent to Tallinn’s Hotel Viru, outside the old city’s walls. Infinitely more fascinating to American eyes were the real-life monuments to the KGB. At Hotel Viru, a high-rise jewel of the former Soviet Intourist hotel empire, a cre- ative press officer curates a KGB museum, which preserves the eavesdropping appa- ratus and logs of the old secret police. The director of the museum showed us how the electronic snooping was conducted, how old ladies sitting in the halls of each floor would silently record guests’ comings and goings, and how teams of Moskvich “limo” drivers and KGB-approved prostitutes, ex- empted from arrest or harassment by local law-enforcement agencies, worked to ply travelers for information. We found an even more skin-crawling relic of the totalitarian era in Latvia, at Līgatne, where beneath a still-active reha- bilitation center, we were escorted into an underground bunker, a subterranean world where Latvia’s Communist Party leaders were meant to hastily repair in the event of nuclear attack. We descended its dank con- crete stairs thirty feet underground with an enthusiastic, multilingual tour guide As was Ilves, who soon departed our lit- Then, having become an Estonian citizen, who looked—with youthful, scraggly pe- tle town and crossed the river to New he went on to serve twice as the country’s rimeter beard and wire-rimmed glasses— York’s Columbia University and a psychol- foreign minister before being elected to like he could have been a founding mem- ESTONIA Latvian artwork make for a memorable luxury hotel experience. ogy degree; three years later, we met again the European Parliament. In 2006, Ilves ber of The Band. It smelled impossibly Estonian Tourist Board (www.malpilsmuiza.lv) when I arrived at Columbia as a freshman. became Estonia’s third post–Cold War awful, with a choking combination of mil- (www.visitestonia.com/en) Igate Castle Once again, I basked in his aura of wry hip- president. dew, mold, and diesel fumes—from the two Ammende Villa The restaurant adjacent to the castle serves traditional Latvian fare, with ness, and then he was gone and I wouldn’t Estonia is unlike its Baltic neighbors to period Soviet T-54 tank engines that run its Sympathetically restored 1905 Russian art nouveau villa in Parnu, barley prepared three ways and pork—a diet staple—prepared one way: see him again for twenty-five years. Until the south, Ilves reminded us, because as a generators—hanging in the air. Built in the furnished in period, with manicured grounds, excellent kitchen, and salty, smokey, and delicious. now, at his farm on a hot July afternoon, Nordic country, it is ethnically more closely 1980s and well-known to the CIA from the fabulous waitstaff. We’d go back in a heartbeat. (www.latvia.travel/en/igate-castle) where I’d come to catch up, now that he related to Finland than to Latvia or Lithu- start, it made us wonder why America ever (www.amende.ee) Ligatne Soviet Bunker was the president of Estonia and all. ania. One thing all three of the Baltic states spent so much time worrying about Soviet KGB Museum, Sokos Hotel Viru (www.bunkurs.lv) Noting that his country (where Audi have in common is their memories of So- world domination. Soviet-style 1960s modern hotel isn’t as charming as the hotels inside supplies high officials’ cars) had its own viet rule. Ethnic Russians, sent by Moscow Highlights of the tour include firing up Tallinn’s walled “old town,” but the rooms are pleasant and the KGB Lithuania successful Jaguar dealership—selling cars at the height of its central planning power the facility’s old-school air-conditioning museum fascinating. Lithuanian National Tourism Office mostly to Russians, the dealers there pre- to tamp down the smaller states’ national- system, which sounds like a squadron of (www.viru.ee) (www.lithuaniatourism.co.uk) ferring the security of parking their wares istic tendencies, remain significant minori- B-17s taking off; a hilariously dated tele- Vieneri Vartai in his own, less thieving country—Ilves ties, and tensions can still flare, although communications center, which tied the LATVIA A rustic farm lodge situated near a huge pine forest, surrounded by proceeded to fill in the missing decades. this may be easing. bunker directly into the Kremlin and the Latvian Tourism Board ponds and lakes, will accommodate up to 100 overnight guests and two After earning a psychology degree at grad- Each of the Baltic countries now goes its KGB’s Moscow command center; and as- www.latvia.travel/en/latvia-brief pole dancers. uate school, his Estonian language skills own way as it best sees fit, within the limits sorted busts of Vladimir Lenin and friends. Riga Motor Museum (www.countryside.lt/en/sodyba-vienerivartai) eventually found him work for the Baltic of a lousy global economy and political sys- I’d have run outside to the fresh air and From a 1930s Auto Union grand prix racer to the mother lode of Soviet-era Chaim Frenkel Palace, Šiauliai desk of Radio Free Europe. Why, I didn’t tems rife with corruption. (Outsiders agree taken a fatal dose of radiation sooner than limousines, this modern facility with a distinct German and Eastern The mansion of a prosperous Jewish shoemaker in Lithuania’s even know you spoke Estonian back in the that Estonia is the relatively uncorrupt ex- I’d spend a second hour in here, much less European bias, won’t disappoint. fourth-largest city, directly adjacent to his former factory and near a day, I told him. “Why would you?” our ception to the rule.) But their shared Soviet a night. But given the frightful state of the (www.motormuzejs.lv) synagogue he built, it is a prime example of modernist, secession ever-snappy friend retorted. “You didn’t history is easy to spot in the many aestheti- economy and the post-Soviet need for the Ma¯lpils Manor architecture, slowly being restored after having been used as a hospital by speak Estonian.” cally blighted state housing tracts, as soul- rehab center to pay its own way, the bunker Forty-minutes from Riga, Ma¯lpils Manor’s main building—one of the Nazis and then the Soviets. Not far away, the impressive Hill of Crosses Having caught the eye of Estonia’s new less and depressing as we’d imagined. Con- is available to rent for parties, weddings, thirty-eight buildings—was erected in 1911 after a fire destroyed its pulls in the greatest number of tourists. democratic leaders, he was invited to serve versely, the former planned economies are and other occasions. Rooms for overnight predecessor. Luxuriant grounds, classical Biedermeier furniture, and (tic.siauliai.lt/article/view/1303/1/429) as the country’s ambassador to the United noted in the refreshing and near total ab- guests are available upstairs in the rehab States after the Soviet Union collapsed. sence of Western fast-food chains and me- center, where one might bunk next to a pa-

84 Automobile | December 2011 December 2011 | A utomobilemag.com 85 tient. In fact, we saw several residents wandering around, bumming smokes or admiring the Jaguar in the visitors’ lot. From there, we took a hand-drawn car ferry across the narrow Gaujā River for a few Latvian lats (only Estonia uses the euro) and reflected on the new economies that have risen from the ashes of the old state-run economy. Wages are low by American standards—the minimum wage in Latvia is less than $400 a month—yet we saw plenty of the sorts of cars, fancy foods, and clothing one finds back home. A Bentley dealership in Riga testifies that some people are getting rich. Clockwise from above: A Soviet bunker in Līgatne Of course, jobs growth has been an in- is frozen in time, as is an- evitable result of the new market econo- cient telecommunications mies in the Baltic countries. As Ilves said equipment. Comrade Kit- of his own country: “Like the rest of East- man mans the hotline to ern Europe, there was no service sector [in the Kremlin. A repurposed Estonia] at all to speak of under Commu- tank engine runs the bun- nism. You didn’t have restaurants. There ker’s generators. A smelly was no choice. Basically, it was like you Soviet car ferry. Bunker had State Haircut Facility Number 347. So tour guide, Oscar. A child that had to change.” admires a bust of Lenin, quizzically. While milking what it can from the So- viet era, Latvian tourism does a brisk busi- ness in palaces from the much more en- during feudal period. The palace at Mežotne, completed in 1802, is believed to have served as the prototype for Bucking- ham Palace, while the Rundāle Palace, a huge and magnificent edifice with baroque and rococo elements, as well as a vast French garden, shared its architects with those of the State Hermitage in Saint Pe- tersburg. It surely must be at the top of anyone’s list of great castles. But it’s hardly only about the past. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well, no- where more so than in Ogre, Latvia, where we visited the workshop of OSCar. Andris Dambis, an automotive engineer, and his two sons, Kaspars and Kristaps, meticu- lously restore Soviet-era RAFs, a sort of Iron Curtain Volkswagen Microbus, for wealthy customers, while designing, fabri- cating, and racing their own highly special- ized Paris–Dakar rally machines. Their first effort turned a wheel in 2004, but they’ve refined their brutal yellow ma- chines year after year. For 2012, they’ll be back with their most ambitious effort yet, a series-hybrid (think Chevy Volt) racer with a Nissan V-6 charging its battery pack. The business model for making these fellows internationally rich is, they con- cede, unclear, but their ambition and en- thusiasm are manifest—our planned twenty-minute visit lasted for hours. Riga LATVIA

WRITER’S BLOC rigita Stroda, the charming and chatty No automotive journalist’s trip head of the Latvian to Estonia would be complete if it didn’t B include an audience with Margus-Hans Tourist Authority who’d Kuuse. In his early seventies now, Kuuse, befriend us during our stay more than anyone—through dint of hard there, rounded out our Latvian work, an engineer’s mind, and an earnest history lesson: “Riga was at but winning personality that brought him the heart of the ‘Amber Road’ into unusual contact with Westerners trade route, which brought during the Soviet era—kept the Eastern entry to the Hanseatic League, bloc apprised of Western automotive and successive dominations [of products and racing developments at a Latvia] by Poland, Sweden, and time when the authorities weren’t They’re confident they’ll make money Russia. The ruling elite were especially keen on alerting the public to all from all they’ve learned, somehow, some- the fun they were missing. way, and their thrifty and nifty ingenuity German, while the vast majority We quickly came upon an example of (they’ve borrowed heavy-duty electrical of the population were Latvians what Kuuse was up against when the components from old Riga streetcars) is who were only released from inveterate literature hoarder presented us inspiring. serfdom in the middle of the with an English-language, 1983 edition of Time constraints prevented us from nineteenth century.” Avtoexport Round-Up, a glossy, coffee- seeing more of the two countries we’d al- table Soviet magazine which contained ready visited, and thus our stay in Lithua- exciting prose like: “Cooperation with the nia was cut short. With less than twenty- service and operating organizations of four hours to spare, we were unable to pressed. We knew we liked the Jaguar, and socialist countries in servicing Soviet- venture far enough south to visit Vilnius, it didn’t miss a beat. After years of ques- made motor vehicles is accomplished by my grandmother’s birthplace and the tionable reliability, the company’s prod- AVTOEXPORT within the framework of the country’s biggest city. ucts have really shaken their reputation Comprehensive Program for Socialist On the other hand, the local tourist au- for shoddiness (well, at least we didn’t Economic Integration adopted at the 23rd thority arranged for us to visit a local have any troubles in our days with the car). Special Session of the Council for Mutual brewery, Rinkuškiai whose wares will But the Baltic countries and their people Economic Assistance.” soon be offered in America. From here, we surprised us in a way we’ll never forget. As Take that, Ezra Dyer. drove fifty miles, the last seven of them on President Ilves, our favorite democratic Kuuse didn’t let that slow him down, a dirt road that defied our navigation sys- leader of 2011, explained, “I think there is and at one time was read by more than tem, just beyond the village of Duokiškis, a fundamental prejudice against Eastern 30 million people across the Soviet Union. to spend the night at an otherwise vacant Europe that goes back at least 200 years. But Tallinn was his home. lodge that has been built to cater to large Today, the West likes to think of Eastern “Tallinn was the U.S.S.R.’s racing capital, groups. Our host, an affable bear of a Geor- Europe as ‘gray people living gray lives in and the Estonian public was interested gian wearing a heavy-metal T-shirt, gray apartment houses,’ but we are doing more in Western racing cars and racing smoked like a fiend, day and night. Rising the same things that immigrants did in the per se than people in the other fourteen at dawn to cook our breakfast—eggs, with U.S. and everywhere. Countries like mine republics, maybe excluding Latvia,” he told giant chunks of smoky slab bacon—he took work harder, are more efficient, and are us over dinner in the walled city. us on a tour of the grounds, which feature more fiscally responsible. The author of thousands of articles a man-made lake, giant wood-fired saunas, “It’s going to be another twenty or and several books celebrating the and dance halls, all of it built by his family, thirty years, but this whole East/West Eu- motorcars built in the capitalist West, by hand. He was particularly proud to rope distinction is disappearing. The fu- Kuuse, keeps an old Nissan sedan as show a trio of obviously savvy Westerners ture distinction, bizarrely enough, will be personal transport but took the bus to join the new pole-dancing room they’ve North/South, because Finland, Estonia, us. For a fan of the West, he is curiously opened, which apparently has a big fol- Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland, the ambivalent about Estonia’s current lowing among corporate clientele. Before Czech Republic, Austria—they’re fiscally free-market economy, which he said made we left, he offered us a shot of the local responsible.” retirement years uncertain for many, cordial, a black liquor made of pine resin. Politics, shmolitics. With that I bid the including himself. “You used to know you We accepted the first one, to be polite, but Estonian president adieu. Unable to re- had something when you grew old.” So declined the second and third, on account member the Leonia High fight song, I in- this stalwart car lover can’t kick it into of the early hour (it was 7 a.m.) and our stead invoke Eagles. Take it easy. AM overdrive yet. He continues to write, and impending airBaltic flight out of Riga. we wish him well. — JK Everywhere we went, we were im-

88 Automobile | December 2011