Day Trippin'

Inside Reiga Kirik
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Our friends Mark and Susan were getting married on Saturday.  We hoped our postcard from Estonia would suffice in place of us.

During Saturday morning we helped Alice clear some rubbish from a building in Kõrgessaare, though we didn't really manage to do much. It was a bit hard not knowing any Estonian to communicate with the other people that were helping out. One thing that we've learnt is that Soviet times were not the cleanest!!

...a bottle of French bubbles...

And the outside
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The afternoon was spent exploring northern Hiiumaa and its east coast. Our first stop was the nearby Reiga church, a pleasant stop but we bumped into a tour group there! The newly opened Military Museum was a let down because there weren't any English displays but Sean gave a try at reading some German battle reports. The people who were looking after it were awfully nice and didn't charge us entry because of the limited English there.

Tahkuna Lighthouse (EEK20) had a great view and nearby is a monument remembering the children who died in a ferry disaster in 1994 between Estonia and Finland. A total of 852 people died. This is the piece of land that is closest to where the disaster occurred. Viewable from the lighthouse is a labyrinth that started off small but has been added to by visitors over the years and is huge. We contributed a couple of stones.

Adrienne ringing the bell at the ferry memorial
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We visited Ristimägi (Hill of Crosses - not much of a hill though, this land is flaaat!).  There used to be a community of Swedish people who lived on Hiiumaa, but Catherine the Great ordered the last 1200 to be sent to the Ukraine in 1781 where they lost their freedom.  A local farmer placed a cross on the hill where the church stood in which they held their last service.  Now it is a tradition for visitors to make a cross out of natural items and place it in the spot.  There are hundreds of crosses lining the pathways.  In the 1920s, the descendants of the Swedish were allowed to return to Sweden and most now live on the island of Gotland.

View from Tahkuna lighthouse. The memroial is on the left and the labyrinth on the right
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There is also a legend about this place.  A long time ago there was a wedding party travelling from Kärdla that met a wedding party travelling from the other direction.  Neither would give way to the other and in the ensuing fight, the groom from one party and the bride from the other were killed.  Once the fighting had stopped and people had realised what they had done, they decided they should put it all behind them and the remaining bride and groom got married (love triumphs over all).

Part of the Hill of Crosses, one of them is ours
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We made it to the Hiiumaa crater but there wasn't very much to see. It's 4 km in diameter and covered with trees. Kallaste Pank grabbed our attention on the map. It turned out to be a bluff in a forest, which although not a stunning sight provided us with a good walk and an opportunity to enjoy a beautiful forest, without anyone else bothering us. It was something that had been hard to imagine in most of the places we had visited in Asia.

Suuremõisa Manor is a huge Baroque house built in the 1750s-70s that now houses a primary school. We wandered around the outside taking in the Estonian style of the time. There wasn't that much to see really, but some kids hiding behind some bushes tried (and failed) to scare us.

Kallaste Pank- it's where the sea used to be
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Sean's work permit for the UK had been approved the previous day, so we thought a bottle of French bubbles would be fitting (EEK40, NZ$5!!). That night we drank it with Priidu and Alice talking away. One of the interesting things to come out was that no one they knew had voted for Estonia to join the EU. During our stay here, we found that the people we met were viewing it like a second Soviet occupation. It's understandable in a country that hasn't seen much independence.

Our week finished with Alice heading to Finland for a course and us blogging the day away.