My wife and I went on Monday to the city center post office to pick up our Estonian literary magazines: Looming, Vikerkaar, Akadeemia, Keel ja Kirjandus. The same repertoire for decades, and we have gone for decades to the same post office, which over time has only moved a bit farther along the same street.

Now it was the last time, accompanied by a sad farewell to the employees who are being laid off, because the post office is being closed. The office is in the heart of Tartu, where three constantly busy shopping centers and six bus stops meet — bus stops served by practically all city bus lines.

We headed back home, which is on the edge of the city center, on Veski street. We bought it back in the day so that everything would be within easy reach — shops, services, etc. In modern terms, a 15-minute city.

And it was. But then the Estonian state started taking care of people. One institution after another disappeared from the city center to the outskirts, starting with the social services office and ending with the police.

At the same time, shops also started taking care of customers. Once, the Tartu city center was full of shops — small specialty stores, from clothing to books. Exactly as you still see across Europe today, whether in London or in a small Nordic town. But a city does not tolerate emptiness. Eateries replaced the shops: restaurants, pubs, cafés, Italian, Indian, even Estonian food. Until the entire Town Hall Square, half of Rüütli tänav, and a few nearby streets were filled with them. They came — and stayed.

Shops moved into shopping centers, still nearby in the city center. Soon a new wave began, signaled by signs saying "The center is being renewed." Which means that yet another business has disappeared. The cheaper ones moved to the outskirts, to Lõunakeskus, which can already be called a shopping city. The more expensive ones simply closed their doors in Tartu.

The area around Veski tänav used to be called Tartu's Latin Quarter. Along its edges and around it are still the houses of student fraternities. A succession of professors have lived on Veski tänav.

We once lived at the end of Veski tänav on Kuperjanovi tänav in a Khrushchev-era apartment building (for non-locals: this street runs from the railway station toward the city center). Downstairs there was a grocery store, next door a post office, a little farther across the street a delicatessen. And so on. Everything could be done within 15 minutes — a 15-minute neighborhood. You can see such places in every larger or smaller European city. All of that is gone. Only a liquor store remains. A few eateries here and there. And above all, secondhand shops. They came — and stayed.

The conclusion is simple. For people without cars, the 15-minute city and the 15-minute neighborhood have turned into a 3 x 15-minute city. Generally speaking. Fifteen minutes to the city center bus stops, 15 minutes of waiting there, and then 15 minutes of travel. And you're there — more or less anywhere in Tartu.

But back to the post office. Along with the closure, Omniva informed us via Tartu Postimees that maintaining two closely located city center post offices is no longer reasonable from their point of view. And that the remaining office is, moreover, much better than the one in the Kvartal Center. It is located in the Eeden Center. For Tallinn residents and Omniva: Eeden is in Annelinn, on the other side of the river, and more than two kilometers from the city center.

I understand that the state does not need a post office in the center of Tartu. True, state leaders — with Minister of Finance Jürgen Ligi at the forefront — still have not understood that the state is not a business enterprise in which the market (whose real name is the owner) determines everything. But I fear these decisions are not made over the heads of the city. And taking that into account, one must assume that the city of Tartu doesn't need it either.

Perhaps this should instead be taken as the state's way of taking care of people? So that they would move around more and not limit themselves to a miserable 15 minutes. From where we live, the nearest remaining post office is now more than three kilometers away. Walking there and back takes a good hour and a half.

P.S. True, this walk is not safe. Dozens of bikes and e-scooters lie in wait along the way. The spring before last I wrote an article in Sirp titled "Bikes and Scooters Out of the City." It got a lot of attention, but in the end it was like spitting into the wind. Just while writing this piece, I could read that Bolt is adding more bikes. And they are green. Grrreen!

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