Tallinn, Estonia 09.07

We arrived in Tallinn on the ferry, and went of in search of the accomodation that we had booked. Unfortunately, the GPS didn't have any maps for Estonia, so we were a bit lost. Thankfully, Artur had printed off some rough instructions from the website, so we weren't completely in the dark. We drove around for a while, in the suburbs of Tallinn, through little back streets with run down houses. We saw a lot of young people in unusual or alternative outfits. Loren immediately liked the place, despite only having seen the shabby suburbs that we were driving through. Eventually we found the old town of Tallinn, which was where our accomodation was. We arrived at the office and checked in, and were then led to an apartment down the road. The place was fantastic! We had a 2 storey apartment all to ourselves. The decor was very modern, and the rooms were spacious. Our kitchen was fully equipped with anything you could possibly ask for, there was a washing machine under the sink, a bathroom with heated floor tiles, and the living room had a beautiful fireplace, a TV and cozy chairs. Our rooms were colourful, and decorated with old wooden furniture. It was the coolest apartment imaginable! People can probably hire places like these for a while, as they are self sufficient.

The beautiful door of our apartment

Once we had settled in, we decided to go for a walk and explore the Old Town. It was one of the prettiest and cleanest old towns that we had seen, and we fell in love with it straight away. The town was surrounded by huge walls, and the little streets were filled with cafes, restaurants and exclusive shops. There were no new buildings anywhere to be seen. Every house was just as quaint and old as the next.

We came across a square filled with people, and lots of restaurants had outdoor sections that spilled out onto the street. One restaurant had some Spanish musicians playing to the patrons, from the street. The atmosphere was so carefree and joyful, and the twinkling lights of the restaurants made the scene just magical.
We found a little restaurant that served traditional Estonian food. It was a similar concept to the one in Helsinki, so it was a pretty brave choice after Loren's last experience. However, the place looked nice, and it seemed like the perfect choice for us. The restaurant was a medieval style, with waitresses dressed in old style clothing, and low lighting once again. The menus were very cool, they were written as if we were in the medieval times, and they had sections addressed to different kinds of people. There were sections for hungry noblemen, and game sections for hunters. The writing was in old calligraphy, and the pages looked old too.
We enjoyed our food immensely, and our drinks as well. Loren tried a cool honey beer, which was warm and quite sweet. Everything was served in clay pots and on clay dishes. The food had the same weird grains that most places serve, I think it is millet. Our cutlery was set down on the table in a clay pot, and the waitress said, 'Here are your weapons'. It was a great place!

Nighttime Explorations

After dinner, Artur's parents went back to the apartment, and we continued exploring the city. We were so excited about the place that we couldn't get enough of it. We wandered a long way around the town, and saw all the little nightclubs and bars that were dotted around the place. We went past a bar that looked like it served only very alternative people, in leather or rocker clothes. It was very grungy, but we liked the idea. Artur was thrilled by all the cars in the town. The place was just filled with expensive cars of every brand. We saw ferraris, maseratis, the latest BMWs, it was pretty cool!

The next day we got up early and had breakfast in the office that rented us the rooms. They had a backpackers hostel attached to the office, and they offered breakfast there for us. We sat at a table with a couple of other travellers. They were very friendly and chatted with us for a while. The breakfast included 'kefir', which is like sour buttermilk. It is traditional for Poland, so it was cool that they had it in Estonia too.

Town Hall After breakfast, we went to see the Town Hall. It was located on Raekoja Plais, main market square in the Old Town. It was built from 1371 - 1403, and is apparently the oldest gothic town hall in Europe. It didn't really look gothic though, from what we've seen of other gothic places.
The first thing we saw in the Town Hall, was the basement, where they had an exhibition on the history of the Town Hall. There were a couple of old outfits on display, and a model of the town. We weren't really in the mood for reading all the information boards though, so we headed up to another level. The other levels had old decorations and furniture, and some of the rooms were really pretty. There was a big hall, with a colourful ceiling and pretty decorations, and there was also a room that looked like a big meeting room, kitted out with a huge desk and fancy looking chairs.
The top floor, was like being in an attic, except that it was really big and spacious. You could see the beams holding the building together, which was a bit scary. One of the windows at the end gave a great view over the market square. There was also the old wind vane on display. There were also exhibitions on what the vane had looked like at different points in time.

The MarketAfter seeing the Town Hall, we went down to see the market. It was huge, and filled up the entire square with closely packed stalls. All of the sellers were wearing medieval clothes, so it felt like you had just stepped back into another time. It was great to see how proud the people were of their culture. Estonia only became independant from Russia in 1991.
A lot of stands were selling felt hats in bright colours and weird shapes. Loren thought about buying one that looked like a hat from the '20s, but Artur was a fan of the felt hats. He though they were kitschy and poor quality, so in the end we bought some pretty green glass earrings and a matching necklace.
Artur's dad bought one of the felt hats. It was a funny one in green, with horns. It looked like a Shrek hat. We both bought some Estonian sausages, which smelt very strongly, but tasted absolutely delicious. We also bought some cheese, which tasted very much like ocsypek, sheep's cheese that we had in Zakopane.
We also bought a cheese shaver, that had a cow shaped handle, very cute! We saw Boggi using one in Stockholm, to slice the cheese, and we thought it was a great idea. Loren used to use one at the cheesecake shop for shaving chocolate curls for cakes.

Raepteek Next, we went to see an old pharmacy, that had been open and running since 1422. It still had the olden day feel to it, with shelves full of old bottles and herbs.

Oleviste Kirik
Then we walked to the Oleviste Kirik, (St Olaf's Church). It was an impressive building, with an enormous tower that you could see from just about anywhere in the old town. It actually used to be the tallest building in the world, in the 13th century (159m), however it shrunk in size (124m) after a fire destroyed a large part of it, and it had to be rebuilt and restored.
We had a look around the church, and then made the long climb up the steps of the tower. It wasn't an easy climb, and by the time we got to top, Artur's mother swore that she wouldn't be climbing any more towers on this trip. For us though, the view was well worth the sweat. It was one of the best views we'd had from a tower so far.
The Old Town was so pretty from the ground, with all of its old buildings standing in tightly packed rows. So the view from above just made it look even cooler. It was like looking into a maze dotted with exciting prizes. In this case, the prizes were the beautiful Cathedrals and churches that we could see rising above the other buildings.

In the distance we could see an Orthodox Cathedral that looked very Russian. It was standing in a section of higher ground, at the far side of the Old Town. This area was supposed to have a castle in it as well.We could see the enormous walls of the city from up here, with its huge towers at every corner. One of the towers near the water was used as a trading centre for the goods coming from the ships. The ocean stretched out for a long way outside of the walls of the Old Town. We could see the ferries that take people to and from Helsinki and other countries. We also saw the 'New Town', or the rest of Tallinn, which consisted of high rise buildings and other modern structures. We hadn't seen much of that side of Tallinn, but we were very happy just staying in our little Old Town.

Ex-KGB Headquarters After seeing the view, we wandered along some of the winding streets until we ended up in front of the former KGB headquarters. It wasn't open to the public, and it didn't even have any signage to indicate what it used to be. The only clue that you had to its dark history, was the basement windows, which peeked up from just above the sidewalk. These windows had been bricked up, to dull the sounds of the torture and cruel interrogations that used to go on down there.

Linnamuseum
Just a little further down the road, we found the Linnamuseum. It was the city museum, and was located in an old merchant's home. The first thing we learnt about, was the history of the building itself, and what each of the rooms were used for. There was a huge chimney that used to sit above a stove, and it stretched all the way up through the many stories of the house, until you could see the sky. There were old cooking utensils and saucepans on display beneath it.
In the main room, we saw a model of Tallinn, and watched a movie about the history of the city. It wasn't that exciting, but we learnt a bit more about Estonia.
On the higher floors, we saw rooms decorated as they would have been back then. There was even one room donated by someone famous, which contained all of their old style furniture and paintings. There was also a substantial collection of propaganda material, from the time of the Russian occupation. It was very interesting to look at what they put on the posters.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
Next we headed to 'Toompea', the upper or raised part of the town. We had to enter through the Tower Gate, part of the old walls from 1380. We walked along the Pikk Jalg (long leg), until we reached the 19th century, still active Orthodox church, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.
It was even more beautiful up close, than when we had seen it from the tower. It's colourful domes were bright against its white walls. We went inside and saw the spectacular interior as well. There was a giftshop there with books about Tallinn, and about the artwork that you can see in its old buildings. The pictures in the book fueled our passion for the city even more, and we were anxious to go out and see as much as we could, in the little time that we had.

Toompea Castle
After the Cathedral, we looked for the Toompea Castle. It was supposed to be located through some gardens. We walked through the gardens and admired the flowes, then sat in the shade on a wall built onto a cliff face.

Ufortunately all that was left of the Castle was a corner tower. The present day parliamentary building had been built adjoining this tower. The parliament building was very beautiful itself, though a bright pink colour. However, it was not open to visitors, so we had to continue our sightseeing elsewhere.

Danish King's Courtyard Next we went to see the 'Danish King's Courtyard', which was just inside the city walls again. There was a beautiful view over a park area with beautiful trees, and circular gardenbeds with colourful flowers. Just near us, there was a girl in a white robe selling tickets to walk on the wall of the city.

We climbed up the difficult stairs to the top, but unfortunately most of the walking areas had been closed, so we didn't get to see much at all. One we reached the top, we found only one small stretch of walkway that we could walk on, so our trip was fairly short. Artur's dad bought a CD that the girl was selling, because it had very traditional music on it.

On our way back, we stopped to buy some paintings that a seller had hung on the wall of the city. We found ourselves a really nice one, that was very colourful and well painted. We had seen the very street that was painted, on our way down from the Danish King's Courtyard.

The street in our painting

Big Lunch
Before we headed off from Tallinn for Riga, we decided to have lunch at a place we had spotted earlier. It was serving 'Golanka' or pig's knuckle, a typical Polish meal. We all ordered the same thing, with different beers. Four pork knuckles makes a whole set of pig's legs! What a hungry bunch we were.

The Golanka was delicious, and the crackling was so crispy that it was hard to break. There was a lot of delicious meat on the bone, and some beautiful 'bigos', was served with it too. Bigos is like 'sauerkraut', but it is a bit sweeter, and sometimes it has other vegetables in it as well. We ate like kings before heading off in the car for the next city.

To see the photos from the post in slideshow mode, click on on the link below:
Tallinn pictures