Tallinn


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June 14th 2011
Published: June 14th 2011
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In case you were wondering, I did make my flight to Tallinn. The plane landed in Riga with about 5 minutes to spare, but since I wasn’t the only one needing to catch the flight, they held the plane for a few extra minutes so we could all make it.

Tallinn, for those of you who are unaware is the small (twice the size of Saskatoon) capital city of Estonia, a small Baltic country, once part of the Soviet Union. It’s a fantastic city, with a lovely old city centre, and I recommend it as a stop to anyone who plans on traveling in this area of the world. The weather has been fantastic, sunny and +30 until yesterday. I am lucky enough to have met the lovely Maarja, from Tallinn, on my previous travels, so I was able to escape the old town and the tourists and enjoy Tallinn as a local.

My 5 days here were well spent. Maarja showed me around the old town my first evening and then we enjoyed a few Estonian beers at the local jazz bar. The next day, we visited the open-air museum. Traditional Estonian buildings have been brought here from around the country so that you can get an idea of how people lived in Estonia long ago. They also have old Estonian folk dressed in traditional outfits at many of the farmhouses. At one of the farmhouses, an old Estonian man, who spoke quite good English, invited us into the farmhouse for some cold tea, made from herbs he picked and mixed himself. We finished the day off with a relaxing visit to a beach.

The nightlife in Tallinn is not bad for a small city. Drinks are cheap and the places to drink are plentiful. Estonians seem to like to start late and finish even later. It doesn’t start getting busy until midnight or 1 and most places are open 4 or 5. There are also a couple of pubs that stay open all night, and don’t get busy until the clubs close at 5. Saturday night, we went to one of these infamous pubs, Levikas. 50cl bottles of beer were 2€, there was a dance floor upstairs, and there were about 4 or 5 people passed out throughout the pub. The doormen are there to make sure drinks stay inside, but they don’t seem to care if you pass out inside. One guy I was with, said that one night there, he slept on a couch there all night!

All in all, my time spent in Tallinn was a fantastic. Now I must be off to catch my 14-hour train to Moscow. Stay tuned for adventures from my 1st ever couchsurfing experience!


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