Blogs from Tallinn, Estonia, Europe - page 14

So, my first slightly drunk blog so please excuse any spelling mistakes (beside the usual). Tallinn was awesome compared to russia. From the moment you get off the boat people are more friendly and welcoming, with stalls and free internet the second you walk off the boat. I got off the ship with my cabin mate Aldis (sound engineer whos job I want) and we took the shuttle to old Tallinn. Old Tallinn is exactly like a medieval theme park, with sections of old casltes, old style stalls and traders everywhere. They have really embraced their roots and live it to the full. Everyone in all the shops/stalls are in period costume, so there really are sections where you could belive you have gone back in time 500 years. We walked through the old market squares, ... read more

We have been following the Midsummer celebrations across Northern Europe. In Helsinki all of the young people get all of the beer they can carry and head off into the country and camp around huge fires and drink themselves silly. In Tallinn they seem to drink themselves silly midsummer or not. I think it is mostly the young tourist that are bent on getting drunk and acting like fools. On the ferry over the Baltic sea they had huge tree branches strapped to the boat to celebrate the midsummer. Amber and I snagged a great table on the deck and had some rowdy company that I am sure we did not want to know what they were being so loud about. It is still light for about 16 hour a day. Come to find out they ... read more

From Helsinki, it was a simple 3 hour ferry crossing to the Estonian capital Tallinn. The crossing wasn’t the best in the world (how can a ferry not have enough seats on board for all of the passengers?), worsened by the amount of drunk people on board (this was a 9am sailing). This did sort of set the scene for Tallinn though. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the city. On the one hand, the old town is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve seen – it has the best preserved medieval city walls in the world, with 1.8 of the original 4.2km still remaining, as well as 26 of the original 50 towers. The city is divided into the lower town, where the merchants lived, and the upper town (known as Toompea), ... read more

Puppets, all kinds of puppets. One of the last things we did in Tallinn was to visit their puppet museum. Nancy's good English student, "V", in Prague is a Master Puppeteer. So she really wanted to see this museum and take pictures to show him. We first found out there was a puppet museum when we saw a 'Rube Goldberg' device in one of the show windows of the museum. It does all it's fantastic moves once an hour and we happened to walk past at the right time. We were quite hungry for lunch and were on our way to a really interesting African restaurant. We ate first and then returned to enjoy a fascinating trip through the magic world of puppetry. As much as we enjoyed it we are sure any child would be ... read more

So now I'm a bit annoyed. Not by the sights mind, Tallinn is beautiful, but this damn technology business. I spent a good 3/4 of an hour yesterday updating my blog thinking I might save myself a bit of time tonight and this shi##y site didn't save it!!! I swear I pressed save, several times! Grrrrrrr. Now, I don't really feel like typing for an hour so I'll keep it short(ish). Yesterday, as per normal, I did a whole lot of running around. Tallinn's old town really is exquisite and it is wonderful to get lost in all its little laneways. (Actually, it's better to just decide to get lost than to read the map and try to work out where I am... we all know that that leads to the same thing anyway - lost ... read more