Guns, Bulls’ Balls, & Lampreys

“Are you sure there’s nothing provocative about parking an army truck just across the river from Russia, with its rear barn doors 100 metres from the border?”

“No,” Mark replied with confident finality.

“I might take my paddle board out…” he added with a mischievous grin.

“No,” I said, with confident finality.

I know what he’s like, trying to paddle across borders like he did on Lake Ohrid, between Albania and North Macedonia. Although that didn’t involve any countries with closed regimes who were at war.

We’d just arrived in Narva-Jõesuu, Estonia. The border with Russia ran down the river right next to us. I could see two boats moored. One was in Estonia, the other in Russia. I could hear the Donald Duck sounding frogs croaking in the reeds on the Russian side.

At our previous park up, we’d met a Dutch guy, Grice. I reminded Mark of his story.

“When I was in Finland, I got to the Russian border,” Grice told us. “There didn’t seem to be anyone around, so I decided to cross. To see what happened.”

What happened was about a hundred border guards appeared from nowhere, surrounded his vehicle and pointed their guns at him.

They marched him off for questioning and didn’t buy his, “I just did it to see what happened,” alibi.

However, they did allow him to leave.

After a mere six hours of interrogation.

With us, it took three minutes.

Before we’d even bought our parking ticket, armed police arrived in a NATO green Toyota Hilux. Three men got out. The first, ‘Bad Cop’, clad in a camo-green bullet-proof vest, laid out his demands,

“Are you tourists? How long have you been here? When did you arrive? What is this car? Where did you buy a car like this? How did you get here? How long are you staying in Estonia? When did you come into Europe? Papers.”

I heard Mark protesting, “It’s a motorhome. You can have a look inside to prove it’s a motorhome.”

We were only 60 miles from St. Petersburg, from where Russian president Vladimir Putin was busy sabre-rattling about using nuclear weapons and threatening vengeance on the West, who had supplied arms to Ukraine on the understanding they could be used against targets inside Russia.

Two Good Cops, dressed in blue uniforms, smiled and spoke to us in impeccable English while Bad Cop refused to enter our home, and stomped off with our passports, driving licences and vehicle registration document. I never like losing sight of my documents, but didn’t feel in a position to protest.

I also struggled to take my eyes away from the men’s nether regions, each of which bulged with a handgun in a holster.

Good Cop One questioned us gently about how we arrived in Estonia and our route there. I told him happily that we’d crossed through France and Germany, taken a ferry from Travemunde to Leiapaja in Latvia, and were here to visit the restaurant Franzia with our Estonian friend, Kristaps. He must have been impressed with the detail and credibility of our cover story.

Good Cop Two gave us a look that said, I probably shouldn’t, but climbed the steps to have a peek inside The Beast, our Volvo N10 army truck camper.

When we met Kristaps at the restaurant later, he told us that Bad Cop was a border guard, while the other two were police. When Bad Cop returned, he simply pushed our small wad of papers into my hand and grunted, “It’s okay.”

“Thank you for co-operating,” Good Cop said with a handsome smile, and they went on their way, although we had several drive bys from NATO green Toyota Hilux’s during our stay.

Restaurant Franzia advertises itself as serving ‘Cuisine Brutale’. Kristaps told us it was famous for ‘eel fish’ – lampreys, beaver tail, “which tastes like well seasoned veal”, and apparently other ‘absurd’ dishes. A sign at the door warned that it didn’t do kebabs. ‘No. HET (Russian for ‘no) absolutely not’ – signed by the chef. 

Kristaps was set on having smoked lampreys with sauerkraut. Mark had promised to take one for the team and try lampreys, a speciality of the area. 

The waiter poised his pen over his pad and glared at me long and hard from beneath furrowed brows when I ordered my starter. His look clearly said, Are you sure?!

I chose pickled mushrooms and vodka. How bad could that be?

Kristaps explained, “They sometimes call it mushrooms and 100, because it’s 100 ml of vodka. Sometimes, they have a teacup full of vodka, and that’s called mushrooms and 200. Come. Eat your mushrooms and drink your vodka before it warms up.”

The vodka was ice cold, and Kristaps told us the mushrooms are very typically Estonian. “They are the same as my mother used to make from mushrooms we foraged in the forest.”

Kristaps ordered Prairie Oysters in Chilli Sauce.

I know what Prairie Oysters are. They are bulls’ testicles.

They were spongy and okay so long as you didn’t think about what they were. Kristaps told us they weren’t as tasty as lamb’s testicles. I wouldn’t know! 

Mark tackled smoked lamprey and beetroot salad as his starter, while the kitchen brought out some kidneys for The Fab Four, our four pups. The lamprey tasted a little like smoked mackerel.

I had thrown caution to the wind and ordered smoked lamprey and sauerkraut for my main. 

We finished with creme brulee, which was delicious.

All I will say about the rest of the meal is that I’m not going to eat anything slippery with a spine, eggs and its sucking lips still intact, or anything that is accompanied by a pint of vodka anytime soon!

The following morning, I still felt a little queasy, and I still had some work to do with Mark.

We followed the river to Narva, Estonia’s most easterly point. After Tallinn and Tartu, it is Estonia’s third largest city. 

Narva’s Hermann Castle and Russia’s Ivangorod Fortress face each other across the river. Both were built in the 15th century.

We walked along the riverbank to Estonia’s most easterly point, which overlooks a hydroelectric power station. Kristaps told us it was built as a joint effort between Russia and Estonia, so the energy should be shared. However, it’s not. I wished him good luck arguing that with Mr. Putin! We were so close to Russia that if we’d raised our voices, we could have conversed with Russian fishermen on the opposite bank.

The birds flying freely over the river between the two countries brought home the farcical nature of human-imposed barriers and borders.

We sprinted back to the truck in time to miss torrential rain. There was no sign of it letting up, so we decided to move on.

I learned Russian as a child, and would love to visit Russia, but once again, I had to use confident finality when I told Mark he couldn’t drive over the Saatse Boot.

The Saatse Boot is a border anomaly which provides a legal means of entering the Russian Federation without a visa. It is a boot-shaped tongue of Russian territory which protrudes into Estonia and divides a the villages of Värska and Saatse. The strange shape is the result of the land being owned historically by a Russian farm. 

In the interests of pragmatism, Russia agreed that people could drive the 0.62 miles (1 km) through The Boot on two conditions:

1. They don’t walk
2. They don’t stop the car

I did hear it was forbidden to forage wild mushrooms, but that is probably covered under walking.

Break down, run out of fuel, try to take photos, or forage fungi without stopping the car or letting your feet touch the ground, and you could wind up with Grice’s fate and be arrested.

The Estonian and Russian authorities were going to exchange territory to get rid of The Boot, but that is currently on hold due to tensions with Russia over the war in Ukraine. The Estonian government is spending millions of euros to create a viable alternative route to ensure that villages aren’t cut off if Russia decides to play dirty.

Ironically, The Boot has become a tourist attraction, but I suggested to Mark that, even though we’ve eaten bulls’ balls and lampreys, driving through Russian territory in a NATO green army truck that is exactly the same as two hundred Volvo N10s gifted to Ukraine by the Belgian army may be ill advised.

Particularly at a time when President Putin has expressed displeasure with the British government (and the West in general) for sending weapons to Ukraine on the basis that it’s up to Ukraine to decide whether or not to deploy them over the Russian border.

It’s a shame, since it would be cool to tick off such a huge part of the map, but at least we live to drive another day!

Attribution for Saatse Boot Maps

1. Photo courtesy of Ehitaja, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
2. Map data (c) OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA &Municipality boundaries Estonian Land Board, 1.06.2012• Shape files infrastructure (railway, roads): all originally by OpenStreetMap contributors. Status december 2011• Municipality boundaries: derived via maaamet.ee. Unrestricted use from Estonian Land Board, status 1.06.2012 • Data for landuse: OSM / Corine land cover, 2006 (eea.europa.eu)• Mentioned sources combined and exported for each commune using a script by Michiel1972, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Enjoy Reading?

I didn’t offer Bad Cop a copy of my new book, which explains quite nicely how we bought and converted The Beast, our Volvo N10 truck.

If you’d like to find out more, check out my latest 5* release, Building The Beast on Amazon.

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