Chapter the Sixth: Estonia

THURSDAY

It will be after Easter by the time you read this chapter. I'm starting to type it up, however, on one of the hostel computers in Tallinn, Estonia! It might surprise you to learn--it certainly surprised me--that the Estonian keyboard layout is quite different from the standard American. The QWERTY layout is the same, but many punctuation keys are located in different places, and it's really thrown me off quite a few times. For instance, where I expect there to be an apostrophe key, instead that key types the letter ä, with an umlaut.

Anyway, Thursday was quite an adventurous day! Our bus left that morning at 6:45, and we just managed to be on it when that happened. We hurried down the escalator at the metro station, down another level to the red line, grabbed the first train we saw going in the right direction, and then literally ran from the metro exit to the bus stop, where the big blue and yellow Ecolines bus was parked and nearly ready to go.

One thing I have learned in my time here is that assigned seats, in most contexts, are essentially a formality, and no one is going to come after you for sitting somewhere else. This is handy when you show up 15 minutes late for a bus ride and need to take whatever seats you can find. Liz and Corinne took a couple of seats near the front; I took a couple seats in the back, one for me and one for my bags. I have my clothes packed in my backpack, toiletries in the toiletry bag I got at the Christmas gift exchange, and of course my wallet and documents in my purse. The ride from St. Petersburg to Tallinn was about seven hours. I took a series of 45-ish minute naps on the way; by the time we got to the border and had to get off the bus to go through customs, everyone was glad of the opportunity to stand and stretch for a while.

The scenery we passed was eerie. Outside the city, it is still very much winter, despite the fact that we are on the cusp of April. Snow and ice coat the ground in vast swaths, and it was foggy, lending a ghostly air to distant trees and buildings.


Estonia is weird. We drove through about 200 miles of rural residences before reaching Tallinn, at which point we pretty much literally turned the corner and entered a maze of high-rise apartment buildings. These soon gave way to the city proper. Tallinn is even weirder, a bizarre hybrid of medieval and modern city trying to cope with heavy modern pedestrian as well as automobile traffic. Half the streets are cobblestone, and the sidewalks are narrow.

For dinner, we tried to go to this place Liz saw on lonelyplanet called Hell Hunt, Tallinn's oldest new pub (established 1993). Unfortunately, it was closed for renovation until next week, when we'll be long gone. So we went to this other restaurant instead, called Porgu or something along those lines. This place boasted the "best selection of draught beers in Estonia." They certainly had some interesting ones; Liz and Corinne tried their farmhouse ale and a chocolate porter, and I opted for some English cider. The food we got was also good: chicken in mushroom sauce with mashed potatoes, sundried tomatoes and some kind of leek-like vegetable for me and Corinne, and salmon in similar sauce with cauliflower pie, asparagus, and radishes for Liz.

We spent Thursday exploring and figuring out what we were going to do Friday. Part of the reason we came to Tallinn at all was for a music festival taking place from the 29th through the 31st, and while waiting for our dinner at Porgu, we checked the schedule and decided which acts we were interested in seeing.

FRIDAY

We woke up around noon on Friday and decided the theme of the day was Medieval, so we explored the medieval part of the city. First, we got some lunch at this medieval-themed restaurant called Ill Draakon (presumably "The Dragon"), where they have a very simple menu. Food is one euro, drinks are two, and their food options include elk soup and various savory pies, including beef/pork, elk/pork, carrot, spinach, and cabbage. They also had apple pies. It was delicious, although you do pretty much get what you pay for; one euro buys you about a cup of soup or one small pie (note: not a pie in the American sense, i.e. a large round pastry baked in a tin; more like what we would call a turnover or a homemade Hot Pocket, a small pouch of flaky dough containing filling of some kind). Two euros buys you a half-pint of house beer (light or dark), or "hot-blooded wine," which I was curious about. I ended up just getting a half-pint of dark beer with my spinach pie and bowl of soup, because Liz and Corinne got that and it sounded good by the time it was my turn to order. Everything was delicious; of course, that only makes sense. Sell your fare for cheap but make it really tasty, so people will come back and buy another portion of soup or another pie. Such tactics worked on us, anyway; we ended up buying a couple of apple pies after we finished our spinach pies and soup.

After that, we went to this old tower called Kiek in de Kök, which translates to "a peek in the kitchen," not whatever you were thinking, perv. It's called that because you can see basically everything from the tower, including peeking into the kitchens of surrounding peasant residences. We toured the old tunnels beneath the defense tower and surrounding bastion, which was really cool. They restored many of the tunnels in 2009, and they have them decorated such that as you progress through each successive room, you are transported back in time; in the 20th and 21st centuries, the tunnels were used as shelter for homeless people (the tour guide said the last homeless man living in the tunnels was kicked out something like seven years ago), hiding places for counterculture groups like punk rockers in the Soviet era (full of fleas at the time, which is why punks were able to hide there even though the tunnels weren't secret), and shelters against air raids in the early to mid-20th century. Before that, the tunnels were mainly used as prisons if they were used at all, and even further back (i.e., end of the 17th century) they were simply used as a way to move troops between defense towers.

They also have one long, straight tunnel that they converted to an exhibit on predictions of the future of Estonia. In this tunnel, guests sit on a futuristic-looking People Mover-esque contraption, which slowly trundles sideways as you view a short film about the future of the city. Then you get off and enter a room where there are some 21st-century items displayed as well as an example of what future archeologists might say about them; some of the items include a necktie, a G-string, cigarettes, platform heels, and a beer can. The predictions are sardonic in tone; for example, on the platform heels, the information blurb suggests that they were worn by prisoners, because escape would be difficult while wearing them. It made me laugh, anyway.

Mari Kalkun, an Estonian folk musician that Corinne and Liz were interested in seeing was playing at a tiny record shop on the second floor of a building in the newer part of town that afternoon, so we hurried over there and caught the second half of her set. That was basically how we spent the rest of Friday, being late to shows; eventually we just settled in at the Von Krahl theater and bar, where the acts alternated by the hour--one hour there would be someone playing a set in the bar, the next hour they would be upstairs in the theater. The bands we saw there were called Jaakko and Jay (punk rock) and Husky Rescue (alt folk).

Later, we moved to this bar that was just down the street from our hostel, where an Estonian rockabilly band called Boogie Company was playing. Estonian rockabilly is exactly as awesome as you think it is. Apparently the genre is gaining popularity in Estonia; the lead singer/bass player (he had FLAMES on his bass!) said they were just one of thousands of rockabilly bands in the country. They were awesome, though; bouncy music, funny banter, a generally upbeat atmosphere. It was, all in all, a very nice way to end the day.

SATURDAY

Each day of the Tallinn Music Week festival, there were a handful of acts in the early afternoon (1-4ish) on the "city stage," which were free to attend. These took place in a large mall called the Viru center as well as in small venues around the city (record shops, art galleries). We went to the mall for a while and parked ourselves in front of the main city stage to watch a few of the acts.

One of the acts we saw there was called Estonian Voices. This consisted of six people--three men, three women--singing a capella. It was really impressive; one of the girls had an amazing range, and they did vocal-instrument singing as well as harmony. One of the songs they did was an entirely vocal freeform jazz piece, where one of the women sang the part of a screaming trumpet. As hard as it probably is to make a trumpet make that noise, it must be just as difficult if not more so for a human to do so. They didn't speak English, but that was OK, they were still awesome to watch and listen to.

We also caught a short set by an alt-punk band from Russia called Motorama at an architecture gallery before Liz and I returned to the hostel to take a nap. (The beds there were better than our beds in Petersburg!) Corinne opted to explore the city some more; she came back later with some delicious bread and jam, among other things. There were a bunch of acts playing one right after the other that evening at a kino, so we made plans to head over there and just stay there all night.

And that is what we did. We were a bit late (as usual), but we grabbed some seats up front and enjoyed a never-ending stream of folky alternative acts. We caught the second half of Silver Sepp's set, but he also played percussion for Mari Kalkun, who followed him. A Latvian artist, Alina Orlova, followed her; Corinne and Liz were already fans, so they were extra excited about that. Alina's style is also folky and soft, kind of like Ellie Goulding but with more Eastern European flavor.

The last act of the night was an Austrian band called Diver. The band consisted of three guys with guitars. One of them also played keyboard and accordion; another also played a melodica. The lead just played his guitar and sang. I would describe their style as kind of alt-pop, sort of Owl City-like but less electronic. We liked Diver so much that Corinne bought their CD before we left, while I was busy liberating a poster from the wall downstairs. The event was over that night, and there were more posters literally all over the city, so I figured they wouldn't miss one. Hopefully the poster will survive the trip home, because it's pretty neat.

SUNDAY

Sunday morning, we woke up before noon and got our stuff together so we could check out of the hostel by 11 AM. We planned to go to this place called Kompressor, for huge pancakes, and it turns out that Hell Hunt finished their renovations early, so we wanted to go there, too! We ended up having to take all of our bags with us, but that was OK. They aren't that heavy.

We showed up at Kompressor just after it opened and decided to split a giant pancake. We opted for a blueberry-and-cream one, and when it arrived we were glad we decided to share it. It was a massive crepe; folded in quarters, one side was about seven or eight inches long. We cut it into thirds and devoured it quickly, drank our coffee and tea, and then hurried across town to Hell Hunt.

We managed to arrive about 15 minutes before Hell Hunt opened at noon, so we killed some time in this little handicraft souvenir shop next door. Liz bought socks, and Corinne got her sister some paper dolls, although they proved kind of difficult to transport. I think she maybe didn't realize that the sheets aren't perforated and you actually have to cut out the clothes with scissors.

In any case, we all got some lunch at Hell Hunt, and Liz was excited by a Scottish IPA they had on the menu. They brought it out to her and it made her entire week, I think. She loves IPAs and they are all but impossible to find in Russia, so this was the first IPA she'd had in about seven months. She drank it happily; the 9.2% alcohol content didn't hurt, either, I imagine. She bought another bottle for the road and decided to hold onto it until Tuesday, which was her birthday.

Following that, we hopped on a tram back to the bus depot and arrived with plenty of time to spare, a welcome change from the last time we boarded a bus. The bus that would take us to Latvia was a double-decker, and the three of us sat together on the top floor, which was really cool. The ride was pretty boring; they played this bizarre Russian Cinderella-like film on the way and I napped for part of it. We didn't have to stop at the border this time, because apparently Latvia's just cool with whoever wants to come over, man. Not like Russia, which monitors comings and goings at all of her borders with all the vigor and vigilance one would expect from a country symbolized by a two-headed eagle.