Across the Gulf…

This week, we left Finland and entered Estonia with two “urban” stops, one on each side of the Gulf of Finland. We are now on the southern side of the Baltic Sea, back on the mainland after all this time in Scandinavia…

Crossing Lake Saimaa took us some time. The road naturally makes a rather long loop (both on the east and on the western part), and there is no real more direct alternative (there are some ferries between the islands on the lake, but they do not allow you to cross the whole lake). In some places, the road goes a little bit into the lake and jumps from islet to islet, a bit like the Atlantic Road in Norway, except that instead of building bridges, the Finns simply piled some rocks in the water and built a road on top of them (it’s a different technique… 😜).

A Sunday in the countryside… (28/07/2024)

The closer we were getting to the end of the lake and the Baltic Sea coast, the more “urban” the landscape was becoming. There were no more large forests but only a few groves between increasingly large fields, huge farms and residential areas following one another, with their houses all almost identical… In fact, we also stopped seeing wooden houses. In the south, they are mostly made of brick and cement…

For a moment, we were afraid that we would have to sleep in a parking lot in the middle of a city, because natural spaces were getting smaller as we drove. Finally, to our great surprise, we found one of the quietest places we have had in the last few days. We were south of the city of Kouvola, right on the bank of the Kymijoki River, in a place where the meanders created a dozen small islands between which the river flows quietly. Honestly, we did not think that we would find such a beautiful place so close to the capital. So we decided to stay there for two days…

The first evening, when the few local fishermen left, a Swedish couple came to settle not far from us. From one thing to another, they invited us to have dinner with them around the fire they had prepared to cook a Swedish specialty, Kolbullen. We talked about everything and nothing (but mostly about conservation since they both work on environmental projects), and we took on us to prepare the next morning’s coffee (more practical with Marvin’s gas than having to relight a fire early in the morning), before accompanying them to fish on the other side of our island/peninsula, where they did not seem too motivated to go on their own… A different evening in the company of Anna and Tornbjörn, who that afternoon continued their journey towards Lake Saimaa, while we, following their example, lit our fire to prepare our lunch (rice and reindeer stew)…

Last night in Helsinki (29/07/2024)

It took us a month to cross Finland from north to south, following (more or less) its border with Russia… A month in which we gradually moved from the Arctic tundra to immense coniferous forests and then mixed forests before reaching the agricultural area of ​​the south and, today, the capital, Helsinki.

After leaving our wonderful spot on the riverbank, we drove the last few kilometers to Helsinki and set out to find a parking spot where we could not only easily visit the city, but also where we could sleep that night to be closer to the ferry the next morning. Then we went to visit the Finnish capital.

Not all capitals are created equal, and Helsinki probably doesn’t fit into any ranking of the most beautiful or largest capitals in the world, but it still has something that makes it enjoyable. Perhaps it’s precisely its size that makes half a day enough to see the main monuments, or all the parks and gardens spread across the city, or perhaps the fact that the Baltic Sea is never far away, with the large chimneys of the ferries jutting out above the buildings’ rooftops.

As for monuments, the list is not very long: two or three churches, the parliament, the seat of government, the institute of zoology, the central station and… that’s about it! 😁 What makes Helsinki charming anyway are certainly its elegant buildings (like most of those in the city centre), but above all its “atmosphere” of a big village, rather than a big city. In summer, the numerous café terraces, the grassy parks, the old covered market converted into something halfway between a mini-market of local delicatessens (salmon and other smoked or dried fish, reindeer or elk meat, seaweed caviar, etc.) and a place where a whole series of small cafés and restaurants are grouped together serving these same products in a super nice setting, offer many options to spend a pleasant and relaxing time, far from the usual hustle and bustle of other big cities.

After our walk, we spent some time on the esplanade in front of the pretty Café Capelli listening to a jazz concert by a local band, before taking a bus back to our island (the Helsinki coast is made up of a whole series of islands, including one occupied entirely by the municipal zoo and the one next door where we were staying). It wasn’t the prettiest place we’ve ever slept, but it did allow us to be closer to the ferry that would take us to the tenth country Marvin will visit during this trip, the following morning.

Across the Gulf… (30/07/2024)

This is probably the shortest step we have ever done. Only thirteen kilometres (since everything else was done by the ferry while Marvin was resting quietly on deck number 3)… 😁

Here we are in Tallinn, the beautiful capital of Estonia. It is difficult to compete with a city with medieval houses, an almost intact city wall and a surprisingly harmonious modern area, where you just want to spend some time on the terrace of one of the many cafés or pastry shops, between large glass towers.

We spent 24 hours in Tallinn (that afternoon and the next morning), as we also took the opportunity to do some laundry. We took our time, found a good restaurant for dinner and made the most of this beautiful city… On top of this, we found a nice place to sleep, right at the foot of the city wall, in one of the many parks in Tallinn.

We will tell you more in the next post, but one thing is clear: when you see how the city has developed and continues to grow, with construction and new buildings everywhere, how the country’s economy is booming and how life here breathes well-being and tranquility of being able to live in peace as everyone wants, you understand why Estonia is so afraid of being the next victim on the list of Russian invasions… Ukrainian flags are omnipresent throughout the city, on all public buildings, and in front of the Ministry of Defence, the Estonian flag flies strategically between the European Union and NATO’s. The desire to preserve this newly acquired freedom takes its full dimension in this small country (45.335 km²) that only gained its independence from the Soviet Union on 20 August 1991, after the peaceful “Singing Revolution”. History here is written almost in the present tense, and can be felt in every corner of medieval Tallinn…

All the way north… (31/07/2024)

Tallinn is certainly one of those cities that you fall in love with easily… Every corner seems to have its own charm, every tower of the city wall reveals a new cobbled alley, every square holds new medieval or art-deco buildings and everywhere you look, you can feel this dynamism and tranquillity. Life must certainly be sweeter in summer than in winter here, but whatever the season, Tallinn seems to use all its charms to tempt us to stroll along its cobbled streets.

This is what we did last night, from one end of the old town to the other, following the wall and then letting ourselves be guided by chance. It must be true that sometimes chance does things right, because we had dinner at the restaurant at Rataskaevu 16 (the restaurant has no name, it is just called by its address) and we had a delicious elk stew and beef steak in a beautiful setting of wood and red brick!

We were commenting yesterday on the omnipresence of Ukrainian flags throughout the city and the fear of Estonians of being next on Moscow’s invasion list. Coming out of an alley, we came across the former Russian embassy in Tallinn, closed since March 2022, when Estonia decided, together with the other two Baltic republics, to expel Russian diplomats from their territories. In front of the building, guarded 24 hours a day by the police and the army, a long barrier is covered with posters, photos and other quotes in support of Ukrainian, Georgian and other Russian political prisoners imprisoned by Putin. A little further down the same street, the Odessa restaurant opened a “Ukrainian shop” and reverts part of its sales to support Ukrainian resistance efforts. Part of the shop has been converted into a “mini-museum” where, against the backdrop of a photograph of the Odessa opera house (bombed by the Russians at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine), the shop owners (themselves from Odessa) gathered and displayed pieces of the grenades and other missiles launched by the Russians to destroy the building. When we were saying yesterday that, in Estonia, history is written in the present tense… in this particular case, it also gives one goosebumps a bit…

To close our evening stroll (yes, we have almost completely dark nights again!…), we returned to the viewing point where we had already been during the day. A street musician was there and started playing “Nothing else matters” by Metallica on his guitar and, under the setting sun, with the first lights of the city coming on, indeed, nothing else mattered except that moment when time seemed to stand still…

The next morning, after a quick visit to Turg market to stock up on salmon and other delicacies for the next few days, a last coffee in town and a quick stop on the outskirts to buy a gas cylinder (since there is no Campingaz in Finland, we had to wait until here), we went to discover the rest of Estonia… After a first stop at Jägala waterfall, we headed to Cape Purekkari, the northernmost point of Estonia, where we spent our first night outside the capital… And to motivate us a little more to visit the country (as if it we needed it… 😉) we came across our first Estonian moose, there, in the middle of the highway… It calmly crossed from one side to the other, trotting, while all the cars were slowing down to let it pass… 😍

Along the coast… (1/08/2024)

Grey and rainy skies today over the Gulf of Finland. It’s not that bad actually, as it will allow temperatures to return to a more normal level, but it doesn’t help much for photos… According to the weather forecast, we might be lucky and see the sun in the late afternoon. Like yesterday, in fact, as after a cloudy and windy afternoon, we were finally able to see the sunset between two clouds, and the wind died down a bit in the evening…

We continue our exploration of the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland coastline. We are at the beginning of Narva Bay, in the last few kilometres separating Estonia from Russia. In fact, we are about sixty kilometres from Narva, the easternmost city in Estonia, which also is the border with its Russian neighbour. We are also about 200 km from St. Petersburg. It is funny to think that in other times and circumstances, this would probably have been one of our next stops… But the current situation does not really lend itself to tourism, on the other side of the border…

The road that runs along the coast was formerly called the Tallinn-St. Petersburg Highway. It was renamed more soberly the Tallinn-Narva Highway, probably to highlight the fact that the border with Russia is closed at Narva and that, if there is still an open border post in the country, it is located much further south, on the road that connects St. Petersburg with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad (between Lithuania and Poland).

For our part, we have settled on a small grassy ridge on Aa beach (Aa rand in Estonian), facing the Baltic Sea, just about twenty metres from the water. Even if the weather is not that good, the place is quite nice and would make more than one Instagrammer drool with envy… 😉

And while we were waiting for the sun to come out and the wind to die down, with all these good things we bought yesterday at the Tallinn market, we prepared some scrambled eggs with mushrooms and bacon, 100% fresh and organic (we even cut the bacon shavings ourselves because at the Tallinn market we only found “blocks” of bacon… 🤓)

At the lake shore… (2/08/2024)

The weather was right and we had a short hour of sunshine by the Baltic Sea yesterday afternoon. Enough to go for a walk along our beach and reach a spa-restaurant a bit further away. The main building was quite nice. One of those “manoirs” as they call them here, which seems to be scattered all around Estonia. Most are private, but some have been turned into museums. This one looked better on the internet and the building needed a good coat of paint!… 🙄

Afterwards, we continued our walk on the sand, along this long beach dotted with large polished rocks, probably washed up by the sea (there were also many in the water). Some locals also arrived as soon as the sun came up. Some were swimming or kayaking while others were walking on the sand, like us. As soon as the clouds reappeared, they all left, and we were left alone to enjoy a mini sunset in front of the sea.

This morning, we headed south to Lake Peipus (or Peipsi, in Estonian), the largest lake in Estonia and the third largest in Europe. It serves as a border with Russia, and Estonia only owns half of it. It is a shallow lake (barely 15 m maximum), which is slowly recovering from the environmental damage it suffered during the Soviet era. Interestingly, at the water’s edge, information panels explain that it is an international transboundary lake, that it is advisable to know exactly where the border runs before venturing into the lake and, if you decide to do so, to always carry identification documents, to make sure your boat is properly registered at the nearest border post and… to avoid drinking alcohol! 🤔

We first went to the western shore of the lake, then came backwards to settle on the northern shore, in a beautiful pine forest right next to the longest beach in the country. We are quiet and cool under the trees, just behind the small dune that separates us from the beach and the water.

The lake is so big that it is hard to see the difference between today’s beach and yesterday’s. The waves are certainly smaller on the lake, but apart from that… To the east of where we are, there are still about twenty kilometres of beach before reaching the Narva River (which comes out from the lake and marks the border). So the bit of land that can be seen stretching out into the lake in some of the photos is actually the beginning of Russia. From where we are, we can also make out the silhouette of two large metal watchtowers (one on each side of the river, we imagine)…

The mystery that remains to be solved is that both yesterday on the beach and today in the lake we found quite a few dead fish in the sand. Yesterday, we thought they might have gotten stuck in the sand when the tide went out but… there is actually no tide in the lake so… there must be another reason… The mystery remains unsolved… 🧐

In the meantime, we will relax quietly under the pine trees and enjoy the lake until Sunday, before continuing to the west coast. By the way, thanks to the National Forest Management Centre (Riigimetsa Majandamise Keskus, in Estonian) which has set many places like this all over the country where you can stay for free and enjoy nature… Although the right to nature also exists in Estonia (as in Scandinavia), this avoids having motorhomes behind every tree in Estonian forests… 😉

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On one side of the Gulf of Finland, as on the other, LEAVE NO TRACE!

– Always travel on public ways and respect the signs.
– Limit noise and interfere as little as possible with wildlife.
– Respect the other users.
– Leave rocks, plants and other natural features as you found them and respect historic sites.
– Take your waste with you and throw it into the appropriate containers, in the nearest village.
– Do not camp inside protected areas and do not make any fires.