Not a good
day, yesterday. The bus ride from Tallinn
was memorable, but for all the wrong reasons.
We were told
by the booking clerk to be at that autobussjaan half an hour before the bus
left – at 09h30. so we ordered a taxi at the hotel for 09h10 to give us plenty
of time. Of course the cab never arrived. It had an accident, according to the
concierge. Yeah! Right! Anyway, the next one turned up ten minutes later and we
got to the terminus in time.
There was
quite a crowd of assorted Baltic and Russian peasantry there already – but no
bus. I spotted our bus parked in the middle of the yard with no driver; after
about ten minutes a man ambled across to the vehicle and climbed aboard, starting
the vehicle but not moving it. At about 09h50 he brought the bus over to the
bay where by now a substantial crowd had gathered. We were expecting a rush for
seats when the door opened, but nobody moved! We waited a couple of minutes and
then asked the woman in front of us if she was going to Riga. No English, but not for Riga. Turned out that
very few were for our bus.
The driver
duly opened the luggage hatch and sourly nodded when I asked if we should put
our bags there, then shoved them right to the back of the bay. We climbed
aboard – a couple of others were ahead of us and chose what we thought would be
good seats. What we didn’t realise was that we had been allocated seats,
although they were not together. As the bus was not full, it made no difference
where we sat. turned out thought that the chosen seats were not the best.
The first
intimation that there was a problem was when our window (and only our window)
started misting up. I had to keep wiping it to give Rab a bit of a view. We
couldn’t understand why this was but as we got going and the heater really
kicked in it became apparent that there was something wrong with the floor vent
as the heat blew up and cooked Rab’s thigh. Adding to this discomfort was the
family of four in the seats behind us. The two young children yowled and cried
and shrieked and laughed practically non-stop. We took it for about three hours
but when a particularly loud shriek right behind me got all the heads in the
rows in front turning, I growled “Hej! Enough!” in my sternest tone. That got
the little girl sobbing, but also quiet and she went to sleep after a while.
But in the
meantime the temperature in the bus was rising and people started shedding
clothes. I reckon it was about 30°C by the time we got to Riga and I was sweating bullets. Rab and I
had both got aisle seats some hours earlier so we avoided the very worst of the
heat but it was still uncomfortable.
It took
quite a while to get going out of Tallinn,
although we left the bus station on time, but then trundled around the city,
going to all three ferry stations (even thought there were no ferries docked –
and therefore no passengers) and on to the railway junction before finally
heading out of town.
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| Border Control at AINAZI |
The trip
itself was uneventful. The road was good for most of the way and only
deteriorated for the last hour and a half or so in Latvia when we reached the end of
the EU funded highway and went back onto the old road. There was not a great
deal of traffic and most of it seemed well behaved, at least until we got to
the outskirts of Riga.
We had two
stops on the way. The first after about two hours was at Pärnu which I think is
the second city of Estonia.
(It’s not actually – about fifth biggest
with a 2010 population of about 44,000)
Not much to see there! We had no idea how long the stop would be but one of the
locals nipped off and came back with coffee so I asked the driver if he spoke
English. His snarled response, whilst unintelligible, was an indication that he
did not. The man with the coffee said that the original announcement had said
about ten minutes. In view of the lack of clarity I didn’t get off, as
being stranded in Pärnu would not have
been a good idea. The second stop was over the Latvia border and having learned
that ten minutes was closer to thirty I got off to stretch my legs and have a
piddle in a ghastly portaloo. I got two nice coffees though, plus a couple of
cheese and ham snacks but caused a huge consternation by giving a Lat5 note for
the purchases which amounted to L 1.07. A search for change ensued but I
finally got a handful of small coins that came to L 3.93! (the exchange rate at the time was 1 Lat = A$2.40. – so we doubled Lat
prices and added 20%.)
Although
from time to time Rab suggested that we may not have made the best decision in
catching the bus, in fact there is little choice if you wish to get from Tallinn to Riga.
The train goes via some ungodly place in Belarus or some such country and
takes about 12 hours with at least one change of trains. (and the requirement to get a visa) There are only two flights a
day – one at the crack of dawn and the other late at night. So in reality the
bus was the best option and did at least give us a view of the countryside.
The road
follows the coastline closely although you would never guess that because the
view consists of pine trees and beech trees in great profusion. There were a
few farmhouses but clearly, as one of the guides said, Estonia is sparsely populated having a density
of one tenth of the Netherlands.
Latvia
had more little town and houses. We saw a beach at one point with a very dirty
looking sea and a thin strand of dark sand, fringed with snow. People were ice
fishing through the ice (which is called
Pimpling – at least in Sweden)
on a number of frozen inlets. We saw plenty of snow along the way but not much
else during the five and a half hour trip.
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| Pimpling along the coast |
We had a
spot of bother checking into the hotel as the first room they offered was not
what we had paid for, but they cheerfully changed the room. We caught a trolley
bus down to the Old
Town and had an excellent
meal there – although not Latvian. Rab had a great fillet steak and I had lamb
cutlets with lentils.
Back to the
hotel by trolley bus and we slept like logs.
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