We went to Saaremaa with the best intentions. We had a list of things to see and a finite amount of time to see them. We were also coming from a long day of driving, and sightseeing, on the Estonian mainland. The day we left Saaremaa, we had a similiarly long day of driving ahead of us, and a similarly long day of sightseeing. And somehow, amidst the general craziness of the two stacked days of traveling, Saaremaa got lost in the fold.
I am not a slow traveler, and yet I am an advocate of slow travel. My travel style is necessitated by the amount of time I am able to travel yearly (15-20 days, generally) while still keeping my corporate job. And because I am generally an ambitious traveler, I try to pack as much into my vacation days as possible. It’s an unfortunate circumstance that will be remedied whenever I get out of the corporate rat race. I think I have about ten years left in me before I make that change.
Until then, though, I will continue to operate this way on vacations. And when David and I were on our Baltic Road Trip Honeymoon Extravaganza (copyright 2015), Saaremaa drew the short straw.
I should rewind. Saaremaa was beautiful, and we very much enjoyed our time there. The issue was that, we only spent about 14 hours on the island in total – eight of which were spent sleeping, three in transit, leaving about five spent scattered between a few places – Muhu Church, Kuressaare Castle, Mustjala Village, and a roadside cemetery in a town whose name I didn’t record.
I read quite a bit about Saaremaa before we arrived there, and was excited to see it, and understand it in contrast to the Estonian mainland. But, taxed as we were, when we arrived to our adorable A-frame campsite on the rural northern edge of the island (which, by the way, we had entirely to ourselves, save for a Latvian family enjoying the last bits of the Baltic summer), we walked down the beach to enjoy the sunset, and then collapsed – finally overcome by jet lag that we hadn’t taken time to remedy in our harried initial days of the trip.
I feel a need to return to Saaremaa, sooner rather than later, and really stay there and get to know the area, its people, its food, culture, history, everything. I can’t help but feel guilty about doing the island a disservice by skipping over it so quickly. It’s a great lesson to have learned, though – that I’m not Superman, and that travel takes time. And that it’s about the quality of the time you spend in a place that makes the travel worth doing, rather than the quantity of sites (or countries, or UNESCO heritage sites, or whatever it is you like to count) you skip through without getting to know.
Have you ever visited a place that you feel you didn’t get to know properly?
