'Welcome to Hell.' Hands down the most
surreal place within a day's travel of Tallinn,
Paldiski was once the most heavily militarised Soviet base along the Estonian coast.
Today you'll find crumbling old barracks,
an eerie nuclear submarine station and a
decaying town with a feeling of utter desolation. Not sold yet? Paldiski also has an
appealing natural setting near some striking limestone cliffs, as well as a bright-red
old lighthouse - Estonia's tallest.But cliffs and lighthouses aside , it's that
weird Soviet past that draws most people
here. You'll witness one of the grimmest
legacies of the former occupiers - as well
as post-independence commentary such as
the graffiti that's scrawled on one of the
abandoned buildings, alerting us that we're
not in Kansas any more.
This area was the first Estonian area to be
occupied by Soviet troops in 1939 and was
the last to see them leave in 1994. It became
the main Soviet naval base in Estonia , and
Paldiski was a completely closed nuclear
submarine station until 1994; only in 1995
were the decommissioned reactors removed.
The reactors functioned continuously from
the early 1970s until 1989. In 1994 a civilian died after stumbling upon radioactive
materials (allegedly stolen from the disused
base ) on waste ground near Tallinn.
The most prominent landmark in Paldiski is the submarine training base - the
darkly imposing concrete structure visible
from anywhere in town. Locals dubbed
this the 'Soviet Pentagon' owing to its
monumental stature. In its day the building served as the main training facility for
submariners through out the Soviet Union.
It isnot open to visitors and entering the
grounds is not recommended as the facility
is guarded and potentially unsafe.
A trip to the lighthouse on the northwestern tip (follow the main road straight out of town), leads through destroyed army barracks and missile sheds, where 16,000 sold i e r s were stationed. The former training sites are deteriorating but the odd bunker
and a staircase built in to the limestone, with
markers showing strata of rock formation on
the exposed sides of the cliff, are still visible.
"Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania" by Lonely Planet, 2006
