Encore Day 036 Paide - Aespa

We hadn't managed to see all of the museum in the rampart tower yesterday, so we went to see the remaining parts. I didn't know that before, but in Paide we had also ended up at the birthplace of mighty mighty Arvo Pärt - on the way back to Kristas place we visited the site of his birthhouse. Around noon it was time to say goodbye to Krista and we started a long ride. About 90 km with mostly forest to the left, forest to the right. We just stopped a few times for food or a roadside coffee - which was the first time I used my cooker since leaving Leipzig. We arrived in the small village of Aespa where our host Raili lives in a small and simple but nice house - together with Simon, a very very dangerous tiger! In the evening we did the only reasonable thing: going to a Metal concert, yeah! Most of the bands were quite good and we even managed to meet some other couchsurfers there.

Encore Day 035 Tartu - Paide

After the rest days we gained new strength. Maybe a bit too much - shortly after starting this morning Alex was cycling with so much power, that her chain burst. We ran with the bicycles to the train and during the one hour train ride I tried to fix it - kind of difficult when everything is shaking. We got out in the village of Rakke and the first try showed that my fix did not work. The second fix in better light conditions did the trick and we were on the road again. The cycling was not very spectacular but nice. The promised rain didn't come and there was nearly no traffic at all, so we cycled taking and singing through the woods and fields.
In Paide we were given an extremely warm welcome by our first-time couchsurfing host Krista. After late lunch we ventured out to visit the ruined castle of the German Order. The best preserved part is a rampart tower, which contains a very interesting multimedia museum of Estonian history. We especially liked that in the presentations the Estonians don't take themselves too serious. The evening we soent talking with our very nice host Krista and her 3 cats.

Encore Day 034 Tartu

Rest day! We slept in and only  started the day after lunch. Despite being Estonias second biggest city, Tartu is pretty small. It has some interesting sights though. We went to Domberg which is crowned by a gothic church ruin. Once we got down we went into the Tartu art museum. I especially liked some of the paintings/objects from the last 2 decades.
Some hot chocolate and cake later we got lost in antiques shops which had surprisingly many German books on offer. Later we found another old church in which some guy played piano - very simply but very soulful. Finally we organized a sunflower and brought it back to our host Silvi. She is an incredibly knowledgeable woman. It is really amazing what kind of people you meet when couchsurfing - I wouldn't have dreamt of ever having a chance to meet a university lecturer of semiotics. But she also knows about many many other topics, so we spent the evening discussing with her about literature, politics and much more.

Encore Day 033 Valga - Tartu

We cheated today. When looking out of the window after waking up we saw a
hëävÿ rainstorm going on - so we decided, that the train going to Tartu in
the afternoon sounded like a very convenient travel option. We could stay
with our host Mario until then, so we spent our time talking about Estonian
and German history and culture and language, looking around town, cooking
and eating. Once we were in the train I heard some very familiar language
coming through the door: a couple from Leipzig trying to load their
bicycles into the train. We had a lot to talk about during the train ride -
though Alex had a hard time understanding our accent. While cycling to our
host in Tartu the weather turned really crazy - bright sunshine, 5 minutes
of heavy rain, bright sunshine again. With a rainbow! Our host Silvi is a
very nice, very interesting lady. She teaches Semiotics at the university
and she fed us very good vegetable soup, chocolate and self-made jam.

Encore Day 032 Priekuli - Valga

Not much happened today. Basically just: cat, cycling, forest, cycling, cat, Estonia! But it was nice anyway. Alex cycled the longest way ever, even though the Latvian mosquitos liked her so much, that she got an allergic reaction on her leg. We spent our last Lats on medicin before entering Estonia, where we were greeted by nice couchsurfing host Mario, who immediately tought us our first Estonian words.

Encore Day 031 Sigulda - Priekuli

We had to get up early and we did not have planned for a long way, so we decided to make a small detour to Latvias largest cave. More of a grotto and not that impressive by size, but still a very nice place. Completely decorated with inscriptions, some of them centuries old. The first half of the cycling route was pretty nice. At some point we discovered a leaflet for an old soviet nuclear bunker nearby. We went there and it was definitely worth it. I even managed to negotiate a special price with the reception lady as we didn't have enough Lats left. We had to wait a bit until the excursion would start, so we used it for a nap in the sun. The excursion was pretty impressive. The bunker was kept secret until as late as 2003, so a lot of the interieur and technical equipment has survived.
After leaving the bunker we soon got lost in wood. Even though it was an official cycling path we had a flooded road, sand, mud,... not very funny. We very happy to arrive at our very nice couchsurfing host Justine. We spent the evening talking and stroking the very very people-loving cat.

Encore Day 030 Riga - Sigulda

We are on the road. We collected the bicycle for Alex from very friendly Markus of eatriga.lv, who gave us very good advice on how to get out of Riga. We built an pretty adventureous suitcase construction for Alex's luggage and off we went. Surprisingly there was a very good bicycle path from the center of Riga to the ethnological museum at the city limits. The museum is a huge area of forest with many wooden houses, barns, churches, windmills etc. of different latvian peoples in it. Beautiful place. We had a huge melon as second breakfast there (first had been a Kalter-Hund-style chocolate sausage of Kristaps mom). There is also a lake nearby - while sitting on the shore we fed some very tame, but kind of psychopathic looking pigeons with sunflower seeds..
After leaving the museum the most beautiful but hardest part of the route started: a very sandy path through the forest and along lakes - the views were marvellous, but the sand definitely wasn't the easiest for beginners to ride on. But we made it - the rest of the way to Sigulda were roads. In the end we had done 75km - not bad for a cycle touring newcomer as Alex.
In Sigulda we had wonderful hosts: Dace & Aldis also had another couchsurfer, Tatjana, a russian girl. Our hosts took the three of us on a city tour by car. Sigulda has very beautiful castles - a new one and a ruined one which is used to stage opera, etc. nowadays. Once we got home we had mint tea and food while chatting in Latvian/Russian/German/English until after midnight.