Estonia travel tips

Estonia travel health

Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Estonia, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Estonia: Tallinn, Pärnu, Tartu, Saaremaa, Lahemaa, Haapsalu.

Required to enter

Nothing. No vaccination certificate is asked for at the border.

Recommended

  • Tick-borne encephalitis for forest walks from spring to autumn
  • Routine vaccinations up to date

Emergency number

112

Care for visitors

Excellent and cheap

EU/EEA and Swiss visitors are treated on the same terms as residents with an EHIC or GHIC card; UK visitors use a GHIC. Everyone else pays, and travel insurance is worth having for the repatriation cover rather than the treatment. Excellent, digital and quick; the private clinics in Tallinn and Tartu speak English and the state system works.

Ticks in the forest and the long grass from spring to autumn, and the encephalitis they carry is worth the vaccine if the trip is the bogs and the islands. The sea is cold. Ice on the pavements from late autumn to spring is what actually fills the emergency rooms.

The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health tips.

The guides in Estonia

Tallinn’s old town from Toompea hill, spires and red roofsTallinnEstoniaThe best-kept medieval city in northern Europe, with a startup nation behind the walls, a sauna culture that means it, and Helsinki two hours across the waterA red lifeguard tower on the wide sand of Pärnu beachPärnuEstoniaThe summer capital: a long shallow beach on a warm bay, spa hotels from the tsars’ time, and a wooden town behind the dunesTartu town hall and its square with the Kissing Students fountainTartuEstoniaThe university town on the Emajõgi, a kissing-students fountain, a science centre for the family, and the intellectual capital of a country that takes the idea seriouslyTwo visitors in front of Kuressaare castle on SaaremaaSaaremaaEstoniaThe big island: a Teutonic castle with a moat, windmills, a meteorite crater, juniper heath and a coast that nobody else has foundThe boardwalk through the pines and heather of a Lahemaa bogLahemaaEstoniaEstonia’s first national park, an hour from Tallinn: bog boardwalks, manor houses, fishing villages on a stony coast, and the forest that is most of the countryReeds and wooden villas along the still water of Haapsalu bayHaapsaluEstoniaA small spa town on a warm bay with a bishop’s castle, a promenade Tchaikovsky walked, a railway station with the longest platform in the north, and a lace shawl to buy