Gullnas blogg

Back home again! :) The circle is complete!

Some final words ... maybe later ...

Teaming up with Chris and Andy once again. We take the bus to the open air museum of Rocca del Mare, west of Tallinn. This is a large area in the forest close to the sea with old, authentic estonian farm houses on display. They are all from late 18th century to early 20th century. It's quite beautiful and the buildings are very well preserved. There's also a number of windmills and a water mill. The large Dutch style wind mill gives a good idea of how a windmill works -- if you figure it out; luckily Andy is an engineer and Chris an architect :)

Before leaving we have a small meal of traditional Estonian food; karask, a barley bread, and kama, a meal of rye, oat, barley and sour milk. Interesting! Quite good! It tasted good, while the smell was a bit strange. Reminds you of youghurt, or rather kefir, with müsli.

After short walk in old town and a quick visit to the Occupation Museum I say goodbye to Chris and Andy. I pick up my other bag at the hostel and make it to the ferry just a few minutes after boarding closes. My final transport after eight and a half months on the road! I'm looking forward to a relaxing overnight trip to Stockholm. I've payed to be alone in my cabin and I'm going to stay away from all the drunk Swedes ... earplugs ready ...

Chris, Andy and I finally give up the idea of going to the National Park at Sõvu, and instead we take the bus to Pirita, a few kilometers east of Tallinn. We take a look at the ruins of the Saint Bridgid (swe. Sankta Birgitta) cloister just by the bus stop. Birgitta is the only Swedish saint and started a new orden, The Bridgettine Orden, permitted by the pope, in the 14th century. She had her own ideas how to run and build a cloister. The Pirita cloister was built in the beginning of the 15th century, after her death, but according her plans and ideas. I knew about Birgitta, even though not much, and for sure not that there once was a cloister here.

We meet a number of Americans in the ruins and this couple actually has a house newly built close to the ruins. During construction they found remains of the living quarters of the workers of the cloister, and parts of it is now in their garden and basement.

We take the bus to the TV tower but it's closed. We take a stroll in the botanical garden and hike along the river and end up by the cloister. After checking out the beach and the marina we head back to Tallinn.

I take a walk along the bastions, the defense construction built mainly in the 18th century if I remember correctly, and designed by the swede Erik Dahlberg. The oldest part of it is the Hermann Tower which dates back to the 16th century. I take a closer look at the tower and the museum it houses before I leave for my bus.

Photo: The Hermann Tower.

My Swedish-bought Italian sunglasses that I stepped on in Korea, manually put back together in China, broke a bit further in Russia now leaves this world for a better place as one of the glasses breaks into a thousand pieces as I take a taxi to the hostel. Rest in peace. Thank you for your time.

The hostel is located in Tallinn's beautiful old town. We team up and go out for dinner; Chris (UK), Andy (UK) and Frank (Germany). Afterwards we take a stroll up to the Alexander Nevsky orthodox russian style church, on Toompea hill with a view of Tallinn by night.

I check out and take the bus to Narva, Estonia, just across the border. Narva has about 75000 inhabitants only, and I don't think there's much to do here for a visitor. I choose to stop in Narva because my journey towards Tallinn is more pleasant with a stop on the way. It's four hours from St Petersburg to Narva and three hours from Narva to Tallinn. Plus, I take the opportunity to take one night in a hotel instead of a hostel. I've been looking forward to privacy, an electrical outlet to be able to shave, and a decent shower. The Moscow and St Petersburg accommodations were quite bad!

Estonia and the city Narva was once part of the Swedish empire. It is well known to (some) Swedes because of a battle in the year 1700, when king Charles XII who only 18 years old led his army of 17000 men and won over Russia's Peter the Great's 40000 men. He won the battle, but lost the war, through a series of losses in Poland and Russia.

I have lunch at the hotel's restaurant and will have to say it felt like the best meal I've had in months! After the Russian small portions of boring food and dry meet, train food and Mongolian cuisine, it was plain happiness to get a delicious pork main course, mineral water that actually taste something, and a piece of bread which reminds me of Sweden. It brought a smile to my face. And add a dessert of icecream and hot raspberry sauce to that ...

I read Estonian history and understand that they've had a rough time. After the second world war Estonia fought extremely well with limited resources, in what's called the Estonian Liberation War, 1918-20, against Russia's Red Army. Britain helped, as did Scandinavian countries and Finland. It ended with the Red Army surrendering and giving up Estonia completely.

In 1939 the Red Army came back though. Russia demanded access to Estonias territory in the war against Hitler. It resulted in occupation and installation of a communist government and they made Estonia part of the Soviet Union. In a year or two they had lost it all to Hitler though. In 1944 they managed to take it back. This year Narva was completely destroyed, mainly due to Russias bombing of the city.

So, most of the old architecture was destroyed.

I take a walk after my meal and take a look at the old City Hall building which have been restored since the 1950's.

Beautiful weather today, warm. I manage to buy a bus ticket for tomorrow, plus some clothes. Philip, from New Zealand, check in and we go downtown, have lunch and walk around for a while. We also go up to the colonnade in the St Isaac's Cathedral. It's a pretty nice view of the town up there.

Tired after all the walking yesterday I spend the day at an Internet-café. I update my blog and organize my onward journy to Estonia and back home to Stockholm. The end is near!

Today Russia celebrates the victory over nazi Germany; "Victory Day". On the big square, The Palace Square, by the Winter Palace (Hermitage) there will be speaches and music etc.

The weather is great, the sun is shining. Janet and I meet up by her hotel near Nevsky Prospect, the avenue that ends at the Winter Palace. We wait for Cem and his brother but they can't make it in time.

It's a quarter to ten and thousands of people are moving towards the square. Janet and I go to the canal bridge north of the palace where military vehicles are lined up, ready to move on in to the square. The square itself is packed with people, or so we guess, and we did not even try to go there. Now we don't have a great view of the square and the stage and what goes on there, but instead we're very close to the military vehicle parade. There's two lines of them, on each side of the canal, and they join forces right where we're standing.

I was hoping for more actually. It was not much, nothing special, and no tanks at all, mainly trucks with soldiers and missiles. The lack of tanks in the St Petersburg parade is easy to understand when you read about the budget for the parade in Moscow: they have allocated over 1 billion roubles for repairs of the damage the military vehicles cause to the streets, pipes, drainage and sewers. And by the way, this parade tradition was suspended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, but was revived this year. And in Siberia they don't have any garbage collection ...

After this we just walk around randomly, have lunch, and kill time until five o'clock when there's a war veteran parade on Nevsky Prospect. A lot of old men, and women, with a lot of shiny medals. And they are all very happy!

We have dinner at Marius' Pub, a really good restaurant if you ask me. I have the classic eastern European/russian/ukrainian beet soup, borsch (borsjtj). Super delish! :) Time flies and sadly we're far away from the river and the fireworks at 10 pm. We missed the whole thing. But I wonder if it was that great anyway .... because why the heck do they shoot fireworks when it's not dark outside yet?

I walk or rather run through the Hermitage ... maybe all of it, I don't know. I'm relatively bored. I contact Janet who's also in town (while Celia who she travelled with is in Estonia). She happens to have just walk through the Hermitage too. I meet up Janet and Cem (Turkey) and we have a beer and dinner, then go for a walk and have a cup of tea.

The only novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky I've read is Crime and Punishment, so after yesterdays incident, what is more suitable than to pay the Dostoyevsky museum a visit? :) After that I follow one of the suggested walking routes on the tourist map. I really had no idea what else to do. But I got a good image of the town.