Estonia

Portion of a U.S. government map of eastern Europe

Yes, I have been to Estonia several times! I was always on my way to or from Russia. I worked there on a project in Sankt-Peterburg, doing repair work in a hospital. Click here to see lots of pictures and travel stories from Russia.

I would fly to and from Helsinki, Finland. There are frequent ferries across the Gulf of Finland between there and Tallinn. I would stay in Tallinn for a couple of nights, then take an overnight train to Sankt-Peterburg.

I would return in the opposite direction, generally staying longer and visiting Estonia and the other Baltic countries.

US Government map of Estonia

Here's a view coming from the Tallinn train station early in the morning after arrival from Sankt-Peterburg. Entering the Old City via a gate through the city walls.

Tallinn was an important port for trade between Russia and Scandinavia. The Teutonic Knights and the Kingdom of Denmark fought over it during the Northern Crusades in the early 1200s. Estonia was the last country in Europe to have been Christianized — forcibly, during those crusades.

Tallinn eventually became the northernmost city of the Hanseatic League. Hence the city's German/Swedish name of Reval, from the Estonian name for the adjacent county of Rävala.

The Swedes, Danes, Teutons, and Russians fought back and forth for control of the area for centuries.

The Estonian Independence Manifesto was proclaimed in February 1918, immediately followed by Imperial Germany occupation and then a war of independence with Russia. On 2 February 1920, the Tartu Peace Treaty was signed with Soviet Russia, and Russia acknowledged the independence of the Estonian Republic.

Then World War II — Estonia was occupied by the USSR in 1940, and Nazi Germany 1941-1944. The Germans retreated in 1944 and the Soviet Union moved in and annexed Estonia into the Soviet Union.

In August 1991 the independent Estonian country was re-established.

St Olav's Church, or Oleviste Kirik in Estonian. This church is thought to have been originally built in the 1100s. The oldest known written records date back to 1267, and it was extensively rebuilt during the 1300s.

Around 1500, the building's spire reached a height of 159 meters. One motivation was for it to serve as a maritime navigational aid.

Here's the surprising part — between 1549 and 1625, it was the tallest building in the world.

The spire burned down after being struck by lightning in 1625, and after a number of rebuildings, it's now 123 meters tall.

From Wikipedia's list::

And from Wikipedia's list of tallest churches, its maximum height is the third-highest ever for a church. And at 123m it's still #27 on the all-time church-height list, and #18 among churches still standing.

Here's a view from Toompea, or Cathedral Hill, over the old city and toward the harbor. Toompea has always been the location of Estonian self-government.

Until 1991, the Soviet KGB used St Olav's tower for radio monitoring and visual surveillance.

You can see how the spire would have served as a maritime navigational aid. Ferrys run from the harbor, beyond the spire, out to the Gulf of Finland, off to the left.

As for the radio monitoring, the KGB attempted to monitor the Estonians and keep them cut off from the outside world. But Finland is not too far away across open water — radio signals, and even television signals at time, propagated across the narrow gulf. Finnish and Estonian are closely related, and so Estonians could generally follow Finnish programs. This was one reason why Estonia was the least Sovietized of the republics of the USSR.

Also, they, along with Latvia and Lithuania, where only occupied by the Soviets for about 50 years, versus the 72 or so years that Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine spent under Soviet rule. There were still many Balts who remembered pre-Soviet days in 1990.

Finally, the Baltic nations were not part of the common Slavic heritage of Russia, Belarussia, and Ukraine — their languages were entirely different, spelled with a different alphabet.

Here's the view as you approach the city walls from the harbor. This is from a visit at a much warmer and sunnier time of year than when I usually visited!

Estonia is pretty far to the north. In the summer it never gets completely dark at night. It's pleasant, but tiring, to visit then.

Most of my visits were either in March, or in late October or even early November. Maybe it's because that's what I usually saw, but I really preferred that time of year.

The large round tower is Paks Margareeta, or Fat Margaret.

To its right is Suur Rannavärav, or the Great Coastal Gate, leading through the city walls into the old city.

Here's a view through Suur Rannavärav into the old city.

The bar, inevitably named Paks Margareeta, was just inside the gate. The entrance was below the yellow sign.

Below is a quiet night in Paks Margareeta.

  Tonight: 15 EEK Saku  

Here is another church in Tallinn.

The architecture in Estonia is distinctive. Lots of very narrow Gothic spires.

Back to some more warm-weather pictures. At right is the market square at the center of the old town.

Below is the city market hall.

Above and following are some typical Old Town streets.

Where else did I go in Estonia?

I went to Tartu, which has been a university town for centuries. It's an interesting place to walk around.

It can be visited on a day trip out of Tallinn. You take the train to the Tartu station, then walk down the hill into town.

If you go the wrong way, you will end up at the high-voltage electricians' training facility, seen here. Here they learn to work on electrical power systems without being dangerously high above the ground. It's either that, or else it's The World's Most Dangerous Power Line.

On the north-east edge of Tallinn, along the Gulf of Finland coast, you find a bizarre Soviet-built monument.

It's a gigantic festival of geometry constructed from some reinforced concrete of low quality (and see my pages about working in the Russian hospital for a discussion of the generally low quality of Soviet concrete, plaster, wallpaper paste, linoleum adhesive, and all materials with delusions of stickiness).

The monument was built to commemmorate the sailing competition held there as part of the 1980 Olympics Games.

It brings to mind gargantuan drainage gutters.

And as you see here, I am not making up the part about the faulty concrete. This isn't supposed to have a camouflage pattern, it is supposed to be a smooth and uniformly colored wall.

Finally, here I am at the end of a trip.

I had met up with a friend of mine from high school, at left. He's an architect, and he moved to Tallinn for a few years. What a great place to immerse yourself in interesting architecture. He lived on the top floor of the last of the Old Town buildings shown above.

I'm on my way home with my aluminum bust of Soviet-blessed Turkic hero Dzhambul. In the cardboard suitcase purchased at the same flea market are some aluminum Lenin heads and a 1955 telephone that I have since adapted to GSM operation. I figured that cutting the "CAUTION: MEDICAL SUPPLIES" label off one of the no-longer-needed hospital shipping boxes and duct-taping it to the suitcase might keep the nosy US Customs agents out of it.

Zhambyl Zhabaev (as in the Turkic spelling), 1846-1945, was a Kazakh traditional folksinger. A prominent city in southern Kazakhstan was named for him, after being known as Talas, Namangan-i Kochek, Aulie-Ata, and Mirzoyan. Now it's back to near its original name, Taraz. It's a place to which Stalin deported large numbers of marginalized ethnic groups and enemies of the state.

From Tallinn it was a fast ride on the Tallink hydrofoil over to Helsinki, a night in the hostel near the waterfront there, and an 0600 flight to Amsterdam and then on to Chicago.

Logistics — At least learn these words:

The Estonian langauge isn't related to many other languages that you hear much about. Finnish is the most prominent Finnic language, and Estonian is the next most prominent, if that tells you anything. Then there's Saami, then Karelian, and then it starts getting really obscure. For all of them, imagine Swedes speaking Navaho.

There are fast hydrofoil ferries from Helsinki, traveling several times per day in each direction. Or, for about the same cost, you can take an overnight large ferry. Sort of a combination vehicle ferry and cruise ship, you can even get a berth in a shared cabin for not very much.

For the Finns, a weekend in Tallinn is a cheap and easy getaway. And there's a saying, "To drink like Finns in winter". Expect to see some world-class intoxication on the ship. And northbound, expect drunken Finns wrestling large bundles of liquor onto the ship.

The place I've stayed in Tallinn has been Hotell Küün, or The Barn. Originally it was an upstairs storeroom in what you would call a commercial building if it hadn't been built under Soviet domination, in which case "commercial" isn't quite right economically, and structurally it might be a bit pretentious. It was on a side street just off one corner of the main square.

Anyway, upstairs was an array of bunks. Well, really they were shallow wooden boxes with 10 cm foam sheets and rough woolen blankets. The room downstairs was a bar where you could get:

• Beer
• Coffee
• Cigarettes if you smoked, or lots of cigarette smoke if you didn't
• Music in the Eastern European style, meaning a mixture of AC/DC, Guns and Roses, and Abba.

Then the property law came into effect. It was an attempt to restore property to the descendants of its owners back in the 1930s. Five decades of Soviet construction turned this into an Estonian lottery, and poor records turned it into a fight. But somehow a fairly young guy took possession of a building just a couple of blocks off the main square. They shut down the old hostel operation and moved it into his building.

Go to the lower end of the old town hall and leave the square downhill. Take the first right (uphill), then the first left. Look for the sign along the left for the Eröötica Bäär. This is a Russian-run striptease joint, in case you somehow hadn't figured that out. Go through the archway and up the stairs to the first landing. The Barn and the strip club (which is to say the Russian brothel) no longer share a lobby, so the atmosphere had vastly improved the last time I was there. Note that it's now called Vana Tom. Contact info:
Väike-Karja 1
Tallinn, Estonia
+372-2-443465
I preferred the original Barn...

• Traveling and working in Russia
• Traveling in Latvia
• Traveling in Lithuania

• My general travel page

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