Tallinn, a Snowfall and Farewell

We had one final morning in Tallinn before returning to the airport so whilst Mike W and Helene stayed behind the rest of us went out for a last look at the city, which in 2011, along with Turku in Finland, will become the European Capital of Culture. It is already busily preparing for the occasion, planning an agenda of special events and holding competitions for ideas, creative works and ecological souvenirs. The theme the city has chosen for its 2011 programme is ‘Stories of the Seashore’ and the idea is to re-open the city to the sea, and with the help of writers, musicians and actors, tell the stories of Estonia’s spiritual and cultural connection to the sea.

As we stepped out of the front door of the hotel a single snow flake fell gently from the sky and as we looked into the clouds for more a second and then a third and then too many to count and we were delighted to see it. It wasn’t thick snow, just little dry crystals that landed on our coats and then quickly melted away but we weren’t complaining, it was snow and that was what we were hoping to see. And there was some soft blue sky as well that was competing with the clouds so it looked as though all we had hoped for was coming along at the same time.

We took the route into the city that Kim and I had discovered the day before but just as we approached the Aleksander Nevski Cathedral we had a problem when the sole on Christine’s left boot became separated from the upper and started to flap about uncontrollably making it difficult to walk. This was the just the sort of incident that required Micky Dawson because he would have been sure to have a tube of superglue or a roll of sticky tape, or perhaps even a spare pair of boots in one of his pockets to deal with the situation. We found a piece of plastic tape and made a first attempt but it wasn’t long enough and didn’t last more than a couple of hundred metres and by the time we arrived at the market we needed a better solution. Mike and I searched around, looking through litter bins and in the gutter and then just as we were about to give up we found a piece of elastic bungee rope that Mike was able to convert into a perfect fix and Christine was able to carry on.

It was snowing quite heavily by this time but it was still only tiny dry flakes and not nearly substantial enough to settle in the streets but there was already a gentle dusting on the gabled rooftops and on the Market Square Christmas tree and the town was beginning to assume a wintery appearance. There was nothing in the market that we hadn’t already seen so we completed a quick circuit and then with the snow beginning to cling to our coats decided that it was time for a final drink in Tallinn.

In one corner of the square there was an archway and behind that a narrow lane where there was a little café/bar called the Kehrwieder Chocolaterie that had an inviting appearance so we went inside and discovered a most charming shabby/chic interior with rustic furniture and comfortable chairs, the crackle of a log fire and the smell of chocolate and seasonal spices. With traditional Christmas decorations it was like a scene from a Yuletide picture postcard and we sat and chatted and enjoyed our drink and through the windows watched as the snow continued to fall.

It was so nice that we could easily have stayed longer but the morning was slipping away and so after we had settled up and used the curious single toilet in a cupboard in the corner of the room we left and strolled about the square and the side streets for just a little while longer before taking the route back to the hotel through Freedom Square and past Kiek in de Kök one last time. As we walked the snow stopped and the weather returned to the predominant grey of the last two days but we were happy now that we had seen it.

At the hotel we collected our bags, I paid 50 Eeks for the wine glass that Kim had broken the previous day and then our taxis arrived and took us back to the airport where there was a thirty minute delay before our plane departed and took us back to Stansted. This was not the best journey ever as we managed to get surrounded by young children and although I was fine because of the granddad implant it wasn’t so good for the others when a two year old in front cried and screamed for the entire journey.

We had all enjoyed Tallinn, the food, the drink, the Christmas Market, the unnecessary bus journey, the sightseeing and the snow. This was the tenth trip for the holiday club and the only anticlimax for us all was that Micky wasn’t there to share the occasion with us and we hoped that the smoked elk sausage that we bought him as a souvenir would help with his own disappointment. Unlikely!

Tallinn, Old Town

Before dining however we walked through to the opposite side of town and along the ‘wall of woolens’, so called because here there were more market stalls cut into the arches of the original city wall and then we were tempted to part with thirty Eeks each (Christine enjoyed that) to climb to the top of the tower for a two hundred metre elevated walk looking down over the rooftops and the narrow medieval streets below. Actually it wasn’t that thrilling it has to be said but we couldn’t really expect a great deal more for only £2 a ticket.

Back at street level we wandered down the delightful St Catherine’s Passage in between fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century buildings where artisans and craftsmen and women were preserving medieval crafts such as glass blowing, intricate iron work, jewellery and leather work. At the end of the passage was a basement restaurant where we stopped for a bowl of soup and a glass of beer and we successfully negotiated the potential crisis moment when Sue and Christine both found something on the menu that they could order with confidence and enjoy.

By mid afternoon when we left the subterranean restaurant it was already starting to get dark because thanks to the 'polar night' phenomenon, in the Winter Tallinn, on the same line of latitude as the Shetland Isles, enjoys only a few short hours of daylight. It has late sunrises and early sunsets, which creates incredibly short days and endlessly long nights. On an overcast day like today the effect was even worse and it is little wonder that Tallinners have been known to have a tendency toward seasonal depression as a result.

In the market the lights on the Christmas tree were starting to appear brighter and the fairy lights decorating the wooden market stalls looked inviting and tempting. We walked through again and planned to return later and then with the temperature dropping again and a renewed optimism about the prospects of snow we made our way back to the Von Stackelberg.

We needed some beers and a bottle of wine but we didn’t pass any shops so as it was still early Mike S and I walked around the city ring road in search of a mini market. The route we chose took us towards the railway station and this wasn’t any real surprise because is a railway man by profession and enthusiasm and after about a kilometre or so we were outside the ticket office and an impressive Soviet Steam Engine, the L2317, a 2-10-0 locomotive built in 1953 in Russia at a factory in the Moscow railway suburb city of Kolomna. The Russian L-series locomotives were one of the more advanced steam locomotives built in the former Soviet Union. They used stocker to feed coal and had a relatively low axle load of eighteen tonnes to be compatible with the clapped-out railroads of post war Eastern Europe. It was a mighty black iron beast with red wheels of almost ninety tonnes that really deserved a name rather than just a number, which during its working life pulled mostly freight trains between Russia and Estonia and after it was decommissioned was rather ignominiously used as a static boiler to heat nearby houses. It has been externally restored now and sits tall and proud outside the railway station, which was where we went next.

We were now in the working part of the city and a long way from the Christmas market and the students dressed in medieval costumes and the overpriced restaurants. The station felt tired and past its best and next to it was a tram station that conjured up images of the old days of the Soviet Empire and what was surprising was that the passengers on board looked grey and tired and firmly locked permanently into a 1960s Tallinn time warp. The trams whirred and screeched and sounded bells to warn of their approach as they drew up and pulled off, setting down and picking up and clattering away again between the rows of old wooden houses and out towards the proletarian flats of the city suburbs.

Next to the station in an ugly 1970s concrete shopping mall we came across a two-story traditional food market selling fish, meat, vegetables and everything for the working class weekly shop. Everything that is apart from alcohol so we were about to give up when we came across a small kiosk with cans of Estonian beer in the fridge and a screw cap bottle of blossom hill red wine. Not exactly traditional but without a corkscrew we were severely limited for choice.

Mike and I returned to the hotel and shared out the alcohol. I went back to the room to drink it and Mike went back for a second look at the L2317 and the finer details of the Baltic Station that we had missed the first time around.

Later we all met up in reception and wrapped up in hats, scarves and thermal gloves walked back into town making our way past the skating rink that we decided to leave until tomorrow, towards the Raekoja Plats where we were surprised to find the market closed. It was only eight o’clock and I would have thought a Times listed top twenty Christmas market would still be open in the evening.

We dealt with the disappointment as best we could and then began the search for a suitable eating establishment. We didn’t take too long over this and agreed upon one of the medieval banquet houses, the Peppersack, that was located in an old building not far from the Town Hall Square. There was a good menu of hearty food and we enjoyed meat skewers and fillets and best of all plenty of Estonian beer and wine to wash it all down. All we needed now was some snow but sadly there was none as we left the restaurant and walked back to the hotel with the objective of a final night cap. There was no hope of that at the Von Stackleberg because the bar was closed so we wandered across the road instead to a modern glitzy hotel that was still open, and our final drink and made our day one assessment of Tallinn, which we agreed we all liked, before calling it a day and agreeing to meet at nine o’clock in the morning for breakfast.

Tallinn, Christmas Market

One of Micky’s important little jobs on our trips away is to get up early, go for a walk and bring back a full weather report and assessment for the day ahead but without him no one else was prepared to accept the responsibility so we had to rely instead on the view from the bedroom window and when I woke and looked out it was still dark and although there was no snow there was no mistaking the rawness of a below zero cold Baltic morning.

The hotel breakfast was a lavish affair with a choice of continental or full English, or both if we were hungry enough! Plenty of hot tea, sausage, egg and bacon, croissants, toast, cheese, ham and a variety of pickled fishes for those who were feeling adventurous. We all ate as much as we could and when we were full we left and assembled together ten minutes later for the short walk into town.

On account of the grey skies we wrapped up in an appropriate way to tackle the bleak weather and set off for the old town and we retraced our steps from the previous night and repeated our visits to the viewing platforms overlooking the Baltic and the islands. With one of the most completely preserved medieval cities in Europe, the seacoast capital of Tallinn is a rare jewel in the north of Europe and a precious city on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It was once a medieval Hanseatic town and for long periods in history dominated by the Germans, the Swedes and the Russians and even today contains lots of influence from those days but as we walked we could tell that there was a uniqueness to the place, a bit like Riga but at only roughly half the size certainly very different.

Tallinn is a city with a long and proud tradition dating back to the medieval times and it was first recorded on a world map in 1154, although the first fortress was built on Toompea in 1050. In 1219, Valdemar II of Denmark conquered the city, but it was soon sold to the Hanseatic League in 1285. After joining the League Tallinn enjoyed unprecedented prosperity because its position as a port, a link between mainland Europe and Russia, enabled it to grow rapidly in size and wealth and many of the City's finest buildings were constructed during this period. This lasted until the sixteenth century when Sweden moved in and claimed the city and during this time of Swedish rule more fortifications were added and the architecture took on the baroque style of the times.

Just like the previous evening we were confused about how to find our way to the centre of the city not least because where we were was an elevated spot with limited access to the streets of the old town. We wandered about and corrected ourselves a couple of times before finally walking through a medieval entrance to the city and descending steps behind the city walls before finding ourselves finally at the Raekoja Plats, the Town Hall Square.



Here, in the middle of the town we had reached our objective because since 2001, from December through to the end of the first week in January, Tallinn hosts a traditional Christmas market. This is appropriate because (although this is disputed, especially in Northern Germany) the picturesque Town Hall Square is claimed to be the site of the world’s first Christmas tree, which formed part of a ritual begun in 1441, when unmarried merchants sang and danced with the town's girls around a tree, which, when they had had enough fun and drink they then burned down.

Today the market is included in the Times newspaper top twenty European Christmas markets and here in the square there were more than fifty wooden huts and stalls where visitors and locals were being tempted by (traditional? well maybe) artisan products from all over Estonia. Surrounding an enormous Christmas tree hung with lights and decorations, the vendors were selling a variety of original products including woolens, felted wool hats and slippers, buckwheat pillows, wooden bowls, wickerwork, elaborate quilts, ceramic and glassware, homemade candles, wreaths and other decorations. Traditional Estonian holiday food was also on the menu such as sauerkraut and blood sausages, hot soups, stir-fries and other seasonal treats such as gingerbread, marzipan, various local honeys, cookies and, best of all, hot mulled wine poured from copious wooden barrels.

We stopped for a drink and paid over the odds in a restaurant on the edge of the square and then left and walked through the market towards the south side of town. Here there were men and women dressed in medieval costume handing out lucky coins and trying to encourage us to dine in this or that particular restaurant. Some of us thought there must be a twist involved and fearing an obligation refused to accept the coins but Kim and I took a chance on a con and took ours and it was all completely innocent of course.

Actually it was approaching lunchtime and therefore, because of the nervousness of finding somewhere that Sue and Christine would approve of, a potential crisis time in a new country with unfamiliar cuisine. Without Micky the anxiety was all mine and weighed heavily because traditional Estonian Cuisine has developed over centuries with Germanic and Scandinavian influences and some of it is not for the faint hearted and certainly wouldn’t suit Sue’s delicate dining preferences. For a girl who turned her nose up at a plain fish salad in Portugal I was certain that she wouldn’t like sült, a sort of jellied meat dish made from pork bones, trotters and heads, or the marinated eel, Baltic sprats, sauerkraut stew or even the Christmas specialty of verivorst or blood sausage. There was no real need to worry however because although Estonians speak fondly of their traditional food they are no more likely to eat it on a regular basis than in England we are to order pease pudding, jellied eels or brawn and the according to the menu boards displayed outside the pubs and restaurants had a good selection of acceptable offerings.

Tallinn, Estonia

This year we have spent a lot of time in Western Europe and especially Spain but in December it is time to go East and visit a Christmas market and despite being disappointed in previous years on visits to Slovenia and Austria, which had been full of cheap trash from the far east, we remembered that the market in Riga in Latvia had been very good so we chose to return this year to the Baltic. Having visited Riga several times in recent years we looked this time for an alternative destination and settled on Tallinn in Estonia.

When the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia made their accession into the European Union in 2004, few people were even remotely aware of where the mysterious sounding capital cities of Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn actually were. Up until the end of the 1980s, and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, these countries were subsumed in any World Atlas into the smear of scarlet that represented the USSR and these once great cities had been hidden behind the Iron Curtain for so long that they had disappeared from the consciousness of many of their Western neighbours.

Even after they were restored to independence the view of most people was that many years under the jackboot of communism rendered them greyer than an Old Trafford sky on the first day of an Ashes Test Match and they didn’t feature on many travel itineraries. But Estonia has caught up quickly, it has more internet access than any other EU country, is the birthplace of the internet application Skype and in 2009 it was ranked sixth in the Press Freedom Index, which is an annual ranking of countries, compiled and published by ‘Reporters without Borders’ based upon an assessment of press freedom records.

http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/

Estonia is located in the North East of Europe (the most Northerly of the three Baltic States) and South of the Gulf of Finland, which separates the country from Scandinavia. It has nearly four thousand kilometres of coastline and one thousand, five hundred and twenty islands in the Baltic Sea. It is one of the smallest countries in Europe (148th in the world), and although it is larger than both Belgium and the Netherlands the population is a little over 1.3 million.

Whilst Estonia is a member state of the European Union it hasn’t met the economic criteria to join the Eurozone and this is a country that makes financial transactions in thousands rather than tens of units so for the first time since Croatia in June we had a wallet full of unfamiliar notes and were enjoying the self deception of feeling like millionaires. The currency is the Krone and is represented as Eeks so Christine was probably going to have more fun than usual!

It was a mid afternoon flight to Tallinn, which meant with the two-hour time difference that we didn’t arrive in Estonia until just after seven o’clock. Because we were flying due east we had flown deep into the night and once outside the cabin there was an icy blast from a spiteful wind that was blowing sub-zero temperatures around the Lennart Meri Airport (named after the second President of the Republic) that made us securely fasten our jackets and pull our hats down over our ears.

Thankfully it didn’t take long to get through passport control and the attentive police sniffer dog and make our way outside of the small airport building to find the best way of getting into the city. It wasn’t any warmer outside the arrivals hall as the wind forced its way under the canopies and sent the cold air searching into every corner. As we wanted to get there as quickly as possible it was a bit late to queue for a bus so on this occasion we broke one of our normal travelling rules and took a taxi for the four kilometre journey to the city and to our hotel the Von Stackelberg just on the edge of the old town. Two taxis for the eight of us because this was a holiday club trip, which was sadly one member short because Micky had had to cancel due to family business. Fellow founder members Sue and Christine were in the group and so were Mike and Margaret who had been with us before (Salzburg) and there were two new faces this time, Mike and Helene.

Our Taxi driver understood and spoke perfect English and he gave us a brief history of the city and the tourist industry, made some dining recommendations and gave us a weather forecast all in the space of fifteen minutes until we arrived at the hotel. The Von Stackelberg was an old building that had been completely refurbished and the reception was cozy with a bright modern style. After a complimentary drink we found our superior Zen room on the third floor and were delighted with the view from the window of the city and the floodlit castle. Although it was cold outside the room was warm and comfortable and so too was the basement bar and restaurant where we reassembled together after a few minutes of unpacking for a first drink in Estonia.

The waitress was keen that we order food but we didn’t have time for that because we wanted to go to the city for the market and some sightseeing so we explained this to her as best we could and then set off into town on foot. We passed underneath the floodlit walls of the Toompea Castle, the home of the Estonian Parliament, and then below the tower of the Aleksander Nevski Russian Orthodox Cathedral and on to an elevated part of the town where there were viewing platforms that looked out over the northern half of the old town, the city port and the Gulf of Finland beyond that. It was half past nine and the place was strangely deserted, perhaps because it was Sunday or maybe because it was just so cold but there were no signs of any restaurants and as we weren’t sure just how to get to the middle of the old town we worried about running out of time so all agreed that we should return to the hotel and eat there. A couple of years ago we arrived late on a Sunday night in Riga and everywhere was closed like this so this seemed like a good idea.

Back at the Von Stackelberg the friendly waitress in the black uniform that matched the contemporary hotel décor was pleased to see us and after preparing a table took our orders and served us with beer and wine. The food didn’t take long to come and it was tasty and filling and we congratulated ourselves on a good decision to return to the warmth of the hotel basement rather that wander about aimlessly in the chilly back streets and alleys of Tallinn old town.