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In Which I Take A Ride Through The Norfolk Countryside
November 2, 2006 by Mike
Tallinn
Route (on Wednesday): Narva - Kohtla-Järve - Rakvere - Tallinn
I missed one of the big events of the year in Narva by about a week. The papers are still full of it - at least, the papers that only come out once a week are. 36 new Mercedes speeding through en route to Peking via St Petersburg and Siberia: it's a Paris to Peking rally, recalling one of the great adventures of the 20th century, the 1907 Peking-to-Paris car race (recommended: Luigi Barzini's inspirational account of the race.
A horde of Germans moving north along the Baltic coast as fast as they can, heading for St Petersburg.
Am I the only person who notices the irony? As the newspapers are either in Roosian or Estonian, I can't tell.
I read that the journey from Paris to Peking is an estimated 13,100 km. I've ridden about 17,000 -- so far.
--
I'm heading in the other direction, and a pause in the snow lets me leave Narva on Wednesday morning. It's bitterly cold but I have to say my jacket, trousers and boots are coping brilliantly with the cold. Helped by two thermal vests and a t-shirt.
Areas of concern -- OK, areas of freezing cold -- are my hands and the gap between jacket and helmet, where I can't always manage to adjust my elasticated scarf properly. My hands are the biggest concern. The winter gloves I bought in Sweden are good, but this is seriously cold; when the ends of my fingers start to burn with the cold I'm also losing sensation and control in them. Not good when you're on a bike.
And, as in Roosia, there aren't as many stopping points as I'd like. Or if they are there, they are beyond my reach - cafes set back from the main road on ice rinks or behind snow drifts that the bike cannot navigate.
Conditions on the road? Good for the most part - signs periodically remind me that the road has been rebuilt with EU money. There is snow piled up on the roadside but the tarmac itself is free of snow and -- I hope -- ice. There have been patches where the white stuff has drifted across the road, but I've found a way through every time. I'm very conscious of how the road might be affected where the sun has not reached it, hidden behind encroaching forest, for example.
My speed has come down dramatically. Not so all my fellow road-users. They are going to overtake anyway, regardless of what I do or where I sit on the road. In the UK, for example, I take a dominant position in my lane, to ensure nobody is stupid enough to try to overtake. Here, it's safer to drift right where snow and ice allow, and let them get on with it. It means that many vehicles 'overtake' me while still half in my lane which is, shall we say, unnerving. I'm making a lot of use of my mirrors and trusting other drivers see that and at least know that I know that they're there.
--
Through the small coastal town of Sillamäe. Like Narva, this is an exclusively Roosian-speaking place. If I could understand them I might hear talk of the Good Old Days when this was a closed town, the factories and plants purpose-built to churn out chemical and nuclear products.
This is where the uranium for the Soviet nuclear bombs came from.
No such work here now. It's dark and depressed. The tourist rochures tried to talk it up as an internationally acclaimed example of Soviet architecture. I look at it less as n academic study, more as a place where people live: eat, sleep, die. Not much else to do here. Not good.
--
The countryside here is low - not flat, strictly speaking, but there's not a great deal to see. Farmhouses set back from the road. Country lanes. The trees look familiar, too. And then I realise it looks exactly like.. home. Whoaaah! I hadn't been expecting that. But the more I think about it (while concentrating on the road, of course) the more it looks like Norfolk.
No wonder everyone's depressed round here. Norwich lost 5-0 at Stoke on Saturday.
--
Tallinn is the capital of Estonia. It is a big, ugly slab of industry and suburbia with a heart of pure old gold. The Old Town is gorgeous. Exactly what you'd want a middle-European capital to look like. Ruritanian. Like the town in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Wooden beams and cobbled streets and rickety stairs and towers and city walls and snow crunching underfoot and crooked spires and hidden passageways and crannies and nooks and Oirish pubs and souvenir shops and strip clubs and hotels and restaurants and.. you get the picture.
I had a long talk with Roman, a young Russian working in the middle of the Old Town. I'm still trying to understand the divisions between Russian and Estonian Estonians.
"I am not Estonian. I just live here. And I was born here. But I am not Estonian."
It's easier looking for divisions between the two than things which bring them closer together.
In fact Roman is considering taking Estonian citizenship in order to be able to move elsewhere in the EU. He has no residual fondness for Russia. It's a country of mafia and alcoholism and failure. No, it's the Soviet Union that he remembers with pride.
Roman was five years old when the Soviet Union collapsed and Estonia won independence.
"Everybody had a job then. You've seen Narva? It's all drugs and unemployment. Nobody has a chance. Even here in Tallinn, the Russians don't get the jobs. But we are the ones who speak English. We're the smart ones. We are the ones who speak Russian, so if any company wants to expand into Russia they should be giving us the jobs. We are the ones who want to work. But that's not what they want."
They?
"The President of Estonia wants us all to go back to Russia. Get the f*** out he says. Well, not quite like that, but this is what he means. The Estonians are so excited. They love it! They love him for saying this. 'Get rid of the Russians.' They forget the good things and just talk about 'occupation'. But this is my country too. So I'm leaving."
Roman has work to do. The conversation is left unfinished. We don't have the time to get to the bottom of this - that he loves his country (which is now another country) so much that he's leaving (but not for the country his country used to be, when he loved it, because he hates that country.)
--
I'm staying in the first hotel I found in Tallinn after the snow started. It's the Revel Olumpia, built for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, because the sailing was held here. Since then, they've taken photos of some of the big names to stay here. They appear in the lobby.
David Copperfield; Big Country: His Excellency Mr Li Lanquing, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Peope's Republic Of China; Vaclav Havel; Hillary Rodham Clinton; BB King; Boney M. No comment required.
--
Today (Thursday) I visited the Museum of Occupations. It refers to the Soviet 'occupation' from 1940-41; the Nazi 'occupation' 1941-44; the Soviet re-'occupation' from 1944-91.
I put 'occupation' in inverted commas because the Roosians who live here don't think of the Soviet period as occupation. Given that they remain a third of the population, it all starts to feel a bit inflammatory, whichever way you look at it.
Film of the dramatic days when local anger at mismanagement grew into national anger at subjegation and achieved freedom in the years 1989-91 reminds me that this all happened so recently. Less than half my lifetime ago. I was a sentient adult aware of what was happening so close to me.
But the film was mostly in black-and-white. So even though it all happened within the lifetime of a teenager, any teenager looking at the film would just think "old.. history. boring.. nothing to do with me."
--
There's a monument in town, erected by the Soviets to the "Liberators" of 1944. It's become a symbol of the conflict between the two cultures. The Roosians here are certain that the government wants to get rid of it, or hide it in a forgotten suburb somewhere. Meanwhile, the Estonians are livid because a government order prevents them getting near the monument if they are carrying an Estonian flag. They can't both be right, can they? Except they are.
And so the government, and peoples, of Estonia are as far from getting to the end of their conversation as were Roman and I.
--
None of which must be allowed to detract from the fact that I love Tallinn.
Comments
By Paul Flower | February 11, 2008 5:03 PM
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flowr (page 2 for Tallinn)
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By Paul Flower | February 11, 2008 5:02 PM
I was in Tallinn last year, (not long after my father died which was on almost exactly the same date as your mother passed away), and everything you say here is true. Great place, I loved it, but the depth of feeling between Estonians & Russians are not ideal. That the Estonians considered destroying the very beautiful Russian Orthodox Church, the Alexander Nevski Cathedral, almost says it all - but not as well as you did.