26.8: A rainy day in Narva

It would seem, for the moment at least, the Estonian summer has come to an end. I awoke this morning to overcast skies and light rain. Armed with my rain jacket, I set out to explore Narva a little further. My first port of call was the art gallery, which was included in the ticket price of the Narva Castle. There, a kind old lady turned on the lights for me and explained the origins of all the different exhibitions. There were four exhibitions spread over two levels. One of contemporary works by artists from Narva, the next was the museums collection of pieces specifically of Narva throughout the decades. On the top floor was the museums private collection, much of which was lost during WWII, only to be later found, water damaged, in a nearby barn. Most of this was restored and is on display once again. The final exhibition was of the types of housing found across Estonia throughout history, from ancient one-room structures to German manor houses.

Kunstigalerii

After this I attempted three ‘mystery’ geocaches. This type of geocache varies from a multi cache in that clues are given in the description of the geocache and it is from these that one has to figure out where the geocache is hidden. These can be very difficult however those that I attempted were not so bad. The first led me back to the remains of the Swedish fortifications. In the photo I took two days ago, I didn’t realise that there was in fact an entire passageway behind the little openings in the wall, extending for some distance. This was really interesting to explore, in spite of the array of unsavoury litter lying around the place.

An entrance to the tunnels

View out 

The next two caches led me to some other interesting locations. The first in the ‘dark garden’ in another hole in the towns wall. The next was near the Raekoja plats, on which stands the new University of Tartu Narva campus, beside the original town hall. Some interesting architecture here, I thought it was quite a good mix of old and new.

UT Narva campus

UT left, town hall right

With the rain still holding off, I was able to ear my lunch beside the river, with a coffee, overlooking the border crossing.

Views to Ivangorod

In the afternoon I attempted another multi cache, this time with eight stages, designed to take one on a tour of the Kreenholm neighborhood of Narva. Kreenholm grew rapidly in the late 19^th when the industrious baron Von Knoop decided to build a cotton mill there. Knoop learnt much about the cotton trade in Manchester and used British machinery (and labour) to fit out his mills. Unfortunately, the collapse of the soviet union saw a decline in the mills business, leading to its ultimate closure in 2010. The cache started at the Lutheran cathedral – still closed – which was originally built for the Lutheran workers at Kreenholm and can hold up to 5000 people. It was then on to the railway station (the original having been destroyed in WWII) and the hydroelectric plant, both of which were critical to the operations at Kreenholm. Next was Gerassimovi Hall, constructed for workers in 1957 and named after a bloke the soviet’s hailed as a hero, having led a large strike at the factory in 1872. The building has been sitting disused for 10 years and is in a very sorry state of repair. It was then past a war memorial and a wing of the Narva hospital that was once used exclusively for the factory workers. The final location was the house of the factory director, a majestic wooden construction on a raised bank of the River Narva, next to two now disused border crossing bridges, again once used by factory workers. At each of these locations I had collected a number (e.g. the number of swords on a coat of arms or the number of pillars on a building) and used these to determine the coordinates of where the geocache was hidden. As it turned out, it was next to the directors house, with an excellent view over the river. Another great geocache that took me to places I wouldn’t have otherwise visited/known about.

Hospital

Directors house 

View downstream

… and upstream 

Up until this point the weather had been playing nice. However, now that I was about two kilometres from the city centre, it decided to start raining heavily, meaning I got a bit wet on the walk back. I ducked into the first café I happened upon on the way home to ride out the storm. After spending a while there writing and making a Skype call I had a pre-dinner drink and snack at a nearby pub before heading home to cook dinner.