Tallinn

I started the day with the pitter-patter of raindrops on my window. I had mostly had good weather for my stay in Riga, but after breakfast and packing, I cut up a plastic bag to try and cover my suitcase and backpack, with minimal success. I walked over to the bus station and within 30 minutes, I was in my seat heading out of Riga.

It was a pretty, uneventful ride through the forests of Latvia into Estonia. It looked like any other country’s country. I entertained myself along the ride by listening to a few podcasts.

I arrived at the Tallinn bus station with much-improved weather. Yet again, my phone navigation did not work. However, I knew roughly where my place was so after getting turned around a little bit, I finally found my way to Old Town. Taking in the sites on my way, I realized Tallinn was very modern and clean. Walking, I saw the very small Embassy of Romania in a strip mall as I continued on to the gates of Old Town and began walking uphill. I was able to sneak a wifi signal someplace and get the directions to where I needed to go. Twisting and turning through the fairytale streets, I finally found my hostel.

I checked in, found my bed, dropped my things, and headed back out after a little snooze. I followed Dean from Vilnius’s advice and made my first dining experience Olde Hansa. Olde Hansa is the Estonian version of Medieval Times, only without the jousting. It was actually founded in 1475 and still uses a lot of the same recipes and the same ambiance, such as candlelight and latrine toilets (oddly on the second floor.) If one was looking for a Game of Thrones dining experience, this place was it. I ordered a dark honey beer and some bear, boar, and venison sausage.

Old Town was a bit of a tourist trap, but it still had a lot of charm. Apparently, this was the stop for a lot of cruise ships. Finding postcards for my nephews and step-brother would not be difficult. I bought some and headed back to the hostel to start writing. In the lounge area next to the bar some guy put on Rick and Morty on the projector which was entertaining.

A little later, I headed up to bed. It was here where the strangeness of communal living occurred. Maybe because it was Europe or whatever, some young lady immodestly disrobed in the middle of the room and crawled into bed while two gentlemen snoring in harmony provided her soundtrack.

I woke up the next day and headed to one of Old Town’s ubiquitous convenience stores and purchased some pastries for breakfast. I needed some energy for my walking tours that I scheduled for a little bit later. The first would be about Tallinn in general and the second would be Tallin during the Cold War.

Estonia, meaning Eastern Land, had a succession of invaders going back centuries; first were the Danes, then the Germans, then the Russians, then the Swedes, the Russian Empire. After some brief independence, the Soviets came, then the Nazis, then the Soviets until their dissolution. Finally, Estonia would become independent once again. They decided to mark their independence with the flag of the Estonia Student Union becoming their national symbol, giving it its unique colors of White, Black, and Blue. Apparently, after independence, Estonia chose not to recognize those that moved to the country during Soviet times or their descendants. This led to Estonia having a great many stateless people living in the country.

Even though Estonia has one of the lowest numbers of religious people in the world, much like their other Baltic brethren, they were pagans before the Danes arrived. Years later, when German merchants started trading here, they did incredibly well and lived in the higher part of Tallinn while the rest of the people lived in the low town; just once again showing that the true divide among people is not lateral, but vertical. It was here, also, that they realized that they needed better defenses as arms technology continuously evolved. They constructed rounded towers that were much more sturdy to canon fire. The idea was, having a rounded surface against a rounded ball would be better than going against a flat surface.

After its Independence, Estonia quickly became a strategic partner for the other countries of Europe. They joined both NATO and the EU in 2004. One of the stipulations for joining the Euro currency, which they did in 2011, was to lower unemployment. So they did what any formerly communist government would do: give incentives for businesses to create a lot of bullshit jobs. After they joined the currency, those jobs went away.

However, today, Estonia is the 2nd biggest cyber security state. You can even safely vote online. I noted they also love the idea of digital nomads, offering year-long work visas to cyber entrepreneurs.

In 1965, even though it was still very cold, the Cold War thawed a little, and Tallinn was allowed to receive tourists from Finland. This not only served as a way to import some visitors from non-Soviet areas but also allowed the Soviets to spy on them. The biggest tips from the Finns to Estonians were plastic bags and chewing gum.

The next fact is very dear to my heart. Apparently, when the weather was just right, Estonians could get antennae television reception from Finland.  While they could get soap operas and episodes of Knight Rider, there was one show, nay event, that brought Tallinn to a standstill; the airing of the 1974 French cornerstone of cinema érotique spawning countless softcore sequels, Emmanuelle. Traffic jams and auto accidents ensued as people rushed to get home to watch. Having seen my fair share of scrambled cable when I was younger, I understood the sentiment.

After an incredibly informative tour, I took a little break then headed to my next one. The tour guide said to truly understand Soviet-style Communism, we needed to see two films: Stalker and the miniseries The Irony of Fate. She listed a few quirks about living in Tallinn during this time. The first was that people would buy broken lightbulbs for a fraction of the price of a new one and then trade them out at the factory for free. Another was that the KGB hired old ladies to track tourists when they came to Tallinn. Yet another was that until 1991, all education was in Russian. Estonian was not tolerated.

However, one story really stuck out. Before the Soviets overtook Estonia for the first time, Konstantin Päts was the country’s president. He had served as the head of the Estonian government on five different occasions. As such, he was the President of Estonia when the Soviets rolled in. He was forced to appoint a Soviet puppet as his prime minister. After that was done, eventually, he and his family were arrested and deported to Russia. When he was arrested, his presidential collar, a large necklace worn on the outside of his clothes designating him as the country’s leader, was taken from him and sent to Moscow to be placed in storage at the Kremlin. While he was in Russia, he was set up by the Stalinists as having made counter-revolutionary statements. He was forcibly committed to undergo psychiatric hospitalization for continuing to insist he was the President of Estonia. He was found guilty of his counter-revolutionary crimes and was bounced from several psychiatric hospitals until he died. After all this time, and even with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Estonia formally asked the Russian government for the presidential collar to be returned as a sign to help them, psychologically and spiritually, as a newly independent country. The Kremlin’s reply, “What collar?”

Unlike in other places, such as Romania, when Estonia finally got its independence, there were zero casualties. We were shown a few more landmarks and then the tour ended right in front of the Russian embassy.

And then that is when things got weird.

There was a protest going on outside of the Russian embassy. Given the narrow medieval streets of Tallinn, the protesters were across the street facing the embassy. This forced the people that were not part of the protest to use the other narrow sidewalk as police were standing in front of the protestors in the street. Everyone, whether they were going to or fro had to use the very narrow sidewalk to continue along their way.

It was here, where I saw a familiar face. J was coming right at me. We met eyes as I said her name and put out my arms. She quickly embraced me and as quickly let go. I asked her how the other part of Lithuania was. She said she liked it. I suggested we stop blocking the flow of traffic. She said that she was going to get some beers and invited me along. As we started walking there was a tall, pale, lanky gentleman that began following us. After a few more steps, I asked her if she knew him. She said yes. So I turned around and greeted him by putting out my hand. He took it and in a thick German accent said, “How do you do?” I asked his name and he replied Steve. So, all three of us kept walking for a bit, heading to the hip district full of bars and restaurants outside of the walls of Old Town. A little further and I asked Steve how he knew J, figuring it was just some guy she met at her hostel. It was at this point, J piped up rather sheepishly, that Steve was her boyfriend. A FACT SHE FAILED TO MENTION DURING THE ENTIRE 20+ HOURS WE SPENT TOGETHER. 

The memory of J’s kiss still fresh on my lips, needless to say, left a sour taste. At this point, any normal person would have lost their cool and stormed off. However, I have made a friend of awkward situations and decided to see how long I could stay. Which apparently was a very long time. I was in it to win it.

We continued on to the first bar and got a round of drinks. I talked with J as if Steve wasn’t even there which she reciprocated. Every now and then she would check in with him in German. We then moved to a restaurant that was an old Soviet dining car from a train. J pulled out her dice game and asked if I wanted to play, I politely declined. She was crestfallen. We then went to another bar that had live Estonian folk music as we got another round. We then got some more beers and they invited me back to their shitty hostel. Now, I had been in some shitty hostels but this one was awful. It looked like it was a heroin den with old Soviet newspapers used for wallpaper.

As we all sat on their balcony, which was basically about a three-foot walkway, drinking and talking, it was surreal to be this far north in summer in the middle of the night and have the sun right over the horizon like a perpetual twilight. The mood must have struck because J looked at Steve, Steve looked at J, then they both looked at me with their come hither bedroom eyes. I had finally found my limit and got the fuck out of there. But the strangeness would not end there.

When I was walking with J and Steve, I noticed a bar with the name Sazerac. For those not familiar, the Sazerac is a rye whiskey cocktail (apparently the first cocktail in the world, created in a pharmacy in New Orleans in 1838) and is the official drink of New Orleans. There was even a Louisiana State Senate Bill to proclaim it so in 2008. Of course, I took a picture. Since it was very late and I was the only person on the street, a man came out of the door and asked me in Estonian what I was doing. Since I did not reply, he asked in English. I told him that I was from New Orleans and loved his sign. He got very excited and told me that I must come to try one on the house. Depending on the kindness of strangers is an adopted trait from my adopted home.

As I walked into the bar, he told everyone in there in English I was from New Orleans. There were four other people in the bar: a very tall and skinny bartender that was a black young man (the first person of color I had seen in weeks,) a young couple sitting at the bar, and a bespeckled older gentleman. The owner introduced me to Bobby, the bartender. He made me a Sazerac and the owner looked on in anticipation. It was very good. “As good as at the Columns Hotel on St Charles Ave,” I said. The owner beamed. It was here where the bespeckled gentleman made my acquaintance. Apparently, he was a rather well-off Lithuanian businessman that said he went to Jazz Fest every year. We got to talking and I told him my line of work. He was very interested in what I had to say about digital marketing. So much so, he got me another Sazerac. He then gave me his email and said it was very late and he was an old man. I shook his hand, thanked him for the drink, and moved over to the bar.

The owner said that he was going to go home too and told Bobby to lock up. Bobby was a native of Zimbabwe that found his way into the EU to work. The owner asked the couple to make sure Bobby did it right. I would soon learn that they were not a couple at all, but work colleagues. Miko and Grieta were their names. Miko was a smaller, mid-20’s young man with brown hair and sitting next to the brunette Grieta, a young woman also in her 20’s. Although her skin was fairer, they could have been siblings.  We all sat at the bar shooting the shit and Miko was hilarious. He had a quick and biting sarcasm honed by years of living in a post-Soviet Bloc country. For example, he made fun of himself for having the name of a middle-aged Japanese woman. He also made fun of my “faggy scarf,” the Cambodian kroma I was wearing. I fibbed and told him it was from my time working at a Cambodian orphanage. His retort was that he did not want to hear of my pedophilic adventures in South East Asia. I knew we were cut from the same cloth so I heartily laughed. I passed the vibe check, so they invited me out to have drinks with them when Bobby closed the bar.

We headed to a bar called Labor that was chemistry-themed in that it was set up like a mad scientist’s lair and drinks were served in small test tubes. Bobby got the first round of 16 test tubes and we sat at a booth and chatted. They asked me about America and I asked them about Estonia and I asked Bobby about Zimbabwe. Somehow, the conversation shifted to the topic of black cock, obviously not by me. Grieta mentioned that she has had men of many sizes but had never experienced it. Bobby asked if she’d like to. Grieta giggled. In a flash, he jumped up and walked around the booth and invited Grieta to put her hands on his crotch. She then placed her hand into his pants and starts feeling around. She oohed and aahed a bit telling him how nice it was. As Grieta’s hand continued gyrating in Bobby’s pants, and through my what-the-fuck face, I looked over to Miko and he looked incredibly uncomfortable. That is when I knew he had a thing for Grieta. After a few more minutes of Grieta’s “exploring,” Bobby sat back down next to me. Suddenly, he started saying he had a stomach ache and doubled over in pain. I jumped up and got him some water from the bar. He could barely move and Grieta suggested we get him out of there.

By the dawn’s early light in a Tallinn alley, I put Bobby’s arm over my shoulder and began walking with him as cars were not allowed on these pedestrian streets. He was about four inches taller than me and almost eight more than Miko. I held him up as we walked to a place where Grieta called an Uber for him. All four of us stood there as a Jaguar pulled up. Grieta confirmed that it was the car. I helped Bobby in and took a seat. I was not going to give up a ride in a Jaguar. Through the windshield, I could see a flustered Miko talking to Grieta. After a bit of talk, they kissed on the lips, longer than a friendly peck, and she jumped in the car. She turned around and asked me what I was doing. I told her it was a Jaguar and asked if I could have a ride. She huffed and relented, she told the driver to drive us the three blocks to my hostel and drop me off. I got out and before I could wave goodbye, the Jag sped off. I hoped Grieta was able to finally get her experience.

The next day was kind of a waste as I had way too much to drink and stayed out way too late. I just stayed in Fort Awesome, my cacoon of bedsheets, nursing my hangover with the final episodes of Veep. It was exactly what I needed.

The next day, fully rested, I headed out to experience communist Estonia. My first stop was the Viru Hotel. This was the only hotel in the whole city where foreigners were allowed to stay for the simple reason that is where all the surveillance resources were located. There was a joke that the building was made from a new type of material called micro-concrete: in that, it was comprised of 50% concrete and 50% microphones. It was funny because it was true. Drilled into the concrete of the entire hotel were small holes in which the KGB place little wireless microphones. We knew this because they showed us the building plans. Another interesting fact is that all the prime goods of not only Estonia, but the Soviet Union as well, were featured at the hotel. While people were starving in different parts of the Bloc, the best fish and meat the USSR and the satellites could offer were stored in this hotel’s massive refrigerators. Much like in Vegas how everyone up and down the line has someone to answer to, all the staff was watched by the KGB. If someone said something that was deemed less than respectful to the Soviet Union, they were demoted if not detained. Being a waiter was the best job as it allowed more interaction with foreigners, although the exchange of money was strictly verboten.

We were taken to the top of the hotel that had a stunning panoramic view of Tallinn. Up there was the KGB master control room. From there, recordings and later video were piped in for monitoring. The guide passed around some spy gear which included a peephole camera. I guess when an entire system was built on CYA, people got very paranoid.

The next museum was the Museum of Occupation. This one covered the many and various occupations of Estonia, focusing on the Communist one. It was a lot like 60 Andrassy Street in Budapest where it was half museum / half modern art gallery. There was a cool part where they set up a Soviet-style apartment building where you could fiddle with an ancient radio in the hopes of getting some Western stations.

The final museum was the former KGB headquarters aptly located right down the street from the current Russian Embassy. It was much smaller than the one in Riga but still was able to convey the terror of what occurred there. There were cells and placards but there was a difficult exhibit from an Estonian artist that served as a kind of early art therapy. This man was drafted by the Red Army and he shared some of the atrocities he witnessed while he was in that service trying to excise those images from his mind and soul. Some pretty barbaric stuff.

After the museum, I needed to drown some feelings so I traveled to a Texas-themed bar, had a few Lone Stars, and renewed my promise to continue teaching others about what I had seen.

The next day I needed a little levity, so I decided to head to Pirita Beach just outside of the city. I got breakfast and hopped on the bus. At peak hours it was only 1.60€, which was amazing. Interestingly, the beach is at the edge of a pine forest. It was a beautiful little walk to the beach filled with bike trails and little exercise areas. There were not really any waves and the water was super cold, but it was still a beautiful place. 

After the beach, I hopped a bus to the Baltic Jaam, the station by the hip district of Tallinn. I got some lunch, a beer, then headed back to the hostel to take a nap. I worked up enough motivation to get out of bed and as I was walking through the hostel, some dude offered to cook me dinner for 5€, which I respectfully declined. 

I then headed back around Old Town and found a Speakeasy that reminded me of the office from Being John Malcovich. For the unfamiliar, it is an office located between floors of a regular office building where people needed to walk around hunched over as it was only 3 ft high. I wondered how many drunk people hurt themselves from standing up. I then went back to the place where J, Steve, and I all had our first drink, Humalakoda. After walking around Hipsterville, I headed back to the hostel as I needed to charge my phone.

Heading back out into the night, I went to a club that was located in the former Soviet cinema but did not feel like paying their ridiculous cover. I guess a cruise ship was in because the population of Tallinn was about four times what I had seen previously.

I went back to the hostel bar and talked with the bartender, a Chilean, for a good amount of time as we both got to practice our Spanish. A cute Polish girl showed up and we all were talking. As I was very tired, I called it a night and went to bed.

My last day in Tallinn started with me walking around the newer part of Tallinn as I needed new shoe inserts. The ones I had had since April and I put a lot of wear and tear on them. Afterward, I decided to head down to the pier and defunct City Hall. It was a 5,000-seat concrete amphitheater built in the Soviet era for the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics which has not been maintained. Although it was cool to just chill out there looking out into the Gulf of Finland on a thoroughly stained and graffitied Soviet relic.

I headed back to the hip district to pick up some souvenirs. Being a place that had such varied history, the souvenir shops there certainly had interesting wares. From Nazi and Soviet Coins and medals to (hopefully) decommissioned arms, it was a history buff’s dream. I bought a few things for my family.

I went back to the hostel and began winding down. I made myself dinner of a salad of summer mix with a raspberry dark soy salad dressing courtesy of the free food bin. I had a very early dinner as I would have an equally early night seeing how I had a ridiculously early flight to Milan in the morning.