Estonia is really surprising

Building in Tallinn
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Estonia was totally not what I expected. I had an impression that we were going to be visiting relatively poor countries that would be something like Russia. But Estonia is most definitely part of Europe now and looks really wealthy. The people are well dressed (it's definitely later than 1984 in Tallinn!). The buildings have been restored and everything is bright and shiny and well cared for.

We arrived in the afternoon after 3 hours on the ferry coming across from Helsinki. After what seemed like a very long walk to the hotel (it was less than 2km in reality), we dumped our bags and headed off to the old town. The old town is really interesting because it is a real hotch-potch of architectural styles. The town has been controlled by just about every other country in the area at some stage. It was originally controlled by the Swedish, then the Teutonic Knights, the Hanseatic League, then Russia before briefly being independent between the world wars, then the Russians got to be in charge again, before the Germans took over for a couple of years and then the Russians got it again in 1944. It was then part of the USSR until 1991 when it finally got to be independent again. It's now part of the EU. It's clearly been doing well since leaving the USSR. There is a lot of tourism from Finland because they can come and buy cheap alcohol.

How Borat is this sign?!
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We had a brief walk around the town before going to dinner. We had dinner the first night at a place called Beer House which brewed its own beer and had German style food. I had a lamb and potato stew with bread that was really nice and the meals were huge here. I then headed back to the hotel to go to bed.

I had breakfast at a little cafe around the corner from the hotel before heading into town to do some sightseeing. It was very grey and sort of raining in the morning but I just put on my rainjacket and headed out into it. I wandered around the old town for a couple of hours as most of the museums and attractions don't open until 10 or 11 o'clock (they definitely aren't early risers here!). I walked all along the city walls on the edge of the city. I had a bit of trouble following the wall because it isn't complete and at various points you end up on the outside of it without meaning too. Luckily there are lots of gates for getting back into the town. Most of the area around the wall is parks which is nice to see some green around the buildings.

View over the old town from on the hill.
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The little windy streets are lovely and there are lots of alleyways and courtyards. It would be good if they didn't let so many cars into the city but lots of people live in the old city and they don't want to have to walk into their houses. It's hard though when you are walking around because the streets are very narrow and there aren't footpaths in the whole town. I walked around to St Olaf's Church which once had the highest tower in Europe (156m). The tower is now only 124m because of remodelling after a fire at some stage. You can climb it but I didn't bother because with the cloud you could barely see the top of the tower, so you wouldn't have seen much of the town.

I continued to zigzag up into Toompea. This is the top section of the old town which was enclosed by its own wall by the German Knights to keep the riff raff out. I went  to the Alexander Nevsky Russian Orthodox Cathedral which is on the very top of the hill (prime position of course). Unfortunately, by this stage the tour groups had started to arrive by this stage and there were 5-6 of them around the church. There are huge numbers of cruises throughout the Baltics. At this stage it had also started to really rain.

I had a quick walk through the park next to the Toompea Castle. The castle is currently the parliament building. It's a strange mix of styles. It was originally built in the 14th century but there is only a small section left from this time. The rest was rebuilt during the reign of Catherine the Great and looks very Russian. It is painted a very tasteless shade of salmon pink.

I then walked down the hill to a church that I can't find the name of on any of the maps, and lit another candle for Nan. It was a nice church on the inside, very Lutheran and now mostly used for concerts. From there  I looped down to the Estonian Opera House which is a very interesting building with some great communist statues around it. Then I went back into the old town to the main square with the world's only gothic town hall on one side and lots of merchants' houses on the others. It has the world's oldest continuous pharmacy in one corner. It has been there since at least 1422.

There are hundreds of souvenir shops in the old city selling incredible amounts of crap! And it's not even cheap crap! There are some very lovely crystal things, model ships or landscapes made out of amber chips, Harry Potter babushka dolls, tacky knitted hats. They have it all. I will admit that they do have some nice knitwear but it's not the kind of thing that you would wear at home.

I wandered past the Niguliste Church but didn't go in with the huge tour group ahead of me and went onto the Museum of the Occupation. This is a really interesting museum about the Soviet and German occupation of Estonia during the time between 1940 and 1992. It's really well put together and has televisions showing documentaries that explain the history of the time by people who were actually there. It took nearly three hours to go around the whole place with a lot of the time spent watching the documentaries. It's not a section of history that I knew much about but I feel now that I can tell people something about modern Estonian history.

I then headed off to the supermarket to get some food for lunch and the bus trip the next day and back to the hotel.

I really enjoyed Estonia and it wasn't what I was expecting but definitely worth a visit.