A few days in the Baltics

Tallinn, Estonia

20th September 2007

I spent the past 5 days staying here in Tallinn and Riga. I only took about 3 photos of Tallinn and then, it was only because as I was leaving I realized that the only photos I had were from Riga.

The Italian president landed in Tallinn at the same time as us. Our bus from the plane to the arrivals terminal parked next to his aircraft and you could see him being greeted my the military and a band. I thought that was pretty cool. Someone could have had made a run for his aircraft since the door was open but the rifles the Estonian army chaps were carrying looked loaded :D.

During my first 2 nights in Tallinn, I stayed in a nice 4 star hotel about 5 minutes from the Estonian Parliament. Everything was perfect except there was only wifi access on the first and second floor and I was on the fourth.

I spent my days swimming, going to the sauna, shopping for cheap alcohol and spending time with my friends over here. I went with a friend to Hell Hunt the first night, the beers were like £1.50 and this place was right in the middle of the old town and full of foreigners. Normally these places in just about every other country in Europe would jack the prices and rip you off, but not here thankfully. It seems as though, everything that is important to me here, is less than half the price of what I would pay in England, if not less.

The second night, we went to Angels, which is a gay bar and club. I had to be talked into going since that stuff isn't my scene but when I got there it was really nice. Yes, there were some strange blokes wearing wings on their backs and wondering around with funny haircuts but I was with a woman so I wasn't approached or bothered by anyone. There were also a fair number of stunning women there too.

I don't discriminate against anyone based on their sexual preferences but I was aggressively approached by a gay man here in London a few months back and I had to sacrifice one of my colleges in order to get him to leave me alone.

They banned smoking inside public places in Estonia so the streets which normally were pretty quiet are now full of people smoking. It kinda adds to the atmosphere but I'm sure it's going to suck for them when -30C January comes around. They could end up dying of smoking early, not because of the cigarettes themselves, but from hypothermia.

I was going to take a wifi bus to Riga, which, for double the price of a normal ticket, you get power and the internet during the 5 hour journey between the cities. I couldn't find their sales desk at the bus station so I opted for the normal bus. It wasn't that bad actually. There is quite a bit to see outside throughout the journey and it didn't seem as long as when we drove through southern Sweden.

The only bad thing is that when you get to border control, it takes a bloody age because they take everyone's passports away, go off and check them for what seems like an eternity and then bring them back to the bus.

All the border guards I went through were being good about using the pages in my passport carefully and filling up a page before using another one. When I drove from Croatia to Austria, all the border guards stamped right in the middle of new pages or half way off the edge of a page. I hate that shit, I know they go through 1000s of people a day but this means something to me. I spent 6 months without a passport because my previous one was filled up, I know I could have had 3 or 4 more trips on that passport had the border guards not been so hasty (namely America, France, Spain, Latvia).

My last night I stayed in the cheapest hotel in Tallinn I could find. This is a description of that hotel:
* The room smelt of smoke.
* It was cold because the window wouldn't close properly.
* Most of the tv channels were in Estonian with no subtitles.
* I could hear traffic all the time.
* The outside, off in the distance, looked nice but in front of me, it looked like Chernobyl.
* The food at breakfast wasn't safe for human consumption.
* The place was crawling with Germans who would step over their own mother just to get to the breakfast before you.
* They closed the restaurant early even though I hadn't eaten a proper meal in 12 hours and had to wait other 8 until I could again. They let me sit down and everything as well before kicking me out.
* I've been threatened by men in nightclubs in Tallinn who were politer than the bloke at the front counter in this place, in fact, that bloke looked familiar.

But, to their credit, they had free wireless internet access.

When I left Tallinn to fly back to London, I checked my bag in at the airport and got my ticket. About 15 minutes later, they made an announcement for me in Russian and then in English over the intercom, asking me to report to the information desk. I just about shat myself.

I had bought shit loads of alcohol and I thought I was in for a heavy fine or would be suspected of carrying alcohol for commercial purposes. In the EU, you can take all the alcohol you want, if it's for personal use. But I remember from living next to Denmark, the number of bottles you can take and get away with changes all the time and the inspectors can take someone in for having half as much as the next guy if they think he's going to sell any of it. I've had mates kicked out of countries for 5 years for bringing in too much alcohol.

The people at the desk started speaking to me in Russian. They then pointed me over to a big grandma in a uniform who was holding my bag. She told me to open it. Then she said she wanted to see the bottles of alcohol I had. It turned out that they were just checking to see none of them were over 70%. There is a vodka sold in Estonia that is 80% alcohol and the shape of the bottle is the same as the ones I bought. They let me go after that.