Blogs from Estonia, Europe - page 7

Bouncing Around the Baltics – July,2017 My feet are getting itchy. Cabin fever is building. It’s time to pack a bag, grab my passport and blow this Nevada joint. Feel the need to walk in new pastures, discover interesting back alleys and bars. And where should I do all this, you ask? Why in the Baltics of course! This upcoming trip will add four new countries to my portfolio….. more stamps for the passport, just what I need. It’s my usual morning routine getting to the airport via Super Shuttle, and boarding the various Delta flights for the first stop on my latest adventure: Estonia. I even get to try out a new airline – Air Baltic – probably a local rinky-dink crop duster, held together with tons of duct tape and good wishes but what ... read more

Au premier abord, Tallinn n'a pas le charme classique de Riga, sa voisine, ni, j'oserais dire, son raffinement. Elle a un caractère bien différent! Elle se divise en quartiers éclectiques offrant chacun leurs lieux de découvertes. La vieille ville date des temps médiévaux. Déjà, à cette époque, la ville est un port de commerce important de par sa situation géographique entre la Scandinavie et la Russie. Mais c'est l'envahisseur danois qui fait ériger au 13e siècle, la forteresse et les magnifiques remparts qui ceinturent la vieille ville qui sont surmontés encore aujourd'hui de 26 tours de guet qui résistent au temps. À la seconde Guerre mondiale, 50 % de l'espace habité de la grande ville de Tallinn a été détruit par les bombardements mais miraculeusement, seulement 11 % du centre historique a été touché. Toute l'effervescence ... read more

July 7 – Tallinn This morning we docked in Tallinn Estonia – the home of SKYPE – AND I might add the first country to electronically connect all it’s citizens to government services. Each person has a single identity card which serves as their health card/drivers license and everything else – they also have electronic voting. I recall studying this aspect of Estonia when I was involved in designing electronic services for Ontario. Anyhow….. we had booked a food tour of Tallinn and were met by our guide and joined by 7 others also taking the tour. This was a walking tour and I fail to understand why someone who uses a wheelchair and is barely mobile would figure this was appropriate but we did have one elderly person on the tour who had to be ... read more

Hello my fellow travellers! Even though Martin set me up with a key we left together this morning, him to work and me to Viru Hotel where I picked up the Tallinn Card and I was ready to make it count! There was just a slight problem with my plan, everything here has really crappy opening hours! I had to wait for about and hour before the earliest attraction opened up, Niguliste Kirik, which is a museum housed inside a former church dedicated to saint Nicholas, built between 1230 to 1275. It's a museum of ecclesiastical art and it has some really interesting pieces, especially the Danse Macabre from the 15th century, by Bernt Notke. Unfortunately it's displayed behind glass which reflected the light a lot so it was hard to really enjoy it or take ... read more

Hello my fellow travellers! Well, today I unfortunately wasted pretty much half the day waiting for Roman. As I said yesterday the plan for today was to go to Narva Joesuu and visit a ghost town on his recommendation. While waiting for this he played some FEAR 3 with me watching, I knew he liked the game and I wanted us to get along and bond so that's what I did. After that we watched first a Russian action movie called Brothers 2 and then a Swedish comedy called Cockpit. So pretty much a very slow start to the day, granted, I didn't really feel like there was a great many places to visit in Narva so I just tried to enjoy the slower pace. The problem is that once the time came rolling around to ... read more