11.9: Nägamist Tartu!

I decided to catch a 2pm train to Tallinn so I still had the morning to play with in Tartu. I didn’t do much, just a bit of shopping, a final walk around and visited my favourite café, Werner, for lunch. After farewelling Christian, I made the long trek to the railway station. I caught one of the slow trains to Tallinn, stopping at all the little stations along the way. This didn’t bother me as I was quite comfortable tapping away on my computer.

The hostel I chose in Tallinn was located in the old town, 400 m from the railway station. The setup was quite similar to Terviseks in Tartu, appealing to the same, non-partying demographic. The hostel itself is on the second and third floors of one of the old buildings located at the foot of Pikk Street – the steep street which connects the higher and lower areas of the old town.

In some ways, leaving Tartu felt like the end of a chapter for my time in Estonia. Many people have told me that Tartu is considered the ‘real’ Estonian city – its spiritual and cultural homeland. Indeed, much of the independence movement was based in Tartu and many important treaties and documents were signed there. Having spent a considerable amount of time in Tartu and, to a lesser extent, Narva I get the impression that Tallinn sits somewhere between the two cities. This is borne out by the demographics, with the population of 430,000 being ~50% Estonian and ~40% Russian, with the rest being a mixture of nationalities. The other major difference is the sheer number of tourists. This is something that really struck me this time around in Tallinn. While there were plenty of tourists in Tartu, in the Tallinn old town they completely dominate. I had become accustomed to hearing Estonian as the primary language but that was certainly not the case here. Even in the modern city centre, Estonian really sits on a par with Russian and English as the most common languages that I could pick up.

I spent some time wandering around the old town before settling on somewhere to have dinner.