Two drifters off to see the world. . .

Well we just spent the past 4 days exploring Estonia’s capital city, Tallinn. We spent most of our time in vanalinn (Old Town) which is a two-tiered medieval town with part of it’s defensive wall still intact and is a UNESCO world heritage site. We arrived at our hostel on Sunday night and after checking in we walked around the Old Town for a few hours. That evening we were invited for dinner with Andres and Liisa. They served us a nice meal and we drank lots of wine over some good conversation. After we said good-night to Andres and Liisa, we decided we were not ready to call it a night yet so we headed to the Depeche Mode bar (which only plays Depeche Mode music). 

Monday, the 20th, was Estonia’s Taasiseseisvumispääev or Re-Establishment of Indepence day (August 20, 1991) so there were lots of events going on in the city to celebrate it. We started by attending the placing of flowers on the Estonian Independence Monument. The previous president was there and they gave some speeches and a marching band played music. (We had run into the current president’s motorcade in Kuressaare). After that we went to the grand unveiling of a reconstructed gate that was next to the Niguliste Church. It was rebuilt and included the original keystone in it, which depicted an angel which rich people would walk under for good luck. Although the luck didn’t seem to help them unveil it as the curtain covering it was stuck when they pulled the drawstring and someone had to climb up and rip it off!

That afternoon there was a concert at Raekoja Plats (aka Town Hall Square) which had some young girls singing traditional Estonian songs and also 8 of the Estonian Superstar (their version of American Idol) finalists singing various songs. The finalists sang about 3 Canadian songs which I enjoyed since I could actually understand the lyrics and made me feel more at home. Later in the evening we met back up with Andres and Liisa for a tour of the less touristy bars in the Old Town. We ended up at this one tiny bar, Valli Baar, where the local old men hang out and where we had their specialty shot, a millimalikas shot (Tequila, Sambuca and Tabasco sauce), kind of similar to a Pairie Fire shot…I don’t think I will order another one again. Then one of the old men at the bar bought Liisa and I a chocolate bar. Apparently this bar is listed as one of the city’s heritage sites since it’s been around since the 1960’s and hasn’t been changed at all.

On Tuesday we went to the Keik in de Kök tower and museum where we went on a tour of the underground tunnels in the bastions. There are apparently some 15 km of tunnels under Tallinn, which some can be accessed, some cannot since they are either filled in or under water. There are supposedly two levels of tunnels under Toompea, the hill which the government buildings sit upon. We toured only 1.5 km of the tunnels on the city outskirts, but still a cool thing to see. We also went through the Occupation museum, but weren’t able to watch all the exibits, since you would need nearly 4 hours of time to do it all. Later that evening we went out to dinner with Piret, Eero’s cousin, at a neat art club type restaurant called Noku. Its members only and was another neat place that most tourists don’t get to see. We then walked around Toompea, and then Eero and I grabbed dessert at a little cafe called ”Chocolaterie de Pierre” that had a delicious hot chocolate with ice cream and whipped cream, while Eero had a hot chocolate with tequilla and chile drink which although spicy had an interesting taste to it and he seemed to like it. I would highly recommend this place if you like chocolate since they make real hot chocolate not the powered watery kind, it was a dessert in itself!

Wednesday we set out in the morning to see the Oleviste Kirik (St. Olaf’s Church) which was built in the 13th century and used to be world’s tallest building before it had a major fire and reconstruction, and before the Eiffel Tower was built. We also went to the Maritime Museum. We had giant pancakes filled with meat and cheese at Kompressor for lunch and afterwards went to Niguliste Church, which was heavily bombed on March 9, 1944 by the Soviets. There was a museum in the church featuring medieval church artifacts dating as far back as the 15th century. That afternoon since the weather was rainy we decided to head to the movie theater to see the Simpsons movie, which we both thought was hilarious. In the evening we went to Arvo and Ene’s house in Viimsi for dinner. The meal started off with Eel soup and dispite thinking I wouldn’t like it, especially since it had mushrooms in it, I really liked it and would have it again. The rest of the meal was also delicious and we ended up pleasantly stuffed. On the drive back to the hostel Arvo and Ene drove us along the coast to see the silouette of Tallinn from across the bay at night.

This morning we woke up early, walked 30 minutes to the bus station and hopped a bus back to Pärnu to visit Eero’s grandmother and aunt one more time before leaving. We plan to head back to Saku tomorrow evening before going to the airport Saturday to fly to Berlin.

That’s all for now…Hope things are great with all of you and we’ll see you in Berlin! 

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Eesti, Festivals, Friends, Music, Relatives, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.