The Times we had: Tallinn

Saturday morning, early (but not necessarily bright), an American, an Italian, a Pole, two Germans, a Spaniard, a Frenchman, and I headed out of our dorms toward the train station, bound for a weekend in Estonia's capital city with no real plan other than a rough idea of the train schedule, tickets to the ballet, and the name of a hostel. None of us had been to the train station before, but I knew roughly where it was do to a drive-by the day before. Luckily, the Tartu train station looks exactly like a train station.

 Seriously, movie style. This is the back side from the platform, but as soon as we saw the front we knew we were there. We arrived minutes before our train did. Points for timing.
  Tallinn is 2ish hours away by train, so we had plenty of time to do other things. There was some sleeping, some studying, and some reading done by the collective group.

Tallinn train station

As it was early on a Saturday, the city was still more-or-less asleep. The only people up this early are tourists (yay us!). We managed the entire weekend nearly mapless, so we just headed off in a direction. We found ourselves in Old Town, and at the top there are a series of buildings: some of worship, some of government, some of the tourist souvenir variety.
     This is the Church of Nikolai the Miracle Worker, and it sits fairly prominently on the Old Town hill, and can be seen from almost anywhere, which made it a pretty great rendezvous point when we broke off into groups. It's a Russian Orthodox church built 1822-1827, and as you can see, currently under construction. There has been a Russian Orthodox church on this site since the 15th century. This one was the first dome building in Tallinn.
     Going inside, it's very different from the other churches/cathedrals I've visited in Europe. It's not stone on the outside and carved and embellished on the inside, but almost the opposite. The outside is completely bedecked in craftsmanship of a number of types. It has four entrances, each with it's own impressive archway and religious iconography. The inside is painted in much the way you would expect it to be carved. It has intricate gold working near the altar, but other than that, all the walls and ceilings are very 2D. It was beautiful, especially filled with people using it for the purpose for which it has been built, just different from the other buildings of a similar nature I've experienced.
    This is Tallinn Town Hall, and it sits in the town square, another super easy place to meet up with people. It's the only remaining gothic town hall in Northern Europe; construction was completed in 1404. The tower was destroyed in the bombing raid on March 9th, 1944, but was restored in 1952. Today it is used as a representational building to hold ceremonies and concerts, and houses a display on the original 1530 weathervane. This is where we met up with an old school friend of Phillippe's who took us to lunch. Unfortunately, Saturday at noon is when everyone's eating lunch, so it took a few stops to find somewhere. The pub we ate in was empty, which was great for a group as big as ours. It was the oldest pub in Tallinn and pretty much all of us had burgers. My first Estonian burger, and it was pretty good; they put a spice on the fries that made them especially tasty.
    After lunch we wandered a bit more, and attempted to locate our hostel. We had news that they lost our reservation, and hoped they still had space for all of us. After twisting and turning through Old and New Tallinn, we found it, and they had room, which was fantastic. By this point, we'd been go-go-go for so long that I was ready for a nap. Most of the group went to the beach, but a few of us stayed back to try to at least curb the drowsiness so we would last through the ballet that evening.

The adorable gate for parking at the opera/ballet building.

     We saw "Medea", as performed by the Estonian National Ballet & Estonian National Symphony. I don't know that I've ever been to a ballet before, especially not one like this. It was different from what I'd imagined; completely tutu-less, nearly pointe-shoe less, seemingly chaotic movements that only made sense some of the time (i.e. Medea's decent into madness). But it was still well done.


And of course even the building was beautiful. The ceiling had a huge chandelier, and a gorgeous depiction of theatre goers of many different eras. There were busts of famous dancers/musicians in the hallways, and costumes from great performances on display.
     But of course, after the ballet, we were hungry. Once again, we split into groups, and ours headed for burgers, ending up at Hesburger. After ice cream, burgers, and Estonian TV with people speaking with Russian & French accents, we were off to bed.
    Sunday was the Tallinn Marathon, so lots of streets were closed, or partially closed, and crazy people were running everywhere. Not just the preset marathon course, but everywhere. It was like an entire city of Martins. There were people from the various gym franchises passing out flyers, a line of shops full of work out gear, and general "there are lots of people here" chaos. There were runners from all over Estonia, two teams from Great Britain, people from Poland and Finland, and even a man from Ethiopia. Who races an Ethiopian?!

    First on the list of things to do was walk on the wall of the city. It's a steep climb up, but you come to this little room which has benches and windows and this suspicious box in the centre. Turns out, the box covers a hole in the floor, from which one could drop things on unsuspecting passersby in the tower below.

There's a room above this one labeled "Room for Wage War", full of arrow notches and a door with a spectacular view of Tallinn. Below, you can see the wall of the city from above, as well as the walk we took on the city wall.

View from the war room

     I'll admit to not having eaten out much in Tartu (and by not much, I mean 3 times) but what we don't have is Mexican food. As much as I like Taco Bell, I'm willing to accept other "Mexican" restaurants as well, but we just don't have any. Tallinn, on the other hand, does have Mexican food. And it therefore became necessary to stop by...

Never before has so little made one so happy. I had pork tacos that were SO GOOD! I was tempted to get one of everything, but reality took hold. Those tacos lit up my whole world... I was so happy. Clearly, it doesn't take much. *sigh* I miss it already.

     Our little group didn't all eat Mexican, so we headed toward this "pancake house" that we kept hearing about. We'd stopped by the day before, but this place is pretty popular, and was packed. Luckily, there was a free table. What came out of the kitchen wasn't so much a pancake, in the North 

American sense, as a thicker crepe. This sparked a discussion, and at some point we're all going to get together to make international pancakes. I ended up getting an apple, vanilla, and cinnamon pancake, which meant that was lunch #2 for the day, since these things are big, on a Waffle Co. vs. Eggo scale. All of our pancakes were really good, and I totally understand why this place is so popular. 

    We still had a few hours after lunch before our train headed back to Tartu, and after wandering around the Old Town a bit more and stopping by the viewpoint, with the "The Times we had." sign, Anna decided we should head toward the ocean, and that's what we did. 

    Nowhere does the ocean smell quite like it does at home. Does Alaskan water have a high saline content or something? Because neither the Baltic Sea or the English Channel smell salty or ocean-y at all. And we saw exactly two seagulls, though we weren't watching very carefully and they could have been the same bird. Either way, there was sun and an ocean breeze. We were only there about 20 minutes-half an hour, but it was so quiet and calm. On the way back, we learned that Germans consider a bird pooping on your head good luck, and we were completely willing to let Katja go on believing that. 

    All in all, it was a pretty fun weekend. I got to see some things, eat some things, and hang out with people I haven't before. It did make me excited for the other travel opportunities open to me around Europe, but I need to make sure my residence permit goes through first. After that, Europe is my oyster!