Day 48: Tallinn to Pärnu

MAY 21 - It is rice cakes and tomatoes for breakfast, and we head east on a city bus to the St. Bridget’s Convent in the Pirita district. It was the largest nunnery of Old Livonia, completed in 1436. It was quite a large structure, with many small rooms to the side where visitors could meet the inhabitants behind screens. The convent was in operation until it was destroyed by the Russian army in 1575, during the Livonian War (this prolonged conflict was fought by Russia for control of greater Livonia in 1558-83).

The cemetery in front of the convent.

The central chapel had a high-angled roof and simple, relatively featureless interior walls.

Onward from the convent to the Tallinn Botanical Gardens, a bit out of town and near the Tallinn TV tower, by far the highest landmark in the Tallinn area.

Not a lot blooming yet, but the tulips, along with the fritillaria above, were plentiful.

The Tallinn TV Tower, completed in 1980.

Check out of hotel and take trams to the bus station (buusijaam in Estonian). Its an 1.5 hour ride to Pärnu. Nearly all the way is rural, with some fields but for the most part mixed pine and deciduous forests. Step off the bus at our destination, and immediately feel the difference in temperature. While it is nearly the same as Tallinn (about 12⁰ C), the wind chill is nothing to speak of.

Today’s route: (A) Tallinn, and (B) Pärnu.

Pärnu is a famous summer beach destination for Europeans and Russians, though we are well ahead of the busy season. I walk around the town for a few hours and am impressed at how well put together it is. Feels very compact, with plenty of older, historied buildings in the core (like Tallinn), and a long quiet boardwalk along the wide Pärnu River. Modern architectural styles mix with faded, wooden houses; some intricate, others just simple and functional.

Just some old abandoned wood house, right in the middle of downtown.

Church of Catarina, completed in 1768.

Some window art, a few blocks from our guesthouse.

Monument, and surrounding park, dedicated to Lydia Koidula (1842-86). She was lauded as ‘poetess, publicist, and one of the founders of Estonian theatre’, and Koidula was her pen name (meaning ‘of the dawn’). She was integral to the ‘national awakening’ of the 1860’s that sought to unbind the Estonian people from centuries of dominance under the Swedes, Danish, Germans, Poles, and Russians.

Like eslewhere in Estonia, I haven’t been left with a sense of the Soviet occupation. The hulking, concrete shells and legions of identical apartment complexes that typify Soviet architecture in a few other places I’ve traveled don’t seem to work their way into Estonian cities very much, at least in what we’ve visited.

An artistic doorway downtown, flanked by the Estonian flag (left) and the local flag of Pärnu (right). Interestingly, the Pärnu flag is the same pattern as the flag of FInland, with the colors reversed.

I didn’t mention this earlier, but Estonians have done a stellar job of displaying detailed historical information on many of the older buildings, both here and in Tallinn. It is obvious that a great deal of care has been taken to keep cultural memory alive. It reminds me of a quote by Jakob Hurt, an Estonian folklorist and theologian (1839-1907), which goes:

“If we can't be a great nation in population we can be a great nation in spirit!“

Estonia