Estonia: Tallinn & Our Second Sea Day
Sep. 9th, 2008 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deirdreIn order to get from Warnemünde, Germany to Talinn, Estonia, we needed to have a day at sea. They still hadn't gotten an acupuncturist aboard, which annoyed me, but the sea day helped me recover a bit.
When we pulled open our balcony curtains, we realized it wouldn't be the most fun day: the day looked seriously gloomy. We met our tour guide, who was hilarious, and pointed out that Estonians were very shy people, so don't take it personally if they are avoiding a direct look at you. As the joke goes, an extroverted Estonian looks at the other person's shoes while talking to someone. An introverted one looks at their own shoes. About the weather, she said they had nine months of bad skiing weather (in part because the highest point in Estonia is about 450 feet) and three months of road construction.
A lot of stuff was in fact under construction or repair. During the Soviet years, there was only one hotel in all of Tallinn, and now there's 40.
Our first stop was to the Song Festival Grounds (Luuluväljak), dedicated to the singing revolution and the importance of Song in Estonian history. In order to free themselves from Soviet rule, there was a four-year long singing revolution, a non-violent approach to revolution. Here's a page dedicated to the history of the revolution (and about a movie that may be coming to your area).
Here's a photo of the Song Festival Grounds:
It can house thirty thousand singers, which is pretty amazing given that there's 1.3 million people in all of Estonia.
After that, we went to the old town, walking by the parliament house (I had to move so that one of the members of parliament could get into his parking place). We then walked to the Alexander Nevski cathedral, which is one of the amazing onion domed ones.
After that, we walked through the old town, but it was cold and pouring by then. We stood under the town hall for a bit, and then walked across the square to continue our tour. We visited the Lutheran cathedral.
Our next stop deserves its own paragraph: the Dominican monastery, which dates from 1246 (at least), and has a wonderful open-air concert complete with locally-distilled schnapps. As it happened to be very cold and wet, the schnapps was very welcome to most. Not being a drinker, and by that time on medication that would make it very risky to have any alcohol, I sat under one of the remaining corridors and felt cold and wet.
We had a couple of more stops, including a final stop in front of one of the better shops in Tallinn, which had a wonderful Estonian lacquer box in a different (albeit similar) style to most of the Russian boxes. I declined the chance to get an egg, which I regret somewhat; nearly everything was cheaper in Estonia than it was in Russia, even the things that were Russian made.
There's more about Tallinn on its wikipedia page.
Overall, this was our favorite port, despite the bad weather. The Estonians have the determination and commitment as the Finns, and seem to have fared much better in the post-Soviet era than Russia has.
When we pulled open our balcony curtains, we realized it wouldn't be the most fun day: the day looked seriously gloomy. We met our tour guide, who was hilarious, and pointed out that Estonians were very shy people, so don't take it personally if they are avoiding a direct look at you. As the joke goes, an extroverted Estonian looks at the other person's shoes while talking to someone. An introverted one looks at their own shoes. About the weather, she said they had nine months of bad skiing weather (in part because the highest point in Estonia is about 450 feet) and three months of road construction.
A lot of stuff was in fact under construction or repair. During the Soviet years, there was only one hotel in all of Tallinn, and now there's 40.
Our first stop was to the Song Festival Grounds (Luuluväljak), dedicated to the singing revolution and the importance of Song in Estonian history. In order to free themselves from Soviet rule, there was a four-year long singing revolution, a non-violent approach to revolution. Here's a page dedicated to the history of the revolution (and about a movie that may be coming to your area).
Here's a photo of the Song Festival Grounds:
It can house thirty thousand singers, which is pretty amazing given that there's 1.3 million people in all of Estonia.
After that, we went to the old town, walking by the parliament house (I had to move so that one of the members of parliament could get into his parking place). We then walked to the Alexander Nevski cathedral, which is one of the amazing onion domed ones.
After that, we walked through the old town, but it was cold and pouring by then. We stood under the town hall for a bit, and then walked across the square to continue our tour. We visited the Lutheran cathedral.
Our next stop deserves its own paragraph: the Dominican monastery, which dates from 1246 (at least), and has a wonderful open-air concert complete with locally-distilled schnapps. As it happened to be very cold and wet, the schnapps was very welcome to most. Not being a drinker, and by that time on medication that would make it very risky to have any alcohol, I sat under one of the remaining corridors and felt cold and wet.
We had a couple of more stops, including a final stop in front of one of the better shops in Tallinn, which had a wonderful Estonian lacquer box in a different (albeit similar) style to most of the Russian boxes. I declined the chance to get an egg, which I regret somewhat; nearly everything was cheaper in Estonia than it was in Russia, even the things that were Russian made.
There's more about Tallinn on its wikipedia page.
Overall, this was our favorite port, despite the bad weather. The Estonians have the determination and commitment as the Finns, and seem to have fared much better in the post-Soviet era than Russia has.