(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

We spent almost our entire Estonian holiday in the capital city of Tallinn.  However, we did embark on one out-of-town adventure:  a road trip to Haapsalu!

The decision to visit Haapsalu was more or less a random one.  There were several potential destinations but Haapsalu was close and accessible by a full roster of buses.  We figured that, if it didn’t live up to expectations, we could come home on an earlier bus.  As it turned out, we stayed longer than expected and caught the last bus of the day back to Tallinn.

While we didn’t know too much about Haapsalu, the most difficult part of the trip was buying the bus ticket.   Few tourists in Estonia travel by local bus from Tallinn, so I had to resort to some creative communication techniques at the bus station.  It was probably very amusing for the ticket agent.

Haapsalu is a very quaint town on the Baltic Sea.  It used to be a favored summer retreat of the Russian tsars:  the covered portion of the Haapsalu railway station platform is 216 metres long  and is the longest in the former Russian empire (see photo at the top of the post).   The tsars, and many others, would come to Haapsalu to partake of its legendary mud cures.  The famous Russian composer Peter Tschaikovsky also spent a lot of time here; there is a bench that plays parts of his symphonies when you sit down on it.

After a short walk from the train station (which, despite its oversized platform, was closed to trains and was now just a railway museum and a bus station), we were in the middle of Haapsalu’s historic downtown.  We had a delicious meal at a local cafe:  the picture is slightly out of focus, but I think you can probably tell that the dessert was decadent.  Later in the day, I had a bottle of kvass (a fermented beverage made from black rye bread)…it didn’t quite match up to the cake, but it was still something that I had to try while in Estonia.  Much tastier Estonian beverages were pear cider and Vana Tallinn; I’ll have more on those in a future blog.

Our first stop after lunch was the 13th-Century Haapsalu Castle.   It is right in the middle of downtown and we enjoyed climbing all over the huge complex.

The Haapsalu waterfront still housed a number of ornate buildings dating back to the Tsarist era.  While some had recently been restored to their former glory, there were still signs of neglect from the Soviet period.   There were also some anti-touristic buildings:  we saw a largely abandoned factory that had clearly been built when Estonia was part of the Soviet Union.  The most surprising part was how such an ugly, industrial building, with no need for water access, could be placed in such a prime waterfront location.   We also saw a suspicious-looking building that looked like it was a combination of apartments and a surveillance tower:  what was the real story?

It wasn’t the only mystery.  There was also an extremely odd sculpture in the harbour:  for reasons we don’t fully understand, a polar bear (which is by no means native to this region) rises majestically out of the water…near the curiously-named Africa Beach.  Were these simply examples of the quirky Estonian wit?  We left Haapsalu with more questions than answers.

The combination of a beautiful downtown, a historic castle, puzzling relics and the shadow of the Soviet era all combined to make Haapsalu a fascinating day trip.   It would be interesting to visit it again in a few years, to see whether it has taken further steps towards regaining its glamorous past.