As Stephanie first posted, our first trip out of the country ended up being to Estonia, specifically to the capitol city of Tallinn (and even more specifically just to the Old Town, more on that soon). We knew basically nothing of Estonia going in other than it's rough location on a map. We left knowing that the Old Town of Tallinn was one of the most beautiful towns we have experienced in a country with a very tragic and sad history.
Getting There
We traveled to and from Estonia by way of ferry boat (for trucks and cars)/cruise ship (for the people). This is a pretty method of transportation in the Baltic Sea between the major cities of Stockholm (Sweden), Riga (Latvia), Tallinn (Estonia), and Helsinki (Finland). Throw in St. Petersburg (Russia) and you have a very well-traveled system of ferrying people and trucks across five major cities of a relatively small region. There are three major lines operating: Tallink/Silja (the one we took), Viking (essentially a party boat), and the St. Peter Line (only one allowed to go to Russia, also the only method of visiting Russia without a Visa!). While these lines are popular for locals and tourists alike, it's also a very common method of shipping goods as trucks also line up to get on board in order to bridge the Baltic and exchange goods between main land Europe and the Nordic countries.
The ship was quite nice and honestly ended up being more pleasant than our Alaskan cruise primarily because we were allowed to go outside. It felt quite similar except that you had to pay for everything (i.e. food wasn't included in the ticket) and there was essentially a tax-free grocery store on board where many people stocked up on alcohol given the high taxes in most of the countries (especially Sweden - it's 25%). To be honest, the food and beds were not great but it's always exciting to be traveling somewhere so our trip out to Estonia was enjoyable, the trip back just seemed like "busy work."
Approaching Tallinn from the sea was interesting. The city seemed divided by time: one side (the left) was shiny with lots of straight lines, blocky shapes, no green, and tall skyscrapers while the other side had muted colors, lots of green, sloped roofs with reddish shingles, and many tall steeples.
A Town That's Actually Old
Tallinn, the capitol of Estonia, is coastal town that exists because of it's location on the sea. Walking from the dock to where we stayed in Old Town we passed a whole array of touristy advertisement-like signs (along with a lot of construction) that described the importance of the sea to the Tallinn economy and people. We later learned from a superb walking tour that Tallinn was "built on salt" as salt, being extremely valuable in the middle ages, was the main merchandise that flowed through Tallinn because of it's location on the sea and was highly taxed (roughly 3 times more than other merchandise). Our tour guide, a young Estonian woman that described the typical Estonian as "passive aggressive and extremely sarcastic", jokingly said that "it's fitting that our town was built on something so cheap because we were always so poor!" More on that in a moment.
We stayed at a great hotel (called the Cru Hotel) that was once a merchant's house. In fact, most buildings in the Old Town were owned by merchants so it wasn't that unique. We actually arrived in the middle of the Estonia marathon so as we walked up the hill and into the Old Town it was a pleasant juxtaposition of modern feel in a medieval setting. It was quite appropriate that our entrance was through a portcullis-of-sorts providing quite a satisfactory feeling of leaving the modern world behind a bit (that marathon was still going on of course). There is something about simply wandering cobble-stone streets lined with buildings that, while you can't quite put your finger on why, make you feel kind of relaxed and excited at the same time. It's an aesthetic that doesn't seem to happen too often with modern construction these days.
Did I mention that Old Town is actually old? As in these buildings and streets weren't torn down and re-build a bunch of times like many "old towns" of other European cities. The answer, provided by our sarcastic tour guide, was because the people and city of Tallinn were so poor over time that it was too expensive to tear things down and rebuild, hence the town was preserved - the sarcastic part was the "how luck are we" bit where she said it was saved so tourists to hold up the economy of the city only because they were so poor. She even told of a story back in the days of Soviet-occupation (not too long ago for them) that the plan was to raze the Old Town and build Soviet block housing but, once again, the city was too poor to accomplish it. You can see Soviet block housing off in the distance as well. For whatever reason, it is one of most most beautiful towns to walk around where you can just feel the age and history of the place.
The Old Town is quite hilly with most of it going upwards from the harbor and "new city" towards the top of a big hill where the Parliament and embassies are. We didn't discover this part until later in the day. It had two pretty unique lookout points where you could see all of Tallinn and in the distance lots of land, trees, and other housing area (i.e. Soviet block housing).
We were told that this area was the "fancy people" part of town where most of the German merchants (Germany owned Estonia off and on for quite a bit of their history and, even when Estonia wasn't part of Germany the German merchants stayed around because their businesses were there) lived. Most of the embassies and buildings are all old merchant houses/mansions. The tour guide (not too sure if you realize by this point that we learned a lot from this girl) said that, though not slavery in name, the indentured servitude of Estonians to merchants living on the hill could be broken by hiding away for one year and one day. Many would escape to the lower part of the Old Town (which, by the way, at the time was just called lower town because it wasn't the old part of the town at that point...it was just the town!) and just hide out and work somewhere and the rich German merchants just wouldn't/couldn't find them.
Anywho, our first actual stop upon arriving in the Old Town after checking in to our hotel was St. Peter and St. Paul's Cathedral for mass (in Estonian).
Religion and History
We weren't aware of this at the time but the current estimate is that 15% of Estonian's are actually religious. Who knows if this is correct but the meaning is clear - relatively few people associate with any form of religion in the country and it's actually known to be one of the least religious countries in the world. Though we've had a similar feeling in Sweden in terms of it being a minority, what is interestingly unique about this fact in Estonia is it's direct relationship to its history. I alluded to this earlier but Estonia is a country that is actually very young - it became independent in 1991! If you just glance at through the history of Estonia you see that it's just been tossed around quite a bit. This is quite common for European countries but not necessarily too common in the 19th and 20th centuries. Germany and Russia are the two main ones over time. Different occupations and ownership brought different governments, different people, and different religious affiliations. The people who lived in Estonia were made to conform to it all. The last Soviet occupation (from the 40s to 1991) was one of harsh communism that drastically changed the culture, and the people (and the population, Estonia only has ~1.4M people, a third of that live in Tallinn). Soviet rule demanded that religion be wiped out and atheism be enforced no matter the cost. As a result, the majority of the churches you see (at least in Old Town) aren't used for religious purposes anymore. They are museums. Of all the steepled churches in this picture of Old Town, only two of them are actually used as churches:
Our wonderful tour guide told us of one very iconic church in the middle of the town that had burned down at one point and the Estonian merchants at the time went to Soviet Russia in St. Petersburg to ask for money to rebuild it. Of course they didn't say it was to actually use as a church, but they tried many different reasons, never getting approval. Finally, they decided to say "we'll rebuild the church as a museum to atheism." They got the money! Today it's actually a well visited museum (though, as Stephanie mentioned in her post, we didn't go inside any museum or church accept for mass!) not to atheism but to art. Many other churches were converted to sporting arena's or other daily activities to encourage the "normal" and to try and minimize the importance of God. All of it seems quite emblematic of how how the culture of Estonia was constantly changed, and crushed, over time. As a result, and as our tour guide so artfully put it, "it's no wonder why nobody is religious because our last occupiers told us nobody should be!"
Learning of all this does sadden me, but it seems like the entire history of Estonia is fairly tragic and sad. However what we noticed and felt at mass was an extreme devotion. What I mean to convey here is that, though by percentage the number of practicing religious are few, it seems as if those that do are extremely faithful as it's quite apparent by simply experiencing the feeling of the words and the people as we definitely didn't understand the words. Attending mass at the St. Peter and St. Paul cathedral was an extremely pleasant way to start our discovery of the city. So even though we didn't know it at the time, maybe what we felt was partially or directly a result of what we did learn about the history of Estonia. Also, just to add, Kateri was not the most devout during mass, quite the opposite in fact as she threw a couple fits and very much was the loudest person in the room :)
This isn't the church we went to, but it's a beautiful Russian Orthodoc one called the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral:
Shopping, Eating, and Listening
Though we didn't go inside many of the "sites" we definitely visited our share of shops (which, by the way, is translated as "pood." You can imagine seeing "pood" written on a sign and, walking in, noticing no food at all. If you did, you just imagined my first experience walking into one) - most of them of the tourist variety. If you simply analyzed the merchandise in these shops you'd think Estonia is uniquely known for kitchen mits, placemats, cloth napkins, woolen sweaters, and amber. You'd correctly assume the wool and cloth items but apparently all the amber is imported from abroad and sold at an incredibly high markup. Lots of Russian influence (matryoshka dolls) in the items too. Very pleasant shops to be honest. The sweaters were incredibly tempting. Other wool items like capes, hats, gloves, and scarves were pretty nifty. We didn't buy anything, though we were interested in some things, but we learned that trying to shop around and find a good price leads you to simply never purchase anything and, when you're rushing to make your ferry boat departure, you realize you should have just bought the thing you saw in that first shop! Ah, the irony (though I'm not too sure it's truly ironic, it just sounds right to type).
What we did purchase (no "shopping around here") was food. We're pretty good at buying food these days, specifically treats. My favorite was this milk curd treat called a "Kohupiinakorp" (a "quark bun") that looked kind of like a pancake. This was from the "oldest cafe in Tallinn" that we had stopped in before we had actually checked in to our hotel but left because Kateri was tired so we didn't buy antything and left. If we had bought something, we would have missed mass so we felt lucky to have left and also luck to have come back :)
Tried a unique carrot cake like thing that wasn't too yummy (but looked had looked too tempting). Ate some borsch at a Russian restaurant called "Troika":
One quite unique experience we had was due to seeing a schedule of events on our first day posted on the side of the tourist office that listed only a couple of things happening during our stay. There two events were called "Savoy ball" and one said "Hunt ja seitse kitsatalle." I went in and asked about the Savoy ball because the term "savoy" is closely linked to the Lindy Hop (i.e. the swing dance that brought Stephanie and I together) as "savoy-style" Lindy Hop is the flavor of the dance we love and it's named that because of the Savoy Ballroom in New York city (doesn't exist anymore) where all the dancers in the 40s basically invented and refined the dance. Well, we were disappointed when we realized it was an opera of sorts and essentially unrelated to anything we knew (seemed like a type of burlesque thing) but the other thing was a children's story tale of the "The wolf and the seven goats." We decided to attend that one :) We arrived late (couldn't find the right door!) so things had already started. It was in the "Winter Garden", meaning it was inside in a room with trees and flowers and a glass ceiling. Many young children of various ages (Kitty was the only one who couldn't walk or talk) were all sitting in chairs around a man with what I can only describe as the whitest, fakest-looking, bowl cut hair I've ever seen. It was real, but wow. He was trying hard to be entertaining and funny. What followed was quite the hilarious interaction between adults entertaining children by having them volunteer and participate in a re-enactment of the story...which is about a shepherdess, her seven goats, and a wolf. Kitty was enthralled once it got going. By the way it was hosted at the Opera house and had four professional musicians doing the music so that was pretty nice. We had to leave early but I must say I won't forget what we saw (already forgot what we heard, they had some fun songs the audience could participate in).
Did I mention that the Estonian accent is quite an interesting one? It sounded defnitely eastern European, but a mix of Polish and Russian with something of an Arabic and/or Asian flow. To say hello was "tere" which sounded like "TAY-dah" but the 'd' was a soft 'r' that you kind of hit lightly with just the tiniest roll (quite like a Swedish 'r' actually). Thank you was "aitäh" which was "ight" as in fight or flight with a very short "ah" at the end.
The Walking Tour
So I'm not too sure if you've already figured it out (and if you haven't then I'm not too sure what you were just reading) but we took a great tour of Old Town. It was a walking tour, free of charge (though not free of tipping guilt) that led us through just a part of the city but almost the entire history of the town and of Estonia. Our tour guide was a very funny, balancing between a realistic approach to history and what we understood as a typical Estonian sense of sarcasm. I think I've already mentioned a good majority of what we learned (or at least remembered learning) but some other tidbits are:
-Estonians have a wonderful ID system that electronically stores/links medical records that can be accessed by any doctor, can use to vote online, can be used to pay for things, and can use to do taxes in a matter of minutes
-There is a gigantic glass monument structure dedicated to the first 22 years of independence in the 1920s/30s that is breaking apart and only had a 3 warranty. On the monument is written a quote by their leader at the time "we will never give up our freedom again" or something like that. This is a good example of the Estonian sense of humor as this was built in the last decade or two with the knowledge that they did indeed lose their freedom after that quote.
-There is not a large separation between the elected officials/politicians and the people. The Parliament is completely open to the public and often the leaders of the country just hang out at normal pubs with little to no security.
-There is a hotel in the newer part of the city (that we didn't visit) where the 23rd floor was a KGB hideout for a long time under Soviet rule. This was because many famous people or foreign dignitaries would stay at this hotel. As the 23rd floor couldn't be rented at all, people asked and the hotel's answer was "because the view from the 23rd floor is so beautiful that it would hurt you" - this was conveyed to us as fact. That floor is now a museum :)
Overall learning about the tragic history of the land was a good experience. We really felt like we got to understand the people and culture a bit more. I think this is going to be something Stephanie and I try to do in every city - take a walking tour with someone that knows the history and bring to life what you see. In talking about other trips, we've said if we ever make it back to Rome the single thing we'd want to fit in is a walking tour of the Roman Forum. You can only glean so much from seeing something.
One fun thing that we experienced was the makings of a protest by farmers at the Parliament. We herd (intentional) about it on our walking tour when there were horns blaring in the background. Then we saw the cow balloons...
We didn't actually witness the protest itself, or quite understand what they were protesting, or even that it was a protest as our tour guide was hesitant to call it that, more of a "gathering and a reminder" of sorts. Nonetheless and either way, it seemed like a nice protest. I don't think the government is treating farmers well, or at least not as well as they wanted. By the way, the horns we heard blaring were tractors going through the streets on their way to the Parliament building. We never did see them, but I'm sure it would have been pretty nifty to witness.
The Right Amount of Time
As we were departing on the ferry, I asked Stephanie if she though that we could have stayed one more night. She replied that we stayed just the right amount of time (well, we could have used just 1 more hour to buy a couple things ;) to see what we saw. Though staying longer we could have seen things outside of the Old Town in Tallinn and maybe some of the surrounding areas, we think we filled the days we were there with good memories. We were very happy to have taken the walking tour after we had already walked around a good bit as it allowed us to understand where we were and what we were looking at and learning more. Though the ferry ride home was more somber, not exciting like the "going somewhere" feeling of the start of a vacation, but the feeling of "it's done" (and the fact that we'd have to sleep one more night on the questionably comfort of those beds). I think I remarked to Stephanie on arriving in Stockholm that it actually felt like we were headed home, and that made me realize that our place here in Solna and in Sweden was starting to feel a bit more like our home. Though it'll never actually feel truly like that, in contrast with our first trip out of the country, it was very pleasant to get home. I did have to go in to work a half day but when I got off we had the pleasure of (through quite a long commute) picking up Laska from his farm-home and seeing him go barky-crazy at the sight of us.
The Next Trip
We're headed to Norway to ride on the Bergen railway this weekend. It's supposedly the most beautiful train trip in all of Europe so, with high hopes, we'll be updating all of you on some beauty next week :)
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