The week started in Tartu, Estonia’s second city and old university town, and ended in Riga, the capital city of Latvia.
Tartu was very appealing, hilly (unusual in Estonia), with eighteenth century buildings and parks along the river Emajógi. It poured with rain and we had a night of thunderstorms so we had a lazy first day in the nice Hotel Lydia and then on day two walked to the Estonian National Museum.
The museum was most impressive, in a spectacular modern building reminiscent of the abandoned Soviet air hangars which are nearby, and it started with the modern day and went backwards through history. There was a lot of film footage and talking heads which gave a really strong impression of life here over the last 50 years through tough and liberated times.
From there we went down to Rouge in the South East of Estonia where we visited the region of Setomaa where they speak a different language and there is a different feel. It made me think of Peter and the Wolf as there is forest (mixed red pine and silver birch), lots of lakes, and remote wooden farmhouses. We didn’t see ducks but we did see a lot of storks, over 60 birds on each of three days. They’ve been a constant companion since Greece but we’ve never seen as many as this. They’ve now grown up but still occupy their nests when they’re not browsing in the fields and doing impressive group flybys. Later they will emigrate down to sub saharan Africa but for the moment this is clearly a favourite home.
We’ve loved seeing the storks. It’s always been exciting to spot them. Alex’s drawing first and then mine.
The swings are because the Estonians love a swing, mostly communal swings which will hold between two or four or even twenty people. We saw them everywhere.
By our lovely campsite (up above the river and lake with a sauna which we used and a pond which we swam in as part of the sauna routine) is a visitor centre which features a tower which has been built to resemble a giant two storey storks’ nest. There’s a light at the top which lights up pink or blue depending on the baby born in the village. Alex went up (far too vertiginous for me) and if you look very closely you can just see him waving from the top.
The Seto people stretch over into Russia although most now live in Estonia so there are Orthodox churches which are being restored although most have been abandoned. We visited a charming small museum where they were getting ready for the election of the next King of the village. This last year’s King is a young woman with a baby (the Prince) and their job is to do good by the Seto people so, for instance, ensuring that children learn Seto as well as Estonian. Again, song is extremely important and has been the way of keeping the language and the culture alive.
Here is a typical farmhouse and an orthodox church.
We drove along the Russian border. It feels very strange. We were in deep rural peaceful countryside and there is a significant barb-wired wall running the entire length of the border past farmhouses and fields built by the Estonians, and why wouldn’t they? We drove up to the border crossing (people can drive over) and to our amazement saw the only other English vehicle we have seen in this entire five months and it was in the queue to cross over.
Before we leave Estonia I’m including the painting I did of the Tallinn skyline inspired by the Estonian flag. The flag was devised by students of Tartu university in 1881 as part of the independence movement. They chose blue for the sky, black for the soil and a reminder of the darkness of oppression which must never come again, and white for freedom.
We spent 12 nights altogether in Estonia and we really liked it. It’s a beautiful country and has a strong sense of their pride in who they are and what they’ve achieved. (Amongst other things we have an Estonian to thank for Skype, they’re big on IT as well as song and swings!).
And so we drove into Latvia on a wet and grey day, stopping at Cesis with its fine castle and medieval streets on the way to the coast. Latvia has 500 kms of golden sand on totally unspoilt beaches all along its coast. We stopped just North of Saukrasti in Lauçi where the sun shone and we were struck by the beauty and wildness of the shore with boulders from the ice age (boulders from Southern Finland).
From there we drove to Riga which is a great city of many different parts. Riga is the largest of the three Baltic capital cities It stands on the huge river Daugava and was a major Hanseatic League port so it has an impressive medieval centre but it also has more Art Nouveau buildings than any other city in the world.
It has beautiful parks with a canal which winds past grand buildings out to the river on which we took a great boat trip. We went to a Peruvian restaurant which is the first non national (or pizza) restaurant we’ve seen the whole time we’ve been away other than in Athens. And the market was sensational. I’ve never seen so much smoked fish of many different varieties anywhere and the fruit market was full of berries, cherries, apricots, nectarines. But it also has a lot of now abandoned Soviet buildings.
The city has a number of very powerful museums commemorating the terrible times they have lived through and the devastating loss of life. Tens of thousands of Jews were shot by the Nazis and there are very few Jews left today. And then tens of thousands of other Latvians were deported to Siberia by the Soviets. And those who survived the terrible gulags came back to find that they were treated as “deportees” and not entitled to basic rights.
We both found the Museum of Occupation profoundly moving. There is a lot for Latvians to recover from and to rebuild. Photographs show the devastation caused first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets after the despicable secret agreement (Ribbentrop/Molotov) between Hitler and Stalin that Russia could have Eastern Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The Museum of the Barricades showed us how courageous they have been even very recently. In 1991 the Soviet Union had still not accepted Latvian independence. Thousands of people barricaded essential buildings against the Soviet tanks risking their lives (and people did die) and although it took some years, the Soviets did eventually release control.
We’ve come away from Riga feeling very impressed by this fine city but also just how grim the whole of the twentieth century was for them and how immensely lucky we are not to have lived through or grown up with this.
And finally, the map to date!
