Reliving our student days

Between the capitals of Latvia and Estonia, we stopped off for two nights at Tartu - a university town in Estonia about three hours on the road from Tallinn. It's a loveable little town which has an atmosphere very like Durham or Cambridge as there are lots of students around, sitting around in cafes having deep conversations. There must have been something in the air, as Sarah and I started having terribly meaningful conversations, not mentioning train times or bowel movements once. I think we covered the nature of language, contemporary art, the origins of the novel and feminist theology. Not bad for one afternoon.

There isn't a huge amount to do in Tartu if you aren't a student, so we just spent the day exploring the old town, wandering in the botanical gardens and parks, and drinking coffee. The town has some great quirks though: the main statue of the town square isn't the ubiquitous Man on Horse but two lovers kissing under an umbrella while water spouts over the top of them. And there is all sorts of evidence of student pranks over the town, such as the granite bridge topped with an arc: apparently a necessary step before graduation is to walk over the arc, hopefully not falling into the river below.

In the evening we plummeted from our intellectual heights when we watched an extraordinarily silly film called Superbad with the guys at the hostel on a projector screen. The title says it all really. The following morning we feasted royally on pancakes for breakfast before catching a bus on to Tallinn.