The drive from Narva to Tartu was a pleasant one, road 3 taking us alongside Lake Peipsi.
As we arrived at our destination, the heavens opened. There have been scattered showers all afternoon, but infrequently enough that they’ve had little to no impact on our day.
Our hotel is the very charming Antonius, sister property of the equally charming Ammende, which is where we stayed in Pärnu what feels like a long time ago now.
The Antonius is lovely, but has been open only since March, so you won’t yet find it in the guidebooks. The staff are friendly and helpful, the rooms are big and the breakfast… well, that’s till an unknown quantity at this stage, but I’m very hopeful.
Tartu itself is also a charming little place. It’s Estonia’s second largest town, so I had expected it to feel larger and more industrial, but it’s actually quite small and feels provincial.
In spite of that, there’s a thriving university here and the population to support it, so the city has a very young feel to it, which is something I like.
After lunch, we made a beeline for the KGB Cells Museum, which was due to close at 16:00 and wouldn’t reopen until Tuesday, when we’d be long gone. We had just over half an hour to make our way around, but the place is small, so it was just about enough.
It was an interesting, if inevitably depressing place. One labours to imagine the depths of human misery that must have been endured there, the crimes of the incarcerated ranging all the way from being in the wrong place at the wrong time to having the audacity to defend the homeland against marauding Soviet invaders.
Of course, this kind of thing still goes on around the world today. Just look at Guantanamo Bay and the evidence that has come to light from that particular chamber of horrors. Perhaps that place, too, will one day be a museum. Stranger things have happened.
Anyway, the museum contains the holding cells fomerly used by the КГБ, including solitary confinement booths, in which the prisoner could neither stand up nor lie down. A plaque outside details the food rations that such a prisoner was allowed, which basically amounted to some water, a bowl of soup and a couple of hundred grammes of bread, spread across a three day period. Man’s inhumanity to man never ceases to amaze me.
Shocking stuff, to be sure; all the more shocking, given the relative recency of the events. Who’s to say Estonia won’t once again be occupied by a hostile force within the next few decades? Only a fool would believe it couldn’t happen.
The rest of the afternoon was spent on a stroll around town. During this, I ducked between the jets of strange, multiple-spouted fountain, so that Sarah could take a picture of Lucas reaching out to touch one of the jets.
Afterwards, absent-minded as I am, I immediately forgot my position and proceeded to walk along the wall of the fountain with Lukie on my shoulders, thereby walking him directly in front of a jet, which blasted him in the side of the head and gave him a good dousing. Needless to say, my son was most displeased about this.
Dinner was at the wildly atmospheric Püssirohukelder, a restaurant housed inside an 18th century gunpowder cellar, replete with a 10 metre high ceiling. Wow.
Luckily, the food lived up to the expectations set by the lofty surroundings. The salmon soup in a bread bowl was delicious and eclipsed the — how could I resist trying it? — pork fillet in chocolate sauce. Colouring crayons and paper kept the children amused.
The main square, Raekoja plats, has a branch of Choclats de Pierre, the only one outside Tallinn, so we felt obliged to cross the threshold and sample the wares. I can dutifully report that the quality matches that of the two sister cafés in Tallinn, although the hot chocolate here was arguably even better (read: even more chocolatey).