Blogs from Tallinn, Estonia, Europe - page 17

On telling friends and family that Vicky and I were off to a tour of the Baltics (well, Estonia and Latvia anyway) taking in not just the tourist/stag party Meccas of Tallinn and Riga but also heading out of the capitals to the largely ignored towns of Tartu and Parnu we were greeted with a raised eyebrow and the "uh huh, ok...." response of uncertainty. This reaction sums up the position the Baltics has taken up (and remains to hold) despite the current four year membership of the European Union and is a stark reminder of its time spent on the wrong side of the "Iron Curtain". Getting to Tallinn couldn’t have been easier however with a short, cheap flight from Berlin Schoenefeld costing a mere 30€. I had been to Tallinn once before in 2006 ... read more

What started as a day-dream at work, became a crazy reality last week. I started my trip with a visit to Dublin with some of my friends from Prague. A girl we met during our teaching course lives there now, so we stayed with her for a couple nights. Then I took my one-way flight to Finland! It seemed like a good idea at the time, but as I was landing in Tampere, I realized that having nothing planned was going to be more stressful than I thought. I knew that I had 6 days to get from Tampere, Finland back to Prague. I spent some time in Tampere before taking the train down to Helsinki for the night. I should probably begin by saying that it was freezing there. What did I expect? I'm not ... read more

March 2005 The jewel of the Baltic is probably Estonia’s capital city, Tallinn - it’s got a combination of the sights, history and that general party spirit. Whilst it’s possible to start feeling this Old Town fatigue in this part of the Baltic, Tallinn’s is possibly the pick of the bunch. It might not be as big as the Vilnius version, but it has that dramatic visual impact not found elsewhere. The most striking feature is the defensive wall, a large part of which is still complete dating from the 1500s and is capped by 18 of the original towers with the red roofs that you’ll see in all the glossy brochures. You can see instantly why the cruise ships all pile into port in the summer months. Estonia gives off that orderly feel from the ... read more

Tere. Greetings from Estonia. Two days ago we boarded a train in Russia and seven hours later we arrived in Scandinavia. Estonia, whilst a neighbour of Russia's, is closer in culture and style to her Scandinavian cousins. Finland is only 48 nautical miles to the north whilst Sweden is a six-hour ferry trip to the west. Estonians are Lutherans - no gilded, ornate, coloured decoration in the churches here. Not that many of the locals practice their religion. That was beaten out of them by fifty years or so of Soviet occupation (with an occupational interlude by Nazi Germany), prior to which there was a period of approximately twenty years of independence, before which Imperial Germans were in charge, before that the Russians again, then the Swedes, the Germans again, the Danes... you get the idea. ... read more

The historical city of Tallinn is pretty much untouched (bar the odd renovation or paint-job) since the middle-ages. As a result, the medieval buildings, misshapen cobble-stones, houses bunched one upon the other, impressive town-halls and churches that appear half western, half eastern, are most evocative and intriguing. To describe it as Disney is to do exactly the wrong thing, undermining its authenticity with a commercial brand, so I’m sorry, yet it is like something from the pages of a fairy story, down to the old well in a street off the main square where you can imagine Cinderella going about her daily chores, or the little side-streets and taverns where Gepetto might have gone about his business or had a pint. We of course are by no means the first people to have discovered it, the ... read more