Estonian Adventures

I just spent a wonderful week vacationing in Estonia and Finland. There are so many things that I could post about that I don’t even know where to begin. Well I will start off by using this post to talk about Tallinn, and then set aside the next post to talk about Helsinki. Rather than tell you everything that happened, I will just talk about a few of my most memorable events.

1. On the 14 hour, middle of the night train ride from Moscow to Tallinn, we stopped early Sunday morning to cross the border from Russia into Estonia. This alone took almost two hours. First we stopped for over an hour in Russia and the police came in with guard dogs, checked all our paperwork, and went through our bags. Finally we started moving again. We crossed into Estonia, and five minutes later stopped again. Now the Estonian guard dogs and police came in to do it all over again. What a hassle!

2. Soon after arriving, finding our hostel, and settling in we went exploring. We had decided to buy a “Tallinn Card” for about $50. This was the best thing we ever did. With this card our entire trip was practically free except for our meals in the evening. This card gave us free entrance into museums, attractions, and paid for all our transportation in the city. We also got free ice cream, coffee, marzipan, shots, bowling, truffles, etc in businesses all over the city. The best of these was free time at a spa, which I will talk about next.







3. Aqua Spa—with the Tallinn Card we got 1 ½ hours free spa time. And we could go as many times as we wanted. So we went twice and essentially had 3 amazing hours of incredible saunas. There were 6 different types of saunas, and multiple swimming pools and some a couple “warm” tubs. I say “warm” because I could not classify them as hot tubs.



4. Ice cream—another of the free things we got with the Tallinn Card was ice cream at a bookstore. I chose wheat flavored ice cream. It was delicious and it tasted exactly like wheaties breakfast cereal.

5. One day as we were walking to our hostel a girl on the sidewalk suddenly yelled at us to stop. She was maybe in her late teens or early twenties and there were a few other people her age with her. We stopped and she drunkenly asked us in English, “are you from Estonia?” “No,” we replied. “Oh, darn. I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing here. I just know that last night I was partying and this morning I woke up in Estonia!” “Well, where are you from?” I asked. “Finland.” Hahahahaha. By far one of the funniest things I ever encountered.

6. Boat tour. So we decided to go to the “Maritime Museum” and take a tour around some boats. We get there, and it is in a very sketch part of town. I was glad Rick was with us. We were the only ones there, and the “tour” had no guide. There were about 10 boats at the docks and they pointed to 3 of them and said, “go explore!” So we ran around and had a blast by ourselves climbing through engine rooms and down dark iron holes. There were two large boats and a submarine. Very cool.



7. Wall tour—the city was once surrounded by high stone walls and we got to walk around and climb on a few of them. Very fun and there were lots great views and pictures to be taken.







8. Hidden Tunnels—over the centuries as Estonia was expanding the people built huge bulwarks to surround the walls. A bulwark is a tunnel that is built above ground and then covered with lots of earth. They are huge hills that are now covered by parks and nice lawns. But once they were a main defensive tactic for the city. Until 2005 many of them had filled up with water, but the city is cleaning them out and taking people on tours. Only a small section is tourable—about ½ km. There are many kilometers of bulwarks. They have been used for different purposes over the years. During WWII the dry parts were used as shelters during the bombings. It was a very neat tour.







Summary—Tallinn is an incredible city. I could live here with ease. The people are very friendly, the food is delicious, the history is interesting, the city is much smaller than Moscow and is easy to get around in. There are a ton of restaurants and neat alley ways to discover. It would be hard for me to get bored here. But there is one thing I didn’t care for. It was much too easy to communicate. Everyone speaks English and the few that don’t can usually understand some Russian. I became very lazy with language and am sad to say that I didn’t learn one work in Estonian. Shame on me. But overall, I would recommend this place to anyone, anytime. I sure hope to return at some point.