We went to the Estonian National Opera to hear an unlikely “My Fair Lady” in Estonian. The alternative would be to go there on another day, but it was way better to go on the actual birthday. Also, since today is a US holiday, I didn’t have to work, so we could plan a no-rush return to Helsinki.
There are several photos and videos on the Opera website, but almost all of them are with different artists than the ones we heard yesterday (the ones below look like the right ones :))
At the ferry terminalStill Christmas at the terminalOn the ferryArriving to TallinnA view from our room at the My City Hotel
After our last time experience with a Medieval hotel we decided on slightly more modern option and chose My City Hotel which is located in a 20th century building and decorated in the 18th century style. We loved it.
At reception they asked me whether it was my birthday, and presented mw with a cute little box of local chocolate:
The room had a normal desk, which is a rarity as we found the hard way 🙂
We returned to Tallinn at 8 PM and had a very late dinner at Pepper Sack:
I took the outside photo the next day, at daylightMoose meatballsApple and raisin cinnamon crepesSorbet boatThe Holland-style Townhall photoContinue reading “Back To Tallinn”→
Narva is a border city, and nowadays, this border does not look peaceful. People who compare Tallinn and Narva might consider the latter one “depressed,” but that’s only if they never saw Ivangorod, a Russian city on the other side of the bridge. Boris saw both because he crossed this border a couple of times, and he says the contrast is striking.
You can see people on the bridge crossing by feet, or rather standing waiting in line at that point.
I took this picture when we visited the Narva Fortress. We had some time before the train back to Tallinn, and we went there. it turned out that there was some special occasion: they were reopening the city museum after some remodeling, so there was a ribbon cutting, official speeches, and TW news, We didn’t have enough time to see the museum, so we just walked around and saw the outdoor exhibit.
The exhibit showing the devastating effect of the Soviet “liberation” of Narva
I want to see more of that fortress, and I want to visit this museum and dine in their restaurant. I will come back!
The pine forest was very much like I remembered it, but it looks way healthier now that there are fewer people wandering around.
I also found the house where we rented the rooms for summer! I remembered the address, and I went right there, and I saw the roof of the house from the far, and I couldn’t believe it was that house, but it was! There are just a couple of houses on that street that were not replaced by the new ones sometime within these 50+ years, and that house was one of them!
I didn’t talk much about the main goal of my current trip because it sounded so unrealistic that I didn’t want to jink it. I still can’t believe that I did it! Here is how yesterday went.
We grabbed our brown bag breakfast at reception at 6 AM, went to the railway station, and boarded the 6-46 AM train to Narva. Although I researched in advance what bus we should take and when it was scheduled to depart, we managed to take the wrong bus and ended up in the wrong place. Thankfully, Estonia is small, and you can’t go too far! We were able to hire a private driver who got us to the right place, and shortly after 11 AM, we were at Narva-Joesuu, where I spent three amazing summers when I was a child!
My most important goal was to find the grave of my great-grandfather (the father of Baba Fania, Baba Grunia, and Uncle Misha). He died while vacationing there, and Baba Fania used to take me to his gravesite. I felt like for the past forty years, nobody ever gave a thought to his grave left behind in a foreign country. I mean, I do not feel super-obligated to attend to all the graves of the relatives I never even talked to, but if you care about the ancestors’ graves in general, I would imagine you should be concerned. Anyway, I felt I should at least try. I had nothing but childhood memories of how the place should look like fifty-three years ago, and even though the cemetery is small, it’s not that small – it has been continuously operating, at least since the end of the nineteenth century.
My first walk-thought didn’t yield any result – I remembered the memorial being sort of standing up above the other graves around it. I also remembered it being on the hill and being very light grey. On my second pass, I started almost from the entrance, trying to remember the general direction and adjusting the distances and size to the seven-year-old me. And then I got a feeling. I turned slightly left and back and saw the surrounding chains, and I knew that was it! I was sure the memorial sign didn’t survive – I passed multiple graves with no name on them, but even if there wasn’t a sign, I knew. And then I walked around it, and the sign was there!
Boris waited for me in the main alley, and I ran all across the cemetery to tell him that I found the grave! We walked back together. Unfortunately, there was no service point at the cemetery. I talked to the old couple who were visiting a nearby grave. The husband remembered the last name Levitin, but he said he used to be friends with “a younger guy.” That could be only Uncle Misha, but the name didn’t ring a bell to him. They didn’t share any contact information, so I just asked them to take a look at David Solomonovish’s grave when they came to visit his mother’s grave. Her name sounded somewhat familiar to me as well, but I also can’t put a finger on it. I copied the contact information of the cemetery administration from the board at the entrance, and I will try to arrange some care for the gravesite.
And I found a wild strawberry in the forest by the cemetery – just like I did when I was a child!
On Friday, we went to Tallinn. That was the only part of my June trip that I posted a lot about, so I do not have much to add.
The journey was smooth. The children’s playroom on board was great. In the city, Boris adapted the route so that Kira could do a lot on her own. We ended up not climbing any of the towers (and we will have to return to do that!). Girls had tons of fun in the Marzipan museum making their own marzipan figurines and painting them.
Also, the Maritime Museum was open, and since it was rainy in the morning, we spent almost two hours there. What I didn’t notice before was that they had models for kids to play on each of the floors, which made it especially entertaining.
I started to put this post together yesterday, and today is very different. I am on the plane back to Chicago, and since early morning, the only thing I can do is to scroll the new and to hope that Ukraine will use this time the best possible way. I didn’t see any confirmation of recapturing Donetsk, but I hope that it was not somebody’s joke.
At first I wanted to conserve this post for a while, but then I though that there is nothing wrong in celebrating the beauty and the spirit of freedom of the country that so far gave the greatest portion of it’s budget to support Ukraine. So let it shine!
Hettie's Reflections 