Solo In Estonia’s East 🇪🇪

🇪🇪 We all know about Tallinn the vibrant capital of Estonia with its tech start-ups and modern infrastructure. It’s lauded as a miracle of the post-Soviet sphere and rightly so. But what about the rest of the country? Is that reaping the benefits of EU accession too? I jumped on a train heading east to find out…

since the fall of the soviet union there have been 
few former republics that have managed to shake off their communist past quite as well as estonia 
seemingly has tarlin the capital in particular is vibrant it’s full of tech startups and free 
wi-fi however i want to know what life is like in the outer region to the country along the 
russian border and so i’m going to jump on a train now and we’re going to head east together 
to the edge of the european union and see how life is progressing for the locals there so um it’s 
freezing cold let’s find a railway station join me whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa there are treacherous 
conditions here in estonia it’s very easy to pull a hamstring or twist an ankle or get 
splattered by dirty bloody snow from cars ah look how pretty it is though look at lovely 
little estonia i had no idea before i came to this country just how pretty medieval well-preserved 
tallinn would be let’s see what it’s like at the east see if it’s the same or if it’s a little 
bit more well let’s say if it’s a little bit more reminiscent of the places we’ve been before 
together in the former ussr let’s check it out hello can i have a ticket to jovi please javi yeah 
thank you check out the name of the estonian towns you can visit in this lovely country you 
can visit poldisky or pasculla or ayegvidu which one would you choose which 
one do you reckon the most exciting i reckon pascula i like the sound of that 
pascula one day i’m gonna go to pascuala maybe or there’s a babashka selling something 
over there let’s go and check it out they’ll keep me warm in navajo oh domestic it looks like the train 
to nava and jovi is pulling in now i’ve already seen some gopnicks getting on 
the train eastern estonia it’s a different world well we’ve got about two hours 
to go until our destination but i brought some reading material 
which is called babushka’s secrets advice for all illnesses so uh i’m gonna settle 
down watch the um estonian countryside pass by and read babushka’s secrets so uh i’ll 
see you at our destination jovi nigeria thank you welcome to jovi we’ve arrived 
here wow check it out beautiful jovi i was worried i was worried on this journey 
to estonia that i wouldn’t find any well let’s say soviet architecture but um passing through 
the villages and the towns of east of estonia well i don’t need to worry because look what 
we’re greeted by a nice old soviet train station see you later train it’s off 
to nava leaving me here in jovi but listen as awesome as i’m sure old jovi 
is it’s not our destination i’ve got to go to a town called sila may which is well 
the most soviet of estonian soviet towns so somehow we’re going to try and get 
there now there’s a bus stop over here i’m hoping there’s a bus to sila may from here 
we shall find out wow i kind of want to explore jovi as well so i’m sure it’s epic i mean what 
a greeting the old abandoned railway station wow we’ve got off to a good soviet star in 
eastern estonia well it seems there’s no transport to sillamay from that bus stop so we 
are going to get a chance to walk through town a little bit and find a lift check it out 
there’s the estonian flag flying proudly and these are the streets of jovi let’s have a little look it’s not exactly 
the weather for adventurizing but um yeah we’re gonna make it to sillamay 
wow look at these places transport foreign foreign wow wow wow what a legend giving me a lift and we’re now at the hotel crunk 
let’s go and see if they got a room oh they go my plans it’s the only hotel 
in town jesus my plans are over already right then babushka’s pointed me in 
the direction of the most beautiful street in sila may we’re going to go 
to it and then i’m going to tell you about sila may it’s got an interesting 
history and hotels that don’t work amazing if you look on a map printed inside the soviet 
union you’ll be very hard-pressed to find the town of sila may marked on it and that’s 
because in soviet times silomei was a closed town a secret city just like the secret city we visited 
in kyrgyzstan it was closed for the same reason they found geranium in the low 
slung hills that surround the town and so under stalin they built this town in neoclassical soviet architectural style 
well that’s a mouthful and look at it here on the shores of the baltic sea a little 
piece of the soviet union still remains no principle wow good in soviet times you weren’t allowed to leave the 
city however now in post-independence estonia you kind of can’t stay in the city and that’s because 
the factories that once worked here are now shut down and there’s nothing for the youngsters to 
do the school is closed over there the marriage office is closed over there the shops have closed 
over there it’s a different time the only people who remain in sillamay are people with pensions 
the babushkas and the jediskas there they go yeah people who basically live on the 
memories of what silla may once was well i’m here at the bus station at sila may the 
plan was to spend the night here in the hotel but of course that’s closed so um instead i’m going to 
jump on a bus to nava a city on the russian border so um yeah it’s about 27 k’s 
away let’s find a hotel there and continue our adventure in 
eastern estonia tomorrow let’s do it we’re in sunny nava isn’t it wonderful let’s go and 
check out if we can’t find a hotel wow what a soviet city old nava is check it 
out the old style in this architecture that little thing on the roof that you see sometimes 
let’s see if our hotel is stalinist where is it estonia um oh look where i am the hotel nava with two l’s well there you have it a little single bed a 
tv a desk let’s check out the old wash basin okay that’s what you get for um 30 euros in the provinces of estonia and 
a view of snowy narva on a tuesday night well that’s the end of day one of our trip through 
eastern estonia it’s been pretty eye-opening for me seeing some things i didn’t know existed 
didn’t know about so um yeah stay tuned for day two when we’ll continue our journey i’m now 
gonna read my copy of babushka secrets and uh fall asleep we’ve got an early start tomorrow 
so yeah stay tuned see you guys in the morning good morning from well the russian town of nava in 
a sense i’m in estonia but it feels anything but the people here communicate 
almost exclusively in russian i was in a shop yesterday and all 
the newspapers and magazines for sale we’re in russian the tv channels in my 
hotel room are pretty much only in russian a lot of the people here in nava have 
dual nationality russian passports so yeah so although i’m obviously in estonia it feels like with the architecture and the 
weather i’m actually in the russian federation let me take you somewhere before we begin 
today’s journey and show you why that is well i’ve come down to the banks 
of the river nava here it is over here in estonia you have the medieval 
danish fort and over here just swimming distance away you have the town of ivan gorod 
and its giant fort and that is the russian federation this is where the european union 
juts up against the western edge of russia and there’s probably no other border in the world 
except for maybe the korean peninsula where two different ideologies clash so sharply you’ve got 
estonia which since independence has followed a path of democracy of rule of law of respect 
for its citizens and you’ve got russia which is done anything but russia a land that is filled 
with the greatest people you could hope to me loyal honest legit people in russia but they’re 
ruled by the biggest bunch of any country’s ever been ruled by the 
russian people have been enslaved tortured murdered embezzled from stolen from 
lied to or by the people that rule that country right then i’ve ordered a cab because where 
are we going there’s no public transport we’re now going to head deep into 
the forests of eastern estonia to something that i think we might 
both find interesting let’s see foreign here yes i’ve been dropped off in the semi-abandoned town of vivikona in the 
past in soviet days vivi kona was a mining town and then with the end of the soviet union well 
they stopped mining and people left for elsewhere for better jobs but these are the houses of vivi 
kona check them out look at this the main street and here you can see the houses still deserted 
they’re balconies wow let’s get closer oh my god see if we can look inside a window wow look at this whoa wow look still got the old wallpaper on the walls the wallpaper from soviet days and here 
look we’ve got the old sign in russian and here the flag holders flag holders 
where on may day and celebrations would have been the red soviet flag would have flown 
from wow let’s look deeper into the village interesting wow check this out well i’m walking up the old 
path to what was once the village school oh a lot of snow just went down my neck [ __ ] 
what was once the village school built in 1954 with the soviet star above it there 
you can see it’s written in russian wow check it out how interesting can we get inside oh just imagine the little school kids that 
would have run up these steps up this path into the school building and here you can see 
these little indents in the walls they would once they would once have had pictures and drawings 
of maybe lenin or letterman tough or pushkin mendeleev some of the greats of russian literature 
and thinking but now of course they’re empty this is the old soviet bus station of the 
town wow you can imagine there would have been soviets coming and going miners 
arriving for their stints underground and then going back there would have been bus 
services from this very station to leningrad to tarlin of course maybe further afield i don’t know 
now of course no one’s coming here there’s no more services to this little abandoned village but 
you can imagine oh this would have been benches and there would have been the ticket room and 
there’s a bathroom maybe a little shop selling suites whatever newspapers for the 
journeys people are about to take it’s all so different back then wasn’t it you can see up there where there was once 
upon a time some kind of circular emblem maybe it was a the face of lenin or stalin or 
the hammer and sickle and all on these walls of these government buildings and apartment buildings 
will have been soviet slogans glorifying the party the workers but of course post-independence 
the estonians ripped them all down the estonians suffered greatly under the soviet 
invasion an occupation that continued afterwards and so they don’t want to be reminded in any 
way of those things unlike saying belarus or other countries would have just been left 
openly to fall into disrepair not in estonia all right well this neoclassical design building was in fact 
the entrance to one of the mines of this village you can still see the old stucco plaster up top 
you can imagine how nice it would have been then the workers going to the mine would have flooded 
through those doors in the morning and then back out in the evening or whenever they worked 
but now the mine no longer works and so this building has fallen into 
disrepair and so is the village well that’s the end of my time in vivi 
connor and estonia in general a part of the former soviet union but i wasn’t too excited 
about coming to i just thought to myself i’m not going to be able to use my russian there’s 
going to be nothing of real interest for me i mean estonia is the eu right it’s modern it’s 
going to be pretty much like my own country but how wrong was i it just goes to show you that um 
well 30 years after the fall of the soviet union it’s how do you describe it tentacles still 
pervade throughout this region and i’ve loved my time here it’s been really interesting met some 
cool people seen some amazing landscapes seen some abandoned soviet stuff so um yeah estonia for the 
win one of my favorite republics i can hardly talk because my face is so cold all right the end 
of the video i’m now going to walk the 10 miles through the snow back to the highway 
and then somehow get back to thailand it’s been a lot of fun thank you and see you guys 
somewhere down the road in a different country adios amigos