Travels around the Estonian coast

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I was up bright and early this morning for our expedition around northern Estonia. I was greeted at the front desk with some good news - my bag was in the country and being sent my way! Woo!

The Dutch guy who owns the hostel wrote a guide book (THE guidebook in the Dutch speaking world, apparently) to the Baltics and was going to be showing us some cool places around the north in his funky old blue minibus. You always seem to get a good mix from Youth hostels - today was no different. Accompanied by an older Taiwanese lady, a student of Chinese literature (who spelled every other word out to make sure we understood her), and a crew of other backpackers we took to the roads. We drove out of Tallinn past a really run-down suburb of Soviet blocks (Plattenbau is the Dutch / German name, I learned, which describes them perfectly) built around an old sulphur factory. According to our guide, this was where mostly unemployed Russians lived. I was looking forward to my year abroad even more already…

Our trip took to us to an ancient burial site which had been transplanted 20m sideways to make way for a road. No resting in peace for them - it is now one of the main roads across Estonia. We also visited a beautiful old building that was absolutely falling down. This was the estate owner’s mansion, and the peasants who lived and worked on the estate were effectively his slaves. The estates used to be pretty self-sufficient and many were successful. The only sign of life on the estate now was a small grocery shop, in what must once have been a front room.

On our way to our next stop, a waterfall, we were stopped by the police for speeding. However, the guy leading the trip just spoke back in English (despite being perfectly good at Estonian) and after being told “Speed not correct” by the policeman, who was obviously not happy with English, was let off Scot-free…

We stopped for lunch in a roadside café, which was completely unmarked and looked like a shack from the outside. However, inside was a different story. The building inside was like a log cabin and in the corner of the eating area were some ladies selling souvenirs. They weren’t so busy, and I wasn’t surprised, considering the complete lack of any signage on the outside of the building. None of us knew what any of the food was on the menu, so it was a ‘choose a random one and hope for the best’ scenario and I managed to land myself Schnitzel, which was nice! Some of the others didn’t do as well - but from what I could tell, no one got too nasty surprise!

Estonia is pretty low lying and has its fair share of bog land. We visited one national park where walkways had been built across the bog to a viewing platform in the middle. The platform itself was probably 40ft tall and built on a raft - when the whole group was up there it did move quite disconcertingly! However, it was worth it for the views over the heather covered marshland.

As the bus rolled along between stops I had a few good chats with everyone in the bus and we swapped stories about China where three of us had been previously. However, the best part of the day was the trip out to the coast. Arriving in what was translated to us as ‘Captain’s Village’ we walked through the forest out to the water’s edge. The views were breathtaking, and the fresh breeze in the sunshine was great after the squash of the bus. The scenery reminded me of the recent(ish) Russian film ‘Vozvraschenie’. Stupidly, I had managed to not bring my camera, but I snapped a few on my phone which I will put here when I get home. That did allow me, however, to do what I do normally and just find a great place to sit on my own on a rock and soak it all in. I used to hate taking photos. I didn’t even get through a reel on my entire gap year, yet I have great memories of everything by taking a bit of time out now and then and soaking the entire scene in - not just snapping a photo and not looking at it again.

Everyone slept in the bus on the way back to the hostel - must have been the fresh air. That evening I went for food with one of the guys from the trip, a Canadian guy (whose name I forgot and it was too late to ask again!) who had been studying at Cranfield in the UK but was from Newfoundland originally. We had a good chat about travelling, his plans for the rest of his trip and his wife’s obsessions with Corination St.

I went to sleep quite early knackered after they trip, despite the fact we hadn’t done any physical work!

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