Today
our language group headed off Viljandimaa, a county in central Estonia, whose
capital is, funnily enough, Viljandi a city (by Estonian standards) of some 20,000
people. We met at the main university building at 8.50, boarded our charter bus
and were soon underway. The weather was a bit funny today, with periods of
heavy rain followed by an hour or two of sunshine. We alighted the bus at our
first destination, the castle ruins at Viljandi. I visited here in 2012. Initially
it was raining quite heavily but soon the weather cleared and we had a lovely stroll around the site. These are the remains of what was quite a grand
Estonian stronghold of the 13th century. A few walls are all that
remain today and the site is utilised for concerts and performances throughout
the year. Some very nice views are afforded over Lake Viljandi from the castle
site.
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| View over Viljandi and lake |
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| Ruins |
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| Ruins |
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| A pretty suspension bridge |
Our
next destination was Olustvere. Here we visited the grounds of the Olustvere
manor house and surrounding School of Rural Economics and Service Industry.
This school is Estonia’s oldest and most prestigious agricultural collage. The
school owns much of the surrounding farmland. Each student gets a portion of a
field to farm as as part of the curriculum, with large signs erected in the
fields with each students name to demarcate which part is theirs. The manor
house and its associated outbuildings are apparently some of the best preserved
in the country and the grounds were certainly very nice. One of the highlights was
a barn which has been filled with around 150 wood carved horse-drawn carriages
by a man called Voldemar Luht. Luht was born in Siberia in 1919 and his family
moved to Estonia in 1922. Here, he went on to study at the Agricultural School.
From 1937-40, he served in the cavalry of the Estonian Defense Forces. He, like
many others of the time, was forced to take to the forests to avoid the wrath
of the Red Army. It was not until a 1945 amnesty that he was able to carry on
with his life, working as senior a horse breeder at various stables around the
country. After his retirement in 1979, he took up woodcarving, producing over
400 miniature carvings depicting all manner of horse-related activities. These
ranged from hauling timber to transporting a family to a wedding to the
deportation of Estonians to Siberia. They were quite intricate and this was the
sort of place that one could spend hours looking around.
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| Manor |
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| Old mill and some outbuildings |
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| Me in front of millpond |
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| Carvings |
For
lunch we attended a bread-making workshop in a renovated granary. The bread was
good and so was the lunch, a typical hearty meal of roast pork, potatoes, salad
and gravy. Yum.
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| Bread (before baking) |
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| Lunch |
The
final activity for the day was a walk on the Hüpassaare bog in the Soomaa
National Park. Bogs are a common feature of the Estonian landscape and have
their own particular ambiance. The rain held off for the most part and we had a
very pleasant walk through some diverse scenery. Soomaa National Park is said to
experience a fifth season, whereby the whole area is totally inundated or a few
weeks at the end of May/beginning of June. Then it is possible to canoe around
the entire park, a very popular activity.
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| Typical bog scenery |
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| Bog |
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| Bog forest |
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| Birch forest |
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| Bog frog |
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| Bog sheep |
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