Travel stories

I like Estonia. It feels like home. I’ve been several times, which is why my last trip was entirely devoted to places off the beaten track . In this post, I want to talk about my day in the vicinity of  the  Jagala Waterfall , which is just a stone’s throw away from Tallinn. The goal of the day was actually to find a movie location , but visiting the Jagala Waterfall and the vicinities makes a great day trip even if you couldn’t care less about the movie. The idea goes back years ago, when a student told me about visiting a movie location of “ Stalker ” ( a 1979 Soviet movie by Tarkovsky ). This information had lingered at the back of my mind for years waiting for the right moment, which came in July 2017. A part of the movie was shot inside an abandoned hydropower station near the Jagala Waterfall. The power station was what we wanted to find. Pinpointing it on the map took some stubborn research, but I succeeded. I will put the location and ways to get there at the e...

Don't get me wrong, Tallinn has an amazing old town worth a trip by itself. But if you have already been to Tallinn and/or don’t like walking among hordes of people (the old town is teeming with tourists), there are some places off the beaten track you can wander through and enjoy this city. In this post, I want to share my day in Tallinn off the beaten track. The day started from looking for 41 Vabriku Street , where the writer Sergey Dovlatov lived for 3 years. I needed a picture related to Dovlatov for my other blog , so I thought, “Since I’m here, why don’t I go and take a picture of the commemorative plaque on the house.” Dovlatov's house turned out to be located in a cute neighborhood, called Kalamaja , with pretty houses and deserted streets. We enjoyed a nice walk there on our way to the next destination. The next destination was Patarei prison , which I stumbled upon when I was scrutinizing the city map in search of places to visit (I have a penchant f...