Tallinn, Estonia

On Monday morning I got up at 5 am and walked for an hour from L'Abri to Liss. There I took the train to London Gatwick airport and flew to Estonia. I arrived at about 3 and didn't have much trouble making my way into the city center and finding my hostel.

Tallinn old town is the most beautiful town I have ever seen. In Medieval times the Estonians made a fortune in trading salt and it was on these profits that the town was built. After that the economy declined, and so there are few new buildings in the city center. The architecture and food are a strange mix of Scandinavian and Russian but the Estonian language is completely unrelated to neighboring languages and particularly difficult to learn.

After leaving my stuff at the hostel and going to the grocery store I wandered the town until I came to a small restaurant in the town square called the Three Drakoons (dragons). It is a medieval style restaurant that serves elk soup and sausages and everything is served in clay standards etc. The people are also dressed up and when I told them i was from America they said "where is that?" Because, of course, it hasn't been discovered yet. The food and the beer was great. The Three Drakoons is owned by Olde Hausa, a neighboring restaurant, which also has a Medieval store and sends carts around the entire town that sell delicious spiced and sugared almonds it's a great business enterprise. I went to bed early so that I could get a good start on seeing Tallinn in the morning.

Wherever I go I try to do what other tourists don't do. In actually talking to locals or going off the beaten track you learn much more about an area and you get a more realistic perspective. Sometimes you also get special treatment. I experienced this is Ireland, and in Bristol too (because of Natasha).

In conversation with someone at the hostel I learned that about an hour's walk from Tallinn there is a museum and that behind the museum are all the statues if Lenin which were torn down after the collapse of the USSR. It was a long walk but absolutely worth it. There I was, completely alone with these huge (many times larger than life) statues if Soviet Greats. Some stood, some were lying down, some were smashed. Lemons marble head sat on a wooden pallet in a patch of weeds. It was a charged atmosphere. I sat for a long time and thought of Ozymandias.

I caught a bus back to Tallinn and walked around for several more hours visiting churches, climbing towers, intentionally getting lost and trying my hardest nit to spend any money. After about three hours I went to a coffee shop which reputedly had the best coffee in Tallinn. It was quite good. I wrote several post cards and then looked for a place to post them.

It was then that I caved for the first time and went into a tourist shop. I chose the Medieval one associated with Olde Hausa because it was different from all the others. Inside were two nice girls named Jane and Anna and we got into a long conversation which was constantly interrupted as they helped other customers. They sold me a pair of totally legit medieval Estonian slippers for about 40% of the marked price. One of their sales ploys is to offer free schnapps (medieval spiced schnapps) but of course they drink with you. Jane admits to being an alcoholic (but work requires it). After we had all had about 5 shots in an hour and a half Anna told me that today was the 4 year birthday of the Three Drakoons and that they were all going to have a birthday party after work. Would I like to come? I said yes of course.

At 5 Anna got off of work and she gave me a tour if Tallinn. She pointed out all kinds of cool things that I had missed before. Then we went to the birthday party. It was phenomenal. Everyone (all the employees and me) sat in the Three Drakoons in the candlelight and gorged ourselves on potatoes and brown bread and mushrooms dipped in horseradish sauce--all eaten the right way--with our hands. And we drank all the beer that we wanted out of clay bowls. I learned how to toast "Vivat" or "Tervisex" and even learned an Estonian song. Everyone made it a point of saying to me that this didn't happen every day and that I was one exceptionally lucky tourist. I sure was. Those people were so generous to me and I am ever so grateful for a wonderful experience in Tallinn. I made a lot if friends and talked until well past midnight. Despite their best efforts I was not tipsy when I left. ;)