A little bit of "real" Latvia

I figure the best way to explore Liepaja, Latvia is to rent a bike and get lost in town. I decide to bike to a Soviet prison in nearby Karosta. It was supposed to be a 4 km bike ride, however the bridge on the map turns out to have been destroyed 3 years ago when it was hit by a ship. So I ended up having the bike an extra 7 km to get around a canal. Liepaja is a very nice town, but if you go to the outskirts, you find some pretty shocking Soviet style apartment blocks. These huge, ugly concrete buildings were put up in Soviet times because they were cheap and quick to build. I saw apartment block after apartment block, all deteriorating, but still inhabited. Some of the huge structures were abandoned or boarded up - adding to the sense of devastation. In the distance a factory was releasing orange fumes into the air. This was my first taste of Soviet influence in the Baltics.



Eventually I found the prison, and got a tour. But the apartment blocks on the way affected me much more than the prison.