After many years of wanting to visit, I am finally in Tallinn, Estonia!
We arrived yesterday evening at 7pm, via a ferry from Helsinki, Finland
. EU customs is so lax these days that the arrivals hall featured four empty customs booths, and a duty free shop. Yay for a free and open Europe! I was very excited to finally see Tallinn- I had heard that its cheap prices and amazing sites were the last of a dying breed of affordable European capitals. I was promised $1 mulled wines and $5 steaks. I was promised snow. Imagine my sadness when none of those promises were fulfulled. Somehow, when I wasn't paying attention, Estonia converted to the euro and prices subsequently doubled and tripled; and it goes without saying that Estonia has been added to my list of places that promised me snow, and failed spectacularly to deliver. Humbugrumble.
Estonia is a tiny nation that was part of the USSR until the Soviet empire fell in the late 1980s-early 1990s. Then it declared its independence (for the second time, as they'd just done it in the 1920s before they got screwed again), and in 2004 they joined the EU along with the other 2 Baltic states, Lithuania and Latvia
. To me, as a kid growing up in the Cold War era, I'd heard of the mythical countries of Lithuania and Latvia, but I was stunned as a 20-something to discover that they actually existed (again). Tallinn, Estonia's capital, was aggressively fought over by Danish, German, Swedish, Russian, and Finnish powers because of its tactical location on the edge of the Gulf of Finland, between Russia and Finland. So as a result, even during the height of World War II's bombing campaigns, while armies wanted to conquer Tallinn, they didn't dare DESTROY Talliinn. And thus, Tallinn is one of the only European capitals left with intact medieval walls, architecture, and forts.
The entire Old Town of Tallinn is a UNESCO Heritage Site- that is how remarkable this town is. There is nowhere else on earth we've been where medieval heritage and history is so prevalent, but not contrived or rebuilt for tourism. That coat of arms over the iron door has been there since the 13th century, and the woman behind the counter can tell you who in her family hung them both
. And given the town's propensity for dressing its shop employees like extras from Spamalot, it feels a bit like a time warp.
Our hotel is right in the center of Old Town, literally built into the medieval town walls. After checking in, we made a beeline for the Christmas market in the town's square. Even without snow, the Christmas market was beautiful. It features the oldest publicly displayed Christmas tree in the world, plonked down in the square since 1441. While I was a bit put off by the Celine Dion Christmas album playing over the loudspeakers, the lack of snow, and mulled wine that cost three times what I'd expected, it was a stunning sight nonetheless. After a wine (or two), we realized how hungry we were, and decided on a restaurant called The Farm. It had already won several Estonian and EU restaurant awards, but truly I wasn't expecting the food to be stellar. But it was. I had a duck and duck egg salad with curried pumpkin soup that was absolutely fabulous, and Matt said the same about his rabbit pate and roasted red deer. We had an entire bottle of Estonia cider with dinner, and the bill barely came to 50 euro. I was completely astounded by the sophistication and quality of the meal. Truly, I'd come back to Estonia just to eat.
This morning we experienced the same oppressive darkness and gloom we woke up to in Helsinki (Matt even ventured to ask, "are they aware they DON'T have to live here in the dark?"). It's a bit hard to get out of bed here- even harder than Seattle or London, I'm not gonna lie- but we valiantly set out for a walking tour of Old Town after breakfast. As I'd said, its intact medieval buildings and towers are gorgeous and jaw-dropping. But it was also freaking cold. While the temperature was in the high 30s, the wind chill dropped the temperature to the nose-numbing teens. We quickly realized why the entirety of Old Town was empty except for us. But as Clark Griswold says, we'll have fun whether we like it or not, so we explored the town's famous towers, walked the medieval walls, and viewed the ancient passages and alleys in almost complete privacy. We had a late lunch at a cafe, then spent the remainder of the afternoon shopping the market stalls for furry hats and scarves (did I mention it's cold here?).
Later in the evening, we stopped at a wine cellar for Estonian wine tasting, then had dinner at a gastropub near our hotel. I was again stunned at how good the food was. But our evening had a merry Christmas-like ending at the Christmas market, where we ignored bad piped-in Christmas music and partook of much mulled wine and gingerbread. BUT STILL NO SNOW.
Tallinn, Dark & Handsome (and Cold)
Monday, November 30, 2015
Tallinn, Harjumaa, Estonia
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2025-02-13