Jan Dinsmore, a professor at Wayne State College, was given the opportunity to travel to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in May and June of 2014.

Dinsmore traveled with a group of five couples that were nuclear physicists from Oakridge, Tenn. to see what life was like living in the Baltic Sea countries.

“I wanted to go when I was younger, but couldn’t because I was an American citizen and at the time, the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union prevented me from going,” Dinsmore said.

The group met many interesting people. They met a man who travelled to France to learn how to make a cheese, similar to Brie cheese.

“The cheese was probably cheaper to get homemade from him, rather than buying it in a French store,” Dinsmore said.

The people in Baltic countries enjoy Native American culture.

The group came across many entrepreneurs on their journey. Some of the areas around the shops had women and children painted on the walkways of the street to symbolize pedestrian crossings.

In Estonia, there was a grave area where statues of Vladmir Lenin and Joseph Stalin had been taken down with the fall of the Soviet Union. But thoughout, there seemed to be more Stalin than Lenin statues still standing in those Baltic countries.

The states have all been controlled by Germany, Russia and Sweden at one time or another, and major deportation occured during the 1940’s due to the holocaust.

The three states came together in 1991 to become individual countries.

The presentation was held in Gardner Hall room 108 on Oct. 6.