Arrived back in Tallinn three days ago after travelling two hours away from Tallinn on the north coast, 50 kms from the Russian border. We stayed in a spa hotel on a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Finland. The hotel was good but expensive and the weather was very cool.
We travelled to the border city of Narva - very austere buildings and very Russian. All around the country is block after block of housing commission type apartments constructed by the Soviets to house the workers.
Saw many Soviet and German cemetries from World War 2.
We caught up with Maree's 90 year old aunt and learnt some of the history of Maree's father but the aunt was not fothcoming about too much of the family history as I think it is too painful going back to the times of the Soviet and German occupations. This country and it's people have suffered so much - so many were killed or shipped off to Siberia.
Maree's cousin and her husband were very good to us and acted as tour guides - the area is heavily into mining and we toured an underground shale oil mine that is now a museum while we were there.
We hired a Citroen C4 and it was interesting driving on the wrong side of the road with a manual car.
Maree and I caught a train two days ago to a country town and went walking and had a picnic lunch with food we bought at a local supermarket.
My brother in law Peter arrived from Oz yesterday and last night we had a session with 3 Norwegian's - bit of a sore head this morning !!
Tomorrow we head off to Saaremaa, an island south west of Tallinn where Maree's mother was born. Looking forward to that - have hired an automatic Mazda 6 for that drive so should be easier than a manual. Will be away for 5 days and staying at a guest house recommended by Maree's cousin.
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