Our first night in Tallinn was largely uneventful, but we fell in love with the city anyway. We walked the 15 minutes from the ferry terminal to our hotel (an old office building currently being converted to a hotel/hostel. Our room definitely felt like an old office- it would have been a nice office, but was an odd hotel room), dropped our stuff off and went to find food. Really, it is the finding of food that drives us to explore cities more than just about anything. It was cold and rainy and I was quite content to stay in the room for the night, after all we had three nights in Tallinn, we could explore it another night. However, as usual, Nick was hungry so we bundled up and set out for the old town. Tallinn’s old town is quite spectacular. It is a walled city from the 15th century. Miraculously, it survived WWII mostly intact- thanks in part to Finland (more on that in a bit) and it retains so much old town charm. It is home to some of the the most charming, winding streets, rustic buildings and the oldest town hall in northern Europe. It also had a small but bustling Christmas Market going strong in the middle of the town hall square surrounding a huge Christmas tree. It is absolutely so amazing to see. While we were wandering around, trying to stay warm, we ran into our Moldavian friends from the ferry, Alex and Marina. We joined them for the evening, walking around the walled city, marveling at the beauty of the city before we ducked into a cute pub for a snack and to get warm! We sat and chatted with them, comparing and contrasting countries and discussing our travel plans until the pub we were in closed down. We said our good nights and we headed back to our office/hotel.
The next morning dawned (at about 9am) cold and cloudy but dry. So we got dressed, partook in the breakfast buffet our hotel offered and headed out to the free walking tour! Outside the tourist info office where the tour was scheduled to meet we met our Moldavian friends again and an American, Jason, who had just arrived on the ferry from Helsinki that morning. A few minutes after noon, our guide, Helly, burst in to the information office, breathless and apologetic for keeping us waiting. Helly was a great guide for the two hours we were with her. She was informative, funny and so energetic on a very cold day. Our tour started at a huge, imposing, old looking church, which Helly informed us was a fake. At first, Nick and I assumed that when she said fake, she meant that it was not the original. But the more she told us about the church, the more appropriate the word “fake” became to describe the church. The original church was destroyed in WWII. After escaping much of WWII without much physical damage to the city of Tallinn, the Estonians were bombed by the soviets one night, destroying much of their city and about 1/3 of the old town. It could have been much worse though, Helly explained. The soviets were scheduled to bomb them a second time and left to get their second round of ammunition. Unfortunately for them, they had bombed Finland not too long before and the Finnish were looking for revenge. In order to get their revenge, the Finnish painted their planes to look like soviet planes. As the soviet planes were heading back to their base to pick up their second round of ammo to hit Tallinn again, the Finnish planes slipped into the pack, followed the planes back to their base and bombed them. So, instead of 300+ planes coming back and bombing Tallinn only a few made it back and the damage was much less than it would have or should have been. Anyway, after the war the Soviet Union decided to rebuild the church (wait a second- did I just say the soviet union wanted to rebuild a church?!) They rebuilt the church (for its architectural value) but not as a church. The original plans called for it to be used as a museum for atheism. Yes, they rebuilt a church to be a museum for atheism. I don’t even know where to start with all the things wrong with that- turns out fake church was an appropriate term after all. They eventually realized, there is not a lot to put in a museum for atheism and so today it is a modern art museum. We were told that if we ever visited the museum we should take a Norwegian man with us. There is a famous macabre painting in the museum that depicts people dancing with skeletons an the like (we didn’t get to see it unfortunately, but maybe that is for the best) and a few years ago a woman started hearing the painting speaking to her- it was death saying he was coming for her. She decided she would get death first, so she took a knife to the museum with the intention of slashing the picture. As she approached the picture, the museum was empty, there was no one to stop her. Except for one lone Norwegian tourist who ended up tackling her to the ground and the picture was saved.
A few other stories that I enjoyed from the tour:
Apparently, its not just paintings that will drive you crazy in Estonia. There is a famous hotel in Tallinn that was not so secretly bugged by the KGB, they kept all of their equipment on the 23rd floor. Eventually, people started asking why no one could go onto the 23rd floor. They were told that the view from the 23rd floor was so beautiful, so dazzling and so amazing that if they saw it they would go insane. The view from the 22nd and 24th floor was fine, but the 23rd was too much!
There was a grand old house that had been preserved and is now only for visiting dignitaries and other fancy people. The house had been built by a grand family who were in huge financial trouble. They were up to their ears in debt, so what did they do? Took out another loan, of course! This time they used the money to build a lighthouse where they sent out fake signals to boats, causing them to crash. Then, who would be there, but this family, ready to help out the stranded crew and save their goods… for a small fee. Using this devious system of questionable legality, the family was able to not only save their social standing and eliminate their debt, but they grew wealthy enough to build the grand house that still stands today.
…And a few random facts we learned on the tour:
- Estonia invented Skype.
- Their president likes to start Twitter wars with anyone who talks badly about Estonia.
- Their flag was originally a sorority flag for an Estonian college.
- The first time they declared independence, it lasted for one day.
- The Golden Age refers to a time when Sweden ruled Estonia. They effectively killed off 20% of the native population and made slavery legal. But, they insisted that everyone go to school and know how to read…
It was an excellent tour, but it was so, so cold and it eventually started to snow. It was incredibly beautiful.
After the tour we joined Alex, Marina and Jason for a lunch of savory pancakes (somewhere between crepes and our regular pancakes) and then went to the small pub called the Three Dragons underneath the Town Hall that was definitely one of the coolest, most unique places I have ever been. It was a stone pub, with small windows and tons of flickering candles lighting up the room (no way it would have passed any fire code in the US). It was very, very cool. We bounced around, a fairly large group of people all from very different places and in different places in their lives, but enjoying each others company in a place none of us had ever been and exploring together, visiting a few of the highlights from our tour, taking tons of pictures and talking about our lives. It was an awesome evening!
The next day, the sun came out! It was glorious! We had not seen the sun for days and we were so glad to bask in it for a while. We met Alex and Marina and headed out to visit a palace out near the sea shore. We even visited the beach and walked on frozen sand- an experience I have never had before! It was a fun and relaxing day, enjoying the Christmas Market one more time, and seeing more of the city. We also got a few craft supplies and made ourselves some Christmas decorations! The next day, we boarded a bus to Riga, Latvia.
We took a ton of pictures in Tallinn so here are a few more:
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