Tour Tallinn
(Marie-Mail entry #36)
TALLINN, ESTONIA
MAY 30
"This is what I've been missing," I thought, watching the lush green Estonian countryside whiz past my bus window. I had taken a lot of overnight trains, sacrificing scenery for convenience.
"But I haven't missed this," I realized when I got off the bus in Tallinn and caught a taxi to Old Town. The taxi charged Western Europe rates, because I was practically in Western Europe.
On the map, Estonia is in Eastern Europe. It's as far east as Romania,
Bulgaria, and Belarus. But spiritually, culturally, and linguistically,
Estonians are first cousins to Finns.
Finland, one of the most highly-developed nations on Earth (and home
to Nokia), is an hour and a half away from Tallinn by hydrofoil. Estonians
grew up watching Finnish television and when Estonia declared independence in
1991, it knew exactly how to set up and execute a free market economy.
All three Baltic republics have become economic success stories. They are still struggling, and there were some painful years when the Soviet rouble collapsed, but Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania enjoy stable currencies, low inflation, and low unemployment -- especially in comparison to neighboring Russia. Mind you, Russia is physically the largest country on Earth and its population dwarves Estonia's one and a half million people.
Estonia is rocketing towards EU membership and while not expensive
like Paris or Helsinki, it is no bargain.
I got a room for one night at "Eeslitall,"
which apparently means -- or was a -- "donkey's stable." For $20, I got
a sunny, clean, secure -- and tiny -- room with a shared bathroom down
the hall. Eeslitall was all booked up for the next three nights. I'd have to move tomorrow.
Tallinn
I took an extra-long, extra-hot shower to make up for my two cold St. Petersburg showers, and went for a walk through the cobblestone alleys of "Vanalinn" (Old Town). It's the most completely preserved medieval capital in Europe (I think), and as such, is a bit overwhelming in its quaintness.
In short, Old Town Tallinn is adorable. It's chock-full of atmospheric cafes, ye olde this and ye olde that. In a few years, it will no doubt be so commercialized and overtouristed as to be intolerable, but or now Tallinn's quaintness got under the skin of even my own cynical self. I fell in love with it from the second I left the Donkey's Stable.
MAY 31
I was still without a guidebook. The St. Petersburg English bookstore
had sold hundreds of guidebooks, but nothing for the Baltics. Tallinn itself could only muster one edition of Lonely Planet's "Scandinavian and Baltic Europe."
Fortunately, Tallinn is one of fifteen regional cities comprehensively
covered by "In Your Pocket" brochure-sized mini-guides. And Tallinn's "In Your Pocket" listed two self-service laundromats.
The last laundromat I'd seen had been in Australia, four months ago. Since then I had steadfastly washed socks and underwear in the sink every night, and utilized hotel laundries for bigger jobs. I had a scrub brush (actually a plastic nail brush) and double Zip-Loc bag full of Tide.
Initially, I'd brought along a clothesline, concentrated travel soap,
inflatable hangers, a universal sink plug, and two flexible clothespins
that dangle from hooks.
The travel soap had gone quickly and I hadn't bothered to replace it. The word "useless" springs to mind, as nothing dissolves in the sink quite like powder detergent (which can be purchased anywhere). The inflatable hangers didn't last either. I was far too lazy to blow them up every night.
I kept the clothesline as a "just in case" measure because it weighed nothing. But I only used the hanging clothespins. My perfect laundry kit was cobbled together from bits and pieces purchased from Magellans.com, the hardware store, and the "Nail" section of Rite Aid.
I approached the laundromat with the kind of anticipation most people reserve for fine dining, or a trip to the beach. I could control the drying time! No unnecessary bleach! No shrinkage! I had seen so many amazing cathedrals, mosques, and art museums that I was numb to them. But clean clothes -- there was something to write home about.
This happens to people on extended trips -- conveniences that seem mundane at home become rare luxuries on the road. A laundromat, a muffin, an English-language novel, freshly ground coffee -- these things take on inflated importance when scarce.
the rooftops of Tallinn
I booked a room for Friday and Saturday night at a "real hotel" outside of Old Town. Tallinn fills up on weekends and even the hostel I'd moved
to had no room after tonight.
I spent the day walking through Old Town and sipping coffee. My evening activities included trying to find a restaurant that didn't ignore a party of one.
Back at the hostel, Dutch traveler Susan was concerned.
"Did you eat alone?" she asked. "We looked for you. Tallinn is an awful place to eat by yourself."
She was right. Couples ruled the restaurant scene in Old Town. Nothing about eating alone in a candlelit restaurant full of couples appealed to me. But at least, unlike Khiva and Bukhara, there WERE restaurants.
JUNE 1
I moved my pack to Hotel Mihkli. That made three hotels in three days. "Perhaps I should have planned ahead," I thought.
My system for choosing a hair salon proved faulty in Estonia. I had
nothing else to go on, so I'd chosen salons based on their use of "Goldwell" hair dye. I was Goldwell 11A and 11N. How wrong could a colorist go when they had the right ingredients?
"Pretty wrong," is the answer to that. Colorists in Hong Kong, Singapore, Melbourne, and Los Angeles had gotten my color dead-on. But I left the Estonian salon as a blond with light brown roots and near-white highlights. This was going to look really bad later when my medium brown natural hair started to grow in, but for now, I would live with it.
There were two cruise ships in port, and groups of tourists followed guides bearing signs. Others took to the sidewalk cafes to sip hedonistic pre-lunch beer in the morning sun. I joined a "Tallinn Bus and Walking Tour" after a quick snack.
The "bus" part took us for a ride around the modern section of Tallinn, and had to stretch for "sights." There was a park, palace, and cottage from the 1700's, designed for Peter the Great. We saw a sailing center built or the 1980 Olympics, a big supermarket, the post office, and an amphitheater here Estonians sang together to protest the Soviet occupation. Sights aside, the bus trip was interesting for the glimpse it gave me into modern Estonian life. Some homes were classic wooden homes, while others -- far more -- were ugly-but-functional Soviet cement blocks. I was pleased to get a glimpse of the world I'd be seeing in-depth if I'd had the nerve to telephone Viktor, the cook from the "Direct Kiwi." And the guide's narration alone was worth the admission price. She switched breathlessly between English and Finnish.
The walking section of the tour took us first through Upper Old Town,
past the Russian Orthodox Alexander Nevsky Cathedral to the 15th century Lutheran church. Back in the lower part of Old Town, we walked the streets I'd been haunting for two days now, and stopped in the town square, where the gothic Town Hall housed my favorite coffee shop.
For dinner, I decided to try authentic Estonian food. I ordered something delicious called "Grandmother's Roast," but it may as well have been called "Cholesterol on Toast." The roast part was greasy Canadian bacon, but it saw under a fried egg and over black bread. Side dishes included sundried tomatoes, beets, sauerkraut, brussel sprouts, spring onions, and carrots, all drenched in allergy-inducing dill. It all tasted great, but afterwards I felt really unhealthy.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," I thought, and stopped by McDonald's
to sample the Estonian version of an apple pie.
Tallinn has a lot of these
It was called "Forest Berry." The taste was a combination of cherries,
blueberries, and those things Ikea calls lingonberries. Delighted with
my dinner and dessert, I caught a streetcar back to Hotel Mihkli, getting
there just in time to catch the Finnish version of "Wheel of Fortune."
HELSINKI
JUNE 2
At six, the brilliant sunlight woke me up.
"Estonia really needs to switch to Daylight Savings Time," I thought.
It was much too bright to be six in the morning.
After a typical hotel breakfast of phosphates and dairy products (read
salami and cheese), I caught a streetcar to the ferry terminal. I was
going to Finland for the day.
What would I do in Helsinki? There's not a lot to see. Finland is a
beautiful country, with a high standard of living, but its capital is
lacking in tourist hotspots. I'd be a consumer for the day, haunting coffee
shops, bookstores, and Stockmann's (the Macy's of Finland).
Halfway across the Gulf of Finland, "Moonlight Shadow" came on the
p.a. It's a song off a Mike Oldfield album from the early 80's, and my
Finnish host sister had woken me up with it on my first jetlagged day in Finland in 1982.
"Serendipity," I thought. I wondered where Heidi was today.
I had come home from school excited in early ‘82. A representative from "Youth for Understanding" had spoken to my class about going abroad. "Can't afford it, that's okay! We have financial aid," she'd said.
I had dreams of exotic places -- I wanted to go to Ecuador or Japan. But we were barely scraping by, and my mom said she had known immediately that we couldn't pay for it, but didn't want to discourage me.
We had found our way from suburban Virginia to the YFU headquarters in
D.C., where it became crystal clear to me during the interview that it
was out of my reach. It was just like college interviews where financial aid
counselors would start talking about loans and family contributions, and I'd know that the thousand dollars that the guidance counselor was going on about might as well have been a million.
Finns enjoying the midsummer sun
Fortunately, the YFU representative was more sympathetic than the average university financial aid officer. There was a grant available from the Arlington Civitans. With it, I could go to Finland on a summer program. My family contribution of a few hundred dollars could be made up with my Roy Rogers income.
Finland? I had no desire to go to Finland. Still, it was Finland or nowhere, so I packed my borrowed suitcase and off I went to the land of the sauna and the midnight sun. My friend's mother gave me a blank travel journal and told me to write about my trip. She had no idea what she was starting.
Finland is very pro-EU
I learned several things from that summer abroad. First, I learned that going to another country is much easier than most people believe it is. All you have to do is get on the plane with your passport. The rest kind of does itself. Second, I got all of the bad stuff -- the culture shock and homesickness -- out of the way so that later trips would be more rewarding. And third, I learned to carry debt, a bad habit that is better left unlearned.
The most important lesson, of course, was that the world is full of different cultures, and some of them play Mike Oldfield while drinking vodka in the broad daylight of the midnight sun. Another modern nomad was born, and was currently making her way across the Gulf of Finland to revisit her youth.
I left the ferry terminal at noon, and hit the ground running. There was an ATM at the terminal, and the tram took me straight to Stockmann's, the center of downtown Helsinki. A nearby bookstore had the elusive Lonely Planet guide to the Baltics that I had been seeking, and Marimekko had some expensive black bike messenger bags that I decided against buying. I would live with the sewn-up Manhattan Portage model -- I had almost forgotten about the bag-slashing incident in Mongolia.
Stockmann department store
Stockmann's top floor featured a restaurant, so I had Swedish meatballs and new potatoes, just like a local would. They weren't as good as I remembered them being, but Ikea has warped my notion of the perfect Swedish meatball.
I cut across the underground passage to the train station. Downtown Helsinki has a small city-under-the-city, which must have evolved out of necessity in the long, cold winters.
view from main square
I went to the English information desk. Would it be possible for me to get to Karjaa and back today? My host family had lived there. I had completely lost touch with them, but have a sentimental side that likes to revisit places from my youth.
Yes, it was possible. No, there was no way I could do it and still ensure that I caught my scheduled ferry back to Tallinn. Disappointed, but relieved to have time to wander through Helsinki, I gave up on that notion and walked to the waterfront. Laughing at myself, I thought how much bigger everything had seemed in 1982. I spent my day shopping and drinking coffee, on a visitor's day pass to consumer culture.
I had forgotten how drunk Finnish teenagers like to get, but now it all came flooding back to me. High school graduation had just happened and drunk teenagers stumbled around with open beer bottles. This would get worse and worse, culminating in a huge drunken party on June 24, the longest day of the year.
main square
On the tram, drunk teens sang songs at the top of their lungs, and I was relieved to get off at the ferry terminal. I spent all my spare Markkas on Finn "Fazer" chocolate, and went back to my regularly-scheduled program in Estonia.
TALLINN
JUNE 3
I couldn't get out of bed, and when I did, I knew that I would never make it Estonia's "second city" of Tartu. Instead, I moved my bags back to the Donkey's Stable, and lazily spent the day drinking coffee in the shadow of Town Hall.
The cruise ships had all left port, leaving me and 50 Finns alone to enjoy performances by local marching bands. A knight on horseback and a few serving wenches passed out flyers nearby, for a local version of "Medieval Times." I liked Tallinn, but had been hanging around long enough. Tomorrow I would move on to Latvia.
NEXT: Riga, Latvia, or is it Latveria? Commu-musings and more.
