Sillamäe - a wander around a secret town
One the way from Tallinn to the Russian Border at Narva lies the little town of Sillamäe, which didn't used to appear on maps. We can find out why by going for a stroll from the bus station.
At first it looks like any town around these parts but as you walk along Kesk, the buildings become grander. The cultural centre (1) and the town hall (2) are grand, as you would expect.
But ordinary apartments are also pretty grand. Why would a remote little town have buildings like this?
The clue is this statue - the Peaceful Atom (3)
After being destroyed in the Second World War, it was re-built as a town with a vision where its inhabitants would not want to leave, even if they could.
Uranium had been found in local shale and this town was process the extracts for the Soviet Union’s nuclear program and help it catch up with the USA which had already demonstrated its capabilities at Hiroshima.
It was closed to outsiders and removed from maps, to most of its inhabitants, this little town would have been a whole world.
Wandering around the neoclassical apartments, concert hall, and other municipal buildings, it has an eerily familiar feeling, at least for fans of The Prisoner. Perhaps it should be twinned with Portmeirion.
One person who also felt the strange push-pull of the place was film director Roman Baskin who used it as the setting for his Estonian cult movie Vernanda a curious film that plays with the idea of being trapped in a town facing imminent doom.
A growing sense of doom might have been a reasonable feeling with the failure of the Soviet authorities to deal with the issue of nuclear waste. Making the tailing pond safe and preventing spillage into the Baltic was a priority for the European Union and work was completed in 2008.
Now the main industry is in extracting heavy metals like niobium for mobile phones rather than uranium for weapons.
To find out more about the town's history, it's well worth popping in to Sillamae Museum (5), which was founded by two local artists who used to work in the chemical processing plant making things like health and safety signs, but formed a little group to paint local nature.
From the museum, its just a short way down to the seafront where you can wander along the pebble beach the borders the Gulf of Finland (6).
As well as neoclassicism, the town also has a somewhat faded collection of grey brick Khrushchyovkas as well as a set of Brezhnev era panel-build flats which may be the most recent soviet relics, but also the ones apparently most in need of maintenance.
The three sets of buildings each in its own distinct part of the town are like layers of Soviet history. Grand vision, shoddy improvement and shoddier decline, which for some at least, seems to encapsulate the story of the Soviet Union.
Further along, past where the river divides the town in two, is a nature area woodlands and beach (7).
If you feel like staying longer, you could check out the Hotel Krunk (8). Built as part of the neo-classical layer, it makes little of its architecture, but instead relies on serving passing trade with cheap beds. Reasonably priced food and drink are served at the attached restaurant accompanied by a continuous medley of Russian pop classics and a whirring glitter ball. Well, it's an experience...
Getting there
by bus
There are regular buses from Tallinn to Narva (396 and 714) taking around 2:30 hrs.
by train
Trains from Tallinn to Narva stop at Vaivara which is 4km away, which is roadway but walkable.