- 30th Country I've set foot in.
- First country I've been to that was occupied by Russia between the end of WW2 and the fall of Communism in Europe (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and East Germany were all Communist but were not directly governed/occupied by Russia).
- First time I've been to a European Capital City of Culture while that city is holding the title
For the past few years I have always travelled on my own or met people while I have been away, however this time I took the whole trip with some friends. The flights cost us £33 each with Ryanair from Edinburgh and as there was 5 of us we managed to book out an entire room in a youth hostel for £15 each for 2 nights. Pretty good deal!
After weeks of deciding what to do the day came and we all headed to the airport. Our flight route took a similar path as my flight to Stockholm, only it was a much nicer day so we got a very good view of the Scottish coast, North Sea oil rigs and some mountain ranges of Norway. As night time fell we were crossing over Sweden and as we started our descent into Tallinn airport we could make out the lights of Helsinki flickering in the distance. Finland is only 80 km (50 Miles) across from Tallinn and on a good day it is possible to see the Finnish capital from some of the taller buildings.
We landed early (no surprise there as Airlines like to "pad out" timetables to make their statistics better, in this case a 2.5 hour flight was timetabled for 3 hours) and a loud fanfare was played into the cabin to mark this occasion. A lot of people clapped. We were soon off the plane and walking through Tallinn's surprisingly modern and extremely well stocked terminal building towards passport control. A quick glance and I was officially inside my 30th country!
We didn't have any bags so we made our way to the city bus and got on. Something I noticed in Tallinn, the bus drivers only opened half the door and didn't bother checking or issuing tickets, they must have assumed everyone had a travel pass or had some kind of advance purchased ticket. We had neither at the time we arrived, but I guess if we had been caught by the ticket guards then the driver wouldn't have cared as it's obviously not their job to sell tickets. There was also no obvious ticket machine by the bus stops at the airport. A sticker on the window gave the impression that there was a €40 fine for not having a ticket, so we eventually managed to give the driver €1 each, although he didn't issue any tickets to us, we felt we had bought ourselves some kind of protection!
The bus would have taken us all the way to the Port terminal building, but we were unsure where that was exactly so we got off at what seemed to be the busiest part of the city. Some Estonian people gave us some directions. It turned out we were about 10 minutes from our hostel and had we stayed on until the port we would have been right at the end of our street! We walked through the busy old town and eventually got to our hostel and checked in!
The room was very nice and warm and the hostel was furnished in an old country house kind of way. There was a kitchen and a TV room on our floor as well as a few bathrooms. As it was now approaching 10pm we headed out to get some food. Most sit down restaurants were shutting for the night so we opted for a "Hesburger" which is basicly a Finnish version of McDonalds which has spread throughout the Baltics and Scandinavia, Russia and Germany (although I have never seen them in Germany). The food was cheap, but was actually very good, certainly a lot nicer than their American counterpart!
We spent a few hours wandering around the old town city centre and then headed to a bar that our Berlitz guide recommended, which was called Hell Hunt. It was totally packed with young and old. The bar was also very cheap and we got a dessert in the form of some brownies which were very good indeed. After a few hours in here it was after 1am and some of us were tired so we headed back to the hostel. The bar showed no sign of closing any time soon. The walk back to the hostel took us past a lot of very old buildings and embassy's for a lot of countries which seem to have taken over a lot of buildings in the old town. Our hostel (tOldhouse on Uus Street) was located just outside the old city walls on the very fringe of the old town, a few doors along from the Tallinn Scottish Club! We had to take into account the clocks going forward so we went to bed at about 2am to make sure we'd be up in time for the museums opening.
Part 2 to follow...
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