Weekend 4: Viva Estonia!

On Saturday September 8th I decided to take a day trip to Tallinn, capital of Estonia, for fun, city exploration, and perhaps even a little non-Euro shopping experience.

The trip didn't start propitiously. In a not-unexpected example of over-ambitious behavior, I decided to try to catch the 8am ferry on a Saturday morning without pre-booking a ticket and without actually knowing exactly where the proper ferry terminal was located. I almost forgot my passport. I didn't have any tourist information about Estonia at all. I arrived at the ferry port exactly seven minutes before the ferry was supposed to leave, saw an enormous line at the passport control, and was told that they couldn't sell me a ticket less than 10 minutes before departure.

Then someone took pity on the glazed-eyed American and they let me buy a ticket, I was the last person through Passport Control, and...I was off!



On arriving in Tallinn, of course I immediately got lost but that turned out to be a good thing. It was still early and the Old Town was quiet, letting me wander down cobblestone streets looking up at church steeples in peace.






Of course, later on in the day it got a little more crowded.


I also spent some time in the Kumu Art Museum, located in a beautiful new building which is unfortunately nowhere near the Old Town. I signed up for one of those audio bus tours to get there, but of course missed the return trip and had to taxi back to the land of the tourists. However, I think it was worth it.

There was one exhibit filled only with sculptures of famous people's heads, and they had piped in audio clips of (some?) people talking such that, as you approached the room, it sounded as if there were a large cocktail party going on.



And of course, there was other art. I really liked this drawing.



There are also numerous smaller museums scattered about the city and especially the Old Town, but frankly they weren't that interesting. Mostly exhibits of period costumes next to plaques listing historical facts in several languages (English was usually fourth). However, there was one piece of Estonian history which caught my eye: a figure of a Don Quixote-lookalike titled: "Old Thomas". Perhaps I have more roots in Estonia than I realized.