The Baltics
A Road Trip through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia
Grutas - Vilnius - Trakai - Kaunas - Klaipeda - Palanga - Lijepaja
Riga - Jurmala - Parnü - Tallinn - Narwa - Tartu
Forest fires, unbearable temperatures, overcrowding. That’s the story of the past summers in many European tourist hotspots. No so in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. What you will find here are vast, white-sand beaches, pretty medieval towns, and charming countryside against the backdrop of a fascinating, yet often brutal history of persecution, occupation and ultimately independence. But don’t expect a bargain (for that your best European bet is still Bulgaria or Bosnia), or indeed spectacular natural Grand-Canyon style highlights. But there is a pleasant, uncrowded, gentle vibe and if you’re into forest-bathing, you have come to the right place; more like forest-drowning, given the prevalence of what often seems like endless stretches of woodland.
Trip Essentials
How to get there:
You can fly into one of the three capitals of Vilnius, Riga, or Tallinn. There is also a quirky slow train from Warsaw in Poland until the high speed line will open up the region in 2028. There are ferry links from Helsinki and Stockholm into Tallinn, as well as connections from Kiel in Germany and Trelleborg in Sweden to Klaipeda in Lithuania.
How to get around:
All major cities and sights are connected by excellent and affordable bus services. Unfortunately, local train connections are still patchy at best, although the train from Tallinn to Narwa on the Estonian-Russian border is an adventurous treat.
Or you can just drive the whole way; a 2-3 day journey from western Europe of around 2,000 km. And if this is the mode of transport that you are leaning towards, the region’s main highways are in decent condition, though minor roads might strain your suspension. Traffic, apart maybe around the Latvian capital of Riga, is on the lighter side and distances are also manageable with Vilnius in the south being 600 km from Tallinn in the north.
In Vilnius, I stayed at the Art City Inn
about a 10-minute walk from the main drag of Gedinas Street: reasonably priced, comfortable, though not spectacular. It did the trick. My place in Klaipeda was the Hotel Aurora, right next to the ferry terminal and a 30-minute walk from the Old Town, which was modern, clean and surprisingly cheap. My favourite stay on the entire road trip was the Hotel Radi un Draugi, bang in the middle of Riga’s Old Town, which conveniently also had a small number of parking spaces. In Parnü, I was fortunate to secure a room at the Villa Wesset, perfectly located between beach and old town with a lovely breakfast buffet. In Tallinn I stayed in a small village called Loksa, on the northern Estonian shore, about one hour east of the country’s capital. From here, Tallinn was just about accessible, but I also made day trips to Tartu and Narwa. I stayed in the ‘Lohjaoja (sheep) house’ bookable through Air BnB. It was worth it just for the size of the sauna.
Tallinn
I chose to drive to the Baltics. Of course I did, ignoring once more some unedifying comments made by close friends and relatives for whom the prospect of spending at least 20 hours behind the wheel whilst clocking up 2,000 km seemed a senseless strain on nerves and one’s lower back. But that’s just what I do. The drive can’t be described as pretty. Far from it actually: through the often featureless flatlands of northern Germany and Poland, until the landscape finally became a little more varied with small hills, some lakes, farmsteads, and forests. I had reached the Suwalki Gap, the 90-mile corridor of democracy that separates the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad in the west from Aleksandr Lukashenko’s fascist dictatorship of Belorussia in the east. Napoleon marched his army through here in 1812 in his failed attempt to invade Russia. Hitler’s Wehrmacht did the same in 1941. Nowadays, with thousands of unfriendly soldiers on both sides, this is NATO’s soft underbelly.
Grutas Park
I crossed into Lithuania near the provincial centre of Druskininkai, just a couple of miles from the border with Belorussia. This is as remote, as the European Union gets. In the nearby village of Grutas, is the bizarre Grutas Park, an eclectic collection of some 200 statues commissioned in honour of heroes of Soviet socialism, most of whom as it turned out met a premature death by being subject to the Stalin’s purges of 1937. Even more peculiar, there is also a zoo with goats, rabbits, chickens, but also lamas and ostriches. The park was founded in 2001 by a local businessman named Vilinmas Malinauskas, who collected all those artefacts in the years after Soviet occupation had ended. Also known as Stalin World, the rather strange assortment of sculptures is a fitting testimony to the madness that was the Soviet personality cult.
St. Stanislaus and St. Ladilaus Cathedral, Vilnius
An hour’s drive across bumpy roads through forests and fields and I entered Lithuania’s picturesque capital Vilnius. The place is charming, set amidst hills and along the meandering Neris river, with a lively old town centre filled with shoppers, sightseers and students, who go along their business flanked by numerous baroque churches, predominantly of Roman Catholic faith. I spent a leisurely day, enjoying the views from the Gedinas Tower, perched on a hill overlooking old and new town, crossed the river into the Uzupis district, the birthplace of the 1990 independence movement and now home to artists, artisans and the entrepreneurially minded, and marvelled at the gleaming, white baroque structure of the St. Stanislaus & St. Ladilaus Cathedral located right next to the Palace of the Grand Dukes, the seat of government during the Commonwealth period. Another house of worship, the red-brick Church of St. Anne, which was completed around 1500 also caught my eye. Put all these architectural gems to together, and it is little wonder that Vilnius is a UNESCO World Heritage site. I ambled along the commercial boulevard of Gedinas Street, had a drink at one of the many eateries on Pilias Street, and made my way through the medieval Glass Quarter, watched the world go by whilst sitting on a bench on the piazza outside the Town Hall. The sun was out, students were celebrating the end of term, families noshed on ice cream, government and office workers readying themselves for the weekend, and Vilnius presented itself as a beautiful, charming, friendly city.
Box 1: A short history of the Baltics
All three countries, apart from the far northern reaches of Estonia were at some stage part of the extraordinary Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569 – 1795), a form of mini-EU with a shared foreign policy, customs union, a common currency, and most notably a democratically elected King (though the electors were limited to the ruling nobility). Not bad for an age when absolutist monarchies were still the norm. The Commonwealth was huge, stretching at one point into what is today Ukrainian territory on the shores of the Black Sea. Then came Tsar Peter the Great, who gained control of the region in 1710 during the Great Northern War with Sweden. Russian dominance lasted until the end of World War I, when all three states took advantage of the turmoil caused by the Bolshevik revolution to declare independence. It lasted until 1939 with the secret protocol of the Hitler-Stalin Pact paving the way for Soviet occupation. A mere two years later in 1941, German forces captured the region as part of the Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. By 1944, the German army was in full retreat and the Baltic states once more fell into the hands of Soviet oppressors. Independence had to wait until 1991, when the Soviet Union ultimately ceased to exist and was swiftly followed by integration into NATO and the European Union in 2004.
Vilnius Old Town
But as if often the case in these lands, the dark shadows of history are all too present. Vilnius used to be the centre of the Jewish life in the Baltics, with the accolade of the ‘Jerusalem of the North’. At its peak, the community numbered 170,000 and swelled to a quarter of a million (around a tenth of the population), after the German invasion of Poland at the outset of World War II. Less than 10% survived the Holocaust. You have to look very hard to find any traces of the Jewish legacy, even in the heart of the former Glass Quarter in the centre of the Old Town with practically all of the formerly 100 synagogues being destroyed, chiefly by the Nazis, but also by the Soviet authorities.
Vilnius
I also spent a little more time in the extraordinary, yet awkwardly named ‘Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights’ which charts Lithuania’s painful history under Soviet occupation. The museum is housed in the former KGB offices, and you can visit the interrogation rooms, prison cells and execution chambers (including some gruesome, grainy black and white video footage); a fitting portrayal of the brutal nature of the Soviet occupation that managed to squash any resistance in the most vicious manner.
Trakai Castle
As an easy day excursion, I drove west for an hour to the 15th century fairytale Trakai Castle, positioned rather scenically in the middle of Lake Galve and reached via a much photographed wooden footbridge. When I visited on a balmy Saturday afternoon in mid-July, it seemed as if the whole country had turned out. Swimmers, sunbathers, SUP enthusiasts, families, wedding parties and of course tourists like me. Plenty of custom for the sizeable number of cafes, restaurants, boat rental outfits and souvenir stalls. Though the setting was undeniably charming, the prevailing feel of a country fair was just not my thing, and I made my speedy excuses.
Kaunas
I had better luck the next day, when on a sleepy Sunday morning I wandered the streets of Lithuania’s second city Kaunas. The seat of the government of independent Lithuania after World War I (neighbouring Poland had just occupied Vilnius) the Germanic architectural influence in the compact Old Town was all too apparent with imposing brick houses built by affluent merchants of the Hanseatic League, complemented by pretty churches and neat town squares. I strolled down Vilnius Street and through an underground passage onto Freedom Avenue (Laisves Aleja), the town’s commercial hub. A perfect place to while away a couple of hours, enjoying coffee and cake.
Klaipeda
I had high expectations of visiting the country’s third city Klaipeda, located on the Baltic Sea and thanks to a massive harbour, Lithuania’s gateway to the world. Founded in 1252 by the Knights of the Teutonic Order, it had for centuries been the stronghold for Baltic Germans. Back in te 13th century, the missionaries built a fort on the river Dane (or Memel in German), which they imaginatively called Memelburg. With papal blessings, the knights eradicated the last remaining Pagan tribes in northern Europe with customary efficiency. Then the mighty Hanseatic League, a medieval trade association spanning large parts of the coasts of the North and Baltic Sea, established an outpost, and the place took off. In 1525, the town (by now referred to as Memel in German) was integrated into Prussia and remained part of Germany (and the country’s northernmost city) until the end of World War I, when the Treaty of Versailles turned the Memel Land into a French (eh?) protectorate. With France being pre-occupied by revolts in western Germanys’ Ruhr Valley, newly independent Lithuania assumed control of the area in 1923 and granted special autonomy rights to ethnic Germans. The settlement lasted until March 1939, when Hitler delivered an ultimatum to the Lithuanian government calling for the area’s re-integration into the Reich. And just with the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, the rest of Europe watched helplessly, as the Nazis gobbled up yet another piece of territory. Adolf even paid Klaipeda a visit and delivered a speech from the balcony of the theatre to celebrate his armour plated diplomacy. Yet, merely one year later, the Hitler-Stalin Pact encouraged the Soviet Union to exert its iron grip over the Baltics, only for the German Wehrmacht to regain the territory in the summer of 1941. Following the counter-offensive of the Red Army, the town was completely evacuated towards the end of 1944 with apparently only six civilians staying behind and was swiftly integrated into the USSR: 5 years, 4 regime changes, spanning the whole spectrum from democracy to fascism to communism.
Box 2: Germans in the Baltics
Strictly speaking – and we're referring to a people that are known for its penchant for accuracy - the citizens of Memel Land were not Baltic Germans, since they resided in a constituent part of Germany. Hence, they were referred to as Germans in the Baltic region. The term Baltic Germans was only used for people of German heritage living outside of Germany. Got the difference? Anyway, nowadays there are only about 10,000 left, although at its peak, they constituted around 10% of the population, and in Klaipeda, half the people had German roots. The diaspora had some notable historic figures, for instance Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, who was even too hardline for Adolf, and was executed following the Nuremberg trials. At the opposite end of the human scale, German comedian Heinz Erhardt (and this is not an oxymoron; the chap was hilarious) lightened up the often dreary mood of post-war Germany. The most notable figure might just be Prince Anatol von Lieven, a military general, who during the Bolshevik revolution commandeered a ‘white’ force in Latvia. His descendant Dominic became a prominent historian who taught at the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge.
Klaipeda
Amidst all the turmoil and fighting, hardly any architectural heritage survived in Klaipeda. Admittedly, the cobble stones and street lay-outs of the Old Town are still there, but empty plots were churches, merchant houses, or municipal buildings once stood are plain to see. During the 45-year Soviet occupation, only 70 buildings were restored, with the rest being razed to the ground and re-built, although the authorities at least refrained from imposing the classic, shoe-box style Stalinist architecture.
You can take a pleasant stroll along the river, sip a beer in a café on the theatre square or check out the positively weird statue of the Black Ghost close to the Chain Bridge. The odd German car or tour group had made their way up here in search of Klaipeda’s German legacy. But the absence of references to the town’s past is noticeable. No devoted history museum, no town twinning, no cultural exchanges. Maybe it’s better that way, since tiny Lithuania could do without any potential forces of German revisionism, that thankfully so far have not materialised.
Curonian Spit
The Curonian Spit; not some rude local response to mis-behaving foreign tourists, but a sliver of land, 100 km long and only between 400 m and 4 km wide, perched between a lagoon in the east, and the open Baltic Sea to the west. The northern half belongs to Lithuania, the southern tip to the Russian region of Kaliningrad (which in pre-World War II times was the German province of East Prussia with Königsberg as its capital). These days, travelling along Route 167 is a dead-end affair, as the borders between the two countries are firmly shut. The Spit used to be a favourite summer retreat for wealthy German families, including Thomas Mann’s entourage who holidayed regularly in the peninsula’s main hub Nida. The village is a highly manicured collection of pretty summer houses, some holiday apartments, and a marina. It is also the starting point of the short hike up the beautiful Parnidis Dune. Even more impressive, on the western side of town lies a glorious white-sand beach that stretches for miles towards the horizon. Halfway back towards Klaipeda is an even more impressive dune at the Nagliai Nature Reserve between the villages of Juodkranté and Pervalka. This was a wonderful day-out, but getting there is an expensive undertaking. The 5-minute ferry hop from Klaipeda came in at a whopping 23 Euro return, while entry into the national park (which is essentially the entire peninsula) set me back another staggering 30 Euro, followed by yet more charges at the Nature Reserve (5 Euro).
Parnidis Dune
I understand the logic. Let (foreign) tourists and not taxpayers provide for the upkeep of the national park. Yet, in my time there, I hardly encountered any foreign cars. The odd Scandinavian vehicles, some from Poland or Germany, but the vast majority were locals. Any assumptions that this might be a backward region, with low price levels is misguided. What you pay at the supermarket checkout, in restaurants, or at the petrol pump are comparable to western European countries. This applies in particular to alcohol. Maybe they used to have a drink driving problem. I was caught up in a police operation that measured motorists’ alcohol levels (I passed with flying colours). That was on a Sunday afternoon at 3.00 pm. Now, what remains might just be a driving problem, with speed limits being treated like a rough guideline that everyone seems anxious to ignore.
Curonian Spit
All cities (and this also applied to my subsequent stops in Lativa and Estonia) are noticeable for a rather odd prevalence of US American style strip malls. In Europe, these first emerged in France some 30 years ago. Now every European country seem to have them, but the Baltic countries adopted them on a large scale. Convenient for car users, not so good for the environment, ugly to look at and quite frankly soul-destroying. Here in the Baltics, they can be found on every approach road into any town. Depressing.
Palanga
I headed north along the coastal road. My next stop was the seaside town of Palanga. Resorts in this part of the world are not your Med-style affair with a promenade filled with cafes, souvenir stalls and beach-tat shops. Instead, what you will often find is a continuous stretch of fine, white sand beach that ends up in a dune, behind which lies a dense pine forest that gradually merges into the resort village. In the case of Palanga that forest was turned into an attractive parkland. I found this set-up rather attractive as it accentuates the natural beauty of the place away from the bass ‘n drum noise of its Riverian cousins. The town has a lovely, old-fashioned charm with a concert hall, cinema and theatre; all built at the turn of the 20th century. Low key at its finest.
Liepaja
I headed further north, crossed the border into Latvia and reached Liepaja, European City of Culture 2027. The same set-up: Beach – dune – forest – park – town. But the place felt a little rough around the edges, the houses in the suburbs just a little more dilapidated, the central stretches less polished, the holiday makers remarkably fewer in numbers. Liepaja is very much a working town thanks in part to a massive harbour and ferry terminal. The intention to enter the European competition seems to add a chink to the town’s armour.
Riga
I travelled along the A9 from Latvia’s west coast towards its capital Riga across for once surprisingly hilly terrain (though Vertigo sufferers fear not). Wheat and corn fields, forests (of course) and storks. They were everywhere, combing the fields for something to eat, sometimes right along the grassy bank of the road. Riga is similar in size to Vilnius and Tallinn (around the half a million mark), yet Latvia’s only main city seems to have just a little bit more of an urban edge. Maybe it’s the rough approach roads across cobbled stones through Soviet-era neighbourhoods. Maybe it’s the presence of more tour groups meandering through the beautiful, medieval town centre. Maybe it’s the abundance of green spaces and parks just to the north and east of the city centre, where well-dressed urbanites walk home from work or take the baby out for a jog in the stroller. Maybe it’s the more international vibe, as for once I encountered quite a view cars with foreign license plates.
Old Town, Riga
I had a marvellous time just ambling through the narrow alleys of the compact Old Town. It felt very German given the high number of houses with steeped pitched roofs and – unlike in Lithuania – stern looking Lutheran churches. Yet my favourite highlight was just outside of the confines of the medieval centre: The Art Nouveau quarter and in particular Alberta Street is just mind-blowing as a coherent, architectural, living museum of apartment blocks with ever more elaborate design features. Fabulous. I also enjoyed visiting the vast Central Market, just east of the Old Town, which resembles a huge railway station filled with flower and vegetable stalls, as well as an astonishingly high number of butchers. The sights, sounds and smells were wonderfully pervasive, something that even extended to the impressive fish section.
Art Nouveau Quarter, Riga
I also visited the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia (they do like their titles to be sharp here). While its counterpart in Vilnius focuses on the machinations of the Soviet secret police, this museum was more about the Sovietisation of Latvian society, with thousands of Latvian families being deported to the gulags in Siberia. The Latvian language was relegated to secondary status and Russian, as the ‘international’ language of the Soviet Union had to be learned by everyone with some schools explicitly forbidding the use of the local vernacular. Most extraordinarily however was the fact that despite the all-encompassing nature of the Soviet state apparatus, military uprisings by Latvian partisans continued until 1955. Towards the end of the USSR in 1991, more than half of the population of Latvia was Russian; some of them army personnel, but many simply economic migrants, moved by the authorities to work in newly erected factories in order to undermine any expressions of the native culture. Handily, these Russian expats were also the beneficiaries of many privileges, chiefly among them the provision of modern homes. I was quite touched by an exhibition on the famous 660 km long ‘Singing Baltic Way’, a human chain of 1.5 million people who in August 1989 (and just weeks after the Iron Curtain revealed its first holes in Poland and Hungary) linked together to sing songs in each native tongue. The occasion was exactly 50 years since the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, and the crowds called for the liquidation of the ‘Secret Protocol’ which handed the 3 Baltic states to the Soviet dictatorship.
Old Town, Riga
I also couldn’t miss a visit to St. Peter’s Church, the oldest place of worship in town, originating in the 13th century. In fact, I went there twice. First, in the morning to take an elevator up to the viewing platform with gorgeous vistas across the Riga skyline, and then again in the evening for a free concert hosted by the German Goethe Institut when a full orchestra – the Otto Sinfoniker from Berlin – played Bruckner (or Brukners as he is spelled here) and Schubert (Šuberts). Bonus.
Jurmala
Jurmala; you might want to call it Riga Beach. And what a beach it is. Just 30 km west of town and linked by frequent trains, this resort too follows the established formula: expansive beach – dune – forest – town. But Jurmala is surprisingly grand. Brightly painted, often palatial wooden houses and holiday homes, shops and cafes – even a cinema and a big concert venue, though the posters of Richard Clayderman playing that evening somewhat curbed my enthusiasm for the place. Still, all very tasteful, and quite a luxury for the citizens of Riga to have such natural splendour at their doorstep.
Jurmala
I drove the 200 km to the Estonian border through what seemed an endless forest on completely flat terrain. It was the archetypical landscape that I encountered on many occasions during this trip. Once in Estonia, something for once looked different. Even more foreign license plates, mostly cars belong to fellow Scandinavians intend on enjoying a cheaper summer holiday. But also, it seems that all of a sudden, a sizeable majority of people were blond. How these parts used to be part of the Soviet Union seems rather odd in retrospect. And of course the language. While the sentence melodies of Lithuanian and Latvian felt quite in tune with my west European ears, here I encountered a distinctly Finnish sounding sing sang, that I had previously encountered when watching a Netflix Scandi noir with a detective (if I remember correctly, his name was Kaari) who solved his cases whilst moving about barefoot on his wooden floor doing Yoga exercises.
Parnü
Just an hour north of the border was my stop for the night: Parnü, the country’s main holiday resort. You know the drill by now: beach – dune – forest – town. But sorry Parnü: your beach is no match for those encountered in Lithuania and Latvia. For a start, it doesn’t stretch towards the horizon, unlike the expanses in Jurmala or on the Curonian Spit. Then there’s just a little hint of Soviet architecture that has crept into the town’s fabric. Not overwhelming, but noticeable. Still, people seemed to be enjoying themselves tremendously. While I wrote this section, I was listening to an avantgarde horns and brass outfit, performing on the town’s main square. It’s as if Kaari had become a musician.
Loksa Beach
Two more hours of driving north and I reached my base for the next two weeks: a holiday rental in the slightly rundown town of Loksa, right on Estonia’s north shore, about one hour east of Tallinn along the E-20 (a two-lane highway: hooray!). My local beach overlooked a nearby cement and gravel factory that surely must have seen busier days in Soviet times. Further along the shore, on country route 283 at a village called Hara, an enormous concrete skeleton stuck out of the sea, which used be a repair site and shelter for nuclear submarines. The area has now been taken over by a glamping operation and sailing school, including an overpriced restaurant and pizza outfit (which on the day of my visit had run out of tomato paste): all very peaceful and quiet, on most days I was the only swimmer in the bay, and hence also quite eery.
Viinistu Art Museum
Just a ten minute drive from Loksa lies the fantastic Viinistu Art Museum, which claims to be the only private art museum in all of Estonia and houses the 400-object private collection of the politician and businessman Jaan Manitski who had spent most of this adult life in exile, before buying this site in his place of birth. The complex also includes a very fine restaurant and hotel located in a former factory: all quite unconventional but also intriguing and memorable.
Laheema National Park
A visit to this part of Estonia would not be complete without a stopover at the country’s largest national park, Laheema. At first, you might wonder what makes this place special, or indeed different from all the other rural bits that you have driven through in this part of the Baltics. Trees, trees, nothing but trees (and here in particular the red-barked Scots Pine, which accounts for a third of the country’s stock). But give it a chance. Right after the Route 85 turn-off from the E-20 highway you come across a spacious parking lot that cannot be missed, which is the starting point of a 6 km circular trail, most of it along a board walk across a vast area of bog; a wetland consisting of peat which itself was formed out of dead plant debris; another rather eery site.
Tartu
I also decided to pay a visit to Estonia’s second city Tartu; a two-hour drive south through the by now familiar landscape of forests and fields, spread out across a sparsely populated and mostly flat landscape. But at the end of the journey, I encountered a small but very pleasant university town. The Old Town is compact, yet charming, with Rüütli Street and its cafes, shops and restaurants slicing through the district and ending up at the Town Square with the famous statue of two kissing students. You might also want to check out the imposing St. John Church; menacing looking as only a medieval, red-brick, Lutheran house of worship can. Tartu’s main attraction though is the vast modernist National Museum built on the site of a former airfield on the northern outskirts, about a 30-minute walk from the centre. The museum has a particularly good section on how Finno-Ugric people populated these lands (and further down into today’s Hungary). All in all an endearing day excursion.
Tartu
Being within earshot of Tallinn, allowed me to visit Estonia’s wonderful capital on quite a number of occasions. UNESCO heritage site since 1997, the town hosts a surprisingly coherent medieval ensemble of towers, fortifications, churches and former merchant houses, all built on an elevated position overlooking the Baltic Sea. Surprising, given that the Red Army comprehensively bombed the place in 1944, in the process destroying over 5000 buildings in the Old Town alone; a fact that the Soviet or indeed the Russian authorities never acknowledged. But after intensive restoration, the Old Town is now very atmospheric, and I was content to just wander about the place for a couple of hours, peeking into narrow alleys, admiring the views from several vantage points, or wandering into churches; most of them spartan and minimalist in fine Lutheran tradition, in particular the Church of St. Olaf (tip: do not climb up the steep stairs of the Town Hall Tower. You get a much better view from the top of St. Olaf, and its entrance fee is also cheaper). No minimalism though at the orthodox Aleksander Nevski Cathedral, a rather recent addition to the Tallinn skyline, as it was built as late as the end of the 19th century in order to cater for the increasing number of Russians who had settled in the city ever since Peter the Great integrated Tallinn into Russia in 1710. Yet, with Estonian independence in the 1920s, the cathedral which is perched on a hill overlooking the Old Town had become a thorn in the eye of many nationalists. Proposals to raze the structure to the ground and turn the site into a park were well advanced and only fell through because of the advent of World War II. The idea is still alive today and has popped up frequently in recent political debates, though seems far from garnering enough political traction.
Tallinn
As architecturally stunning as the Old Town is, it has also been taken over by tourism, without much interaction with locals, something that Vilnius for instance avoided by placing its university in the town centre. As such, the place also feels polished, on occasion even sterile and disneyfied. One of the biggest tourist magnets is the Kiek in the Kök museum (meaning a peak through the wall), which is located in the old fortifications first erected by Danish rulers in the 13th century. By the 1960s, the complex also included private dwellings and apartments but was ultimately brought under Soviet state ownership and restored with impressive attention to detail. Yet, unfortunately, the museum displays cannot match the setting with comically amateurish animations and a generally poor display of information. Lacking an overall coherence and narrative, the museum left me with the feeling that I had just visited a junk shop of historical artefacts. At least I came across a fun fact: Already in the 17th century, a mixed-used sauna began operating on the site. Unfortunately though, the sauna master also functioned as the local procurer of horizontal services (if you know what I mean), which somewhat undermined the health credentials of the outfit.
Market Square, Tallinn
For vibrancy, you have to step beyond the medieval setting. Tallinn is known for its tech industry and has the highest number of start-ups per capita of any major European city. Outside of the confines of the Old Town it feels modern, open, spacious, helped by the fact that the seashore was in Soviet times a military exclusion zone, but has now been completely redesigned to include modern apartment blocks, parks, and sea promenades, all linked by bicycle lanes. Impressive.
Tallinn, New Town
To get a taste of local life and to escape the tourist crowds of the Old Town, you might want to head to the nearby district of Kalamaja, just to the west of the central train and bus stations. The focal point of the neighbourhood is the Balti Jaawa Turg Market, Estonia’s version of the urban foodie markets that have sprung up all over Europe in recent years. The market is host to traditional food, vegetable and flower stalls but also the by now ubiquitous designer coffee outlets, some antiquities but also rather disgustingly a sizeable number of stands with Nazi paraphernalia including Adolf mugs or Eesti Homeguard posters (the local militia who couldn’t wait to do the dirty work of the German occupation during World War II). From the market I ambled north towards the seashore along Vana-Kalamaja Street across a rejuvenated neighbourhood of fine clapboard houses interspersed with playgrounds, park benches and appealing urban landscaping for the town’s emerging hipster class. An exercise in Scandinavian living based on the human-centred concept of the 15-minute city. Admirable. And the location is fantastic: close to the city centre yet also right next to the sea in an area partially reclaimed from the Soviet navy. Now chic apartment blocks have popped up everywhere. I could see myself living here, before I reminded myself of how severe and long Estonian winters are.
Kalamaja
Worth a visit is the compact Kadrioru Palace in the eastern suburb of Kadriorg, which was built by Peter the Great as a summer residence for his wife Catherine. The Tsarina never warmed to the place and spent little time there, which seems a shame given that the palace is a fine and rare example of baroque architecture in northern Europe. It is also close to Tallinn’s major art museum KUMU, and while you stroll through the pleasant park, you might want to look out for the nearby TV tower, built for the 1980 summer Olympics, when Tallinn hosted the sailing events.
My last visit on this road trip toom me to Narwa, Estonia’s third city and right on the border with Russia from which it is separated by a river bearing the same name. Founded by the Danes in 1256, the Knights of the Teutonic Order purchased the place and built what today is the country’s biggest castle. Not to be outdone, Russian Tsar Ivan III erected his own, slightly bigger castle across the river in 1492, which prompted the Knights to add a large tower to regain architectural supremacy. Who says size doesn’t matter? To this day, the river constitutes the border between Slavic-Orthodox Christianity in the east and Protestantism of Roman Catholicism in the west. Yet, during Soviet occupation, and right up until Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Narva and its Russian counterpart Ivangorod were twin cities with lively cross border exchanges of goods and people. No more. Nowadays, a special visa is required to cross the ‘Friendship Bridge’. During my visit, long queues had formed on the Estonian side with people wheeling big suitcases filled to the brim with stuff and waiting for custom officials to inspect their travel permits. Narwa continues to be overwhelmingly Russian with only about 10% of the population considering themselves to be Estonian. It is by some distance the biggest concentration of Russians in the Baltics.
Box 3: Russians in the Baltics
In order to keep all Soviet republics under the domain of Russia, it was Stalin’s policy to water down the impact of different languages, traditions and cultures by forcing the re-settlement of many ethnic Russians to places such as Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine or the Baltics. Not so much in Lithuania, where in 1989, the number of Russians was less than 10% of the overall population, but very much so in Latvia (around half) and Estonia (around one third). With independence in the 1990s, it was of little surprise that such large ethnic contingents in the latter two were regarded as potential security threats. Many Russians too, feared that they were now regarded as strangers in their own land and consequently emigrated to Russia or used their newly granted EU passports to settle in particular in the UK or in Ireland. Since 1989, out of 1.7 million Russians formerly living in the Baltics, 900,000 have left. But some pockets of Russian-influenced cities still remain, including Tallinn (just under 40%), Riga (a third), or Daugavpils in Latvia (over half). The highest concentration of ethnic Russians can be found in the Estonian border town of Narva (a whopping 82%).
Narwa
Soviet architecture adds to the gloomy appearance of the town with socio-economic challenges very much visible. The Red Army comprehensive flattened Narwa between March and April 1944 and only 8% of today’s building stock has at least some historical remnant; chief among them the impressive Herman Castle (also referred as Narva Castle) perched high up on a prominent position overlooking town and river. The Soviets managed to restore it in a process lasting 20 years and today it houses the interesting, but unfortunately very expensive Narwa Museum, which tells the story of town and building, but also functions as a sanctuary to any bits and bobs that survived the brutal Soviet onslaught.
Herman Castle
Apart from the castle, one might want to take a stroll along the river promenade where EU funds financed a big green space with playgrounds, bike lanes and cafes. Take note of the NATO flag flying next to those of the EU and Estonia. One doesn’t see too many of those on streetscapes in the rest of Europe. So Vlad, in case your Satnav encountered a glitch, this is your sign to turn around. Otherwise … World War III.
Estonia - Russia border
The rest of Narwa consists almost exclusively of Soviet apartment blocks and commercial complexes. While most of eastern Europe (including Estonia) couldn’t wait to raze them to the ground, those architectural monsters have very much survived here. One particular ugly one – so ugly it actually starts to look hyper cool – is right along the town’s central roundabout; 15 stories high with a fabulously hideous water container bang on top. It looks like a footballer’s hair cut gone wrong. But give the structure a lick of paint (may I suggest pink), add some flashing disco lights, and maybe a gigantic plastic pineapple on the rooftop, and the world’s Insta influencers will surely spark a boom in tourism.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. True, the Ukraine war robbed Narwa of its commercial hinterland, with the town now being a dead-end. Yet, the university is expanding, green spaces and parks continue to be build, and with cheap rents and low costs of living, maybe a new artistic or scholarly future could be on the horizon. The place deserves a little bit of good luck for once.