Ruth Sowter discovers Estonia and its unique people carved from a turbulent and romantic history, straddling the past and present and leaping into the future.
I had planned my visit to Estonia to fit in with my first trip overseas, nonchalantly slipping it into my itinerary between Sweden and Lithuania, to conceal the huge importance visiting my mother’s homeland had for me. For most of my life I told people my mother was Russian to avoid the difficulty of explaining where Estonia was, why it was part of the Soviet Union and how on earth to say my mother’s name (Tiiu). Stories had trickled down from my grandparents about bits cut out or blacked out of letters from relatives, how many of them had died fighting Russians, how empty the shops were and the people who were bullied by vulgar Ruskie types. Boney M seemed to have it right when they groaned, “Oh those Russians…”
The ferry from Stockholm was massive and could have been anywhere in the world except for the number of blondes aboard, and the announcements being made in Swedish, English and Estonian. We disembarked in a remote-feeling (or perhaps that was just me?) wharf full of men in black leather jackets standing around cabs. Our chosen cab quickly had us at the borders of Tallinn’s old town, with the driver explaining that cars could not enter. Despite getting down to –30 degrees in winter, in October the weather was mildly in the mid 20s. A fresh breeze came off the Baltic sea.
I had read that Tallinn was the ‘new Prague’. The Tallinn I found was a style-conscious city of medieval charm, determined to defy the post-Soviet, or actually any, stereotype. As tourists trampled the globe searching for places un-trampled, Estonia is one place still relatively fresh – a blend of former Soviet edginess and Scandinavian cool, naturally beautiful and intriguingly mysterious.
Tallinn is now famous as a party town. Brits and Europeans flock like Aussies flocking to Bali – chasing cheap beer, anonymous nightlife and locals. Trendy spots abound, but one bar that deserves a special mention is the more off-beat Depeche Mode bar, an underground grotto devoted to the band. Popular with backpackers for years, it feels like an 80s themed party and the spot to meet other people looking for something more than another trendy night spot.
Centuries of occupation by Danes, Swedes, Germans and Russians have galvanised Estonians into fiercely independent, quietly ambitious people, wary of allegiances and highly political, if somewhat hard to read. Fortunately I knew not to take it personally if people didn’t jump down my throat with friendliness the way they sometimes do in Australia. There’s a saying in Finland about two old Estonian friends who haven’t seen each other for ten years bumping into each other in a pub. “How’ve you been?” asks one. “Not bad,” the other replies. They sit and drink in silence for some time. Suddenly the first man exclaims, “Well, did we come here to talk, or to drink…”
The heart of Tallinn is Toompea, a hill where its first fortress was built in 1050. The two churches on Toompea represent both sides of Estonia’s past – a very simple, 12th century cathedral with the stone faces of its saints mostly vandalised, and another more dramatic church, Russian Orthodox with large glistening dome and tacky icons for sale.
The city is one of the best remaining examples of medieval architecture, its cobbled streets and alleyways nestled behind huge grey walls and turrets. Markets are still held in the walls (that’s how big they are), where you can buy incredibly long knitted socks, silver, amber jewellery, boots, carvings from Juniper wood and even white fox fur mittens. At the centre of the town is ‘freedom square’. Loud music, generally American, blasts out of the square’s shops and the exuberance of freedom is palpable.
To say the internet is big in Estonia is an understatement. In a country so practised at secretly pursuing liberty, the internet is the ideal portal to the world. This year the country was the first in the world to conduct its presidential elections using an electronic voting system, and all government legislation can be viewed by the public online.
After three days in the old town I was ready to explore further. Braving a five- or six-lane unmarked intersection to catch a tram, I headed for the outskirts of the city. The small, blue tram ticket cost me about three Aussie cents. Leaving old-town Tallinn, I found a different world of sprawling concrete and older, timber housing. Here was the post-Soviet grimness I had feared.
An old lady sat by the side of the road on an upturned box. Wearing only a cotton dress and headscarf, she was hunched over the wares she was selling: a few bits of old-looking apple and cabbage. It was an image I was to see repeated throughout the Eastern Block. Further out, abandoned houses, rubbish, stray dogs and bored looking youths edgily regarded the passing tram. Rusty flag holsters on the houses were a grim reminder of Soviet occupation. This place was a pin up for anti-communist sentiment, with signs everywhere of desperation, repression and poverty.
The smell of poverty was inescapable and the landscape dotted with another thing I would see all through Eastern Europe – pale, blue kiosks selling cigarettes, chewing gum, sweets, and dozens and dozens of varieties of vodka.
Estonia gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, culminating in what is known as the ‘singing revolution’. This began in 1987, with a cycle of demonstrations where people sang national songs and hymns that were banned by Soviet rule. They began broadcasting the songs on TV and the radio, and at its peak 300,000 people participated. In 1991 the Soviets sent tanks to quell the resistance and the Estonians formed a human chain around the TV and radio stations. At the same time, parliament passed legislation proclaiming the restoration of independence. Estonia had its revolution without any bloodshed, a fact of which they are justifiably proud.
A government statement in 2004 quipped that Estonia sang its way out of the Soviet Union in 1991, and then into the European Union in 2004 when Estonia came to the world’s attention by winning Eurovision. Since then, it has exploded with life with an economic boom and a taste for European sophistication, creating a strange contrast against the old Estonia.
Many of the Russians in Estonia still refuse to speak Estonian to this day, but having been born in Estonia, they refuse to return to Russia. In a weird twist, a significant number have become like gypsies – not eligible for citizenship or passports from any country, they stay around like ghosts, waiting for a return to Russian Imperialism that may not even recognise them anymore.
Four days is enough to take in the old town and outskirts, so on Day Five I took the train to Tartu, Estonia’s second largest city. Here was a different Estonia. The countryside, if not spectacular, was gently beautiful, all autumnal golden grasslands and dark fir tree woods.
People seemed to relax as we moved away from Tallinn; passengers chatted to each other and to the driver. There were no tourists, but there might have been more had they known how cheap the train was, less than one dollar Aussie.
Its hard to talk about former Soviet-occupied countries without it turning into a rant about Russian imperialism. One method the Russians used to keep people under control was by letting the infrastructure run down, leading to demoralisation. This was evident in the Estonian trains. Although clean, the huge steel car doors didn’t shut properly – instead, they spent the whole trip swinging back and forward, smashing with a tremendous clang whenever we rounded a corner. The train seemed to pull up anywhere, once or twice in the woods with not even a platform. The passenger would leapg a few feet down into the grass with a wave to the driver.
Tartu is Tallinn’s smaller, friendlier, if less sexy, sister. Home to Estonia’s oldest university, it is very much a cosy student town. A running joke in the town is immortalised in a statue of one of Estonia’s most famous poets, Wilde (pronounced Vil-de). He lived about the same time as Oscar Wilde, and the similarity was evidently amusing enough for the Estonians to have a themed Irish pub named after the two men, with an accompanying bookshop. This was one of the best pubs I visited, pumping with students, good food, more cheap beer and lovely wooden interior.
Traditional Estonian food is all about black bread, sauerkraut (pickled cabbage), fish and potato. Being a vegetarian, I had to put up with family jokes for years about how a good Estonian blood sausage would sort me out (that is, it would exorcise silly vegetarian notions), so I was nervous about local food. How wrong I was! Anyone who likes garlic would love the Estonian black bread served at Wilde – toasted, buttered and rubbed with garlic. Also, Estonian ice cream is like no other – it is all real cream and fresh local fruit.
After independence, we asked my grandfather if he would consider going back. He shook his head. “Too cold.” Estonia, like my grandfather, is looking forward – focused on a future that sees the country becoming ever stronger and more secure in Europe. If you want to see any remains of the old Estonia, you had better move fast. After waiting decades for freedom and self-definition, this country ain’t waiting around for no-one.
Fourteen hundred and twenty steps. I lost count around three hundred and fifty, but figured we were about half way there. My legs felt heavy and I could hear blood pumping through my ears. My partner and I were in deep in darkest Transylvania, in search of Dracula. At the top of our climb lay his roost, a fifteenth century castle.
My imagination raced ahead, conjuring up images of swirling, screeching, black bats. A slight breeze whistled through the pine needles while a pack – no, more like a gang – of mangy dogs trotted incessantly behind us, their nails clicking tick! tick! tick! on the empty steps. The scene was straight out of Bram Stokers’ Dracula: Jonathon Harker, the young solicitor sent to stay with the Count, surrounded by howling wolves as he approaches the vampire’s lair.
Well, almost. Not exactly howling wolves, but the dogs did seem dangerous in a rabid kind of way.
Confusing myth with reality is easy to do in Transylvania. The legend of Dracula (meaning ‘the Devil’) entices tourists to drink from a potent cocktail of folklore, history, landscape and literature. Everybody knows of Count Dracula, the bloodsucking neck biter. But only Romania can boast the man behind the myth.
Vlad Draculea, a fifteenth century Romanian prince, is said to have been the inspiration for Bram Stokers’ shapeshifting character. He impaled victims – Turkish prisoners of war, disobedient subjects and treacherous lords – on sharpened stakes. Thus he was named Vlad Tepes – Vlad ‘the Impaler’.
‘Dracula tourism’ is prolific in Romania. Any building, town or toilet remotely connected to either the fictional Count or the historical Vlad is exploited.
We, however, were determined to experience the ‘real’ Dracula, a search that would take us through student clubs, rural villages and gothic architecture to the heights of the Carpathian Mountains.
We caught an overnight train from Prague to Cluj Napoca. Coincidentally, this was Jonathon Harker’s first stop on his journey to the Count’s castle. Our train was late, so we alighted on the platform near the stroke of midnight. Much to our disappointment we didn’t stumble across black caped creatures emerging from crypts. We did, however, encounter night dwellers of another kind – students.
Cluj Napoca (known simply as ‘Cluj’) is the hub of Romania’s burgeoning intelligentsia. During the school year, students make up a third of the city’s population. And, like any place in the world where students gather en masse, partying takes precedence over studying.
The Fashion Club, Diesel and the Basement Bar are just some of the clubs in which Paris Hilton lookalikes groove to the latest European dance anthems. Young men wearing designer labels sip Black Russians with an air of arrogance which often clings to the rich, like cologne. Models pass out free packets of Vogue cigarettes while ‘Fashion TV’ plays on a big screen behind the bar.
This came as a surprise to us. Romania is one of the poorest nations in Europe, recovering from a long and brutal dictatorship. However, the country has recently joined the EU and seems to have finally broken the shackles of Ceausescu. A few long nights in Cluj proved that young Romanians are quickly moving away from their nation’s troubled past and can party with the best of them.
The nights blurred together and we became distracted from our quest to find the real Dracula by a slightly scarier quest to find the real Paris Hilton among the lookalikes. It was about then that we decided to re-focus, re-hydrate and hit the road. We caught the train to Sighisoara, Vlad Tepes’ birthplace.
On the train we met Anna, a music student returning home for the holidays. She gave us the lowdown on a changing, progressive Romania. “You used to be able to smoke on trains,” she said, tapping her knee to the rhythm of the tracks. Anyone who has traveled through Eastern Europe will understand the gravity of this comment. The country was in a flux: no smoking in cramped, public places; Russian was out, English was in; people can now vote.
We questioned Anna about opulent Cluj: “Higher education is only available to those whose parents can afford to send them to university,” she explained, “or those lucky enough to be awarded a scholarship.” Herself a scholarship student, Anna revealed that 40% of Romanians live agriculturally, many in abject poverty.
The train lumbered past a Stephen King landscape of yellow haystacks, never ending cornfields and ragged scarecrows flapping in the breeze. The horizon occasionally provided a silhouette of post-communist perniciousness: disused factories, abandoned collective farms and silent power stations. Our alcohol enhanced impression of Romania as party central quickly dissolved like an aspirin.
We said goodbye to Anna as she hugged her parents on the train platform in Sighisoara. Her comments were correct: horse-drawn carts cantered down the dirty street and grubby children raced each other on rusty bicycles; a marked contrast to affluent Cluj.
However, Sighisoara is experiencing an economic boom of its own. In the centre of the town rises a 13th century citadel, listed as a UNESCO world heritage sight. Tourists stroll through the maze of sloping cobblestone streets, marvel at the fortified walls and sip coffee in the town square, once the site of public proclamations and gruesome executions.
A clock tower built in 1648 still keeps time and a climb to the top provides spectacular views over one of the best preserved medieval towns in Eastern Europe. Interestingly, people still live inside the citadel; one of the old battle towers is occupied by a local radio station.
The central attraction is Vlad Tepes’ childhood home. Situated in the town centre, it has recently been converted into a (surprise, surprise) Dracula themed restaurant. The mass of associated merchandise, including vampire t-shirts, Vlad Tepes’ stubby holders and oddly, Star Wars memorabilia, evoked a sense of nostalgic kitsch. Sighisoara, although architecturally incredible, just didn’t rate high enough on our Draclometer. We were after the scent of blood.
Perhaps blood would stain the streets of Brasov, the second largest city in Romania. Flanked by steeply rising, forested hills, and overlooked by a Hollywood style ‘Brasov’ sign, travelers are attracted to its medieval ambience and proximity to ski resorts in the Bucegi Mountains.
On St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1459, Vlad Tepes executed 30 000 dishonest merchants and nobles in the town square. He arranged the stakes in concentric circles and sat in the middle of the grisly scene, lasciviously eating his dinner.
We didn’t find remnants of Vlad’s mass impalement, but were astounded by the spectacular gothic architecture of the Black Church. Its towering steeple, daunting in the night sky, provided an eerie atmosphere to a dark night in Transylvania. The ‘Brasov’ sign, lit up on the hillside, gave the impression of a film set. Once again, our search for Dracula distorted fact and fiction.
The two sides of the Romanian coin continued to beguile us in Bran, a small town which was a 30 minute bus ride from ‘Brasovwood’. Our guide book told us that it was here we could explore ‘Dracula’s Castle’.
I clung to my sharpened stake, expecting the rank smell of open crypts and garlic to permeate the walls; instead, a musty, odour hung in the air like an old noose. Further consultation with my guidebook revealed that the Dracula reference is due to the castle’s classic appearance: it is unlikely Vlad Tepes ever visited here.
However, the spirit of Vlad was to be found in a nearby haunted house where shrieking ghouls and the moaning undead frightened those brave enough to venture in. A market stall sold fake blood and plastic vampire teeth. A bar, complete with coffin-shaped lounges, sold slightly overpriced drinks. Further exploration revealed a cheaper local alternative down a flight of stairs under an internet café.
More a museum than horror show, an exploration of the many rooms in Bran Castle revealed an elaborate collection of antique furniture. A recreated traditional Transylvanian village was nestled in a field below. The red roofed castle fronted an evening sky of setting sun and coloured clouds, a memorable visual experience.
We decided to bite the silver bullet and journey onwards to Poenari, site of Vlad Tepes’ actual domain. Built by slaves and servants in 1456, it is, as Jonathon Harker correctly described, “in the midst of the Carpathian Mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe.” While not completely inaccessible, the castle is difficult to reach, and as such, sees few tourists.
Three bus rides from Bran took us into Romania’s rural heartland. Through the city of Pitesti, the town of Court de Arges and a truckstop called Poenari. Cows roamed the streets and the sound of hens clucking was intermittently interrupted by the growl of passing road trains.
After an anticipatory night’s sleep, we walked three kilometres to the base of the mountain where we had to search for the first step that would take us to ‘the Devil’s’ lair.
Eventually we emerged from the gloom of the forest into bright sunshine. Vlad Tepes’ castle perched precariously on the side of a cliff. Crumbling ramparts and aging battle towers loomed ominously overhead.
There were no swirling bats, yet Bram Stoker’s evocation described the scene well: “The castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree-tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.”
Our long search had finally alchemised fact and fiction. Overwhelmed by the view, we stood silently on the ramparts of the real Dracula castle looking out over the precipice into the rugged Carpathians. The air that swirled beneath our feet was scented by fir trees and we were dizzy from the height, or was it the spirit of Vlad circling us?
We had also seen the spirit of a poor, post-communist nation emerging into the wider world with a garish sense of humour and the inventiveness to take what it has and run with it. It all merged on top of that mountain to produce a moment of sheer exhilaration. We had drunk from the potent cocktail and were now His minions.
It turns out that Vlad Tepes’ first wife threw herself from these ramparts into the Arges River far below, to avoid being captured by invading Turks. Our impaling anti-hero escaped, only to be killed later in battle. His body was decapitated, his head sent to Constantinople. However, his legend lives on in castles, villages, and tacky t-shirts all through Romania. RIP.
Fast Facts:
• It is possible to travel to Transylvania by train from almost any major city in Europe. Connections, however, in Hungary and elsewhere can be unreliable, so patience is required.
• Train travel within Romania is reliable and frequent. There are slow trains, which are old, dilapidated, and as the name suggests, very slow; and fast trains, which are modern and more expensive. Ticket prices for the fast train average between 20 – 40 Australian dollars between destinations. Buses are regular and very cheap.
• Expect to pay between 20 and 40 Australian dollars per night for double accommodation. Hotels are available in most major towns; pensions and home stays in smaller towns and villages.
• Australian citizens require a visa which costs $65. The visa is NOT available at the border, but from Romanian consulate in Canberra.
