Tag: estonia

Tallinn At Midsummer

Today was the first day of this trip when I was really happy that Anna’s family trip was rebooked. Today, we all would go to Tallinn, assuming “there was no holiday n Estonia,” and it was! Somehow we missed when Midsummer became the same everybody’s time-off in Estonia as in Finland, and today almost everything was closed! Olevista, most of the museums, and even many smaller boutiques, believe it or not! Even finding public restrooms was a problem!

We tested the routes for our August trip, and I took pictures of all opening hours, located the restaurants which allow people from the street to use their bathrooms for one euro fee; took notes of all places which are not child-proof (a lot!) and almost counted the steps 🙂

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Russian Embassy In Tallinn

Narva-Joesuu, part 2

Turned out, I have a lot of pictures from my last pre-school summer, although it looks like they cover just two or three days – as usual, when somebody with the camera was around.

Blueberries picking: looks like my mom is taking pictures from the nearby hill. I and Baba Fania
Looking fro the next blueberry spot. I had this basket for so many years after! I won’t be surprised if it is still sitting somewhere in Saint-Petersburg
Surprisingly, I remember the name of this lady, who was Baba Fania’s close friend. Her name was Anna Maximovns Bomach, I think, and she was a retired pediatrician. I do not remember what her relation to Eugeny Mravinsky was, but there was one. And it’s because of her that I got a ticket to the only Eugeny Mravinsly concert I ever attended (several years later)
A view of the mouth of Narova RIver from the nearby hill
On the Narova shore
Mom, which means that my father was visiting
On the way home from the grocery store
With Aunt Kima
On the beach. I am sitting on yet another ruin of yet another villa…
End of summer, and we are leaving on that day. I am dressed nicely (the same white lace dress as a year ago, probably redone, and I stand by Uncle Misha’s car. He would drive us back to Leningrad.

A Little Bit Of Tallinn

We had about three and a half hours in Tallinn. In contrast to our visit in October, the weather was sunny, and I was so glad to have one more opportunity to see the Old Town. On our way there, we passed this building:

It was erected in 1952 and probably symbolized the submission of Estonia to Russian occupation. However, it looks so grotesque with these tiny balconies, which do not go together with the imperial spear with the star on top, that it looks more like a caricature of the Soviet architecture.

It used to be a sububurb..
I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how they attached the trees to the streetlight poles 🙂
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Tartu – Part 3

We wondered whether there was anybody else except for us in the hotel, and hence we were curious to see whether somebody would show up for breakfast. The breakfast was served in the hotel restaurant in the basement. We saw one more person at breakfast 🙂


The buffet selection was great, but just when we filled our plates and sat down, a waitress appeared and asked whether we wanted to order something :).

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Tartu – Part 2

We were looking for a nice place for dinner. There were a couple of internet suggestions very close to the hotel, and we decided to walk past them and check what they looked like. One of our potential top choices ended up being closed, so we went to another one. That one was the restaurant Holm located in the Lydia Hotel, and it turned out to be fantastic! In short, it was like in Peninsular when Vlad worked there, but for half-price. I should have figured out that this was a high-end place because I saw the menu online, but I forgot that we are in Estonia for a moment.

There was an option of a taster menu – a five-course dinner for the price of 53 euros, we asked whether the portions would be half-size, and when the answer was yes, we went ahead with this option. Unfortunately, I can reproduce all that was said by the waiter when he introduced each of the courses; I can only copy a very short description from the restaurant website.

Since I told them that it will be a non-alcoholic dinner, they started by offering us a special local quince soda, as they stated locally grown and produced.

A sample of pumpkin soup “on the house”
House bread with somehow specially made butter
The first appetizer was made of sunchokes (I believe it was a sunchoke puree), black truffles, and some nuts. I am not sure about which nuts and what else was there since the menu does not succumb to google translate 🙂
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Tartu – Part 1

On the brighter side – the trip to Tartu was fantastic, even with the weather as it was.
We took a ferry to Tallinn and then walked to the bus station, where we took a bus to Tartu. The Lux busses are very comfortable and convenient for travel. The seats are pretty much like the airplane seats. You can lower the back or even increase the gap between two seats, and there is a folding table and an entertainment screen. Also, there is WiFi available and an electric outlet at each seat.

Although it turned out that Boris had to take his computer with him (he was waiting for one important email confirmation), we resolved to reduce the computer usage to a very minimum and kept it that way.

Tartu is an ancient city, to the point that I believe there is no official founding time of the city; people have lived there since the 5th century B.C. However, the “second Estonian city” is pretty small, and it didn’t take us long to walk from the bus station to our hotel, which was located right across from the main building of the University of Tartu.

The hotel Antonius is located in the 17th-century building last rebuilt in 1811, and the interiors are kept pretty close to that period.

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In Tartu First Time After 39 Years

I disappeared from everywhere except for Instagram because first I was en route to Helsinki, and then we left for a two-day trip to Estonia, and I didn’t take my laptop with me (since I only have my work laptop in Finland). Now I have no idea when I will have enough time to blog about this trip.

The trip was amazing, and every tiny detail of it was just incredible. But in addition, it was a very meaningful trip in a way I didn’t think it would become. Only when we were on the way to Estonia, I realized that the last time I was in Tartu was approximately the same time of the year, 39 years ago, during my winter break at the University. I realized that it was sort of closing the circle because Tartu nearly became my hometown. I was going to transfer to the University of Tartu; I already talked to the Dean, and he had nothing against my transfer, except that I had to catch up with classes in Estonian, but my friend Anna Mints was saying it was not so difficult. There were reasons I wanted it, and there were reasons I didn’t. Recalling it now, I think I was just not adventurous enough, but it was just a couple of months before I met Boris for the first time. And if I would transfer, I would never meet him. I would probably “become Estonian” because I had a reason to become. And I can’t even imagine how different my life would be…
I didn’t find a thing of what I remembered from Tartu of 39 years ago. I was trying to find the old building of the Department of Mathematics. I remember how it looked, and I thought I remembered where approximately it was situated, but I didn’t find it.

There is a new building called Delta, in a different place. And Tartu does not look a bit of how I remembered it. Which is actually good 🙂

Estonian Maritime Museum

I just realized that I forgot to blog about one more museum in Tallinn – the Estonian Maritime Museum. The museum is relatively new, and its centerpiece is an old cog – a Medieval merchant ship. 

It was built at the end of the 13th century, and it sailed for quite a long time until it sank in the mid-14th century. The ship was discovered and lifted from the sea in 2015. Now, the cog, along with hundreds of artifacts discovered on the wreck, occupy the museum’s first floor.

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Tallinn: Getting Inside

The rain started shortly after 11 AM, as forecasted. At first, we could ignore the random drops, but later, the rain became more substantial, and we switched to numerous museums and cafes.

The first cafe we landed in was Maiasmokk, the oldest in Tallinn (in business from 1864). That was the first public space we entered in Tallinn, and there we learned that by city ordinance, proof of COVD vaccination is required to enter any place. Masks are still required.  

Tallinn depends heavily on tourism, and I was very happy to observe that this requirement didn’t impact tourism negatively and that the business owners were happy to comply with the city ordinance. 

This round pastry with cinnamon was heavenly good!!!
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