Estonia: Tartu

Monday 17th July

Oh no! Woke up in the middle of the night with a gippo guts! Think it was the sausage we made on the braai last night as the 2 Dutch girls had the same problem. Worst of all, we were due to sit on busses all day! We all packed up camp early morning to find the local bus to the town, where the first of 3 busses towards Tartu in Estonia was leaving at 9am. We missed it!! Not a good start. The initial itinerary busses linked up perfectly so now we wern't sure how things would proceed. As it turned out everything went pretty smoothly, except for the heat inside the bus. We reached the border of Latvia and Estonia at the border town of Valka. Usually the busses we've taken, cross borders at a major river, directly into the new country, with a stop for passport control guys to board and check documents. But this time our bus terminated in Latvia and we had to walk across the border into Estonia. No rivers inbetween, just a gate with officials sitting at a control station. How they pinpointed this particular spot is anyones guess! In we walked and THEN crossed a river in search of the next bus station for our linking bus. David went into the info office and us girls sat in the shade of an old Estonian church. After about 15 minutes he hadn't returned! Where was he? He wasn't in the info office anymore. Should we wait a bit longer or assume that he'd meet us at the bus station [which we still had to find and only had 45 minutes]. We decided to not waste time and just hope that David would be there at 3pm. En route we still had to draw some local currency and buy some snacks for the bus [and find the bus station]. To make things a bit worse, it was still hot. Anyway, we eventually got to the bus station where David was frantically waving at us from the middle of the street!! We had 10 minutes to go before the bus departed and had to buy tickets still. David couldn't buy them because I had the new currency with me!! Panics over, we climbed onto a very dirty and ramshackle bus where half the seats were broken! 90% of this journey was on a gravel road as the entire route is under construction. It was shake, rattle and roll all the way, very dusty and very slow. It reminded me of the bus trips that go through the Himalay mountains as it took 2 hours to do 86km!! Climbing off that bus in Tartu was such a relief. To stretch the legs and to breathe fresh cooling air!! Now to find a place to rest our weary heads. There was a university student place which offered accommodation and once we'd found it, saw it was a pretty new building with excellent rooms, even a TV in each room. Luxury or what? The 2 Dutch girls are only here for 1 night so they went out into the town straight away whilst we chilled out and relaxed.

"The City Of Good Thoughts"

Tuesday 18th July

Tartu, Estonias 2nd largest city has a lot more going for it than first meets the eye. It has the nickname of "City of Good Thoughts" and it's not hard to see or feel why. Being the main university town in the country, it has a definite creative and intellectual aura with an artsy and spiritual edge. Behind the main town hall square is Toome Hill which hides the brick red ruins of the 13th century Dome Cathedral. Picturesque against the greenery of the gardens and a photographers delight. There are monuments scattered everywhere mostly of the old universitys best and brightest. The most prominent being Karl Ernst von Baer who founded modern day embryology and that of Oscar Wilde the famous Irish writer. There are bridges all around with names such as Angels Bridge and Devils Bridge, there's an old observatory from 1810 which in those days had the most powerful telescope in the world. Ther's even an ancient sacrificial stone [one of 400 in the country], where pre-Christian Estonians used to worship their pagan gods. Nowadays, students come here to sacrificially burn their lecture notes after exams!!

We visited the KGB Cell museum in the afternoon. It's housed in the original infamous "Grey House" which was the regional KGB headquarters in the 40's and 50's. the exhibition is cleverly laid out inside the actual lockup cells, with the oh so claustrophobic solitary confinement rooms open for the visitor to sit in and get a feel of being closed in for a week or 2 in a 2-foot square diameter, pitch dark cell! Inside there is room for only 1 small wooden seat and a lavatory bucket. That's it! the prisoners were fed once every 3 days and the gourmet meal consisted of half litre water, half liter soup and 200g of bread. Talk about the destruction of the human psyche.

All round, we found Tartu to be unexpectedly and surprisingly interesting, but had only planned to be here one day. Tomorrow we go to the island of Saaremaa on the west of Estonia.

Wed 19th July

Change of plan! Another day in Tartu because we couldn't get a bus early to Saaremaa early enough. Instead we visited the bus station and booked a seat for an early start tomorrow. So.... what did we do instead? A bit more strolling around, a visit to the local market where I bought a new pair of long triple zipoff pants!! My jeans had given up the ghost due to constant wearing and they had come apart at the seams, unrepairable. We discovered a fish market at crazy cheap prices. Guess what we had for dinner tonight? The fish was approx R5 for 4 huge pieces!! Dunno what we bought tho, as everything was labelled in Estonian. Nothing better than a good surprise.

Later in the day we went to seek out the Tartu Toy museum as we'd read that it was worth visiting. And it was. the first section was mainly real kids stuff with a lot of hands-on interactive games and we thought 'oh no'!! The further into the museum we ventured the more interesting it became. There was the most stunning collection of original handmade dolls all in national costumes from around the world. There were old and beautiful teddy bears and displays of puppets and marionettes from countries around the globe - glove puppets, string puppets, shadow puppets - and the costumes they wore were all handmade and exquisite to see. These are just a few of the many interesting items in the museum. It was a great way to end the day and afterwards we went back to feast on our fish!! which tasted OK but was so full of teeny weeny bones that it was impossible to eat. Won't be buying that again.