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Levings and Kalnbērziņš with their fans at the start of their trip in August 1925 |
“In Egypt, the pyramids are so tall they pierce the sky. You can drive a motorcycle up one side and get to stick your head above the clouds!” the presenter got on his toes as if peeking over the edge of a real cloud. The audience leaned towards the stage in awe. Some pairs of eyebrows hit the ceiling of the room.
“Yeah, I imagine you are pretty often in the clouds. Snorting them!” a visibly annoyed gentleman in the last row spat on the floor, stood up and headed for the exit fighting his way through the hypnotized jungle-like crowd.
That did not bother the presenter one bit. He closed his eyes, eyelids twitching, as if chasing a distant memory and declared: “You won’t believe this, but… the clouds, they, move up and down… like waves in sea…” and started to flap his arms in front of the audience as if ventilating the room.
Now an entire row of people got up and started to move to the exit.
In the mid 1920s, Latvia was struck by a new type of fraud – raising funds for traveling the world. Crafty individuals took up a role of a traveller seeking the much needed financial support for a trip around the globe. Some were more crafty and made a bit of extra cash for an ice cream or a pack of cigarettes. Others were less eloquent and only made people laugh. However, the idea behind the fraud was not just some drug-induced fantasy. In the post Great-War Latvia, touring distant lands indeed was the hottest fad, and many individuals did really launch daring journeys across the world map.
The first Latvian world travellers were two young men – a 28-years-old electro technician Augusts Bija, and a 24-year-old pharmacist Gastons Reinbahs. To make the scene more holywoodesque, the two brought a German shepherd named Jack with them. Their motivation? Breaking world records? Exploring the unchartered jungles of Kongo? No, nothing of the sort. Just “satisfying their interest and doing it for sport to see the world”. The goal was to complete the trip in 6 years and return to Latvia in 1931. Well, you would think, they must have had some kind of an all-terrain vehicle to accomplish a feat like that. But no. Just the bare minimum – a total of two Latvian legs. They set out in April 1925. And they really made it big already at the very beginning. Both started with gathering a huge crowd at the end of Grēcinieku Street on the bank of the river Daugava. Not intentionally though because at first it was only supposed to be their families and friends, but soon enough the commotion drew in a ton of onlookers. To make the most of the sudden attention, both adventurers started selling their commemorative cards to rake in some extra cash for the trip. They were out of their stock in just 10 minutes. But the money just kept coming in as the crowd simply threw donations in their direction anyway. Such was the people’s hunger for sensations and big names. It was going to be the adventure of centuries, for sure!
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Bija, Reinbahs and Jack on the day of departure |
So how did it go? Did they leave their footprint in the Latvian history of world exploration? Barely. And that’s saying a lot. After leaving Riga, they reached Jelgava the same night where people were already waiting for them on every bridge. Here they printed out a fresh batch of the commemorative cards to keep fuelling their trip. In no time they reached Liepāja. Again, a ton of welcomers at the gates of the city celebrating their arrival. Here they spent the evening touring the city selling their photos. After that it was time to head for Danzig in East Prussia. In the German city, they were welcomed by the Latvian consul and the city mayor who happily left their autographs in a special book the travellers carried with them. And that’s it. After that their trail went cold. There were no more news in the press, no letters of any kind. Months went by without so much as a shadow of a whisper…
And then, in October 1926, the biggest Latvian newspaper Jaunākās Ziņas hit the nation with some devastating facts about the two. Allegedly they had failed, only reaching Italy. There a female German world traveller, a swindler, had bewitched Reinbahs to such an extent that both had left Bija alone and gone to Egypt to start a new life there. As for Bija, his fate was left in the dark.
With time their story withered away like dry leaves, and people forgot about the Latvian trailblazers. Then in 1931, the year when they were supposed to return, they were found. Well, one of them. A journalist of the Latvian newspaper Latvis accidentally stumbled upon Reinbahs in a pub in Breslau (nowadays, Wroclaw, Poland). The traveller boasted he had visited 23 countries so far and wanted to settle in Paris. However, he was much less chatty about the fate of his companions…
So much for the first giant leap around the world... While Reinbahs and Bija left people disappointed, it can’t be said about Emanuels Katuļskis. He and Kārlis Liepiņš set out on bicycles from Riga in the same fateful year of 1925. Liepiņš got ill in Rome and had to return home, leaving his companion with the daunting task of completing the journey around the world alone. However, it seems that it only reinforced his concrete will as he reached the Pacific coast by the end of September. From there, he went to Japan, then Australia and eventually landed in Americas. After carving through both continents and having killed 7 wheels and 26 tyres he finally returned home in August 1928.
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Liepiņš and Katuļskis before starting the journey |
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Katuļskis returns home |
So did the hero of the nation dive into the sea of endless parties, red carpets and appearances on radio shows? Did he announce his own line of scented candles and become an underwear model? No, but he did feature in an ad. For bicycles, of course. To be honest, Katuļskis did not have time for any kind of celebrity lifestyle as he already was planning the next big adventure. In 1929, he launched another world tour, this time with a different companion, Masļuks, and a different vehicle. The trustful bicycle was upgraded to a motorcycle with a sidecar. This time the New World was not in the picture (they would discover that later), but the length of the journey was still going to be twice as long as they covered more of Asia and Africa.
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The trustful bicycle in an exhibition in Liepāja. The text under it says: "On this bicycle, the Latvian E. Katuļskis made a trip around the globe" |
They started great doing hundreds of kilometres every day. But no matter how fast Katuļskis ran, bad luck caught up on him again. This time it happened in Greece. A sharp turn in mountains caused the motorcycle to tip over and fall several meters down into a ravine. The vehicle was in shambles and the same could be said about Masļuks. He had to stay in hospital for quite a bit. And yet again Katuļskis continued the journey alone. Having reached Persia, he fell so much in love with this exotic land, he decided to wait for Masļuk’s recovery while travelling around the country. During this time, he made a series of stories about his adventures in the desert that were published in the most popular illustrated Latvian magazine at the time Atpūta. Later Masļuks arrived to Tehran and together they continued with visiting Arabia. The journey then continued to India, China, Australia and New Zealand. Having spent some time in this southern-most corner of the world, they returned to Australia. Bad luck caught up with Katuļskis for the third time to take away his companion yet again. It was not a road accident nor an illness. It was a woman. Masļuks got married and decided that the holy matrimony was an adventure enough for him. So Katuļskis was left alone to cut through the whole continent and enjoy all it’s exotic and danger. Having reached the western coast, he got on a ship to Africa. The last part of the journey took him across the entire length of the black continent from South Africa to Algeria. He returned to Latvia in 1935.
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Katuļskis returns in 1935 |
As with any fad, this one too sprouted some unhealthy offshoots among the youth. Some boys got so intoxicated by this new “drug” that for them just following the stories in papers was not enough. They had to stick out the tongue and taste the dust of road themselves. So there were quite a few who ran away from home to go on a trip around the world. Or so they thought because none of them really got anywhere. They always ended up in the hands of police or railway employees without even managing to leave Latvia. Some were true romantics at heart and went on this adventure with neither a plan nor means. Others were smarter and did their homework… if by that we can call pocketing their parents hard-earned cash. In 1937, three 16-year-olds went as far in their planning as stealing bicycles from the good citizens of Valka. But it did not end there. After catching the rebellious youth, police among their things found an Arabic dictionary, binoculars and even three Finnish daggers…
Thinking about self-defence before travelling to distant lands is definitely a smart move. Of course, if you know what you are doing. But if you are as “lucky” as a golden retriever left alone with a bar of chocolate, you might get yourself in trouble. It was exactly the case with three adolescent boys in Riga who felt only firearms could guarantee safety. Their big idea was to run away to America to seek adventures in the New World. Of course, as per the usual plan of any young adventurer, they snatched their parents’ money to fund the trip. However, these ones felt it would be wise to grab something for their protection too. Back in the day, the stories of dreadful highwaymen in the post-war Latvia were still fresh, so why take risks? One of the lads took his brother’s pistol, the other one ¬grabbed dad’s revolver. After getting off the train in Jūrmala, they had to wait for a while for the next train to Ventspils. And what better way to kill the extra time than trying out the guns. One gun safety violation led to another… and they ended up shooting their third mate in the head. So the trip to America was swapped for a trip to hospital and back to their happy parents…
However, the vast majority of these reckless endeavours by Latvian youth were far from this tragic. Most of them were just disappointing. No, I don’t mean the young men were branded a disappointment by their families. No one was disowned because of failing to go around the world in 80 days or less. Rather it was a big disappointment to their country as the image of Latvia abroad took a hit. Many of these travellers did not have any backing nor even tried to find sponsors. They simply thought they could wing it and relied on compassion of foreigners by turning the classic street corner begging into… slightly different kind of begging – selling their own photos and postcards with Latvian landscapes. This was often done under the name and colours of Latvia, which, of course, left a bad first impression of the Baltic state abroad. Many countries simply deported such adventure-seekers. However, deportation was still better than imprisonment which was exactly what some of our compatriots found in Italy. In this Mediterranean country, selling photos and postcards were strictly regulated and needed a permit. Otherwise it was considered begging which was illegal. But it was not only foreign governments that frowned upon such juvenile activities. If not the parents, then our state representatives abroad did really disown their citizens. As the numbers of these world travellers grew, Latvian consulates in foreign countries more and more often refused to help them with money and visas leaving the broke daredevils on their own.
The Latvian Age of Exploration produced many adventurers but few big names. Turns out getting around the world is neither as easy nor as romantic as it’s portrayed in the books. But that’s exactly where many of the new-born world travellers found their inspiration. Jules Verne, James Fenimore Cooper, Thomas Mayne Reid and other 19th century writers were like bartenders serving all kinds of colourful stories intoxicating the young minds. Many lost their heads and got spanked by their parents, others by Italian prison guards. Some lost their dignity, some lost freedom. Reinbahs for not returning home lost his citizenship. But no even bad press or warnings from our embassies abroad could stop the stream. The young men were riding bicycles, motorcycles or some friendly foreigner’s horsecart or truck when the romanticized travelling on foot turned out to be real pain in the legs. But nobody needs to know that at home, right?
Ways of travelling the world were different but the main activities along the way were the same for everybody – selling their photos and Latvian postcards, as well as collecting autographs of famous people. The first two fuelled their journey while the latter one fuelled their pride. But at least once it served both purposes. It happened with Katuļskis in Panama. He lacked the necessary 500 dollars for a visa for the United States. As the hope was about to die out, the consul, mesmerized by Katuļskis’ book of autographs of statesmen from all around the world, inquired about the countries left to visit. Having heard that it was only the United States to complete the collection, he granted our traveller a visa for free!
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Katuļskis back in Riga in 1928 |