Mark's Travels

10 years of travel blogging from 35+ countries around the world

Weekend in Estonia 7th September 2005 in Tallinn, Estonia


I finally got a change to fly out to Estonia for a weekend and drive around a bit :)

I have been encouraged by a couple of Estonian to visit the Baltic country for some time now. After a great deal of studying the country, its language and people I decided in August that I needed to check out the place.

The photos I took didn't always show the most beautiful side of Estonia nor are they an exhaustive collection of everything I came across. The photos I choose to publish represent my experience in the most summarised fashion I could conceive. I believe that sometimes I beaten up old Soviet car can be as beautiful as a 500-year-old church in a forested hillside.

On Friday I got to the airport around 4pm, checked in and said hello to a friend from Denmark who works at the airport while I waiting for my flight. The flight itself was good. You had to pay for your food and drinks but that didn't spoil anything. I flew over Holland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden on the 2 and a half hour flight.

I landed in Tallinn at 11:50pm. Gert, Norris' brother, picked me up from the airport and we drove back to his house just outside Tallinn. It was quite, cold and dark but I was still excited for what laid ahead. When we arrived, Gert's uncle joined us for a few drinks. The clubs don't open until late in Estonia so we had some time to enjoy a few drinks and get to know one another.

A little after midnight we drove out to Terrarium, a nightclub in Tallinn near the harbour, here are some pics from that night. They had a ladies night going on that night. The doors would open at 10pm for women only and for two hours, they were given free drinks and a male striptease. Then at midnight, they'd kick the gigolos out and the doors open up to men who will enter a club full of drunken Estonian girls. Gert is a VIP at this club and is friends with the head of security so we got to skip the queue and go right in.

The drinks there were cheap; the place had multiple floors with multiple rooms on each floor and two balconies overlooking the harbour and the old town. I meet quite a few really friendly people there. It's amazing how well Estonians speak English, even when they've been drinking all night. I know quite a few Canadians that wouldn't be able to hold their linguistic skills for that long. We stayed out until about 4am and I have to say, it was one of the best clubbing experiences I've ever had.



Saturday morning I woke up feeling refreshed. It was cool and quite throughout the night so I was able to sleep really well. Gert and I went and ate at Hansburger, Estonia's answer to McDonalds, for breakfast. We then drove to his office where he showed me some of the security systems that he sells for a living. We then drove down to Otepää, in southeastern Estonia, which is relatively close to Russia and Latvia. It was interesting to see so many hitchhikers along the way.

It took a few hours until we arrived at Otepää Siekluspark, an adventure park where you swing between obstacles in trees as high as 10 meters. I shall never forget that experience. I have a heap of photos attached to this article that will do a better job of explaining the concept than I ever could.

Afterward we drove to Tartu, a near by student town, and had a quick bite to eat. We had a tight schedule so I didn't have a chance to take to many photos of the place.

We then drove to some village areas near Jogeva, further north, where Gert and his brothers grew up. I got to see some places there that, according to Gert, some Estonians haven't even seen.

We took some side roads back to Tallinn though Järva-Jaani, Aegviidu and Keha. It was interesting to see these huge farming fields with big apartment blocks in the centre of them in the middle of nowhere, built by the Soviets during their occupation for collective farming.

Another thing that I found quite surprising is the road we were taking to Tallinn turned from being a normal road, to one infested with potholes, to a dirt trial, then into a normal street again and then suddenly into a huge aircraft runway.

The Soviets had built the airstrip so that if Tallinn airport was bombed, this road could serve as an alternative for aircraft bringing in supplies. This runway was absolutely huge and really long. I know that the Autobahns in Germany can be quickly converted into airfield runways but this was a lot more obvious since a 2-lane road turned into a 10-lane one.

When we got back to Tallinn, we bought some food and alcohol. The store we went to had the largest, cheapest alcohol section I had ever seen in my life.

While the food was cooking, we had a proper Nordic Sauna. It was incredibly relaxing and invigorating. They gave me a Sauna hat to protect my head and told me to breath in the hot steam that come up from the water being poured on the rocks. Those two things really helped, as I had never been in a sauna set to 100 degrees centigrade. Afterward I quickly ran into a shower that was spraying down incredibly cold water. It really took me out of my comfort zone and I screamed from the shock to my system but it was so satisfying in the end.

We watched some TV while eating our dinner. It was nice to see that so many channels were in English with Estonian subtitles. Gert told me sometimes shows are only in English with no subtitles at all. I have to say they had some of the best TV I had seen in any country, unlike in Canada or Germany were there would be heaps of shit channels and one or two that I would ever watch.

Around midnight we headed out to the clubs. The first place we went to was Bonny and Clyde, which had predominantly older cliental and quite a few English people there as well. We didn't stick around too long.

We then went to Club Terrarium, here are some pics from that night, which had a Russian-language radio station promoting a party that night. Almost everyone there I saw was speaking Russian. It took us ages to get drinks as the bartender was ignoring us and when we finally got a drink and stood out on the balcony, we saw 3 huge fights breakout. One of them involved about 11 people. We finished out drinks and left. As we were heading out the door, we saw couples violently hitting one other and shouting face to face in Russian.

We then drove to another club called Parliament, which was filled with people speaking in Estonian. I say 'filled' but the place was half-empty. It was a huge club with everything you could ask for but Saturday was a lot quieter than the night before for some reason. We chatted to a few people we had met the night before but we didn't stay long there either. Gert said I got to see a good chunk of the clubs in Tallinn so that was a bonus :)

It was good that the second night was quieter than the first, otherwise I might have never had left Estonia :)



Sunday morning we started out by walking around the old town in Tallinn. The old town has to be one of the most beautiful places, architecturally speaking, that I've seen in Europe. The churches and the ex-KGB headquarters are some of the things that interested me the most.

Afterward we went to the TV tower where you could see all of Tallinn. The elevators are about 28 years old and make very scary cable-snapping-like noises as you go up 21 floors to the viewing platform. From there I could really take in the city and understand the different parts of the city.

Tallinn is quite diverse with a medieval old town, Soviet apartment blocks, forested areas with beautiful homes right in the middle of them, sandy beaches and a beautiful harbour. I told Gert I definitely want to come back and visit soon, he replied by saying, "I'm free next weekend".

My trip back was painless, the border guard stamped my passport where I told her to and I got to fly first class on Estonian Airways. It was strange when the flight attendants thought I was Estonian and would say things like "Kas te soovite teed?" to me.


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