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I
reached the beach paradise of Pärnu, located my hotel and purchased the last
transport ticket I would need, for a bus to Tallinn. All remaining transportation needs were
pre-arranged before I left Taiwan. Hungry,
I sat down at a cafe near my hotel. I
had a pork schnitzel with cheese sauce served on a large bed of delectable roast
potatoes with a side of coleslaw. It was
spectacularly Western and decadent.
While wolfing down that joy, I realised that this town would certainly
have been better enjoyed with friends. I
love traveling alone, and I seldom get lonely, but this haven had a distinct
holiday-maker ambience which reminded me of many happy (shared) vacations in
Thailand.
Pärnu
is very beautiful. Lots of tall trees,
green spaces everywhere, cool eateries and a gorgeous beach. I ambled down to this beach and watched the sun
worshippers at play. The beach was both
broad and long, with plenty of room to sunbathe, engage in water sports, or sip
piña coladas alfresco. I did
none of the above. Instead I just
enjoyed the whoosh of the waves, the whisper of the breeze and the whoops of
children playing in the sand. There was
also some eye candy. The further north I
travelled, the taller and more handsome the men grew, and here many were
shirtless and buff. Pärnu has long been
the preferred beach destination in the region, attracting people from as far
away as Russia and probably many former Soviet lands. I also met Finns while I was enjoying my
schnitzel.
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| Parnu Beach (more) |
On my
way back from the beach, I headed by Inge Villa Hotel. This place constituted the only mistake I had
made in my frenzied and complicated plans for the trip. Everything was booked, but on June 11 at
somewhere around 1am, I got a call while I was snuggly asleep at home in
Taiwan. I usually turn my phone onto
airplane mode before I slumber so as not to be disturbed, but I had somehow
forgotten that night. It was this very
Inge Villa, enquiring where I was. In a
daze I finally got out of bed to check my bookings and indeed found that I had
booked the room a month early. I know it
was dumb, but Jun and Jul can look the same if one is in a hurry. I decided to show myself and apologise for
the inconvenience in person.
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| Streets of Parnu (more) |
Then I
returned to my hotel, asked for the nearest supermarket, and had my staple
dinner of smoked salmon, bread, fruit and salad in the room. The next morning, I was awakened by someone
shouting "Help! Help! Help!" somewhere in the streets below. It was remarkably unpleasant to be woken like
that, and I'm ashamed to announce that my immediate thought was that some football
reveller had gotten himself into hot water.
Later I realised that it had in fact been the seagulls calling from the
skies above and that all was well.
Birds overhead
After
breakfast, I returned to the shopping centre with the supermarket and found
a store selling CDs of classical music by Estonian composers. I'd
previously bought music by Arvo Pärt, so I
asked for composers I'd never heard of. I walked off with works by Gustav Ernesaks, Villem & Artur Kapp, and Erkki-Sven Tuur. Then I made my way around the small town centre to take in the
recommended sights. It was certainly pretty. At length I arrived at the Museum of New Art,
housed with succulent irony in the former Communist Party headquarters. The contrast between the building's exterior
and its inner exhibition was striking.
Said contradiction was made ever more poignant by a photographic display
of the horrors taking place in the Ukraine at the time of my visit. In deference, I did not take pictures of
those pictures, but I did take others.
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| Museum of New Art (more) |
Next I
made my way to the Pärnu Museum, chronicling 11,000 years of regional
history. Livonian, Russian and Soviet
relics are among the fascinating displays.
Here I met another young historian who explained a few things to me, and
pointed out the building across the road the museum was hoping to acquire in
order to display more of its collection.
After this, I returned to my hotel to rest.
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| Parnu Museum (more) |
Next on
the agenda was Tallinn. An early bus
took me north. I dropped my luggage at
my hotel, after which the first order of business was to locate a) the bus stop
for the next morning's ride to the airport, b) the ferry terminal for my trip
to Helsinki a few days later and c) the hotel where I would stay between
Iceland and St Petersburg. I was glad I
had taken the time because the bus stop proved a little confusing - most buses
stop in the basement of Viru Keskus Shopping Centre, but the one to the airport
stops on the road beside it. Then I got lost
at the port - I first found myself in the cargo area and it took a while and a
few questions to find the passenger terminal.
Interesting, I thought, was that the security person who helped me, upon
looking at my ticket, pronounced Viking Line "vee-king line". Are English speakers all wrong, or is that
just the Estonian pronunciation?
It was in
Tallinn that I first registered poverty.
The occasional older man was looking through trash cans, although I had
also seen this in Pärnu. But here there
was the addition of unsavoury characters on public transport. Obvious vagrants sat beside well-kept
people. One was bandaged and still
seeping blood as he stumbled onto the tram with an open beer - before
noon. His companion was also drunk but
not beat up. On the next ride were two
similar characters carrying bags of plastic and glass bottles (it would seem to
collect recycling fees). The locals did
not look shocked nor did they react in any way, and the vagrants did not pester
anyone at all. I read somewhere that
public transport was free for residents of Tallinn, making it the first (and I
think I read the only) European city to apply this rule. This is perhaps an explanation for the
questionable commuters.
Reconnaissance
done, it was time to eat. On Raekoja
plats (a square in Old Town), I found a restaurant serving traditional Estonian
cuisine. It was great to see salt and pepper on the
table (though that had been true throughout this trip - it is NOT something you
find on a table in Taiwan), and I ordered pork rolled with mushrooms and served
with a beetroot sauce. Absolutely
delightful! Both the place where I ate
and its neighbor had high school boys on the plaza inviting passers-by to
enter. I did not see a single person
accept their invitation - poor brutes.
All service personnel in the cafes and shops were dressed in medieval
clothes to heighten the historical mood of the neighbourhood. Tallinn Old Town is billed as a fairy tale
location, and it decidedly lends itself to the filming of a historical
documentary or indeed a Grimm tale.
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| Tallinn, Estonia, first time (more) |
I got to see very little of Tallinn because the next day I
had an early flight to Reykjavik (via Helsinki and Oslo). Not to
worry, I'd be returning. I retired to my
hotel with my usual supermarket dinner. I liked this hotel because there was a
fridge in the room, the receptionist was pleasant, and she agreed to keep one
of my bags while I was away. However,
the room was once again too hot, and I could not open the window - there was no
handle on it! I woke well early because
of the scarcely absent sun, made it to the bus stop I'd located the day before
and was off to the airport with the smaller suitcase that had thus far been
packed inside the hard-case. It was a
relief to not have to carry my purchases - CDs, books and gifts - or indeed all
my clothes, and my bag was much lighter.
The flight from Tallinn to Helsinki has to be the shortest I
have ever taken - it lasted all of twenty minutes. At Helsinki the wait was over three hours and
I whiled away those hours by calculating the lengths of my various
journeys. If this bores you to tears,
skip it.
1. Taipei to Vilnius
|
24 hours
|
2. Vilnius to Trakai
|
35 mins
each way
|
|||
3. Vilnius to Kaunas
|
about 2
hours
|
4. Kaunas to Šiauliai
|
about 3
hours
|
|||
5. Šiauliai to Riga
|
2 ½ hours
|
6. Riga to Rundale
|
2 hours
each way
|
|||
7. Riga to Pärnu
|
2 3/4
hours
|
8. Pärnu to Tallinn
|
2 hours
|
|||
9. Tallinn to Reykjavik
|
12 hours
each way
|
10. Tallinn to Helsinki
|
3 ½ hours
each way
|
|||
11. Helsinki to St Petersburg
|
19 hours
each way, but overnight
|
12. Tallinn to Taipei
|
24 hours
|
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The reason
this came to mind was this: it's the relative quick transits between points of
interest that made my run through the Baltics more pleasant than my run through
Africa 11 years ago. What I mean here is
just that moving from one place to the next can get tiresome when the distances
are great and the stops are short. In
Africa, it often took two days to get to the next destination. There was also one 22 hour bus trip and one
40 hour train ride. Anyway, moving
on.......
I was so startled at Helsinki Airport that people enter and
exit planes in the same area. Usually,
disembarking passengers are funneled through a separate set of passages,
removed from those who are boarding.
There was also no unnecessary double screening of hand luggage. In most places I've travelled, passengers
have to repeatedly put their bags through security checks before their second
and third flights. This seems silly to
me because they were already checked at the start of the first flight, and
transiting passengers are not allowed beyond the transit area, so where do they
pick up forbidden items? In addition,
having traveled quite extensively to many different parts of the world, it
seems to me that airport security checks are equally thorough and diligent the
world over. Then I read that this
convenience only applied to passengers arriving from and leaving to other parts
of the European Union. All travelers
from without had to go through the troublesome checks.
Coming in to land at Oslo Airport, while the clouds bounced
us around, I caught glimpses through the white torture at the ground
below. There lay a lush plain, alive
with myriad shades of green, from pastels all through the range to the
deepest tones.
