Midsummer's in the Baltics

Tallinn, Estonia

27th June 2009

We spent the last 10 days abroad. We were meant to just spend 4 days in Estonia but Anja's Aunt passed away. We fly last minute to Germany and stayed there for 5 days. Then, we flew to Riga and stayed at my cousin's place.

Now, there is a bit of a pattern with alcohol, Latvia and myself. Almost every single time I go to Lativa, on the first night I like to try out all the interesting and unique drinks they have. The morning after I always feel like I'd been run over by a tank.

This time we had a few beers, chatted for a bit and then the girls went to bed and Janis and I stayed up until 5am drinking some home-made beer he had prepared. The water of the beer tasted really cold and fresh and the rest of the drink was light and a bit fruity. We damn near emptied the keg and by 5am we were shouting about various potential European conflicts we foresee happening in the near future and how they could play out. What I didn't realise is that Anja had been in bed for hours and could hear our conversation while trying to sleep. Sorry honey :(

The next day we drove to the airport and took a small-ish plane from Riga to Tallinn. The plane could only hold about 60 people but there were only about 20 onboard. The steward and stewardess were up to some kinky flirting throughout the flight. When she announced how to top-up your life vest she made blowing noises into the microphone. While we were landing they sat at the back on the plane. I glanced over to see some arms moving about and heaps of giggling going on. I expect nothing less of an air carrier :)

The plane was being thrown around like an Air Baltic stewardess as we were landing in Tallinn. Normally I'm a good flier but with the beer from the night before I was feeling sick every time we did a sudden, 150 foot drop.

In Estonia, we had a great time seeing our friends, going to the beach and having a BBQ near Keila-Joa and generally enjoying the country we love.

I only once ventured out into the Old Town. It was like another universe. It was on the last night of our stay and I just wanted to do a 25 minute walk to work off dinner. It was nothing like the rest of our trip and I started to wonder about the people there. Would they think this is all the country has to offer or that it's all they'd ever be interested in? I'm sure there are people who have a night out in the Old Town and then from then on be put off the whole country or even the region or even worse, think the rest of the country is like that.

When we flew back to London, we were approached by a man from Estonia in the immigration queue who, though born and lives in Estonia, can only speak Russian and therefore, doesn't have any citizenship to any country. He didn't say anything but instead, handed us his passport, a landing card and made a gesture for us to fill in the landing card for him for the immigration people. He had a grey flimsy-looking alien's passport from the Estonian government. Using some of the Russian I had learnt at King's College, we filled in the card for him. I was really tempted to put his profession as "Intelligence case worker". But I'm sure, either way, they probably sent his ass packing back to Tallinn.