Day 171 5th August 2017
Up bright and early from our overnight stay out in the Estonian countryside after a bit of a kerfuffle about our credit card we headed out for a long drive. We were headed for the far north-eastern corner of the country and the city of Narva which is right against the Russian border.
Our journey took us alongside Lake Peipus and various villages that appeared to be a haven for summerhouses with the occasional dilapidated apartment block thrown in. We stopped briefly at a beach at Kauksi right at the top of the lake a lovely long strip of sand with a beautiful forested camping area. After this stop we headed straight towards the border and at the end of the road we visited the small village of Varsknarva and peered across the river into Russia which has the biggest flag you have ever seen standing on the other bank. The middle of the river flowing into the lake, is the border designated by orange buoys. I can’t imagine what it be like to run out of petrol as an Estonian boater and drift into the Russian sector. I have visions of Ivan in his large patrol boat come screaming out of the river bank yelling through a loud hailer. We had already seen the border in Finland and in fact had crossed it a few days previously, and were conscious of the stories about the Russians being very sensitive about incursions, even accidental ones.
I don’t know what our fascination with the border is but it obviously appeals to the melodramatic side of our natures and has been nurtured by growing up in the cold war period. The funny thing is our trip through Russia allowed to us to meet everyday Russians who we really liked but the image of a potentially aggressive neighbour still persists. This has been fuelled by conversations with Estonians and Finns .It is also fascinating that some of the older peoples remember when they would just go to and fro between the countries before a “hard’ border existed.
We had been told stories about Narva and how the majority speaks Russian and how they feel that they consider themselves different to mainstream Estonians. This feeling of a Soviet Style of city is perpetuated when you start entering the outskirts and seeing the ubiquitous apartment blocks, the street signs and advertisements in Cyrillic’s. There is also the sign on that simply says Border Post and you know that Russia is just at the end of the street.
We checked into our hotel, which was in front of an old electricity plant complete with broken windows. The hotel was called the Elektra and we think was a guest house for visitors to the plant it is now owned by VKG which is an oil shale company!!!!.It was decorated in Soviet retro and to get access to it you had to go through two secured doors and an office. Probably one of the weirdest hotels I have been in. But hey the staff were lovely the bed was comfortable and the breakfast outstanding by European standards.
Anyway first destination was to try and find the famous Hermann Castle fort which stands on the Estonian side and has a matching one Ivangorod Fort on the Russian side . Sort of “my fort is bigger than yours”. Anyway we found it next to the border post and went into a restaurant inside the castle walls that gave us a good view of the forts on both sides. Later we went onto the fort walls, which gave us a view of the Estonian border post and the bridge which leads to the Russian checkpoint on the other side. The Estonians have also built a very pretty promenade section with swimming pools which juts out into the River almost to the middle line of the river.In walking alongside the river we found that the promenade had been funded by the EU and that there was a light for each of the member countries facing across to the Russian side of the river. For me this was proabbly an “up yours” metaphor but maybe I just have a fertile imagination.
We had been advised to go to the Narva Art Gallery and we did by way of the impressive old style Town Hall and a modern building, which was part of the University of Tartu campus in Narva. The gallery itself had an interesting collection of portraits and landscapes bequeathed to the city by Peter the Great as well as some more modern collections.
We came out of the Gallery to find the heavens had opened and it was bucketing down-we waited for a respite got it but were then caught again just before arriving at the hotel. We went out for dinner and found the restaurant amidst a series of dingy soviet style apartments. The unusual thing for us was that the visit to Narva was probably more soviet style than in Russia itself-I guess because there we stayed in nice tourist style hotels and were guided to the high-points of each city we visited.
Up next morning we acknowledged that we had enjoyed the experience but were eager to get out of town and on the road to the Kingdom Day Celebration being held near Luhamaa four hours to the south.
