Narva Weekend

As for what I did in Narva. When I arrived, Alena had bad news for me, there was no heat or hot water in her room. It had gone out the night before. I figured I would survive and was glad that I chose this weekend to start wearing long underwear. We also went by the reception and picked up some extra blankets. However, it ended up not being all that cold and by the following afternoon, the heat and hot water were back on.

It was rainy the next morning, so our first stop was the museum in Hermann Castle. I took this picture on Sunday when it wasn't rainy.

Alena standing in the cold in front of the castle. The Castle was built by the Danes in the 14th Century. The Danes later sold Narva to the Livonian Order, who built the tower in the middle. The tower was built because on the other side of the river, the Russians built this:

Ivangorod Fortress.

The two fortresses are directly across from each other. If this sounds like an unstable arrangement, it was. Ivangorod constantly changed hands between Russia and Sweden for the 125 years after it's construction in 1492 to 1617 when a peace treaty finally handed the fortress over to Sweden. Of course, the Russians took it back in 1704, along with most of Estonia. So for most of it's history, Ivangorod and Hermann were held by the same country (basically whoever controlled Narva at the time), making it kind of pointless to have two fortresses there. Ivangorod remained part of Russia when Estonia declared independence (the second time, not the first time).

Inside Hermann Castle was rather entertaining. The castle is a massive structure, but they don't have enough materials to make it one big history museum. So each floor has a different mini-museum going from the Estonian language, illegal fishing, Narva's history, chimney sweeps, puppets, Narva theater, and... seasons? I'm not really sure what was going on with the last one, it was all in Estonian. The Estonian language exhibit was actually really fascinating as it showed how the language has evolved over time such as examples of how the same piece of text would have been written 200, 500, or 1000 years ago as well as showing where some of the loanwords in Estonian came from.

The weather was still bad when we left Hermann, but we decided to continue on to the churches. This is the Orthodox church.

The inside of the Orthodox church.

The Lutheran church.

It was really dark inside the Lutheran church as it has not been fully restored. It definitely gave the church an odd feeling. Although the church isn't fully restored, the bell tower houses a small museum and a modern elevator.

This is the Swedish lion. A lion statue had been built here after a successful expulsion of the Russian army in 1700, but was torn down sometime later. When Estonia became independent, Sweden paid to have a new statue erected with "Sweden Remembers" written on the back. You may notice some white smudges on the statue. Some vandal had written "Peter the Great Remembers Too". As can be imagined, a statue commemorating Sweden's victory over Russia in a city made up of mostly ethnic-Russians is rather controversial.

This is the town hall and one of only four historic building still standing in the old town. The old town had been almost completely leveled during WWII. What had once been a beautiful Baroque city, was replaced with gray, concrete structures.

We ended our tour for the day there, after relaxing for bit, we went to get dinner. We wanted to eat at a Russian restaurant at the shopping center. Unfortunately we waited too long as the shopping center closed at 8pm. We eventually found a jazz club that was open, but there was almost no one there. We met up with one of Alena's friends who was an ethnic-Russian. She also spoke German and was very disappointed with my listening comprehension. Since she was a native of Narva, she could answer a question that had been bothering me. Despite the city being over 90% Russian-speaking, all signs and advertisements were in Estonian with very little Russian. The advertisements were especially puzzling as it would seem that business would want potential customers to be able to read their signs. Apparently by law, all advertisements in Estonia have to be in Estonian. They can have Russian translations, but the primary header has to be in Estonian.

The next day, the weather was much better. We thought about going to take a look at the beach, but discovered the bus only ran once an hour and Alena had to be back to do an interview that afternoon. So instead we went for a walk around the old industrial area. I've already talked about it a bit, so we'll move on.

This is an old cultural center, abandoned after independence. It is currently held by a private owner, but apparently the owner is content to just let it sit in disrepair. It has since become a home for stray cats. Along one of the walls, someone has written a rather specific message roughly translated from Russian as, "On April 12th, 2012, Stalin will inspect this building..." and I forgot the rest, but something bad would happen if he found it a poor condition. I'm not sure about the significance of April 12th.

We went walking along the river where a lot of men were out fishing and then stopped by a cafe before I had to catch the bus and Alena had to go to her interview. She was curious what I thought of Narva. The city definitely felt depressed. Not so much in the sense that there was crime and homeless people everywhere, but more that the city just felt empty. I think there are fewer restaurants in Narva, a city of over 60,000, than in Waynesville, a city of only 10,000. There was just nothing there, nothing happening. Despite the prevalence of Russian though, I never really felt like I was in a different country, as many told me it would be like. There were a few differences, but mostly small ones, like few establishments having bankcard readers that are so ubiquitous in Tallinn. Still, despite not being a tourist city, I'm really glad I went and found the whole trip really fascinating.