Circumspencing the Globe

Preliminarily, let me thank the many of you who have expressed concern for my sister.  I can’t tell you how much the prayer is appreciated by everyone involved, especially Andrea and her husband Paul.  Paul has spent countless hours speaking with doctors, ascertaining the best course of action.  Andrea is still in the hospital and on blood thinners and has not had surgery.  Since one possible side effect of the surgery is suffering a stroke, our prayer is that surgery can be avoided.  Please join us in this specific prayer.  Thanks very much.

 

As for my sojourn, earlier in the week I spent a couple nights–not nearly enough–in Helsinki, the nation’s capitol.  The city is big and bustling.  The country once belonged to Sweden (1155 to 1809) and twice, more or less, to Russia (1812 to 1917 and again under Soviet control until the Winter War of 1939-1940).  The current president, Mrs. Tarja Halonen, looks just like Conan O’Brien, a show many Finns watch.  Helsinki is full of museums and impressive architecture.  Two eye-catching cathedrals overlook the city center, both built in the mid-19th century.  The first is Orthodox, made of red bricks, with 13 golden cupolas (Upensky Cathedral) and the other is Lutheran, white in color and part of the Senate Square.  I took a tram to the Olympic Stadium, built for the 1952 Olympic Games.  I saw some sights but ended up spending much of my time in the library, sorting out the details of the next phase of my trip on the internet.

 

Helsinki:

On Wednesday, I took a ferry across the Gulf of Finland to Tallinn, the capitol of Estonia, the northernmost Baltic country.  As I watched Helsinki, then Finland, then Scandinavia disappear from view, I was sad to leave such a wondrous part of the world, so gorgeous, bountiful, vibrant and clean.  The first phase of my trip had come to an end.  Fin.

 

I would’ve shed a tear as I peered back from the windy aft deck, but I didn’t want the rough looking smokers nearby to sense weakness.  They looked like brawlers, some even with fresh facial abrasions.  So I just spit it in the ocean as if spitting were my habit and sauntered inside for the remainder of the 100 minute journey.  Then I sat down and wiped the spit off my shirt and gazed out the window.  (I just now made up the spitting part for effect, but the guys did look rough.)  My ferry fared better than an Estonian ferry that sank in these waters in 1994, tragically killing 852 people.

 The view from the back of the ferry.  Oooh.

Now on Estonian soil, I entered the magical medieval town of Tallinn.  Wet cobblestone reflected yellow streetlamp lights and challenged my balance as I trod the narrow road between very old buildings.  Over the next two days, I would wend my way up and down and around the Old Town.  Stone castle towers.  Church spires.  Red turrets.  Pastel facades.  But at the end of the cobblestone road I trod that first night, I encountered a familiar sight utterly misplaced in these medieval surroundings:  McDonald’s.  I was mcshocked.

 

The entrance to my B&B was marked by two flickering floor candles.  In the morning, the individuals sitting around the breakfast table included a gentlemanly Swede who had both sold art to Abba and decorated the interior of a hotel suite later occupied by President Bush, a Swiss woman who races dog-sleds, and an Australian in a Pearl Jam t-shirt who approached his breakfast with the enthusiasm of Steve Irwin on a croc.

 

Greater Tallinn is a thoroughly modern city.  But the Old Town lives up to its name.  The Town Hall square is believed to have been established as far back as the 11th century.  The square is circumscribed by buildings dating back to the 15th through 17th centuries.  The top of the huge nearby Oleviste Church offers terrific views of the town, including the harbor to the north.  That church was the tallest building in the world when it was built in the 13th century, but it burned down several times and is now shorter than it once was.  While taking in the view from the top of it, I met a New Zealander named Sarah doing the same.  More about her later.

 

On Thursday evening, I had dinner with Triin, a local Estonian I’d met over the internet.  While I ate sausage made from the meat of elk, boar and bear, she described life under the Soviet regime and since its collapse.  Everything changed, rapidly and totally.  The grocery stores became stocked with food, new homes sprung up, the job scene modernized.  Life is much better now, she said, as I bit into bear.

 

The next night, Triin and her sister Tiina took me for a drive.  I mentioned their names would make good Scrabble words for someone with a lot of “i’s” but they hadn’t heard of Scrabble.  Tiina drove us along Tallinn’s coastline, stopping at Pirita beach, beside a yacht club, and then at a pier, and then continuing on past a Soviet obelisk and an ancient monastery.  We had dinner in a restaurant designed like an upside-down ship with rightside-up waiters dressed like shipmates.  If we had had dessert, it would have been, of course, upside-down cake.

 

Sarah, the New Zealander from the top of Oleviste Church, completed law school and has been escaping from the working world by traveling the geographical world ever since.  She just finished a one-month stint in Russia and spoke fondly of her time there.  We wandered Tallinn together some yesterday and then took the same bus to Riga, Latvia this morning.  She’s got a wicked sense of humor and loves my favorite comedy:  Flight of the Conchords (New Zealand’s 4th most popular parody folk duo), Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Simpsons and Monty Python.  If you happen to know Flight of the Conchords, maybe you’d appreciate that in half of my converations with Sarah I’ve assumed the persona and accent of Murray, the band manager.  In fact, over our first shared meal I called a “band meeting” and took roll.

 

Our connection in matters of comedy has overriden our disconnection in matters of politics and cuisine.   Sarah is a vegan and would never eat an animal or animal product, even, she insists upon inquiry, if she were trapped on a mountain in the Andes after a plane crash and had nothing else to eat.  I’m assuming from this that she probably wouldn’t try bear.

 

Shots of Tallinn, Triin and Sarah:

   

Tags: Baltics, Estonia, ferry, Finland, Helsinki, Scandinavia, Tallinn, Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 6th, 2007 at 6:17 pm and is filed under 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.