Would You Like Fries With That?

I feel like I’ve found my groove again – there’s emergency Redbull in the fridge and I managed to lose the latest admirer – another American, this one a gentleman called Randy from California who bought his own water bottle filled with wine onto the ferry. He wasn’t so bad – a retired engineer turned journalist turned wino who aside from calling me fit and asking me to dinner spent the two-and-a-half-hour voyage regaling me with stories of his hay-day. Did I mention he’s a Vietnam vet, so with one foot in the grave he was easy to ditch in the disembarking crowd.

I didn’t have any expectations of Tallinn – in fact, the only reason Estonia is even on my radar is because my boss has an Estonian mother and I was mildly curious to see if that’s the reason, he’s a bit… odd. Turns out no, that’s probably all him. Estonians on the whole are quite lovely, very reasonable and sensible people. They love to have a dig at the Finnish and I can respect them for that.

Tallinn is more akin to a German city than a Scandinavian one and it was interesting to go from the relatively modern Helsinki to the old town with its city walls and 14 or so remaining towers. Towers with unusual names like ‘The Long Leg’, ‘The Short Leg’, ‘The Golden Leg’, ‘Fat Margaret’ and ‘Kiek in de Kök’.

Since the 14th century Tallinn has been a German city – not by population but by nobility. The city has been an important merchant port throughout its history and therefore has been ‘peacefully’ conquered and ruled by the Danes (1219), under King Valdmar the second, who sold the city to the Teutonic Order (1346). In 1561 the city was taken by the Swedes who gave up Estonian territory to the Tsardom of Russia after loosing the Great Northern War in 1711. Estonia continued as a kind of dukedom of the Russian Empire until the Russian revolution in 1917, whereupon Estonia declared independence on 24th February 1918, only to be occupied by the Germans until the end of World War I. There was a resurgence in Estonian independence in 1920 but in 1940 Tallinn was again occupied by Russia and annexed to the Soviet Union who lost the city to Nazi Germany from 1941 until the Germans treated in September 1944 and the city was occupied by the Soviets again. With the fall of the USSR in 1991, Estonia once again established its independence and is therefore a modern nation of some 35 years old.

Tomorrow the city will host a marathon, and I ended up talking to a woman who’s run over 200 races around the world and is aiming for 422 marathons. This week she’s raced in Riga (capital of Latvia), Helsinki and now Estonia. She’s also run the ultra through the Sahara. So good luck tomorrow Ariannita from Venezuela!

Not one to give up on talking to strangers I had lunch with two GPs from Sydney, and coffee with two Irish ladies who were over for a quick week’s getaway, and who I ran into again at a chocolate museum because where better to spend your time (and money) during a brief but sudden downpour. Turns out Estonian’s are the third largest consumer of chocolate after the Swiss and the German. I am really trying not to buy anything because Gerald (my new suitcase) just about gave the taxi driver a hernia, but I saw chocolate sardines in a tin and well, what would you do?