Old Towns and New Views

As the northern hemisphere quickly approaches the summer solstice, St. Petersburgians continue to celebrate the White Nights. These White Nights are six weeks worth of high culture and all-night partying by less high-minded residents as a dusky half-light is as dark as it ever gets. Sitting just south of the 60th degree, approximately 330 kilometers further north than Fort McMurray, St. Petersburg simply does not sleep. After more than my fair share of late nights, I was happy to catch up on sleep as I crossed the border into Estonia.

Exiting Russia by bus, I arrived in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia and suddenly felt very much alone. Three weeks of being told where to go and when to go there, tickets bought in advance and meals recommended had blunted my self-reliance, and when I got off the bus in Tallinn I realized I had no idea where to go. Throwing my backpack over my shoulder, I started walking down the nearest main road and eventually found a hotel where I used the free internet in the lobby, oriented myself, and made my way to a hostel. By this time it was fairly late, and while I had eaten a box of duty-free Toffifee I had bought with some of my last roubles at the border, I hadn't had supper. I found my way to a 24-hour bistro easily enough, given the long daylight hours this time of year in Tallinn, though a few degrees south of St. Petersburg, and then made my way back to the hostel.

The Gidic hostel where I was staying is situated just outside of the Old Town, and the next day I made my way past the ancient guard towers to explore the town centre. Human settlement can be traced back five thousand years by shards of pottery found in routine excavations, and as I made my way through the circuitous cobble-stone streets, I gawked at buildings that have histories stretching back centuries. I fell in with a free walking tour of the city given by students, and by the end of the tour I thought that I had never been in an older city in my life. Along the way the guide pointed out a church that allowed tourists up into its steeple, and I took note of it with the plan to climb it the next day.

The next day, with my bus not leaving until the afternoon, I made my way into the Old Town to climb St. Olaf's. Apparently the tallest church in the world during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, St. Olaf's has now been eclipsed by other more grandiose testaments to God and actually stands a little shorter than its former self. After several fires, the Gothic spire is now approximately a hundred feet shorter than it used to be but the view from the top after the long climb was worth it regardless. The Old Town, hemmed in by battlements and guard towers, could be clearly seen, and while the walls no longer fully enclose the town centre and twenty of the original towers are no longer standing, with a bit of imagination it is possible to imagine what the city would have looked like a few thousand years ago. On the previous day the guide had mentioned that on a clear day it was possible to see the coast of Finland, and while I would be lying if I said I did, I imagined that the indefinable blur at the horizon line was in fact another country on the other side of the Gulf.

On the bus out of Estonia, I enjoyed the view from the window as we moved through the lush countryside at a leisurely pace, covering the 310 kilometers in about four hours. The terrain is flat, with the fields a vibrant green, and the forest, though with fewer deciduous trees than home, reminds me of Fort McMurray. When we pulled into Riga, I was fully prepared, having booked my hostel in advance, and I pulled my hand-drawn map out of my pocket and made my way directly to my hostel.

Riga's Old Town is in many ways very similar to Tallinn's, at least to my uneducated eyes, and both have been declared UNESCO World Heritage sites. The Old Town of Riga apparently has unparalleled examples of Jugenstil (German Art Nouveau) architecture, and after spending today walking along the river through Old Town and following the Australian A.B.C. mode of sightseeing (Another Bloody Church), I have to confess that I will have to take that UNESCO fact on faith. Just another moment where I have wished I knew more about art, architecture and history.

Tomorrow evening I catch a bus that will take me through Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, but I won't be stopping until I arrive in Warsaw where the plan is to from there catch a train east to Kiev, Ukraine. My flight out of Istanbul to London is on the 14th, so I will be covering a lot of ground over the next twelve days. While I had originally thought I would be able to make my way through northern Africa on this trip, skipping through the Middle East along the way, that has been exposed as a pipe dream given my self-imposed time limits. Nonetheless, a reason to come back to this part of the world without a return ticket.