HELSINKI, FINLAND
AND TALLINN, ESTONIA
At the beginning of April, my university in Ukraine
announced that April 26-May 4 would be a week off for Orthodox Easter (April
27) and Labor Day (May 1). I decided to
take advantage of the time off to do some traveling. While most people were going to warm places
like Crimea and Crete,
I decided I wanted to explore Finland
and one of the Baltic countries, Estonia. My travel journal follows below. You can also
see pictures
online (click on the folders for Helsinki or Tallinn).
Friday, April 25/Saturday, April 26, 2003: Journey to Helsinki and a night on the town
Like most of my trips out of Ukraine, this trip began with an
irritatingly long journey. Friday night I left Khmelnytsky at 11:30 p.m. on an overnight train to
Kyiv that arrived at 8:30
Saturday morning. I bought an espresso
from the train station kiosk recommended by my colleague Olena, and had it
along with some paska (?) I had left
over from the day before. Paska is a traditional Ukrainian Easter
food, a frosted sweetbread with raisins.
After breakfast I caught the next available bus to the
airport, and had what seemed like an interminable four hours to kill before my
flight. The airport had Internet access, but the prices were insane so I
passed. Instead I sat at a café and had
another coffee which turned out also to be insanely expensive (18 grivnias,
about 3 dollars). Finally at about 12:30 it was announced that my
flight was open for check-in. I got my boarding pass, went through passport
control and waited again to board. I
flew on LOT Polish Airlines to Warsaw,
and changed planes to another LOT plane for Helsinki.
I arrived in Helsinki
at about 7:30 in the
evening. As I walked through the airport
I studied my surroundings intensely, trying to absorb as quickly as possible
the atmosphere of the place. I noticed
three things: lots of parquet flooring,
a near-quiet airport with almost no people, and the Finnish signs. Finland is actually a country with
two official languages, Finnish and Swedish. But I didn’t notice the Swedish
language signs right away.
After picking up some more maps and guidebooks at the
tourism bureau in the airport, I went outside and waited for bus 615 going
towards downtown. The bus was
recommended in Let’s Go Eastern
Europe. (Helsinki is treated as a
gateway city in that guidebook.) When
the bus arrived, my jaw dropped. It
looked like new. It had cloth seats. It was spotless inside and out. Well, it was 3 Euros (nearly 18 gryvinas,
compared with the 40/100 of a gryvnia for a city bus in Ukraine) but it
was still a welcome treat. And it made
me all the more sorry that most Ukrainians cannot yet experience such luxuries.
When we arrived at the train station square I got out and
noticed a Sony Jumbotron screen. Finland was hosting the World
Hockey Championships. Although it was
barely above freezing, there was a good-sized crowd outside to watch the Finland
national team play Austria. It seemed to me that Finns don’t let a little
cold weather stop them from going out and having a good time.
Because of the championships, the hostels were already full
for Saturday night when I had called the day before to reserve a room. I had had to call a hotel booking service
mentioned in Let’s Go (+358 9 22 88
14 00) to get a room for the night at Hotel Finn, Kaevankatu 3, telephone +358
9 6844 360. It wasn’t a full-scale hotel exactly—it was a single floor of rooms
in an office building. It was cozy but clean with a bed, a TV and a shower in a
very convenient location. That was all I
could ask for.
I dropped off my stuff and went back to the square to watch
more of the game. Although it wasn’t
“White Nights” yet, I noticed that at 9:30
p.m. it was barely starting to get dark. But by the end of the second period I was
bored of the game and a little cold, and hungry as always. I peeked in a restaurant called Zetor
(Tractor), but with the t-shirts in the gift shop it looked very touristy. I
went into an Irish restaurant across the way, but it didn’t serve food. It didn’t even have any Finnish beers on
tap. I went next door to a place called
Praha (Prague).
It also didn’t serve any food, but at this point I felt I shouldn’t be
picky. Besides, it seemed like a fun
place. I tried something called Golden Cup Perry, which turned out to be a
pear-flavored alcoholic drink, kind of like a hard cider. Weird but good. Even weirder, they offered to put ice in it. I declined the offer. I noticed that unlike
other parts of Western Europe, Finns appeared
to use plastic to pay for just about everything, no matter how small the price.
I was definitely gonna like it here.
After my drink and the end of the hockey game (Finland won), I
wandered down Mannerheimintie, a main street in Helsinki, to look for a place to eat. I’m not
sure at what point I figured out that ravintola
was the Finnish word for restaurant, and not the name of a restaurant
chain. Anyway, eventually I stumbled on
a place called Simone Wok and Pub, located at Simonkatu 9. The menu looked only mildly interesting, but
the 80s American music drew me in. I’m glad it did. The Asian noodle soup in a
coconut curry broth was excellent. They served it and then put a bib on
me. I wish I could say I hadn’t worn a
bib since I was a baby, but there was a restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg a
few years ago that gave me and my family bibs the size of small tablecloths; it
is an old tradition there. This was a
modern-looking restaurant so I think it was just their attempt to help people
keep themselves tidy. The lemongrass
brulee was to die for. Even the water
was good; it had wedges of orange and lime in it. I can’t say the same for a
cocktail called Apple Crisp, which tasted like cough medicine. But overall my experience at this restaurant
was a highly positive one. It was here
that I asked the waiter to teach me the Finnish word for thank you—kiitos.
I probably didn’t need to learn it; everyone I had met so far spoke
fluent English. But I wanted to make
that overture to Finland,
and I wanted to know it for the sake of knowing it.
Sunday, April 27: Helsinki
museums and movies
I had to check out of the hotel at noon. Since I had paid 65 Euros for the room, I
decided to spend as much time in the room as I could to get my money’s
worth. Also, foreign language TV shows
are not dubbed in Finland,
so it gave me a chance to watch some American movies. I saw “Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels” and an M. Night Shamalayan film about a kid who is looking for
God. Appropriate for Orthodox Easter
Sunday, I suppose.
After I checked out of Hotel Finn, I walked a few blocks
down the street to check in at the Hostel Erottajanpuisto located at
Uudenmaankatu 9, phone number +358-9-642-169.
Like Hotel Finn, the hostel was on a single floor of what looked like an
apartment building that had been converted to office space. It wasn’t as well maintained as Hotel Finn,
and I had to have roommates, but it was 43 Euros a night cheaper.
The shops in Finland
are closed on Sunday but open on Monday. Museums in Finland are open on Sunday but
closed on Monday. So after having a
sandwich and a latte at Café Lapsipalatsi, the choice of what to do for the day
was clear. I am not usually interested
in modern art, but my gut told me that Kiasmus, the museum of modern art in Helsinki, would be
interesting. And it was. There were two main exhibits. One was called “The
Night Train” and it was based on four parts of an old Finnish movie. The
spookiest section of the four was called “A Ghost at Noon.”
The point of this section was to demonstrate to people that things are
not always as they appear. There was one
exhibit with a room of furniture and what appeared to be a mirror. But when
someone in the room put their hand through the “mirror”, I realized it was just
a framed, square hole, with identical furniture on the other side in a mirror
image. Looking through the hole myself
was like being a vampire for a moment.
Or not existing. In another
exhibit, there was a true mirror, a table, a red curtain, and two track lights.
When I stood in front of the mirror, the lights reflected off the curtain and
into the mirror to create a multicolored, halo-like effect behind my head. I
couldn’t see how that was possible. Even
the bathrooms seemed to be designed like a work of art with lots of steel and
nonparallel geometric shapes. Each
stairwell had a different view of the street outside and the floors below. I felt like I was looking at everything for
the first time, and questioning everything I saw. I have never been so moved by modern art
before.
The other exhibit I saw was a collection by a Nigerian
Englishman named Yinka Shonibare. He had
digital photographs of himself as a Victorian dandy from an Oscar Wilde play,
and he took traditional African prints and created 18th and 19th
century clothing and a family of astronauts with them. In an interview he said he wasn’t even sure
himself what his art means. Was he
trying to challenge traditional views of aristocracy, or was he trying to be a
part of the aristocracy?
When I finished viewing the exhibits, I went to the museum’s
free Internet kiosks and checked my email. I also went online to find
information about movies. On Saturday I
had seen signs at the Finnkino movie theater for “The Pianist”, but on Sunday
the signs were gone. I took a stab in
the dark and typed in www.finnkino.fi,
and kept clicking on things until I found a schedule. There was a showing at Tennispalatsi at 5:30 and 8:45 pm.
Since I still had time before the 5:30 movie, I walked down Mannerheimintie past
the Parliament Building and Finlandia (a music hall,
not the vodka company’s corporate headquarters) to the Finnish National
Museum. On the outside it
looked like a church with its tall spire, but inside it was like a combination
of the British Museum and the Smithsonian. It had
artifacts from Finnish life and history dating from prehistoric times to the
year 2000. Looking at the exhibits here
it seemed to me that in all the places I have traveled to date, the same things
endure in substance and value: weapons,
tools, jewelry, household goods, practical and decorative furniture,
photographs, and clothing. The only
thing I couldn’t comprehend is why spears and knives always endure. Will the human race always be a violent
one?
There were other interesting exhibits on Finnish history in
the 20th century, and on toys over time. But I have to admit that one of my favorite
exhibits was on Sancta Birgitta. There was (or is?) a village in Finland and an
order of nuns named after her. She was
born in 1303, so the exhibit honored her 700th birthday. She died in 1373. That is 600 years to the
year before I was born. And I bear a variation of her name. Maybe it means nothing; God knows I am no
saint. Maybe saints don’t even watch
over Jews. But something is gracing me
with fortune in this life; who is to say it isn’t her?
My brain full, I left the museum and wasted a lot of time
wandering around looking for Tennispalatsi before I finally asked two security
guards in the Metro station for directions.
I had to walk by a construction zone, and I noticed that the crews had
to dig through what looked like sheer rock.
I felt like I was at the edge of the Earth, or on another planet
altogether.
By the time I got to the movie theater, there were less than
10 seats left for the 5:30
show and they were all up front. I found
out that in Helsinki
theaters, when you buy a ticket you also choose a seat assignment, like buying
tickets for live theatre. I thought that was nicer than the scramble to find
and save seats that takes place in American theaters. I decided to buy a ticket with a good seat in
the middle of the theater for the 8:45
show.
Now I had three hours to kill before the movie. I wandered
around the shopping center. All of the shops were closed, but there was a bar
called William K. Beerhouse. The beer I had literally and figuratively was not
memorable. I saw a Chinese restaurant
across the street, but it didn’t look very good. I decided to go back to
Simone, but it is closed on Sundays! So is Jam Jam, a nearby restaurant and
nightclub. I decided at this point the only places that were going to be open
besides McDonalds and Hesburger were the touristy restaurants. So I headed to
Zetor. It turned out to have a pretty
good menu of Finnish cuisine. I had Karelian Stew, a hearty dish of meat and
vegetables with mashed potatoes. Perhaps
it was a bit pricey at 11 Euros, but it beat Mickey D’s.
After dinner I walked back to Tennispalatsi and saw “The
Pianist”. What a sad and powerful
movie. I could see why Adrian Brody won
the Oscar for his performance; I believed that he really was this man going
through these horrible trials, and not just an actor playing a role. I didn’t know that parts of the movie were in
German. The subtitles for the English
and German dialogue were all in Finnish, so I had to rely on my knowledge of
German to get the gist of what they were saying. I only say that as a caution to others who
might think about seeing this movie in a non-English language theater and don’t
know any German.
Monday, April 28: Helsinki
travel planning, shops, sights and movies
This was not the best day of the trip for me. For breakfast I went to another café on
Mannerheimintie for an espresso macchiato and a roll similar to an American
cinnamon roll without the glaze. It was okay, but not as good as the coffee and
food at Lapsipalatsi. Then I wandered briefly around a department store called
Sokos. The clothes were expensive so I
didn’t buy any. But I got a Mother’s Day card for my mother in Finnish. I’m not sure how I figured out that it was
for Mother’s Day. Perhaps the Finnish word Mummille
on one card and the Swedish word Morsdag
on the display sign helped clue me in.
Perhaps it was all in my imagination.
Whatever. From the store I went
across the street to a Postal
Museum, which turned out
to be closed for renovations. But the
post office was open, and it had free Internet access. If I didn’t like Finland before, I was really liking
it now.
Now it was time to turn to a more serious task: planning my
trip the next day to Tallinn. I had seen a TV show on Sunday morning that
looked like a Finnish travel show, and from that I managed to figure out the
Finnish word for travel, and thus figure out that I was standing in front of a
travel agency and not a bank. I went
inside and asked for help booking a ferry trip to Tallinn. First, I found out that because of
ice on the Baltic, the express boats (one and a half hours) were not
running. Only the “slow boats” (three
and a half hours) were running. Second,
because of the Labor Day holiday on May 1, a lot of people were travelling to
and from Tallinn.
The boats returning from Tallinn
on Saturday and Sunday were completely booked, and the hotels that go with
packages on the Eckeroe Line were also completely booked. I bought a phone card and tried calling the
hostels in Tallinn—sure
enough, they were completely full. I also tried calling a Tallinn homestay service, but the number
didn’t work. I was slightly relieved though—I had heard enough stories about
Ukrainian homestays from Peace Corps volunteers to know I needed something that
would allow me more mobility and independence.
The travel agent suggested I go up the street to the Tallink
ferry office to see if they had any space.
Tallink ferries also had no return trip space on the weekend, but I was
able to book a trip leaving Tuesday morning at 9:00 a.m. for Tallinn
returning to Helsinki
Friday night at 8:00 p.m.,
with three nights in Hotel Viru (breakfast included). It cost a small fortune (300 dollars), but I
felt it was either that, or deal with the hassle of showing up in Tallinn without a hotel,
or not go at all.
Feeling dejected and ashamed of spending six months of a
Ukrainian teacher’s salary for a three-day trip, I walked outside and pondered
what to do next. Let’s Go said that the
3T tram line is the cheapest tour of the city.
I got on, but it seemed to be going only through residential
neighborhoods. That was interesting in itself, but I didn’t see anything that
looked like an attraction. Perhaps I had
gone in the wrong direction on the tram, I thought.
I saw a harbor area with large cruise ships and I decided to
get off the tram. About this time, it
started to rain. There were a few fresh
fish and vegetable stands in the harbor, as well as people selling arts and
crafts, handknit goods, and Russian fur products. It wasn’t fun to look at them in the
rain. In the distance ahead loomed a
building on a hill. With its
black-roofed spires, dark red stone walls, and the dark clouds above, it looked
like the hotel from “Psycho”. It turned
out to be Uspensky Cathedral, a Russian Orthodox Cathedral. I went up the steps
hoping to find sanctuary there from the rain, but it is closed on Mondays. And
it was Easter Monday so it wouldn’t have been open anyway.
Despite the rain, I had to keep going. I walked down
Aleksanderinkatu to Senate Square
and Nevsky Cathedral, a typical Russian dome-shaped building. I was surprised
to see a statue of Czar Alexander II in front of it. Finland was a part of the Russian
empire in the time of the czar, but it gained its independence after the
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
I kept going down the street and ended up back at the train
station. I went to the tourist office in the train station to try to get ideas
for things to do on Saturday in Helsinki,
since I hadn’t planned to be in Helsinki
on Saturday and the tourist office is closed on Saturdays. I was advised to take a bus an hour outside
of Helsinki to
a town called Porvoo. I took a brochure
and thanked the assistant. I had lunch
in the train station restaurant, an Art Deco cafeteria that made me feel like I
had gone back to 1930s America. The soup was pretty good; the sandwich wasn’t
bad either.
After lunch, I went to a shopping mall called Forum. I ended
up at a café called Fazer; there is a chocolate company in Finland by the
same name. I saw a treat with ribbons
around it, which I guessed was a treat for the May Day/Labor Day celebration.
It is hard to describe what it looked like.
Imagine small, thin pieces of dough fried and woven haphazardly together
in the shape of a roll and dusted with powdered sugar. Like a dehydrated,
shrunken funnel cake or sweet, dry spaetzle.
It was only a Euro or two, so I bought one along with a cup of tea. The
treat looked better than it tasted. Live
and learn.
After I finished, I went downstairs to the movie theater and
saw the 6 p.m. showing of
“The Hours” (Tunnit in Finnish). I had
read the book, and the book and movie complimented each other nicely. After the movie, I walked up towards the
hostel and stopped in a restaurant/bar I thought was called “Memphis”, like the city in Tennessee. But on the menu it said
“MPHIS”. That was weird. But I stayed anyway and had a good triple
decker tuna salad sandwich with seasoned fries. It is now possible in many
places in Ukraine
to get sandwiches (two pieces of bread or rolls with stuff in between) instead
of butterbrot (one slice of bread with meat or cheese on top). And in some places, like Top Sandwich in Odessa, it is pretty
good. But the sandwiches in Finland are
superior. No doubt about it.
After dinner, I went back to the hostel. I had had to change
rooms (this happens in hostels because of their reservations system; don’t ask
me why). A man walked into the room and
was surprised to see a woman there (usually HI hostels have only single-sex rooms). I went to reception and was told I had been
given the wrong room number. So I moved once again. I ended up with a couple of
the same roommates I had had the night before, but I still didn’t really chat
with any of them. I don’t know why; I just wasn’t in the mood.
Tuesday, April 29: Journey to Tallinn
and Tallinn
sightseeing
I left the hostel around 8:00 in the morning. I had been told at Tallink that it
was short walk from the hostel to the train station, about 15 minutes. It was more like 25 because I had to walk all
the way to the other side of the U-shaped harbor. But I got a nice picture of the ferry and the
ice along the way, not to mention some exercise, so I guess can’t complain
about that. I felt like I was at an
airport. There were signs directing cars to Eckeroe Line and Tallink ferries
and signs for customs. Of course, those cars would be driving onto the ferry,
not dropping people off. And it makes sense that it would feel like an airport.
I mean, think about the word airport. Air port. Ports on the sea came first on
this world. I should say that airports
feel like the Helsinki
ferry terminal, shouldn’t I?
Anyway, I went inside and checked in, and then went through
passport control. Passport control
seemed pretty tight to me. The border
guard looked very carefully for my entry stamp.
The stamps in my visa are all over the place, so it was hard. He must be used to backpackers, because he
thought I had entered from Frankfurt in March
until I showed him the Helsinki
airport stamp.
I walked down a ramp (like a doublewide jetway; perhaps I
should call it a shipway?) onto the ferry. The last time I had taken a
passenger ferry was from L.A.
to Catalina. That was a small boat and I
had had to take a Dramamine to keep from getting seasick. But this was like a big luxury cruise ship.
It even had sleeping berths, probably for the longer trip from Tallinn to Stockholm.
I sat in one of the dining lounges. For breakfast I had a tray of
Karelian pastries. No, it’s not
something from a Star Trek episode. Take a flat wheat-colored bread (like one
side of a pita pocket), put it into an oval shape the length of your palm, and
flute the edges inward. Fill the middle
with an unknown white starchy substance, and on top lay “egg butter”, butter mixed
with chopped hardboiled eggs. It was much tastier than it sounds. And definitely better than the coffee. To pass the time I read my guidebooks,
listened to music, studied Estonian phrases (a lot like Finnish in many ways),
looked out the big bay windows, and tried not to watch the American soap operas
on TV.
When we arrived in port, I went through customs, got more
guidebooks, and started walking to my hotel, Hotel Viru. I could see it looming in the distance, a
large, gray rectangular box that must have been built in Soviet times to serve
as a proper contrast to the elitist beauty of the spires and roofs of Old
Tallinn. Once inside, however, I felt
like I was in the hotel of a modern country that is ready to become a member of
the European Union. It was clean, with
lots of wood, steel, and a simple carpet pattern. Like the outside image of this hotel, though,
I could still feel vestiges of Russian or Soviet life. For example, the building was under renovation. Right next to my room was a gaping hole where
what looked like a new elevator bank was being installed. The noise was
unpleasant. I dropped off my stuff in a
beautiful, modern room with the bed at an odd angle, and a shower that was not
completely enclosed from the rest of the bathroom. These little surprises reminded me a lot of
the surprises I get living in Ukraine. Not unpleasant, just surprising, almost
amusing.
I left the hotel and went across the street to start
meandering through Old Tallinn. I will tell you now that as I was wandering I
pretty much had no idea where I was or what I was seeing. In the evening when I
went back to my hotel I sat down with the map and my digital camera and tried
to figure out where I had been. I was mostly successful. From this recreated memory, I now know I saw
Viru (Street) and the old town hall, St. Nicholas Church, Fat Margaret (a
former cannon tower which is now the Estonian maritime museum), the Great Coast
Gate with a beautiful stone crest, and parts of the original town wall from the
13th or 14th century. I also saw a memorial of some kind,
a steel arch that had a large gap in the middle.
I had originally planned to go to the one of the medieval
restaurants for lunch, but it was hard to find. I walked into a bar that I
thought was called Au Le Coq, but is actually called Nimega Bar. Au Le Coq is the name of the beer they sell
there. The beer was pretty good. I had
seafood soup, and then the lunch special (like a blue plate special). For 40
Estonian kroners (less than 3 Euros), I got
a “cutlet” (a ground beef patty; Ukrainians also use the word cutlet to
describe this dish) with a creamy mushroom sauce, potatoes, and beet
salad. Everything was tasty. The meat
tasted more like meat than the meat in the cutlets in the cafeteria in my
university. And it was nice to have a sauce
with flavor for it for a change. I’ve
learned to love beets in Ukraine
so that was fine. But the potatoes were
the best because these weren’t just any potatoes to me. In my childhood, these
potatoes were known as “Grandma’s potatoes” because this was exactly the way my
great-grandmother used to make them--cut into large chunks and boiled or baked
first, then fried with paprika or some other kind of seasoning. I had never had them in Ukraine. My great-grandmother’s sister-in-law was from
Lithuania.
I asked myself, did “Grandma’s potatoes” originate from the Baltics? Or were they from her village in what is now Belarus? In the end, the answer didn’t and doesn’t
matter.
The other two experiences of the day were clothes shopping
and coffee drinking. My friend Renuka
had told me about the wonderful wool sweaters in Estonia. I went to a shop called ReWill that was
having a sale. I wanted to try some
sweaters on but there was no dressing room.
No problem: the sales clerk
simply went to another part of the store, and I stood out of sight of the main
entrance. A sign I have definitely lost
some of my American sense of modesty. I
ended up getting a 100 percent wool black sweater with a beige, grey, and
blue-grey pattern on it for 490 kroners. Not bad. Especially since I wore it for the next three
days because it was so cold. Now I only
needed gloves.
Near ReWill, I found a coffee shop that also sold truffles
and other chocolates. I had an espresso macchiato and an Irish coffee
chocolate. Yummy! I sat in a wooden
chair at a table with a rich, red cloth tablecloth. I felt like I was in
someone’s living room in the olden days.
It was so wonderful I used my map and phone book that evening to figure
out that the place was called Café Chocolaterie Kohvik, and its address is Vene
6. Vene, by the way, is the Estonian
word for Russia.
By 4 or 5 in the afternoon, I was wiped out. I went back to my room and spent the evening
watching the “the Sopranos”, a British version of “Thirtysomething”, BBC World,
and other good TV shows I can’t remember.
Wednesday, April 30: More Tallinn Sightseeing
I woke up again to the noise of drills and what looked like
a cold, rainy morning. I went downstairs to the second floor for breakfast. It
was a first-class breakfast buffet with something for everyone—herring, grilled
and cold vegetables, deli meats, cheese, beans, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, bacon,
Karelian pastries, yogurt, cereal, toast, and rice cakes advertised as
gluten-free.
After breakfast, I headed out to Old Tallinn again. I stopped in a mini mall to look for black
pants. But everything there was made by Italian design. Which is a nice way of
saying it was made for models who are 6 feet tall and weigh 90 pounds.
I went to another clothing shop to look for wool gloves. The
sales clerk immediately spoke Estonian, English, and Russian to me. She helped me find a lovely pair of gloves
for 145 kroners, and we started chatting. Her name is Astrid. She is Estonian,
but she left for America
when she was 21, and as she put it, didn’t know enough to be scared. Just as I felt when I left L.A. for D.C. after college. She lived abroad for 20 years and then came
home. She said that because she has
traveled abroad and was married to another foreigner (an Englishman), she has a
different mindset from her peers and from her mother. But she wasn’t apologetic about it. In fact,
she seemed to put the onus on her reserved, oppressed colleagues to adjust to
her more open and direct nature. And she is having an impact; they are starting
to change. Talking to her was like
finding a kindred spirit. It made me
feel better about the choices I might make in the future. If you want a good pair of gloves or a
sweater, or just want to chat, the store is called Aplexs Tekstiil, Viru 20,
64-40-221. Tell Astrid that Bridget the
American from Ukraine
sent you.
After I got the gloves, I found my way to the tower called
Tall Herman, a palace (now Parliament? I’m not sure), a post office in a
building that had some kind of connection to Peter the Great, and two
viewpoints of Old Tallinn. Then I found a stone area called the Kings
Courtyard. It was almost too much beauty to absorb in one day.
I went down the hill and ended up at an Indian restaurant
called Elevant. I am not a vegetarian,
but there is something about vegetarian Indian food that is so good I don’t
notice that there is no meat. I had vegetable vindaloo (incredibly spicy, but
it hurt so good) with rice and Indian bread, and two guava shakes to take the
heat off. I sat in large wicker chairs
looking at yellow walls listening to very mellow folk music. It was so peaceful. I did some more meandering and bought some
postcards in a gift shop. Then I went back to Café Chocolaterie for espresso to
write the postcards. I sent them from the post office in Old Tallinn. If they all arrive, I’ll know that Estonia is
ready for Europe. If they don’t, I’ll know
it’s still like Soviet times.
By now it was about 5
p.m. and I decided to have happy hour at Arizona Saloon. I had Saku, the Estonian national beer, which
was pretty weak. The nachos were even worse. The chips were warm, but the
cheese was cold and had no heat. And
there was only enough for two or three chips. I asked the waitress to bring me
another dish of cheese, hot. I watched
another hockey game for a while, then went back to my room. I had heard that the eve of Labor Day was a
big party day in Estonia,
and I wanted to get ready to go out. Not too far though—the hotel has a club
called Café Amigo, and hotel guests don’t have to pay the entrance fee. Plus
there is an entrance from inside the hotel.
I showered, styled my hair, checked my email at the free computer kiosk,
and then went to the bar. I had some really good wine, and watched people
dancing while I waited for the blues band to come out. I saw some people on the
dance floor wearing white hats with a black brim, similar to a boat captain’s
hat. I knew from the Finnish National
Museum that these were
Finnish graduation hats. The width of the black cloth on the hat indicates the
language of the wearer; Swedish speakers have wider strips.
The blues band was good but they played a set for only half
an hour. Then it was dance music again. I was bored before midnight.
I was never into the “club scene” when I was in my 20s, but suddenly I
felt old. Whatever.
Thursday, May 1: A Day of Rest
This day looked even colder and rainier than the day before.
I went down to breakfast and pondered why the hotel staff wore orange and black
hats from Halloween for Labor Day. I knew
most of the shops and restaurants would be closed because of the holiday. There
was supposed to be a concert somewhere, but I couldn’t get motivated to go. I
was tired of going out to movies. Going
bowling seemed pathetic. I decided I
just needed a day to do nothing. And
besides, I had spent all that money on the hotel room, I might as well get my
money’s worth. So I stayed in all day and watched TV. Which may seem silly since I could have done
the same thing in Ukraine.
But in Ukraine
everything on TV is double tracked, with English and a layer of Russian or
Ukrainian over it. And I don’t have BBC
World or Deutsche Welle at home.
I finally went out in the early evening to dinner. it was so
cold and windy I ducked into the first decent place I saw, a place called Kaar
Baar (the Bear Bar). There were pictures
of fish dishes that looked good and reasonably priced. I asked the waitress a question in English
which she didn’t quite understand and had a hard time answering. Then I heard her talking to the bartender in
Russian, and I realized I was in a Russian-speaking bar. I asked her in Russian if it would be better
if I spoke in Russian. She said yes.
The red wine was really good, as was the black bread and the
fish with fried potatoes and vegetable garnish. But while I was eating, a
meister came do some scary looking repair work on the men’s bathroom with what
looked like plumber’s snake. Yes, I was
definitely in the Russian part of town.
After dinner, I went next door to the Irish pub, since I had
heard Irish pubs were expat hangouts. But I didn’t see anybody
interesting. The Irish coffee was
good. But as I saw the names Tanya and Oksana
on the servers’ nametags, I knew once again I was in the Russian part of
town. Not a bad thing, just interesting
that I could see and feel the difference.
Friday, May 2: A final tour of Tallinn and return to Helsinki
Once again, I lollygagged in my room as long as I
could. I had a late breakfast, then
checked out and put my bags in the left-luggage room. It was a sunny and crisp
day. I decided to stay out of Old Tallinn; it was time to explore the “real”
city. I started walking down Narva
Mnt. I don’t know how “Mnt” is
pronounced, but I think it is a word that means “a highway going towards the
city of Narva”. I walked for a good half an hour past people,
older, more functional buildings, and a few embassies. I saw the Ukrainian
Embassy, a stark white building with the Ukrainian trident-like symbol on it). My heart fluttered at the sight of it. I walked on and crossed the street to the
beach on the Bay
of Tallinn, a bay of the Baltic Sea. I like putting my hands or feet or whole body
in different lakes, oceans, and rivers as I come across them in the world, but
because of the cold I just barely allowed my finger to touch the surface of the
water.
I went back across the street and followed the signs in the
park to Kadriorg, a palace commissioned for Catherine the I by her husband,
Peter the Great. It is an aristocratic
palace with a carefully sculpted back garden.
Allegedly it houses a sculpture collection that is open to the public,
but I couldn’t see a way in. I also
noticed in the garden that there was a section that was fenced off. I thought
it was just closed while they finish repairs, and that it would be open later
in the summer. But when I kept walking up the road to another palace nearby, I
discovered the palace next door to Catherine’s Palace is the palace of the
Estonian president. Two guards with
rifles and a short set of steps were the only thing that separated me from the
front door of the great pink edifice.
All I could think of in that moment was my president’s White House and
everything that protected it from entry.
How nice for Estonia
that it doesn’t need so much security.
I sat by an unmarked statue in another part of the park and
soaked up the sun, then walked through the park and past an old school and a
modern-looking football stadium until I ended up down the street from my hotel.
I had gone in a large circle somehow. I
didn’t want to go back to the hotel or Old Tallinn. Instead I went in the
supermarket across the street called Selver. It was gorgeous. I got some provisions for the return ferry
trip. I saw the “new Tallinn”—department stores, large bank
buildings, etc. It felt like Helsinki
or another western European city. I had
lunch at a place called Peetri Pizza. For 40 kr I got a large pizza that was
really good. I ate what I could and took
the rest with me to eat on the ferry.
After stopping in vain at a few department stores to try to
find the new CD by the American band The Bangles (I’d been hearing the new
single on the radio), I grabbed my bags from the hotel and walked back to the
ferry terminal. Passport control took forever—I
didn’t get through until a few minutes after 5 for what was supposed to be a 5:00 p.m. departure. The dining lounge I had sat in on the way to Tallinn was completely
full, as was another bar. The only bar with seats available was rather
dark. I milled around as much as I
could, went outside to take pictures of the ice on the water, and sat in the
few areas that weren’t official dining areas or bars to have my pizza and
mineral water. I finally returned to the bar with seats in time to hear bad Finnish
karaoke. Although there were some English language songs in the karaoke book, I
didn’t get up and sing.
When I arrived in Helsinki
again, I treated myself to a taxi to the same hostel I had stayed at before. An
odd combination to say the least. I went
right to bed and watched BBC World and movies for a while (also odd to have a
TV with cable in a hostel room), and went right to sleep.
Saturday, May 3: Suomenlinna Island and another night on the town
I got up and went back for breakfast one more time at
Lapsipalatsi café, and back to the post office to check my email. I had lunch at the Kiasmus museum café, which
was okay. I went to a bookstore to
browse, and then found a walking street of shops and cafés. The name of the
street escapes me now. It was only +8
Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit), but it was sunny and for the residents of Helsinki this was spring.
Many people were sitting outside at cafes with small tables three rows out from
the wall that reminded me of Paris. I didn’t stop to sit but kept walking to Market Square. There were many more merchants out than my
last time there, so I bought some nice souvenirs. An employee in the hostel had told me the
night before that if it was sunny I should go to Suomenlinna Island
instead of Parvoo. Suomenlinna is a 10 minute ferry ride from Market Square and
has a fortress which is a UNESCO world heritage site. It truly was lovely, but I was suddenly
wishing I had Reeboks or hiking boots—many of the paths were made of large
rocks.
I walked to the fortress and on my way a man asked me in
Finnish presumably to take a picture of him and his girl friend. I said “Yes” in English. They took my picture
in return. It turned out okay. The fortress was really lovely. I still don’t quite understand Finnish
history; I think it was a Swedish outpost if I understood correctly. The archways and stone rooms were amazing.
But I was equally awestruck by the child climbing around on an ice floe like a
seal, the view of Helsinki
from the island along with ice and haze, and the old boat dock. I stumbled on a game of cricket nearby. I am
not sure why it was being played there. And I still don’t understand the game,
either. I saw three people acting out
some kind of historical interpretation, but it was in Finnish so I had no idea
what was going on.
I walked back in time to miss a ferry back to Helsinki by 30
seconds. I went into a nearby bar for a
glass of wine. I got on the next ferry 20 minutes later and debated whether to
go back to the hostel, put on warmer clothes, and then eat, or to eat first and
then go to the hostel for the night. I
decided on the former. I ended up talking to my two roommates. One was a girl
from England who had graduated from university, er, college, had spent 4 weeks
studying Russian in St. Petersburg and was getting ready for a 3-month
internship in Moscow.
The other girl was a college student from Austin
who was studying in Moscow. As we talked about our lives and about life
in Russia,
I was glad to be living in Ukraine.
I’ve never had to wait 3 hours in line for a train ticket, and the train prices
are the same for everybody in Ukraine.
I told the two ladies that I was going back to Simone if
they wanted to join me. We walked down but it wasn’t as good as last time. The soup wasn’t as warm, the water wasn’t as
cold, and it seemed to be hard to keep the conversation going. After dinner the girl from England decided
to go back to the hostel. The other girl
followed me down to the train station square again. This time Finland was
playing Ukraine. Again my heart soared at the sight of Ukraine, and I
knew I had to be careful not to root too loudly for Ukraine or against Finland. But it wasn’t easy. In the first period
alone, Finland
scored 4 goals. I couldn’t watch
anymore. (I found out later from Ukrainian students that the final score was
9-0.) The girl from Austin wanted to find a club, but I wasn’t
really into dancing and the one club I knew (Jam Jam) wasn’t her style of
music. So she went back to the room and I kept wandering. I found another movie
theater, Kinopalatsi, and bought a ticket to see Michael Moore’s “Bowling for
Columbine”. I was still really mad at
Bush about the war, and it seemed like a good way to protest his foreign and
domestic policy. It was hard to watch it
in a foreign country, though. A lot of
the people in the movie said and did things that made Americans look really
stupid. I felt like the audience was laughing at all of America as it
watched and laughed. That issue aside,
and the fact that the movie rambled on a bit long, it sent a very interesting
message about guns and gun violence. It
suggested that the reason that America
has more gun-related murders than other countries is twofold: we have a culture of fear propogated by news
media, and we have a messed up welfare system.
Sunday, May 4: Return to
Khmelnytsky
I got up early and walked down to the train station square
to catch a bus to the airport. I didn’t see signs at the bus terminals for the
bus I needed, so I went to plan B, the Finnair bus terminal. But the office is
closed on Sundays, and I didn’t see a schedule. Fortunately, inside the train
station are several electronic tourist information stands. I was able to find
the bus schedule and platform number for bus 615, saving me from having to go
to plan C (a taxi). I got on the bus
and paid my 3 Euros. Halfway through the ride, ticket control got on to check
people’s tickets. I panicked. I had paid
but had not received a ticket. Fortunately, they understood me in English when I
said, “I paid 3 Euros,” and they got my ticket from the driver.
I checked in, had a donut at Robert’s Coffee, and did some
really last minute shopping at the department store Stockmann (got some of that
Fazer chocolate). I got my Bangles CD, and a CD by a female Finnish rock singer
named Maija Vilkkumaa. I have no idea
what she’s saying, but she rocks.
The flight to Warsaw
was nice. Finnair is a wonderful airline.
I changed planes in Warsaw and then arrived in Kyiv. I swear, Boryspil Airport
in Kyiv makes me hate traveling and is the worst way to welcome people into the
country. I waited forever to go through
passport control and customs. By the
time I made it out, the thought of spending another 7 hours in Kyiv, then
taking an overnight train to Khmelnytsky and only having 5 hours to prepare for
a class, sounded awful. A taxi driver asked where I was going and I said
half-jokingly “Khmelnytsky”. He said a
taxi could take me there in 4 hours! The
price was atrocious, but I was able to bargain it down to something that was
still atrocious. I’ve decided it was
worth it though. Kyiv was cold and grey
that afternoon, but the road to Khmelnytsky was sunny and warm. The trees were
either in full white blossom or a bright green that suggested the energetic
beginning of spring. The driver had a
nice car (a Volkswagen Jetta) and was chatty but not overly chatty. When we got to Khmelnytsky, my taxi driver
stopped to ask a local taxi driver for directions, and ended up paying the taxi
driver 6 gryvnias (a little over a dollar) to take me home and save him a long
trip out of his way. That was
understandable. And then I was home. And
as good as it felt to leave Ukraine
and as much as I enjoyed my journey in Helsinki
and Tallinn, it
felt good to be home again.
Back to Ukraine Page
Home