The Curonian Spit is a fascinating UNESCO world heritage site, exotic landform, summer resort and the heart of a historic fishing culture. In the resort hotspot of Nida, the Parnidis Dune rears south of town, providing a bulwark against the Kallingrad enclave of Russia just two kilometres away. At the height of the Cold War, Nikita Khruschev permitted noted philospher Jean-Paul Sartre and his companion feminst writer Simone de Beauvoir to cavort on the dunes in 1965. Sartre is acknowledged by a statue entitled 'Against the Wind'. De Beauvoir has been airbrushed from the site, perhaps blown away by a storm on the Baltic Sea.
Storms were an everpresent threat for the fisherman of the villages of the spit. Their boats, the kurėnai, bore on their main masts a weathervane. Not so much for determining wind direction, but as an identification of the village of origin of the vessel, and a talisman for its safe return from the travails of the day. Of oak, and gaily painted, the windvanes bear images of village life, the symbol of their home port, and a crowning avatar of the sun, for luck and good fortune.
Today, tourists walk the promenades at Nida, at Juodkrante or at Priema or Parvalka , above their heads, the windvanes twirl. No longer atop a fishing boat, but still a siren call to those who go down to the sea in boats.
Storms were an everpresent threat for the fisherman of the villages of the spit. Their boats, the kurėnai, bore on their main masts a weathervane. Not so much for determining wind direction, but as an identification of the village of origin of the vessel, and a talisman for its safe return from the travails of the day. Of oak, and gaily painted, the windvanes bear images of village life, the symbol of their home port, and a crowning avatar of the sun, for luck and good fortune.
Today, tourists walk the promenades at Nida, at Juodkrante or at Priema or Parvalka , above their heads, the windvanes twirl. No longer atop a fishing boat, but still a siren call to those who go down to the sea in boats.