Tere

Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn is the biggest city in all of Estonia and it is absolutely amazing. One day is not enough time to fully enjoy this city because all I want to do is get lost wandering down cobblestone streets and drink tea al fresca at sidewalk cafes.

The weather today was unseasonably warm and unusually sunny. Every local we talked to said they only have a handful of days this nice all spring. Finally, a little good luck for a change!

Getting off the ship took hours and the passport control in Estonia (though not as intense as Russia) moved so slowly. When we finally arrived at the hotel, I was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful the old town here is.

It kind of reminded be of Istanbul with the winding cobblestone streets and beautiful little row buildings. There is a main square with a historic city hall building that looks like a church and then a few real churches all within walking distance from anywhere in the historic section.

The city is split into an Upper Tallinn and a Lower Tallinn. Traditionally, the lower city was where the merchants, craftspeople and tradespeople lived and worked and the upper city was where the wealthy people lived - like knights and political figures.

After joining a free walking tour to get our bearings, we ventured into the upper city and visited Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the oldest church in the city. Inside was a huge collection of wooden coats of arms. Approximately 200 of these Estonian family coats of arms exist in the country and around 90 are on display inside Saint Mary’s.

We also visited the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral - a Russian Orthodox Church. The outside was architecturally stunning - though it appeared oddly misplaced when centered among the more European style buildings surrounding it. Built during Russian occupation, this building with its quentisential Russian style was a clear message to the residents of Estonia about who was really in charge.

In fact, we learned on our tour that Estonia has spent much of it’s history occupied by foreign forces - including Swedes, Danes, Nazis and Russians.

Given how small Estonia is, most Estonians speak several languages so they can communicate with people outside their country. Our tour guide said she speaks four lanaguages. Estonian, which she learned at home. English, which she began learning at school in 2nd grade. Russian, which she began learning at school in 5th grade. And, German, which she learned in college.

The Estonian language is very difficult to learn for non-native speakers. It is closely related to Finnish and Hungarian.

Our tour guide did teach us the ”Tere” - the word for ”hello.” She also explained a few reasons why Estonian is such a complicated language. First, the language does not have a future tense and, second, the nouns are not gendered (which is also the case in English, but not so in many other languages like Spanish, Italian and German). She said a common joke among Europeans is that the language of Estonia shows it is a pretty bad place because they have no sex and they have no future. *bada bada bing*

Another cool site we visited today was the Bastion Tunnels below the city walls. These tunnels were first built for military purposes by the Swedish around 1600. Throughout the last few centuries, they’ve been used as fallout shelters, cover for anti-establishment/counter culture meetings, homes for homeless people and who knows what else.

We took a self guided tour through the long, cold, damp, dark, deep underground, never ending tunnels and I am proud of myself for not having a full on panic attack. Josh enjoyed it, until he had a run in with one of the low ceilings!

In the evening we decided do something a little different for dinner. We missed the finale of Game of Thrones because we can’t get HBO here (no spoilers, please!). So we found a medieval themed restaurant with tasting menu called the “King’s Feast” and had our own game of thrones night.

The menu featured like 17 different dishes and everything was delicious - including the wild boar, elk and BEAR sausages and the rose pudding! Beer was served in clay mugs and utensils were optional. The staff really played up the medieval theme and Josh enjoyed - a bit too much - the idea of being told he was our table’s “master” of the feast (he had to taste the bread first and make the decisions about when it was time for the next course).

We ran into another couple we met during our St. Petersburg leg of the trip - Linda and Rob. He is an international business lawyer and they are from Califonia. We’ve crossed paths a few times over the last couple of days and they ended up beside us at dinner tonight.

They shared our love of great travel deals and adventures abroad. We really enjoyed talking with them about their latest trips and they were nice enough to show us some photos of their recent trip to India (which we are now going to have to add to our list!).

After dinner, we hiked up the hill back to the Upper town to watch (an anticlimactic) sunset at a nice overlook on the city walls. It stays daylight until the wee morning hours here. So, even the sunset at 10:00 p.m. only made the sky slightly more dim than mid-day. The picture below was taken around 10:30 p.m.

Tonight we are thankful for a perfect day in Tallinn. And blackout curtains. Very thankful for the blackout curtains.