17-18 March 2014: Estonia

After my ferry docked in Estonia, I headed right from my ship into the Old Town.  Tallinn, like many European cities, has an "old timey place", which dates from the Medieval era, as well as a more modern city full of depressing apartment building surrounding the old timey place.  Tallinn's is considered a particularly beautiful old town,  My hostel was right in middle of it, and was, indeed, very much a part of it; it was listed as a historical building by the town council.

I was a bit worried about the place, though.  It had the reputation of a party hostel.  As in, its very own website advertised it as "Tallinn's #1 party hostel".  Luckily, its hostelbookers reviews said that it wasn't a problem at all to not partake as much as you'd like.  I was all in favor of going out and having a good time until late with new people... I was not in favor of seeing the sun rise on a new day in Tallinn with said new people.  But, when I arrived, things were pretty low-key.  I was able to check in and was told that I would be the only one in my room that night.  In a 6-bedroom dorm room.  Yessssss, no need to even use the lockers outside!

I met the people who were there.  It turned out that all of them at the time were staff.  That was a cool thing about the hostel: it was by backpackers, for backpackers, and so it seemed like half of the staff were itinerant free-thinkers who were traveling the world and decided to stay in Tallinn for a while because they thought the hostel was that much fun.  The staff were from anywhere from Estonia itself to Romania to Slovakia to New Zealand, Canada, and Australia.  I was a little worried that there weren't actually any guests besides me, but soon they started trickling in.  Soon it was time for dinner, another perk of the hostel: for just three Euro, the hostel staff would make a home-cooked meal, that would encourage everyone in the hostel to circle up and gather 'round before the night's festivities.

Did I mention it was St. Patrick's Day?  Yeah, it was March 17th.  As a good (mostly) Irish-American, I couldn't help but hope we would celebrate the holiday of my people, and was curious how.  First, drinking games... kind of unsurprising, though it was quite amusing watching some of the European guests learn to play drinking games that are common here in the States.  After a short detour to talk about the ins and outs of gun violence, and a quick realization that holy crap what a depressing topic, we ended up moving to one of my hostel's sister locations to join the party already in progress there.

One of the employees who I had met earlier was dressed as a leprechaun... his ginger beard was paired with entertainingly skintight green tights.  The hostel didn't disappoint on the booze front, either.  There was even a green drink or two—the greenness coming compliments of absinthe(!)—and I enjoyed the wheat beers, my drug of choice.  I met a Hungarian via France who does humanitarian work in Africa, a Finnish woman just down for the weekend, and was absolutely owned by said Hungarian at air hockey.  (It was absolutely pathetic.  Something like 10-1.)  And then, when it got to be too late, and others were proposing going bar hopping, I opted out, hovered around the other hostel a bit more, and then headed right back and fell asleep... just as I wanted.  The best kind of party hostel.

The next morning, I wanted to go on the free tour hosted by the local tourist information office, but I also wanted to sleep, so I ended up sleeping far too late and just eating a fiber bar for breakfast.  On my way out, I ran into the guy from India I had met the night before.  Sudesh also seemed keen on going to the tour, so we rushed over the tourist office and got there just in time.  Our tour guide was entertaining and fun.  Estonia is not a country that you learn much about in AP European History, so she filled in some details and shared anecdotes about all the spots we saw.  I was most entertained when we found ourselves in an unmarked and uninteresting-looking small parking lot, which our guide suddenly declared was the parking lot for the Parliament of Estonia, which was a few scant meters away.  Er, okay.  Kind of like how you can just wander into the parking lot... of the US Congress???

We then had lunch in Hell, or, at least, a restaurant named Hell, which served me a tasty pork chop sandwich and a genuine Estonian beverage called Pihtla.  I got to know Sudesh.  He was a long-time tennis player who was currently coaching youth tennis.  Tennis really seemed to have a hold on him; at one point, he got a law degree, but only practiced for two months before he went back to the sport he loved.  But he was interested and curious in a lot of different things, freely talking to me about international politics, psychology, and a lot of other fields.  He was in Tallinn just for a vacation, not for any particular reason; in fact, the weather in Tallinn (near freezing) was, he thought, the coldest weather he had ever experienced, which was particularly galling considering that he had left his jacket at a bar in Brussels two nights before (he went out and bought one at a mall instead).

Folks like Sudesh are why I love hostels so much... when on earth would I have met such people if I had stayed safe and sound in College Park over spring break?  Or if for some reason I had been staying in a hotel rather than a hostel?

After Hell, we stopped by a flea market (I didn't get anything, as it was mostly closing), then I took a tour through Estonia's (very reasonably priced) national history museum.  It was well worth the admission.  My tour guide earlier in the day had done a great job outlining the history, so there weren't many huge surprises, but I loved the multimedia presentation of the exhibits.  They were organized around central questions, with artifacts, presentations, and text working together to help answer the questions.  I particularly enjoyed the part of the museum about the Estonian language.

More than learning about Estonian history, though, I was entertained to learn how the Estonians saw themselves... negatively.  Take this sample from a sign (somewhat paraphrased): "Because Estonia lacks many significant natural resources, and does not have many people, Estonians have had to find other ways to build the economy."  Yes, you heard it first from the national history museum: Estonia is a country that lacks natural resources.  Also in the national history museum: "Estonia often ranks as one of the most unhappy nations."  As my tour guide said, "Estonians do not often smile, so it took years to train tour guides to be able to do it."  The museum's attempts to name famous Estonians came up with just one name that I recognized, and I only recognized the name because a member of my church told me about the composer in question the week before.  I'm not entirely sure why Estonians are so miserable, but they almost seem resigned rather than celebratory about their status as an independent national entity.  They keep surviving as a group despite being invaded repeatedly and stomped upon... so whoop-dee-doo, they suppose, we're a country now.

After the museum, I headed back for family dinner, then went out with Sudesh and a Frenchman to salsa.  I'm not entirely sure why I agreed to go to salsa.  As I demonstrated to Sudesh and the others, the only salsa move I have is the basic step, and literally nothing else.  I cannot spin.  I cannot do that thing where you are both facing the same way and walk around.  I am not capable.  But Sudesh seemed fixated on salsa, and I wanted to make sure he had a good time, and besides, hey, maybe in Estonia, of all places, no one could salsa.

This was manifestly wrong.  Many Estonians can salsa, and salsa well.  So I stayed firmly off the dance floor, and chatted with the Frenchman, who also seemed intimidated.  While Sudesh was out wowing many with his abilities (and dancing with the prettiest, most talented women), the Frenchman and I compared stereotypes of instrumentalists across national boundaries.  (Apparently where he was in France, many low brass players were female, wtf.)  Sudesh chatted up one of his dance partners, then invited us over.  Eventually, the woman's aunt started making gestures and saying things in tones that could only mean "Please marry one of these foreign men." ... the prosody and gestures associated with such a thing seem to be universal.

After salsa, we headed back to the other hostel, then went to another other hostel bar, where I was finally able to dance.  (Much to the amusement of my fellow patrons.)  Then I went back to sleep, again earlier than most, because the next day I had to head to the airport.

After stopping for some souvenirs (and white chocolate with blueberries, apparently a local specialty, to give to my hosts for the upcoming week), I took a bus to the airport.  Tallinn's aiport is quite small, only about 14 gates.  I particularly enjoyed one novel feature of the airport: a book nook with a library that travelers from all over the place could freely add to and take from at their leisure.  What a great idea!  I boarded my flight to Copenhagen—aboard Estonian Air, which has all of 10 or so destinations, all direct from Tallinn—and said sensible orthographies and quiet people goodbye.

16-17 March 2014: Finland

Turku, Finland Proper, Finland/Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland

H: 0/-1  L: -9/-14 Weather: Light Snow, Turning Clear/Scattered Clouds

I took the opportunity on Sunday morning to sleep in.  Like, a lot.  I've found that nothing eases the transition to a vastly different time zone like sleeping way too much on the day after you've made the time zone switch.  For me, sleeping in "a lot" meant 10:30am, but that was about 11 hours of sleep.  It felt really, really good.  Since then, I haven't really had any issues with jet leg!  Apparently forcing myself to stay up during the whole of the ferry ride to Finland helped.

We headed towards the Turku port, where I had just arrived the day before, to check out the castle.  Turku is one of the oldest cities in Finland, so it has no shortage of relatively old things.  Interestingly, most of them were Swedish,  Finland started its life as a united entity as basically a colony of Sweden, with Turku being eventually made its capital.  As such, Turku has some of the longest-lasting institutions in the country: the oldest newspaper and the oldest theatre, for example.  Both of those are in Swedish.

Turku's castle was built in two stages: the first in the Middle Ages (c. 1300s), the second in the Renaissance (c. 1600s).  The entire castle complex largely fell into disrepair in the 1900s before a successful renovation brought it back.  But the renovation lent an odd air to the castle.  Although there definitely were old things here and there, they were often overlain with modern touches: fire alarms, electric lights, wood platforms to walk on, and so on.  It felt somewhat like the owner of the castle was doing some renovations but was letting some lucky groups of visitors shuffle through.

Still, there were some cool artifacts that were preserved from earlier times in Turku, particularly wooden carvings of saints that had all had their hands chopped off or fall off - I couldn't quite tell which.  It was interesting to imagine how long the carvings had been intact and who had originally worked on them.

A tour of the castle took a couple of hours, so afterwards we decided to get lunch.  We were turned away from no less than two restaurants before we found somewhere with an open table, despite the fact that it was 3:30pm on a Sunday, much to our surprise.  Our next stop was the city's church... again, pretty much one of the oldest churches in Finland, originally Swedish, and somehow the National Shrine of Finland, whatever that means.  Like most Lutheran places, Finland went on an anti-Catholic spree around the time of the reformation, and took out all of the pretty carvings and shiny things from the church.  However, the building was still massive and powerful on the inside.  The Lutheran simplicity of the thing was almost a bit reassuring. As with most European churches, dead folks were buried all around the worship space.  While we were there, a couple of singers were warming up for some sort of performance (perhaps in a service), which lent the space a beautiful light.

Afterwards, we adjourned to the library, where we tried unsuccessfully to find American travel guides.  (I wanted to see what they had to say about Detroit.)  I floated the idea of grabbing a drink and loitering around until dinner... there was a Viking restaurant that I was desperate to try, because, lol, Viking restaurant.  But instead we just headed back to Essi's place and took a bit of a rest.  By the time we became less dormant, it was already something like 8:30pm.  Unfortunately, Finland, like much of Europe, basically shuts down at 8:00pm on Sunday evenings.  No, I can't quite explain it either.  But we were desperately short on dining options.  Our one savior: Rokbar.

Finland is known for its heavy metal scene.  I can't quite explain it either.  But Finland has one of the largest numbers of heavy metal groups in the world, and Finnish heavy metal artists have apparently been reputed far and wide for their prowess.  One Finnish heavy metal band shocked the world when it won the staid Eurovision contest (also known as the Europe-wide music contest that introduced the world to ABBA, Céline Dion, and Julio Iglesias) with its spirited heavy metal antics.  Apparently, this has led to a culture-wide phenomenon, such that there are now heavy metal-themed restaurants and bars.  Rokbar is one of them.  Thus, my second evening in Finland was spent nomming on a pork-and-mushroom sandwich and drinking a delicious Finnish lager at the only heavy metal-themed bar in Turku.  It was delicious and completely unthreatening.  We returned back to her apartment quite tired, but we still rallied to make a YouTube video for some friends before getting to sleep.

The next morning, I woke up with some time to spare before the bus, but unfortunately Essi wasn't so lucky.  So, on my own, I negotiated a bus to the middle of the city, a short walk to the bus station, and then figuring out how to get on the long-distance bus that I had reserved.  I could tell that, for a couple of the bus station employees, I was taxing their usable English, but because my Finnish vocabulary consisted of "Hello!" ("Moi!") and "Thank you!" ("Kiitos!"), we didn't really have any other options.  Eventually I made it on the bus.  Which was gorgeous and convenient and even had a screen with the current destination, time-to-destination, next stop, and everything else you could ever want.  It was nice.  The scenery made me realize how appropriate it was that many Yoopers are Finns.

In Helsinki, I had time to visit a church—built into a rocky hillside—and to have lunch at a Australian-owned bar (that featured delicious salmon pasta, nom nom nom!), before it was time to head for the harbor.  Helsinki is a more Russian city than it is a Swedish one, so it was interesting to find Cyrillic writing when out and about.  Eventually, I boarded my boat (after accidentally trying to plug in my details into the reservation system for a rival ship company... oops).  This ship was... er... a bit less classy than the one I took from Stockholm to Turku.  There was basically no where to sit except in a bar, so I planted myself in a bar that ended up featuring a rather repetitive band playing songs that sounded like they were from some Old Country.  Also crappy internet.  I was less than amused.  But I was making it to Tallinn!