The senior Grestes are off again.

Now that a part of the big campaign with the Egyptian authorities has been won, we feel we deserve a break and a diversion away from the FPG front. The battle regrettably is not completely over yet. Peter is free in Australia but not innocent of the ludicrous charges against him. We are unlikely to be completely out of the FPG slipstream for a while.

 

The timing of our departure on the 23^rd April is related to Peter. He has been invited to speak at the UNESCO World Free Press two day conference, this year in Riga. As the invitation for the awards ceremony also included us, we thought it a good enough reason to go. In any case, we did want to make another return visit to ancestral Riga. And May in that part of the world can be the most charming, colourful and inspiring time of year. So why not?

We wanted to defy the premise that all routes to Europe lead through Dubai. So why not try the Siberian route (again!) and arrive in Helsinki? We are indeed landing in Finland but when the final figures were added up, routing through Dubai still made better money sense. In the end, regrettably it is often the economies of scale that win the day.

After a few days of jetlag recovery in Helsinki, we will board a ferry to Tallin, the Estonian capital, and then catch a daytime bus to Riga. It takes a bit of deliberate adjustment to scale and distance that you can be in three different countries in one day.

The main conference day is May 3. The following day marks the Declaration on the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia, and the Latvian SSR was renamed Republic of Latvia. May 7 is the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II when on this date the German high command signed an unconditional surrender to the Allied forces. No doubt there will be events to commemorate both dates. Peter leaves Riga on the 7th after which we have no fixed program until we leave for Istanbul on the 18th. We intend to fill the time exploring more of my family’s rural and provincial heritage.

Riga is in the same time zone as Istanbul so the transition should not be too hard. Just fly South for a couple of hours. Either Riga is popular with the Turks or Istanbul is a Latvian favourite. Either way, there is enough traffic for a direct daily flight. Latvian passport holders (that’s me!) don’t even need a visa. We intend to take it as easy as we can in Cappadocia, central Turkey, before heading for home via, guess what – Dubai.

So we will try to keep family and friends informed of our adventures until we are back on June 13.

J&L

                                                                             In Canberra a few weeks ago.