Klaipeda
Klaipeda is Lithuania’s third-largest city and its only major port. Under its former name of Memel, Klaipeda was the easternmost city of the German Empire until 1918, when it was declared a “free city” by the League of Nations. However, the new nation of Lithuania seized the port in 1923, thus making it a sore point in German-Lithuanian relations. Hitler visited the city in the 1930s and vowed to undo this “injustice” by returning Memel to the Reich. He made good on his promise in 1939. Now devoid of Germans (they were forced to leave between 1945 and 1949), the city is once again Lithuania’s primary industrial port.
We visited the Amber Museum in Palanga, a resort community near Klaipeda. Amber is fossilized tree sap, not a stone. As the exhibits demonstrated in ample measure, it has been an important item of trade for millennia, forming the backbone of exchange between the Mediterranean world (as in Romans) and the Baltic world (as in northern European barbarians). It comes in many colors and hues, ranging from white (the oldest amber), to green and black (amber found in swamps and bogs), but most amber ranges from yellow to brown. The most prized pieces are those with “inclusions,” bits of ancient flora and fauna locked within the sap.
Amber is still an item of trade, as we demonstrated by exchanging our dollars for amber at the many kiosks and shops in Klaipeda and Palanga. This evening we took our new prizes to the Endeavour lounge, where the embedded treasures were examined using the ship’s projecting microscope.
Klaipeda is Lithuania’s third-largest city and its only major port. Under its former name of Memel, Klaipeda was the easternmost city of the German Empire until 1918, when it was declared a “free city” by the League of Nations. However, the new nation of Lithuania seized the port in 1923, thus making it a sore point in German-Lithuanian relations. Hitler visited the city in the 1930s and vowed to undo this “injustice” by returning Memel to the Reich. He made good on his promise in 1939. Now devoid of Germans (they were forced to leave between 1945 and 1949), the city is once again Lithuania’s primary industrial port.
We visited the Amber Museum in Palanga, a resort community near Klaipeda. Amber is fossilized tree sap, not a stone. As the exhibits demonstrated in ample measure, it has been an important item of trade for millennia, forming the backbone of exchange between the Mediterranean world (as in Romans) and the Baltic world (as in northern European barbarians). It comes in many colors and hues, ranging from white (the oldest amber), to green and black (amber found in swamps and bogs), but most amber ranges from yellow to brown. The most prized pieces are those with “inclusions,” bits of ancient flora and fauna locked within the sap.
Amber is still an item of trade, as we demonstrated by exchanging our dollars for amber at the many kiosks and shops in Klaipeda and Palanga. This evening we took our new prizes to the Endeavour lounge, where the embedded treasures were examined using the ship’s projecting microscope.
