Tallinn (Estonia)
09 AUG - 10 AUG
One thing that I didn't know about Tallinn was that it was actually an Olympic City, not in the prime hosting sense but in the fact that little old Moscow didn't have the capacity to host yachting events and thus Tallinn was given the honour. Thus it was with that infinite sense of Soviet purpose and grandeur that they went to work on constructing a monolithic Olympic style dais which also doubled as a promenade, one that opened up right onto Tallinn Bay from its pride of place in front of the old town. The hope, it was said, were that tourists would come to Tallinn and bare witness to how grand, wonderful and intriguing a city it is and how this particular representation of the Soviet Union was so different from the Western propaganda that had infiltrated the minds of these foreign Big Mac merchants. And then, the good 'ole Soviet Union made a slight faux pas and in 1979 invaded a little country to the south called Afghanistan. Can someone say 'Oops' and can someone also add to that, 'ramifications'! In response what most western nations therefore chose to do in terms of showing their anger and the contempt of the Soviets in invading The Ghan was to boycott the their prize piece, the 1980 Olympics. For Tallinn therefore the expectation of a tourist influx and the chance to show itself off never really eventuated. Also it should be remembered that they were only hosting the YACHTING for goodness sakes, who the hell was going to sit on the shore for hours of a day and watch boats 2kms off the promenade hit their marks against an imaginary course!? In any case the mighty promenade, the sign of Soviet strength, grandeur and supremacy became the classic white elephant, and that as they say 'is all folks'. There it now remains in front of the old town walls of Tallinn, an old Eastern bloc style construction that stands starkly on the bay with no heart, no soul and no sign or intention from the Estonians of ever really utilising it or ever doing anything constructive with it. Still, I'm surprised that the young Estonians haven't rocked it as yet, perhaps they will. An outdoor Eurovision one year? Just a thought!
View of Tallinn old town from St Olaf's - at one time the tallest structure on the planet
Old town - Tallinn
Estonia has been an independent state for going on twenty years now. Russians comprise approximately 20%-25% of the population and it appears from chatting with some of the people around the town that there's no love lost between the groups. From the Russian side it seems that they feel, or at least try to convince themselves that the Estonians accept them. It sounds like the typical head in the sand type of philosophy to me. The Estonian perspective seems to be quite different and whilst there's not any real outward aggression the consensus is that they wish these guys would just buzz off, go home, and leave this little big country to find it's feet in the EU.
So let me get this right, with a seat belt or not, it's still going to be a bloodbath
View onto the bay of Tallinn- was kind of trying to get the colours of the Estonian flag in the photo...can you see it, can 'ya!?
Enough of the facts now, back to what I've actually been doing. Over the past few days I've been crashing out at the Dancing Eesti, a hostel run by an Australian, located practically in the middle of the old town. What is starting to both amuse and frustrate me a little bit on this adventure is the number of my countrymen that I keep running into. I heard a saying recently, in Estonia of all places, that goes something like this, 'You find Germans everywhere and you find Australians anywhere'. It's incredible and amusing but it also appears to be the case that everywhere you turn in Europe, (and it's true for other places also), that you will inevitably hear a familiar accent. I was in a bar called the Hell Hunt with a group of mostly Australians a night or two ago, some Germans, English and a smattering of a few others national denominations. I then managed to tack onto the end of a conversation that I could hear emanating from the bar which sounded like it was an Australian Lawyers Convention in full swing. I jumped in on this one and found out that the guys were in fact lawyers, a few years out of uni and two of them had just worked out that they'd done the same degree at UWA. Kind of amusing, kind of small world-ish in its outcome, and as I said earlier, a little frustrating to be truthful. It's almost as if there's more Australians outside of Australia than there are back at home, why are we all travelling people? What is wrong with us? LOL ... I think the way we Aussies figure it, and the way we explain in to everyone that asks us is, 'Hey, we're so bloody far away from everything that when we go, we need to go global!'. In addition, and with no disrespect to New Zealand, because it's a great destination, there's only so many times that you can jump the Tasman and go mental in Queenstown before figuring out that going mental in other places might be equally as amusing, and the Kiwi's are so damn nice, really, sometimes you just need some vodka inspired fury to get those endorphins going!
St Olaf's Cathedral - Tallinn
Alexsander Nevsky Cathedral - Tallinn
There's no perfect blue buildings here
Night view of Tallinn from the 'grand' Olympic dais
In any case our bar hopping turns into a one stop shop and I start chatting with this cool American girl that works as a masseuse on the European Poker Tour. She has as one of her clients, amongst others, Daniel Negreanu, who is an absolute legend in the poker world. A dude that is shrewd, witty and can basically read your thoughts even before you've fully formulated them yourself. She is an employee of a company that is employed by the tour and basically she travels from city to city, working on the guys whilst they're in tournament play. So, at the end of our drinking session we all ended up making it back to the Dancing Eesti digs at about 2am after a great night out, I then discover that this girl is a pretty damn good salsa dancer and has salsa, bachata and merengue preloaded onto her iphone just ready to go. It wasn't a difficult decision at that point, as the young Estonians would say, 'lets rock it'. We cut up the hostel floorboards until the sun came up, finishing up somewhere close to 6am, it was freakin' awesome.
