Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

Well, here we are in Gulbene and, as expected, there’s not much to do.

That’s fine, though, because we’re only here for one night and we’ve already done what we came here to do, namely to ride on the narrow gauge railway to Alūksne and back.

The drive here was an easy one, with many stork sightings along the way. The last forty or so kilometres were along a gravel road, a shorter route than the main road, which gave us time to check into our hotel and have a drink before heading to the railway station.

We’d hoped to make the journey on a steam train; that’s what it shows on the railway’s Web site. It turns out to be a bit deceptive, though, since the actual train used is a diesel locomotive, pulling a single carriage. Still, it was narrow gauge, which is unusual, and I think it was also Lukie’s first journey by train, so for that reason, it was memorable.

There wasn’t a lot to see on the way to Alūksne; just trees, fields and the stations we pulled into, although calling them stations is misleading, as there was usually nothing at the stop other than a sign next to a dirt road.

Gulbene is the first stop on this trip where we’ll be spending only one night. Every other destination so far has seen us stay for at least two nights, which has made for a much more relaxing pace than on some trips we’ve done. The hotel is nice, but seemingly empty. We may, in fact, be the only guests here, which is how it’s been in a couple of the towns we’ve been to.

Tomorrow, we continue south to Daugavpils, a town just 25 km from the Lithuanian border and just 33 km from the border with Belarus.

The guidebook descriptions make it sound so grungy that we really have no choice but to stop off there for a night. Well, it can’t be any worse than Cork.

What better way to wile away a lazy Sunday afternoon than by wandering around the streets of Tartu? As we enter our fifth week on the road, the unhurried pace of our holiday is effecting the evolution of this sojourn from our normal lifestyle into the lifestyle itself.

Clearly, most tourists skip the east of Estonia, but that was already apparent in Narva. Here again, we have the city more or less to ourselves. You’d almost think summer was grinding to a halt, and yet Black Saturday was only yesterday. Happily, we notice none of that, way up here in the Baltic countries.

This morning, we looked around the Dome Church ruins and climbed the towers there. Eloïse’s wild imagination turned this routine pastime into spoken zoeken (searching for ghosts). In the evening, she would recall this as a highlight of her day, together with the time she spent in the nearby playground.

Dinner this evening was delicious, thanks to Moka, which is very close to our hotel.

Tonight is our last night in Estonia. I feel as if we’ve been in the country a long time now, but it’s an illusion, of course. Time really stretches and distorts when you’re travelling.

In the morning, we’ll continue south, back into Latvia, to the small town of Gulbene. There, we’ll take a narrow gauge train to Alūksne, where we’ll pause for half an hour before returning on the train to Gulbene.

There’s not much else to do in the area, so we’ll be spending just the one night in Gulbene before continuing south.

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).