On telling friends and family that Vicky and I were off to a tour of the Baltics (well, Estonia and Latvia anyway) taking in not just the tourist/stag party Meccas of Tallinn and Riga but also heading out of the capitals to the largely ignored towns of Tartu and Parnu we were greeted with a raised eyebrow and the "uh huh, ok...." response of uncertainty. This reaction sums up the position the Baltics has taken up (and remains to hold) despite the current four year membership of the European Union and is a stark reminder of its time spent on the wrong side of the "Iron Curtain".
Getting to Tallinn couldn’t have been easier however with a short, cheap flight from Berlin Schoenefeld costing a mere 30€. I had been to Tallinn once before in 2006 as a celebration of graduating from Bath with my course mate Mike, but that was at the height of summer, when the town was literally buzzing....I was eager to get back and see what it would be like 'out of session' and see how the reported boom had changed the city since 2006.
30/03/08-01/04/08On arrival it was clear that Tallinn had changed, the
airport had been revamped and on stepping out into the snow covered arrival point the skyscrapers illuminated a modern, high-tech, productive route into the medieval centre of the old town. We'd booked into the
CityBike Hostel on Nunne Street which could hardly be rivalled for price and centrality to the centre of the old town and comes highly recommended not just for position but for its facilities and cleanliness too. Our first morning in Tallinn was spent roaming around the old town, getting lost in the quaint winding cobbled streets and enjoying the spring sunshine in the main town square. A word of warning should be added however concerning the supposedly "Number 1 cafe in Tallinn"
Kehrwieder which was more than disappointing with agonisingly slow service and miserable sandwiches; contrary to what the name suggests we would not "be returning"! Other than this minor disappointment the rest of Tallinn impresses beyond comparison and is best enjoyed at a leisurely stroll around town absorbing the atmosphere. In the afternoon we decided to take a bus outside of town and along the coast to the small wooded suburb of Pireta which offers impressive views of the Old City
centre from the coast as the ancient towers of the town's fortifications play optical illusions as the towers line up with one another. Also worth exploring along the coast was the huge war memorial dedicated to German soldiers which is (intentionally) split by the road.
01/04/08-02/04/08 After a morning of catching the last sites in Tallinn itself we made our way to the Bus Station (quite a way from the centre of town!) to catch one of the many buses heading the 250 or so kilometres across the country to the university town of Tartu. The journey itself was enjoyable if not a little unexpected. The landscape of Estonia is incredibly green and flat so that the entire route from Tallinn to Tartu was through near unbroken forest with a single stop enroute in Poltsamaa which appeared suddenly from the dense forest and disappeared just as quickly as we left it.
In Tartu our accommodation was at Hostel Terviseks which was seemingly difficult to find due to the fact that the Colin, the friendly Canadian owner of the hostel, is not allowed to hang a sign in front of the building advertising its existence. Look then for a
small 10x10cm flyer blue tacked to the door!!! The hostel itself is fairly new and could probably be best described as more "sofa-surfing" that hostelling as it basically boils down to kipping in a spare room in a flat where 8 bunk beds have been installed with free run of all the facilities! The place is extremely welcoming, laid-back, central, cheap AND includes breakfast so shouldn't be grumbled at nor overlooked! After a walk around the main sights of the town (cathedral ruins, the university, town square etc.) the daily search for food began, ending after much 'umming and ahhing' at the
Georgian Embassy with an amazing meal.
02/04/08-03/04/08 We left Tartu on the morning of the 2nd April to head to Parnu on the coast to enjoy as full-a-day as possible by the sea. The only regret leaving Tartu early was that we were unable to explore a more bizarre sight of the town, the Anatomical Museum which reputably has a 5kg pickled testicle on display which I thought would be worth the 5EEK entry to gawp at but sadly it was not to be! Again the bus journey passed by in a 2.5hr blur of greenery across,
what seems to be, largely uninhabited areas of countryside as I envied how much green space there was in this small country.
The 15min from the Bus Station to the
Hotel Staadioni was along wide open streets and through many wooded parks in the town heading always towards the coast. The "Hotel" itself is actually a part of the town's stadium, which in all honesty has seen better days. As for the hostel, it is rather basic with communal showers but at only 300EEK a room you'll be hard pressed to find some else to dump your bags and lay your head only 100m from the beach - for this reason alone it’s a treasure of a find.
Parnu holds the title of "Estonia's Third Capital" and is apparently
the destination of choice for holidaying Estonians. In sunny early April however it presents itself more as a sleepy spa town waiting for the pages of the calendar to be turned over before the tourists appear and the beach houses, restaurants and spas can open for business. This however didn't bother us as we were content to wander around town sampling traditional Estonian dishes and beers and then strolling
along the sea front. We also decided to take the obligatory 2.5km walk along the breakwater out to sea, which on this calm, sunny day had a somewhat surreal quality to it and was great fun!
03/04/08-05/04/08 Mid-morning on the third we took our Eurolines connection from Parnu to Riga in Latvia pausing only briefly at the now abandoned border control since the Schengen Trade zone was expanded doing away with the need to show any identification as we crossed the border. Arriving in Riga came as something as a shock after the week spent in the tiny capital of Tallinn and the small towns of Tartu and Parnu. Riga by contrast boasts 800,000 inhabitants and the traffic (i.e. trying to anticipate the reckless driving style of the Latvians as it borders on sheer dangerousness), bustle and dust took a few moments to acclimatise to. Within 10mins of arriving we had found
Central Hostel Riga our base for a few nights and were then on our way back into town to take in the sights of the Old Town.
Riga, for me, has a very different feel than Tallinn in that although both have an "Old Town Centre"
Riga feels to have a dynamic drive to 'modernise', 'develop' and "westernise" whereas Tallinn seems content to cling to its traditional, Hansastadt, historical underpinnings. Evidence of this change can be seen in the cars that are driven in Riga, the number of high-end Porsche, BMWs, Bentleys (!) etc that are on display is truly staggering. Financial development in Riga is also obvious but whereas in Tallinn this has been confined to the outskirts of the city, in Riga this encroaches into the centre of town threatening the revocation of Riga's UNESCO heritage status.
On our second day in Riga we felt that we had discovered the 'main' sights of the Old Town and were persuaded by James from
Eat Riga to
"get out of the tourist trap of the old town and discover the REAL Riga", so we paid our 5Lats each and joined him on a 3hr tour of the areas most visitors over look. The highlight of the tour by far was the Flee Market which was truly staggering to witness.
By the evening we decided that we would scrap the last few Lats that we had together and sample some of Latvia's Russian influence in
the "Slavu Restorans" taking in a tasty Russian beer and ending it with an ice cold Vodka before falling well fed and weary into bed only to have to pack the next morning to fly back to Germany........
Estonia's Flag
Map of Estonia