RIGA - I must have heard the story a hundred times. In 1944, my grandparents and their son (my father) ran from the communists invading Latvia. After five years in post-war Germany, they went to the United States. They built a new life in America, but their dreams and stories came from faraway. It was a place that lingered in my imagination growing up; it has always been close to my heart. But it was only in 2006 that I finally stepped onto Latvian soil.
Thousands of people share similar stories of exile, after fleeing or being sent to Displaced Peoples (DP) camps in Europe during World War II. Many have since come back.
Maybe it is not strange that the children of exiles came back, most notably Toomas Hendrik Ilves the president of Estonia who was born in Sweden and raised in the United States. What is odd is that now the grandchildren, many of whom are only half Baltic anyway, choose to go back "home."
Larisa Medene has been working and raising her daughter in Riga for the past three years. She grew up in Canberra, Australia, in a relocated Baltic haven. Despite the fact that her parents both grew up in Australia, Medene, one of six children, spent her early days speaking only Latvian. Only when she had to start going to school did her mother realize, "S***, we need to teach you English."
Most Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians who fled in World War II, eventually relocated in the United States, Australia, Canada, Sweden and the U.K., although there are also large communities of Balts residing in Russia and Brazil.
The expatriated Balts have shown incredible tenacity in preserving their cultural heritage. During World War II many living in limbo while in DP camps, created schools, churches, and cultural organizations with fellow displaced countrymen. The exiles even created the "Baltic University," later renamed "DP University Study Center," to ensure that displaced Baltic peoples would remain educated.
In fashion with the scholarly tendencies of the Balts, a select few from the United States, I humbly include myself, come to the Baltics for a period of just less than a year via a governmentally funded Fulbright Scholarship. Lisa Bacanskas was awarded a Fulbright to Lithuania in 2004-05 to study coastal environmental management principles.
She said: "The scholarship not only awarded me the opportunity to gain valuable perspectives on global environmental issues" but also to "explore my Lithuanian roots, and to forge new ties with the family I have here."
Monika Hanley came to Latvia with a scholarship from the American Latvian Youth Association to work at the Occupation Museum.
"I realized I didn't want to leave. It's a whole world of my hobby. It is like coming back to Disneyland," she said.
Hanley adds a note of caution. Not all Diasporas are keen on coming back.
"I have spoken to people who have chosen not to come back. They think they are the real Latvians and culture was ruined by the Soviets," Hanley said.
A number of organizations created by Balts during World War II and after remain today: the Baltic American Freedom League, the Daugavas Vanagi, a Latvian Welfare Association, the Lithuanian World Community, and the Estonian World Council. These groups create very tight knit cultural communities, one reason why many third generation Balts speak the native tongue of their grandparents.
For many who studied Latvian, Estonian or Lithuanian outside the Baltics, there is a sense of displacement upon arrival here. The language they know is archaic, having been passed on by people who left in the 1940s. Today Baltic languages are different colloquially and are peppered with new slang. Some coming back actually feel abused by the modern Balt, claiming they get treated as foreigners in a land they always regarded as home.
I arrived here knowing how to say nose (deguns), tummy (puncis), and thank you (paldies). I might have had it easier than those coming with knowledge of the local language. I felt no ridicule for being an American-Latvian. The first four months I thought everyone hated me; then I began to feel loved for my broken Latvian sentences, and for teaching the locals fun English jargon.
Some who have returned are fleeing their domestic troubles, but most have come back because of their family history and for the opportunities that exist here; inexpensive education, resume building opportunities, investments, and the enjoyable lifestyle.
For many who come to visit, however, blood ties and the glory of returning to the Baltics, perhaps on behalf of grandparents who were unable to do so, are not enough to keep them from returning back home. The cold, dark winters, further career opportunities, and the rising cost of living are reasons to leave.
For those who have made it here, rekindled family relationships, built friendships, and eaten this delicious Baltic cuisine, it can be hard to go, and so, they stay. Yet, for most of us who come back to their ancestral homeland, in the end, home isn't always where the heart is, but where we took our first steps.
