'I'm in Estonia and I don't want to leave!'

Hello from Estonia! (Well, I may not be in Estonia when posting this, but I am in Estonia writing this so hello from Estonia!) We are all definitely enjoying our weekend trip to the European Union, though perhaps I shouldn’t have gotten as excited about the internet as it has only worked briefly for my roommate and I though it has worked just fine for others. It isn’t a big deal, of course, as we pretty much only have time for the internet when we should be sleeping – no comment on what time it is now – since there is so much to see and do here, but I am sorry that I wasn’t able to use the opportunity to talk to some of you online at a more convenient time for you. I’m always sorry to disappoint you all!

Luckily, everything else about our hotel and about this beautiful city of Tallinn has been absolutely wonderful and enthralling – ok, except for the weather. We are in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, European Union member state and former part of the Soviet Union. But I am getting ahead of myself. Hours and hours ahead. You see, in order to get to Tallinn we had to take a bus across the border. We made it to the border on some nice bumpy roads that are what pass for highways in Russia, and then got to have some serious fun at the border for about 3 hours. Russia being Russia, we had to get off the bus with all of our baggage, go through passport control (pretty much what you have probably experienced when flying internationally), scan our luggage through a machine that the border guard wasn’t paying any attention to at all, and get back on the bus to wait for approval to cross the border. At the Estonian border – we were all debating where you actually are when you’re driving between the two, at this particular border the actual defining border I believe is a river – a border guard came on the bus to collect our passports and then they processed the whole stack while we watched a movie on the bus. (State of Play!) So all of this took a rather long time, and then we hit the EU-roads-without-potholes to finish our drive to Tallinn!

The hotel where we stayed in Tallinn was gorgeous, and they let us just drop our bags in the lobby and attack the lunch buffet that was set up for us, even though it was already after 4 pm Tallinn time. Most of us had forgotten that we would gain an hour just by driving across the border. After a wonderful lunch/dinner we headed up to exclaim over our views of the sea and the old town, we switched some rooms around so that Vika and I were rooming together, and then it was time for our walking tour of the old city of Tallinn. Estonia has a very brief independent history, for most of its existence it has been Russian, German, or Swedish territory. So there were clear Western European influences as well as Russian ones, and winding around the old cobblestone streets and ducking down stairways often reminded me of getting to know the streets of Salzburg. There is an upper and a lower part to the old city, built under different ruling powers. Our guide was very funny and entertaining, I went on the all-Russian tour with the girls I wanted to hang out with later and was really excited that I understood almost all of what he was explaining about the city. It was sometimes difficult to remember that we were in a capital city, but we walked past lots of embassies and federal buildings that were small but very beautiful. Estonia has a largely Protestant population, but there is also a prominent Orthodox church in the center of the old town. Tallinn has a very romantic feel as well, aided by all the cobblestones and archways. It was great to start off with a walking tour to get us oriented, it was already getting pretty dark but our guide gave us suggestions about where to shop, what things Tallinn is known for, what kinds of beer to try, and a few fun facts about the Estonian language – which is related to Finnish and Hungarian and sounds and looks incredibly strange sometimes as it has a tendency to use lots of letters with umlauts (those funny little dots on top of letters) right next to each other. We also wandered around quite a bit on our own after the tour, finding a couple of cute cafes and scoping out menus for dinner the next day.

One of the exciting things about our hotel was the fact that we had free access to the sauna, fitness room, and swimming pool in the morning. So Saturday started at 7 with a workout, a swim, a trip to the sauna, and a wonderful breakfast and we were all ready to go. We had a bus tour to see some areas just outside the city; the new art museum, a monument to the sailors of a ship that sunk on its way to Finland, a beach looking across the Baltic, and the Folk Song Festival grounds where Estonians gathered in 1991 to seek their independence. Then we were free to explore! After our big and delicious breakfast we weren’t in the mood to eat, so we shopped at a couple of markets for handmade goods and then in a Western European-style mall with coffee shops and stores like the Body Shop. Then we decided to wander around the old town and go in some of the churches and buildings. By this point it was raining, and chillier than it had been in the morning on the beach and our bus tour. The Orthodox church was beautiful inside, I am always struck by how dark they seem and how different that makes the paintings and icons appear. The Lutheran church was also very beautiful – it had those old pews that still exist in places like Colonial Williamsburg where families had their own pews that they sat in every week. The walls of the church were covered with different coats of arms, those of families, areas, and countries I would imagine. It also had a gorgeous organ, something that is always missing from Orthodox churches since there is no music during Orthodox services.

After wandering around, visiting the churches, taking plenty of pictures, shopping in the marzipan and medieval stores, and getting a little wet, we headed back to the hotel to warm up and pick up Sarah for dinner, who had gone back to nap earlier. We had made reservations earlier that day for one of the restaurants right off of the square, called the Pepper Sack. When we arrived for dinner we were glad we had made the reservations, as it was completely packed. We were seated in a corner which turned out to be perfect as we could still hear live music and dancing being performed but weren't self-conscious and were able to be completely ourselves, laughing as loud as we wanted. Tallinn is actually known for its use of garlic, so we got a few orders of garlic bread – slightly different from ours, its almost as though the pieces of bread were covered in garlic and then fried in garlic, it was delicious – and we all had cider or beer (or ginger ale, in Sarah's case). Everything was delicious, in fact, I had baked chicken in a cream sauce with rice and mango – which turned out to be more like pineapple – salsa that was simple and hearty and very good. One of the funniest moments was when Kelly suggested that since there were 5 of us we should get one of each of the five desserts on the menu – and we did! Crème brulee, white chocolate truffle ice cream with cherries in rum sauce, house cake that was like chocolate and gingerbread together and delicious, ice cream with fresh fruit, strawberry ice-cream-like cake!!! After dinner I walked back to the hotel with Sarah at like 11:30 while some people went out to a bar in the old city.

Sunday after breakfast it was time to head back to Russia, with a stop in the Estonian border town of Narva for lunch. We were all rather sad to be leaving Estonia, but the castle restaurant where we had lunch was very good and their chicken noodle soup distracted most of us from worrying too much about going back to Russia. After a quick tour of the castle fortress of Narva, which has been under just as many rulers as Tallinn and is even older, we piled back on the double-decker bus to head across the border and back to St. Petersburg. Or, rather, we piled back on the bus to wait for them to tell us that we could try to cross the border. So, we waited for a while, and went through the whole process in reverse, except there was more waiting doing nothing and I think it took even longer. We were all pretty tired and were either napping or trying to. At one point when the bus was off and the driver opened the vents on the roof to keep us from all getting sick and too warm, some of the guys rigged an umbrella opened over the vent and tied to a chair to let air in but keep the rain out. A few times we thought we would be Mary-Poppins-ing back to St. Petersburg! It might have been faster.

We made it back to St. Petersburg eventually – though too late for the metro. As always, though, the program took good care of us and those of us on the island zipped across the bridge just in time (we had already missed one of them) and were dropped off at our doors. I felt bad for the directors having to be out so late dropping us all off (and then waiting for the bridges to go back down again) but we were all very grateful for the door-to-door service and they always put our safety first so it worked out just fine. Today we don't have school, but we did have to drop off our documents to be re-registered now that we have left the country and come back. You always have to do this when you leave and return, it is quite an entertaining system. Great news on that front though, my visa has been extended all the way through next May so I'll be able to do much more travelling spring semester if I want to, because I'll be able to get on trains! Yay! This week I am meeting with my conversation partner to chat over coffee after class, then Wednesday we have a tour of the national library and this weekend Jarlath, one of our directors, is playing again with his band! Then the next weekend is halloween and we're going to the university halloween party at one of the dance clubs here – I know it won't have anything on Athens but it will still be a good time – plus a walk about the history of rock music in St. Petersburg. And after that…Moscow and Berlin. It is insane, but time continues to speed up!! I am still loving being here, though was reminded this weekend of the many differences between Russia and its European neighbors. It was a great weekend with lots of new experiences and great friends – and how many people can say they were in the tallest swimming pool in Tallinn? ☺

Much love to you all, and I'm sorry that the internet didn't work out the way I would have liked this weekend. Hopefully all is going well in the US of A and I'll be able to catch up with you soon ☺ All the best and lots of love from Russia – beth