Old Town(s)
SUBMITTED BY ARA DATE 03 - 13 - 2010

During the last week our group has traveled through the so called Baltic States, including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The first thing our guides would show us to (and generally the only thing) was the city's "old town". For this colloquium assignment I want to breifly discuss what these old towns mean to their respective cities and how they fit in to a global context. As I hinted at before, our guided tours of the old town's of Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius were all limited to the old town district. These get their names as the old town from their origins and historic architecture coming from the city's beginnings. To this day the orginal churches, schools, and pubs are preserved in their original form, and of this the cities are always very proud. In my former colloquium assignment I discussed cultural history as a soure of pride, and here the theme continues. While seeing these old towns one after the other, eachappears un-unique to us country hoppers, but these cities use their old town as a form of identity. They greet tourists with abundant signage to reach and navigate the old town, and seem to prefer to be known by the old town rather than the new progress they've made in the last century. Why? Naturally someone like myself from the United States wouldn't understand this. Our country is practically a baby; only 200 years old. What great architecture or historic townships do we have worth celebrating? From a chronological comparison, everything we have is just days old. That's our culture. Their culture has much much more; towns that are 400 years old or more. Naturally they are going to cherish these old towns. I must say that I am glad for their ability to preserve them as well as they have. I truly felt as though I had stepped back in time when entering the old town of Tallinn, or when I looked out over Riga's old city from its central overlook. My point here is that I find major similiraties in culture here in Northern Europe, but because of an age gap, the United States can't really relate. What we can do is appreciate the age difference much better then someone from Riga or Tallinn. Nothing surrounding us in the U.S. predates the 1800's, so when we come here and see these old towns it really is amazing. Because of this I am glad not to have a global culture where everyone comes from similar backgrounds and is already acustomed to the same things. While we may seem unfortunate in our short history, we are lucky to experience these midieval towns with vrigin eyes.