Northern Lights : karlova

Showing posts with label karlova. Show all posts

Saturday, August 08, 2026

tartu 8 july - 1 karlova

So I decided that on Wednesday, 8 July I would visit Tartu, the second biggest city in Estonia, one of the oldest cities in northern Europe, and the country's intellectual and cultural centre (or so I read somewhere). I got up before any sparrow was even thinking about a fart and I got the 5:45 am train. It arrived in Tartu around 9am I think. This is one of the first things I saw, can you explain it?

Below - I admired this small yard, with a garden in it, although I wasn't sure if I was trespassing to photograph it.

Anyway it's quite good isn't it.

This cat saw me go by and said nothing (at the time).

So initially the main reason I wanted to go to Tartu was to see houses in this region, known as Karlova, built in 1911. It just sounded interesting. It was interesting but there was nothing really much to see, if you know what I mean, although it was a vibe. But in truth, the vibe wasn't substantially different from the place we're staying in Tallinn - Kalamaja.

Boasting

It rained pretty hard.

I popped into an op shop. It was OK. It had this, and because it had no mention on the back of whether it had subtitles, I wonder/ed whether maybe it was dubbed, into whatever language they speak in the country where it was made - Denmark I think. Anyway, I didn't wonder enough to bother buying it.

I didn't buy this either. The snakeskin put me off I think.

I saw these. These exist.

After I took a picture of this place below I had that kind of North by Northwest feeling that someone was going to kill me inexplicably. But no-one did. (Yet)

Back in Karlova proper...

A fabulous soviet apartment building.

Started to get a bit fascinated about these multiple backyard shed things

I hope you like this one below.

I gather part of the appeal of Karlova is the avenues of trees. I am used to this though.

Those steps (below)!

Ok none of that prepared you (or me) for this...

I hope I did that building justice. Here are a couple more interesting places and structures... I really don't know what the relevance is of Tolstoy to the below, but sure, why not...