Monday, August 21, 2006
Keeping in theme with the last entry, I boarded the Ferry at 9:30 a.m. Sunday morning and mounted the top deck where there was already a line at the bar and several Finns making morning toast – not as in bread, as in beer. The twenty-some odd drinkers on the top deck were the only people besides me below eighty years of age on this ship. I must have gotten on the Scandinavia Parents of AARP discount cruise or something. These eighty and ninety-somethings were proof positive that the propaganda against smoking is, uh, propaganda. Every damn one of them was smoking. I couldn’t tell which made me more nauseous – the aroma of the food from the cafeteria, the smoke smell of rooms laden with smoke for decades, or the smell of old people. (I’m sorry but they do smell different). The bar looked like a lonely-hearts club for the old and dying where they actually seemed to be enjoying the Finnish version of that song “Fire”. Remember? “But when we kiss, oooo-ooooo, f-i-i-i-r-e.” I couldn’t help but giggle – at that age the fire ain’t sexual, it’s because the senile forget to take the damn cigarette out of their mouths they get so excited about kissing! Of course that was better than the English version of “Country Roads” sung with Finnish Accents. And I’ll tell you, women should not be allowed to sing ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ ever, and certainly not with cruise ship back up bands.
When I truly couldn’t breathe anymore, I made my way to the cafeteria which was the only non-smoking room on the boat - not that it helped. I spotted an empty seat in front of a port hole at a table with four vibrant young ladies, they couldn’t have been a day over 76, and buried my head in my computer. Am I the only one who believes old people are really aliens and if they make direct eye contact with you, you become one? I mean think about it. You never see your relatives age, just one day you look at them and suddenly they are old. I’m telling you it is an alien abduction scam.
I must admit, I was touched when one of the ladies pulled out four rolls, another some lunch meat, another some cheese, and the last one exactly four cherry tomatoes. They made sandwiches to go with the four black coffees they had bought at the cafeteria and the one with the cherry tomatoes ceremoniously handed one, just one mind you, cherry tomato to each of her friends. I had to smile. I actually felt a little guilty for thinking they were aliens – though I still didn’t risk looking any of them in the eye.
Tallinn was an interesting city, though I spent a fair amount of time in the hotel catching up on writing. My host, Ele, and I missed each other at the Ferry terminal. A minor crash took the couchsurfing mail system off-line that morning so I didn’t get her email telling me where she was waiting. It turned out I was upstairs for almost three hours and she was outside for two. Damn. I finally wandered off to find a hotel and lucked into a decent price and wi-fi in the room! Ele and I finally got to meet for dinner at a neat little African restaurant the last night I was there. It was nice having the chance to dine with a real local and she was a delight to talk to, extremely well-traveled and still full of life and adventure at 55. I love women like that!
The hotel time was good for me. I’ve been lucky with rain. Every time I’ve needed to settle in and catch up on writing and pics, the rain has come and so it was in Tallinn. In breaks between clouds and writer’s cramp, I got in several walks through the Old Town, a tourist bus tour out to the convent ruins, and an audio guide walking tour. The Old Town is not only medieval in structure with its serpentine streets and old architecture, it is medieval in spirit. Throughout the town you will see pretty peasant faced girls in long traditional costume selling roasted nuts at little wooden wagons on the street or staffing the numerous restaurants, as well as a wide assortment of medieval style shops and stores. It is a bit like walking into a year round Scarborough Faire.
While the Russian tourists have come here for years, the European tourists have only begun to find it. It is clearly a favorite for Italians – so much so that many of the shop windows have signs declaring ‘Benvenuto!’ - ‘Welcome’ in Italian. There are just enough tourists parading the streets to have that nice tourist energy high without the too-many-tourists irritation. The tourists come with good cause as Tallinn also has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Property. After having randomly stopped without intention at several of UNESCO’s award properties, I finally checked out the list on line. There are just over eight hundred such properties around the world. For future reference, it is not a bad starting place for traveling ideas. The list is truly focused on our cultural and natural heritage, as opposed to the typical tourist sights – though of course they cross over a fair bit. Interestingly, America makes the list almost exclusively for its natural heritage in our many National Parks.
Generally I don’t go for the tourist-trap restaurants but Olde Halsa in Tallinn was an exception. Cute young girls with pug noses and pigtail braids dressed as wenches from days of old serve up village friendliness at wooden plank tables offering ceramic mugs full of ale in an interesting array of flavors including honey, cinnamon, and heavy herb. Figuring I probably wouldn’t like Heavy Herb Beer, I tried the cinnamon. It wasn’t half bad, for beer. The menu features everything from bear to boar, though the bear was a little pricey. I opted instead for the roasted boar which is served with sauerkraut, onion jam, pickled cucumbers, cheese bread, tart berries, and spelt – an old grain a little stronger tasting than barley. All fascinating flavors – different but good. After dinner, I ordered the offered specialty coffee - forgetting my rule that you never order a suggested dessert without checking the price. It was half the price of my meal. Damn it was good though – a bit stronger than an Irish Coffee with rich sweet whip cream on top and a little ginger cake wrapped up in brown paper and tied with a brown paper string. These are a few of my favorite things….
It has been over a month since I have felt like a stranger in a strange land. Everywhere I have been in Scandinavia, including nearby Tallinn, English is a common language. It is a job requirement for people working in Old Town. A local newspaper, the Baltic Times, is actually in English. Despite the fact they will learn English for business purposes, Estonians are fiercely proud of their language. While there are only about a million speakers of Estonian in the world today, they are determined to keep their language alive and well. Every five years close to 100,000 people descend upon Tallinn in July for the All Estonian Song Festival. There is a huge open air amphitheatre built for the festival on the outskirts of the town, though it is of course used for other performances between festival years. The largest single choir ever conducted took place here with over 33,000 singers performing as a combined choir – imagine! The Song Festival tradition actually began in 1869 during what Estonians call The National Awakening. The continued tradition led to what was known in the 1980’s as the Singing Revolution and is credited with the country’s success in reestablishing their independence from Russia.
Now, with less than fifteen years since their break with the Soviet Union, you can smell Capitalism in the air around Tallinn. Like most new-opportunity societies, some people get it and some people don’t. You would see girls like the bright little blonde working the streets to sell postcards in the sunshine and umbrellas in the rain with a cheerful smile and irresistible enthusiasm. And you would see girls like the one at the coffee shop obviously irritated at the foreign dollar and those there to spend it. The locals seem to be caught between wanting the opportunity that capitalism brings while not wanting the hustle, bustle, stress, and corruption that it also brings. Understandable.
You can see the war between old ways and new ways in the way women dress as well. The streets are filled with extremely attractive, classy young ladies dressed in tight above-the-knee business skirts doing the hip-swinging tight rope walk in their stiletto heels. They walk side by side with women the same age in potato sack dresses and head covers. Interestingly, many of the blondes, who even here make up about fifty percent of the female population, have the buttery smooth skin usually reserved for the women of the Mediterranean. Most blondes are freckled and a bit splotchy, me included. Yet these blondes have that lovely skin you just want to swim in it is so pure and clear. No I haven’t switched teams, I just appreciate female beauty. Many of the women, both old and new, were carrying flowers in the streets. Flower giving seems to be a medieval tradition that has carried on here. With rows of florist shops at the entrance to old town, they were the only shops left open when the sun went down.
I will say, the nice thing about new capitalistic societies is they have wireless access everywhere! In the terminals, the coffee shops, hotels, and restaurants. Wi-Fi is always a plus in my book and usually an indication of the forward looking attitudes of the city’s tourism industry. The same contrast exists here, for while some are clearly looking to the future with the attempted (though often failed) effort to implement successful tourist programs from other cities, you can see they have not let go of the past. There is a strong resentment of the Russians here and it shows. It became my source of entertainment listening to the less than interesting tour guides to see how many digs they made on the power-flaunting Russians. The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral is a beautiful piece of traditional Russian Orthodox architecture built on the upper part of Old Town. The audio guide describes in tremendous detail the little walk way (called Little Leg) and long walk way (called, you guessed it, Long Leg) that connect the upper and lower towns. It tells every detail of the construction and reconstruction of St. Olav’s Church which they claim once had the tallest spire in the world (though I don’t think anyone has substantiated that claim). Stories are told of Tall Herman, their watchtower, as well as numerous other walls, towers, buildings, and churches in the town. But when you reach the Cathedral, certainly one of the most interesting and unique structures in the city, the guide sums it up in about two sentences – basically, that the Russians built it to show their power and piss off the Estonians, removing the town’s statue to Martin Luther and obstructing what had been a lovely view of and from the Troompea Castle. The guide then goes on to describe the Castle in tremendous detail. Here, let me help you get that chip off your shoulder…
The audio guide tour ends at the Town Hall Square which has been a market place for centuries. A quick climb up the almost insurmountably steep steps to the tower will give you a lovely though barred view of the city. It was here in the Town Hall Square that I had a random chance meeting with a journalist for the Toronto Sun. He was doing a travel article for the paper on Finland and had taken a detour, like I had, to Tallinn. He asked me about my travels and couchsurfing, declaring with heartening enthusiasm that I had a great book concept, and told me he would try to put a mention and link to my site in his article. Let’s cross our fingers for that one!
Personally, I had the sense that Tallinn carried a bit of a Disney World façade – look too far beneath the surface of the city and you might not like what you see. That said a bag full of warm nuts, a meal at Olde Hansa, and a stroll through streets that seem to belong to another time, certainly make the old town a charming and pleasant place to pause for a day or two on holiday.
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