Kaberneeme, Palmse, Rakevere

Kaberneeme

A little beach shack/summer house town high on the Estonian coastline, Kaberneeme is one of those typical fishing village type places which look fabulous when the sun is out, and utterly miserable when it's raining. It started raining shortly after I got there (mercifully after I'd stopped riding for the day), and kept doing it on and off for the rest of the afternoon/evening. The next day the sun was out, the weather was glorious and the place looked brilliant... well, except for the huge mounds of stinky mud created by the construction site.

The Kaberneeme Guesthouse is this weird contradiction. On the outside, it doesn't look terribly inviting - especially as it is situated between a shipping yard, a construction site and a dumping ground for assorted large pieces of oddly shaped concrete. There are some bits of beach that have been left to look pretty, but generally speaking the outside of the place is not a good look. Inside, however, is a lovely, funky little hotel/restaurant which plays lovingly with the nautical theme. Very comfortable, very intersting. Quite nice, really. Oh, and there are lots of birds dancing about the place - quite nice to watch in the early morning sunshine.

Palmse


Palmse hotel is situated in the old brewery behind the Manor house (now a museum), and the whole complex is quite possibly one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in all my life. They're fixing up the grounds and some of the buildings at the moment, so it was a bit of a construction site as well, but you can tell it's going to be magnificent when they have finished. It was a wonderful place to spend time, and I felt truly recharged and edified just by being able to walk around the grounds.

The hotel itself has been refurbished recently, and everything was so new it squeaked. The food was unbelievably cheap, considering how good it was, and the service was very friendly.

I'm going to go back there someday.

Rakvere

Rakvere is not so pretty. I think the town is slowly dying, and their response to the death is to basically shrug their shoulders and say "eh, whatever". The area where I'm staying has a lot of derelect buildings, and the local kids have been having fun rebuilding them in their preferred image.

The local kids are quite amusing, actually. They're trying to do that "I'm so tough, wearing hoodies and hanging out with my gang late at night" thing, which looks weird when "late at night" is still quite a lovely afternoon. The whole hoodies-and-bmx after dark thing doesn't quite work when it's still light.

At some point, during the 80s, someone decided that apartments didn't have to be beautiful, and so they created some of the most soul destroyingly ugly buildings in the world. A lot of them seem to have been put here, in Rakevere. I've never seen so many ugly apartment buildings in the one place.

All of this, right nextdoor to a large stretch of parkland with the ruins of an old castle in the middle of it. Quite a strange juxtaposition.

Also, I couldn't find a laundromat. Three different people told me to go to three different places, and there wasn't a laundromat in any of them. It doesn't bode well for the town...