I Can See Helsinki From My House

The following account of my trip to Estonia/Finland is put together with scattered memory and a few notes I had written down while I was there. Enjoy: Having been a bit desensitized to the "wonders" of flying, I spent the 2 hour flight just reading my book. Though it got a little distracting because halfway there, the plane started sounding like a Tuvan Throat singer. As the plane started to descend, Lincoln and I looked out the window at the empty, murky, marsh-looking land of Estonia. I turned to him and said, "I don't think anyone lives here..." to which he replied, "Honestly, I think you're right." Then we saw Tallinn. Not a gigantic city, but also not a hamlet. By this time it had gotten pretty dark and the vast wilderness of Estonia was a single black sheet stretched out beneath us. When we landed, we figured out the bus situation and were off to our hostel. It was only about 15 minutes and we climbed out of the bus and walked around a sketch-looking park and up a couple of alleyways until we found our destination which was shoved between a sex shop and a hookah bar. Everything that night in Tallinn was dark with the exception of the many many many neon signs. Our hostel, The Monks Bunk, was being run by a group of hilarious Western Australians from Perth. All of the red-faced, bearded, and excited to see new people. After a few cheap Estonian beers, Lincoln, Chris, and I set off to find a grocery store. We walked passed the grocery store the Aussie's had recommended twice because it was hidden behind yet another sex shop. My mouth dropped at some of the prices of the food items there (i.e. I got a loaf of bread for 25 cents and a jar of Nutella for 75 cents). That night was spent shaking off the grogginess of traveling by drinking a few beers and talking with the Aussie's. The next morning we set out to discover where we were. Turns out Estonia was a good choice. Right around the corner from our hostel we had a perfect view of the Old Town. It was definitely a skyline I had never seen before. Dominating the view was a tall building with 6 or 7 black onion domes with gold trimming. The rest of the buildings poked out in random places, each of them having their own elaborate design. We started walking in that direction and found a giant medieval wall with a ton of towers that we decided to explore.

Each of the towers had long spiraling staircases that seemed to go on forever. Despite the loads of pigeon poo covering every inch of everything, that damp and musty smell of age that I love so much was everywhere.

Afterwards, we walked around and found our way to the onion-dome building which I named, "St. Basil Jr" and other parts of the old town. I found the look of Tallinn really really strange. Every other building was in complete shambles, while the buildings next to it looked completely fresh. Some buildings were brown and dreary, while others were completely covered with broadly painted strokes of green, pink, yellow, and blue. The cobblestones are probably some of the worst i've ever walked on and have probably never been changed since their original placement in the 12th century.

After wandering around for a few more hours we found our way to the old town square and went into a restaurant called, "The Olde Hansa" where I ate dried Elk meat while others had giant platters of duck, mushroom soup, different breads, vegetables, and a number of other things I can't even begin to describe. We each got a giant medieval-style mug of Dark Honey beer that thickly slid down our throats leaving an incredibly sweet taste on our tongues. That night, the boys went out while I stayed in (not wanted to spend all my money) and drank a few beers with Poncho from Perth. He was tall and just big boned with a giant beard that wrapped around his red face like a sloth. He had a deep guttural laugh that echoed around the lobby. It was fun to watch him strum his beer and flick his cigarette to the beat of the music while he told me all about his home town and how he had ended up in Estonia. The next day started late as we shuffled out of the hostel and took a trolley out to a giant park that had the old summer palace of Pyotr the Great, The National Museum of Art, and the Presidential Palace. The sun was shining and birds and people were running around everywhere trying to enjoy as much as possible before the wrath of the eastern european gods would crack open the skies and pour more heavy rain down on the city. The National Museum of Art was loads of fun. I am not familiar with Eastern European art at all, so it was wonderful to see hundreds of works completely different from what I am used to (Western European). The group was split during the museum trip because Lincoln and I spent quite a bit of time in there. He and I ended up wandering through the park and found our way to the beach where I saw the Baltic Sea for the first time. I strode out onto the sand and jumped up on a pile of seaweed and kind of laughed to myself about how cool it was that I was on a beach touching the Baltic Sea. I bent down and scooped shells out of the water and wrote my name in the sand only to watch it disappear. Lincoln and I took a seat in the sand and talked about traveling and other places as we watched the giant ferries puff away in the distance headed for Finland and Sweden.

We got a trolley back to the hostel where we sat and played a couple rounds of chess waiting for the others to get back so we could see what everyone is up to. The other boys were taking part in a beer pong tournament against the freshly arrived Yorkshire tenants, so Lincoln and I stayed around to watch and then shoved off to the Old Town. We ended up in a tiny, candle-lit, medieval-themed tavern where we grabbed a couple Dark Honey beers along with a couple apple pies and sat in the corner just loving the atmosphere. After an hour or so we decided to go for a walk, but then ended up back in the same little tavern. There were all kinds of options when it came to pies: you could have any kind of meat pies, cabbage pie, apple pie, spinach pie, carrot pie, and so on. We got a couple mugs of Lingonberry juice, apple pies, and a spinach pie and sat down and talked about everything. The next day was complete insanity (in a good way). Josh has a friend, Maksim, who is Estonian and was kind enough to rent a van and take us out to the Estonian countryside. It didn't take long to get out of the city and to suddenly be surrounded by vast tan fields. As we continued on we stopped a giant cliffs that plunged down into the Baltic. The more we went along the thicker the forest got until all of a sudden we were submerged into a giant forest that just seemed ancient. The van twisted and turned around thick walls of green until at last Maksim parked the car and we got out and took a walk through the forest until we got to what we will call, "The Estonian Niagra Falls."

The water was this strange golden color and nobody really knew why, but what did it matter? It was gorgeous. I watched the river flood down into the depths of the forest, it looked like a single golden ribbon cutting through and flowing around the deep trees. After this we drove on to probably one of the most impressive cliffs i've seen. I'm happy my friend was able to catch a picture of me checking it out:

After this we ran off to the Cisternian Paradise Monastery. It's this giant abandoned monastery from the 13th century that is probably one of the coolest places i've ever visited.

There were all kinds of crazy twisting passageways that would go down and then suddenly swing up again and completely turn you around. It was a labyrinth of epic proportions and I was in love. We excitedly went down into the creepiest of creepy-looking places where we found piles of animal bones and other doorways leading into darker places (which, of course, we went to). Then we ended up in the old chapel which was beautifully eery.

I looked around at the high vaulted ceilings and imagined the chants of the monks echoing from the walls, the desperate prayers, the people who ran here for safety during times of war, everything that could have possibly happened here. These walls witnessed the rule of Eric V of Denmark, and then the conquering by the Teutonic Knights, and then it was partially burnt down with 28 monks trapped inside, rebuilt, and then witnessed the Livonian War, then the occupation of Sweden, and later the Russians. And now it was rubble and tourists were running around taking photos. We all agreed that we could have spent a whole day in there, but we had to get going back to Tallinn. When we arrived back in Tallinn, we went to a little restaurant in the former factory (now art student occupied) district. I had a giant chicken salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, and I don't even remember what. Only that it was amazing. That night was the hostel beer pong championship which some of our group were in, so while that was going on, Lincoln and I ran back up to our little Medieval tavern to eat more pies and drink more beer/juice. The next day we were shoving off bright and early to get to Helsinki, Finland.

There's a picture of Lincoln on the back of the ferry as we go across the Baltic Sea. Actually, I don't know if I want to call that thing a "ferry." It was a FREAKING HUGE SHIP. I'm kind of new to this whole boat-travel thing. So I was in awe that this thing with 8 floors, a grocery store, a casino, and 37 restaurants and bars could FLOAT. When we landed in Helsinki and got off the boat, we had to take a bus into the center of town. When we got off the bus we were suddenly surrounded by dozens of gypsy music groups. Each of them trying to play louder than the next. Helsinki reminded me a lot of Prague in some ways. Many of the buildings were just so elaborately decorated it didn't seem real. We caught another boat that took us to a small island called Suomenlinna where we made our way to the southern tip to check out the old fortress. Needless to say, it was simply epic. We found creepy places to crawl and giant cannons to play on. Here is a photo of the whole group (minus Lincoln who was taking the photo) in one of the underground passageways:

We made our way back to Helsinki where we just walked around and looked at the city. It had some pretty incredible things.

We caught a 21.30 boat back to Tallinn and were happy to leave Helsinki. It wasn't a place you wanted to spend a whole day in, maybe half a day. That, and we kind of missed Tallinn. As the boat pushed out of the harbor, I went and stood on the back of the boat and decided I would stand there and watch Helsinki disappear. Lincoln came out and joined me and pretty soon we were freezing, but we had made a commitment to watch Helsinki disappear so we were going to do it. Didn't matter that it started raining and the wind was going to rip my face off... I was going to do this. It actually turned out to be a LOT of fun. First of all, I love the wind, and I love fog. We passed another smaller ferry and Lincoln and I started pretending to order commands to shoot missiles at it (doing all of this in Russian accents). "Zey take up zpaze in vater. Shoot mizzles zo zey know who zey try to raze." It's hard to write it... but you get the idea. We stood there and watched Helsinki disappear into the fog, and then walked down to the bar to join the other guys where we sat and talked until we heard the big foghorn indicated that we were arriving in Tallinn. I forgot to add one picture of Estonia that's probably one of my favorites:

Tallinn was a home away from home away from home and felt good to be back. Unfortunately we left bright and early the next day and made it back to Marburg at around 16.00. It was a very fulfilling trip and one that I needed to take badly. I hope to see Estonia again at some point, and perhaps Latvia and Lithuania as well. Actually, I just hope to see the rest of Eastern Europe and so on and so forth.