Day 18: Tallinn

Saturday, August 31

Eighteen days. This trip has now exceeded the length of Amanda's & my original Europalooza.
    If i'd gone just a little further down the hallway and turned the corner last night, i would have found that there's a green couch in a vestibule that's next to a power outlet, and not directly outside the shower room. It is at the intersection of several other dorm rooms, but it might be a little quieter here.
    I'm starting to write this at 11:30pm, against my better judgement. I'll try to keep it short. You know. Like i do.
    Despite how excited about Estonia i had been before the trip, and how bummed i was when Stockholm ran a day late, then Helsinki ran a day late, then i discovered the travel disruption at the Estonia/Latvia border which forced me to now cut half a day off the end of my Tallinn time...i still got started real slow this morning. This is my only full day in Tallinn, and i do not feel that i utilized it effectively. It did rain all morning, though, which probably affected my willingness to go outside.
    I did take a shower though, that was good.
    It was nearly noon by the time i was actually leaving the hostel. I was looking for food, even though i didn't feel like i was that hungry. I did feel a little weak, and my brain was maybe a little sluggish...and as i walked down the street, i suddenly realized i hadn't eaten since the Finnish spite pizza, other than a small bag of chips on the ferry. It had been 24 hours since i'd had a meal.
    Hopefully some food would make my brain work enough to make decisions.
    I found myself at a pub called Hell Hunt. Incredible name, if you read it as English. I kept thinking of it as a Bob's Burgers reference, even though, obviously, no.
    Translated from Estonian, though, it literally means "Gentle Wolf."
    I walked up to the building, and saw their logo, a naked blonde woman riding on a wolf's back, with an affectionate smile on her face. This may as well be a portrait of Amanda.
    The internet had recommended their pub burger, so i went for that. Some of the salads looked more interesting, but i was too hungry for a salad. A burger would do nicely.
    And it was quite good! I don't know that it's incredibly distinguished from other pub burgers, but it was reasonably priced and came with fries, which is not something you find in the kinds of hip-looking bars like this in the United States anymore. It came with a white sauce for the fries that i found delectable.
    I also had one of their brewed-in-house ciders, the Hell Hunt Siider. Same sentiment; it was very good, but i'm not sure that it's very distinguishable from other ciders that i've enjoyed.
    The bar also featured local artwork across its walls, much of which was for sale. There was also an interesting nature-focused wallpaper on the lower half of the walls.
    Other items on the menu include a salted herring, boiled egg, and potatoes dish like what i had in Helsinki, although listed as a main course this time, and a pig's tongue, as an appetizer. I thought about that pig's tongue. I really did. But in the end, i was not feeling ready to roll those dice.
    Since i was in the area, i decided to go ahead and walk through that KGB Prison Cell Museum that i saw yesterday.
    It was haunting. The building was originally constructed as residential apartments in 1912, but during the Soviet occupation, the holding cells were built in the basement, and the rest of the building was converted for government use.
    The museum includes a full timeline of the building's history, from inception through the first Russian occupation, through German occupation during WWII, then the post-war Soviet era through 1991, and into present day. That building has lived many different lives. When Estonia gained independence, it was used for their fledgling government to get things in motion. Then it was Tallinn's police station for a while. It was only finally returned to habitable apartment space in 2013.
    Each room in the museum tells harrowing stories of how people were arrested by the KGB for little to no cause at all, held without trial, tortured, and sentenced to hard labor or death. They have one of the interrogation chairs on display in the first room, with arm and leg restraints included. They have an example of a small closet that people were sometimes shoved into for days on end.
    Then you turn the corner into the second part of the museum, which includes a solitary confinement chamber, and has boards explaining the mass deportations of Estonian citizens to Siberia, the separations of family, and children being sent into orphanages which programmed them to be good Soviet citizens, on a steady educational diet of propaganda. There are letters that were sent between family members that detailed the hardships they faced, the lack of food and clean water, the deaths of parents and children. Reading the firsthand accounts is absolutely devastating.
    And it leaves me absolutely gutted to think about how the United States is doing all of this right now, under both major political parties. The family separations at the borders. The unmarked police trucks grabbing protestors off the streets and holding them without charges. See, the problem wasn't communism, it was authoritarianism all along.
    Since i've been here, i've heard a lot of concern among people about the war in Ukraine. I feel like Americans have largely forgotten that that one is still going on. It definitely hits harder here, as Estonia was also part of the USSR, against their will, and there is a lot of worry that if Russia is successful in Ukraine, they will attempt to retake the Baltic states as well. They've seen this all before, they do not want to see it again.
    Saint Olaf's Church is on the next intersection from the KGB holding cell museum. I thought i'd give that a look.
    I think i may have written some misinformation about Saint Olaf's yesterday. For one, it was built in the 12th century, not the 16th; but 1590 is when the tower was reconstructed to its maximum height of 159 meters, making it, at the time, not the tallest building in Europe, but in the entire world. The church has been fully destroyed by fire three times, and the tower has been rebuilt several more times than that. It currently stands at 124 meters.
    It was originally constructed as a Roman Catholic church, became a Lutheran church during the Reformation, and switched to Baptist in 1950 as a mass exodus of Germans from the city led to the Lutheran congregation being too small to support the building.
    During the Soviet era, the church tower was used as a radio tower and observation post by the KGB.
    Entry to the church was free, so i looked around a bit, and found it mostly to be just a church. But then i paid six dollars for the right to climb the church's claustrophobic spiral staircase up the tower. Just like we did at the Christchurch in Christchurch, New Zealand. As i entered, i snapped a quick pic and sent it to Alyssa. "This looks familiar," i wrote.
    My legs were burning as i chugged up those stairs. My breathing was labored gasps. The sweat poured out in buckets.
    But i made it, without taking more than a quick moment to pause once or twice.
    I kept thinking, if walking up a few stairs is getting me this badly, there's no way i'm going to be in shape to run a marathon in November.
    I know stairs are entirely different from running, but i don't feel like this bodes well for my physical state in that kind of a situation. I gotta get back to training.
    After the spiral staircase, which does break a couple of times, once for a straight set of stairs, once for a flat, straight hallway, to give you a few seconds respite (and the spirals switch direction after each, so you can work both your legs evenly!), i entered a large, wooden attic. There were two people sitting at an information desk, but there was a wooden causeway that zigzagged across the floor, with rails, so i don't know how you're supposed to reach the desk if you need it. The path leads to another staircase, this one only about a story and a half, but so shallow and narrow and steep that it's nerve-wracking to put your feet on it and ascend. I used the rails on both sides to keep steady, and still felt like i was falling backward.
    This final staircase leads you to a hatch that pops you right out on top of Saint Olaf's spire. Here you are, over a hundred meters above Tallinn, standing on a narrow metal catwalk around the outside of a church spire. You can walk all the way around it, all four sides of this square tower, for a 360 degree view of the city. There are guardrails and a fence which extends above your head and becomes a roof, so you can't fall off; but on the other side, there is nothing, so you can touch the oxidized copper roof of the actual tower. It's covered in scratched-out graffiti.
    I counted the stairs on the way back down. 257.
    On the way back down, it's much more noticeable how uneven these stairs are, how the distance between them is not uniform. And hell, that uppermost staircase, the one that leads to the outside at the top, was so vertigo-inducing to go down that i almost did it backwards. Probably should have, to be honest. Probably should've treated it more like a ladder.
    From there, i got on a bus to the Tallinn Open Air Museum, which is well outside of downtown. If i hadn't gotten such a slow start this morning, i would have gone there first; Triin was singing with a group there at 11am. Sorry i missed it.
    She did meet me there, though. So we walked around the museum together for a while. Like the open air museum in Oslo, it's a collection of buildings that have been moved here, representing all eras of Estonia's history.
    Triin first took me to their newest acquisition, an apartment building that was constructed in the 1960s. It has four large apartments in it, and each has been decorated to represent how it would have been laid out in different decades of Estonia's past. The first two were the 60s and 70s, which honestly were more or less what you'd expect.
    Then we got to the 90s. This is a period right after Estonia gained its independence, and did not have a functioning economy. The country was very poor, just setting out on its own again after six decades of oppression. The 90s apartment is filled with outdated appliances and furniture, in various states of disrepair, and the kitchen is filled with trash, dirty dishes in the sink, and every visual shorthand for poverty you might imagine. The kitchen table is covered in liquor bottles.
    The last apartment is supposed to represent present day, and it is a dramatic contrast from the 90s apartment. Everything is updated, modern, and in good condition; the design of it is very similar to what we'd expect in a middle-class apartment in America.
    We talked a bit about how the economy shifted in Estonia over the last few decades, and how Finland is largely responsible for Estonia's recovery over that period.
    We saw some windmills. We walked through many much older houses, many which more resemble huts or log cabins. We walked through some buildings which came from southern Estonia, which has a very different culture; these homes themselves come from a city that Estonia did not get back in 1991, it is still in Russia today.
    We grabbed some food at a restaurant inside the museum. I asked Triin what would be the most traditionally Estonian item on the menu, and she guided me toward a dish with roast pork, boiled potatoes, and sauerkraut. I thought about ordering something else, because i don't like sauerkraut, but hell. This trip has seen me intentionally put both beer and bleu cheese in my mouth on purpose more than once. Let's see where we stand with sauerkraut now.
    She also encouraged me to try a drink called Kvass, which looks like a beer, but is non-alcoholic. She said it's very sweet, but even with that head's up, i was not prepared for it to be sweet. If beer tastes like bread (i said "if," put your pitchforks away), then Kvass is a King's Hawaiian Roll.
    The pork was pretty good! The potatoes were alright. And the sauerkraut...yeah it worked for me today. It was not bad. I did not hate it. I ate it all. Not on its own, i was shoveling it on top of bites of potato or pork, but i feel like that's how it's supposed to be eaten, right?
    Would i seek out sauerkraut and eat it intentionally? No, probably not.
    But i also might not avoid it in the future.
    I don't know, it might just be the difference of having authentic sauerkraut in a country where it's culturally relevant, versus having it on a hot dog in Waterloo, Wisconsin during a once-a-year festival. Someone in Denmark suggested that maybe i never liked beer because i only ever had American beer. And the bleu cheese...yeah, that's European too. Maybe i just never liked these things because i've only had imitations of the masters before.
    Or maybe my palette has just changed as i've gotten older. Who knows.
    Or maybe it's a phase.
    Hey we're on page 100 of this document now.
    We hopped on the bus over to a pier Triin wanted to show me. It started raining as we got off the bus, which turned into a downpour by the time we reached the water. We hid under an overhang with a dozen other people and a shiba inu for maybe fifteen minutes, then, as suddenly as it started, the rain was over.
    Once it was clear, we walked down the pier for a minute, saw a DJ performing under a tent, and then headed back.
    The pier was really just a way to kill a little time before the Muinastulede Öö, the Night of the Ancient Lights, a traditional ceremony held on the 31st of August every year, where several small bonfires are lit on the beach, plus several out in the water, and then an enormous one on the beach. It's to celebrate the end of the summer, but also has its roots in ancient sailing, outlining the land for the boats at sea. Like lighthouses.

    It was starting to sprinkle again as we were leaving the bonfires. We had taken a Bolt car to get here, which is a car-sharing system that uses an app to get you into one of hundreds of vehicles around town. Kind of like a Lime scooter, but it's a car.
    Triin parked by the bus stop near her house, and we stood under the shelter as it downpoured and chatted for a bit while waiting for my bus to come take me back to the hostel. I thanked her for showing me around these last couple days, and we said goodbye, probably never to meet again. I'm glad we did. She's a good person. I had a good time this weekend. She wants me to let her know how hot it is in Spain when i get there.
    Old Town seemed a little quieter tonight when i walked in, but by the time i made it to the Monk's Bunk, it was still clearly loud and bumping. The bar/check in area was packed, the common room was packed, the courtyard outside had people drinking and smoking even though it had just stopped raining. I made my way through the bustle, intending to go upstairs, do my log, and go to bed. However, i was a long way off from my water goal for the day, so instead i went downstairs to fill my bottles again.
    There were a couple guys in the kitchen eating sandwiches. One of them said hey, and reflexively, i said "Hey, how's it going?" as i proceeded to the sink.
    A moment later, after he swallowed the bite of his sandwich, one of them said, "Good, it's going well. That's a fancy camera you've got there."
    "Thanks," i said. "I'm pretty happy with it."
    So we got talking. His name is James, he's from New Zealand, and he wants to get into the film industry. He's thinking about moving to Amsterdam for it, he says the Netherlands actually has a pretty strong film industry and he thinks that's where he wants to go.
    He's pretty early on in his travels as well. I thought i was a little bonkers, going for two months. James is planning to travel for a full year.
    More power to him.
    There was a third guy hanging out with them that had been out of the room. He came in, and was also immediately quite taken with my camera. He's a photographer himself.
    The other two guys are from Italy, and i cannot remember their names, but one of them kept feeding me cookies while we talked. All three of these guys just met yesterday and have been hanging out since.
    The photographer asked me to show him something i've taken today that i'm proud of, and i tried to deflect for a minute, i'm never comfortable showing my video clips before they're edited and put in the intended context, but i showed him a bit of the huge bonfire on the beach. He and the other guy were very impressed.
    "Holy shit, that's here? In Tallinn?"
    "Yeah, on the beach. Today's the bonfire festival," i said, or something like that.
    "Oh, yeah," James said. "Someone was telling me about that on the ferry. I think i knew about it, and forgot!"
    The two Italians were loudly disappointed about this, they would have really liked to go.
    The conversation shifted to them talking about picking up girls, which is what they've been doing across Europe, and at that point i bowed out and headed upstairs. I'm too old and introverted for this conversation. They were heading out clubbing sometime after 10. I am going to bed.
    And hoping that, at some point, the taste of sauerkraut gets the fuck out of my mouth.