Since the http://www.sk-gaming.com/blog/2349/]last blog I wrote about[/url] one of my trips seemed to go over pretty well, I thought I'd do another one about the one I was just on, which was a trip to Estonia, more particularily, Tallinn. To hang out with my best friend Eicca. With a stopover on my way back in Stockholm to make final preperations for my move next spring, and also to visit my grandmother.
Note: I am writing this from memory so some small details might be a bit off, and also I might embellish a few things to make this a more interesting read, but for the most part it's 100% accurate :) Also, There are a few links, and Pictures in it, so keep your eyes peeled for URL tags, since I probably won't make it 100% clear when I use them to cut down on clutter.
So without further adieu, here we go...
Date - Friday, October 13th, 2006
Location - My house in North East Calgary
After finally getting all my packing done, which seemed to take forever considering that all I was bringing was a standard suitcase, and my trusty Rammstein shoulder bag. I ordered a Taxi, While I was waiting for the cab, I finished getting dressed. After a little debating, I decided on a pair of simple, yet expensive looking black straight leg dress pants, and a Bordeux coloured Versace sweater, and a matching beige scarf. No sooner had I finished getting ready, than my taxi arrived. After travelling no more than three blocks, I suddenly realised I had forgotten my passport. Feeling like an idiot, I turned around and went back home and grabbed it. Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at the Calgary International Airport. Quickly checked my bag, spent 10,00 CAD to get my leather shoes polished since I was to lazy to do it myself at home, then went to Montana's Saloon / Cookhouse (Also my place of employment). I only had about 90 mins to kill, so I just had a salad, and a half litre of semi-decent Valpolicella.
After I was done, I exchanged the last of my Canadian Dollars for 55€ since I knew I had a three hour layover in Frankfurt, before my flight to Tallinn; then went through security (which for once I didn't set off the metal detector) and boarded my plane; An Airbus A340 at a little after 17:00. After settling into my Business class seat (My father worked at Air Canada for 32 years, so I usually get nicer seats when I fly which is pretty nice when you're crossing the Atlantic).
As we prepared to take off, I set my watch to Central European Time. Not just because it seemed like a good time to do it, but also because by doing this it made it Saturday (even though I'm not really superstitious, I wasn't sure I really wanted to be flying on Friday the 13th hehe)
Once airborne, I had a Seafood kebab, and a couple glasses of sparkling wine, while I forced myself to watch The Da Vinci Code, which proved to be even worse than the book, even though I had thought that immpossible. After the movie was finally over, I took out my cd player, put in my copy of Rosenrot by Rammstein, and made it to "Wo bist du?" before I fell asleep.
Date - Saturday, October 14th, 2006
Location - Frankfurt International Airport, Frankfurt
A flight attendant woke me up about 45 mins outside of the airport, as we were starting to land. I shotgunned a glass of Orange juice, and two coffee's then just waited to land.
Once on the ground, I stayed seated for a few mins to let the throng of impatient people get off, then casually deboarded myself once the coast was clear.
After getting my passport stamped, I went down to belt 18 to get my bag, then went back upstairs to find out where exactly I needed to go for my Lufthansa flight to Tallinn. I located the check in painlessly enough, thanks to the astronomical flight board inside Terminal B. After standing in a gigantic lineup for about ten minutes, an employee started walking down the line, asking people where they were flying to, in the hopes she could shorten the line by getting people to split up into different check ins. When she got to me, I had a bit of a funny Conversation.
Lufthansa Girl - "Wo fligen Sie?"
Me - "Nach Tallinn."
Lufthansa Girl - "Wo?"
Me - "Tallinn, auf Estonia."
Lufthansa Girl - "Wo?"
After explaining to her where I was going (I guess it isn't just North American's who suck at geography hehe), I found my correct check in counter, checked my bag again. Cleared security again without any hassles, killed an hour at a post security bar with a few Bitburgers, then boarded my flight to Estonia.
Date - Saturday October 14th, 2006
Location - Tallinn Airport, Tallinn, Estonia
After quickly reading the interesting parts of the previous days copy of "Die Welt" and setting my watch another hour ahead to Eastern European Time, I found myself descending into Tallinn.
I got my passport stamped again which was cool (Finally I got a stamp from somewhere other than Frankfurt), and stood inline waiting for my bag. After a few minutes, I felt a slap on the back of my head, and turned around to see Eicca standing there giddy as a school girl. I found out that he had flown in from Helsinki earlier in the day, and had been waiting for a few hours by the Frankfurt gate for me. After I got my bag, we went outside, and got in a Taxi. I let him do the talking, since his Eesti is a lot better than mine, although I had hoped to improve mine a little bit in the time I was there.
Our destination was the Merchant's House Hotel, a 14-16th century property with restored features, right in the centre of Tallinn's Old Towne. In an effort to keep it as genuine as possible, vehicles aren't allowed in the old towne itself, and as such our Taxi had to drop us off up the hill from the hotel, which was fine. We split the 150 EEK bill, got our bags and walked down.
After we got checked in, and organised we both went to the locally famous Ice Baar in the hotel for a few drinks. We had both spent the past day and a half between airplanes and cars, without much food or sleep, and just wanted to relax.
We started off with a shot each of 80% Viru Valge (Really nice Estonian Vodka) served in shot glasses made of ice, followed by a few rounds of of mixed drinks. Being the typical Finn that he is, Eicca had only Finlandia with Cranberry juice, whereas I had orange juice and ???????? ?????, a really nice Russian vodka. With a little pronunciation help from Eicca, I was able to order our second round in Estonian. "Paluks veel ühed" I'm sure I probably didn't pronounce it correctly, but the bartender seemed happy that I at least made the effort. Almost everyone else in the bar was British, and didn't even bother to even try to say anything in Estonian, so I think she was happy just to hear somthing in Estonian, even if I did pronounce it badly. After that, we ended with a coffee and Vana Tallinn (Translates to Old Tallinn. It's a high proof liqueur that kind of tastes like bitter rum with vanila, that goes really well with coffee or tea). Then we both went to bed.
Date - Sunday October 15th, 2006
Location - Tallinn, Estonia
Eicca and I woke up at an reasonable hour, and had a typical breakfast of fruit, yoghurt, and toast, then went out to do some exploring. After a little bit of conversing, and some practise on my part, I learned to at least ask for directions, how to count, and a few other basic phrases, the most important of which was probably "Kas te räägite Inglise keelt?" which is the formal way to ask if someone speaks english. With our Tallinn cards in hand (tourist cards that provide substantial discounts to just about everything) we did a generic bus tour of the entire city, followed by some exploring on foot.
Here's some pictures I took, with some descriptions
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A street Car in the Downtown
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Not 100% sure what this building was, but there was a staircase leading down, so whatever it is, most of it is underground. Maybe an Estonian here can let the rest of us know what it is?
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A nice looking street
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Another old street
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We were told that this was the old KGB building. Barred windows, and steel covered basement windows. Also, can't see it in the photo, but right beside it is the chess club, named in honour of Paul Keras, Estonian Grand Master of chess, and prominent Chess Theorist.
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Downtown Tallinn, old and new combining
After getting back to the hotel, we both showered quick, then went down the square to the local Molly Malone's for a few drinks, and enjoyed a local football match. After we were done we went for dinner since it was about 19:00, we went a few blocks down to a 600 year old restaurant called "Olde Hansa" which had been reccomended to us by several people.
I would have loved to have taken some photo's of this magnificant place, to show you guys, but alas, the flash on my camera is broken, and as the entire restaurant is lit by candles only, none of my pictures turned out :(
If any of you are ever in Tallinn though, I highly reccommend this place. It really is medeval. It is designed to look the same as it did in 1400. Everything is wooden, and made in the old ways. the floor has straw on it,the staff are dressed to suit the era, the entire place is lit by candles like I said, and all the walls are hand painted with designs of the times. And to top it off, instead of radio, there were wandering chamber musicians playing violins, and harps, and what not. We both started with a glass of ale (although to call it a glass is misleading, since a glass there is actually a full litre) I had the light cinnamon flavoured beer, and Eicca tried the dark ale complete with floating herbs for flavour in it. We then split a bottle of Romanian red wine over our meal. He had wild boar with potatoes, and I had seasoned bear. The last page of the menu, listed souvenirs that the restaurant sold, so Eicca bought himself a pepper sack, and a beer stein, while I spent 800 EEK, on one of their leather and parchment menus.
We then stumbled back to the hotel (we'd both had a bit too much to drink hehe) and promptly passed out until a few hours after midday the next day.
Date - Monday October 16th, 2006
Location - Tallinn, Estonia
Like I said we both slept well into the afternoon, finally getting up at about 15:30. We ate a greasey breakfast, to help with the mild stomach aches we both had, but then feeling better went out and just wasted an afternoon walking around. We had lunch at a nice place called the African Kitchen. At nightfall, we went to a local nightclub called Club Hollywood, and had a plesant evening, drinking and socializing.
Date - Tuesday October 17th, 2006
Location - Tallinn, Estonia
After waking up early this day, Eicca and I checked out of the hotel, and went to the port, as we had a boat to catch.
Our boat was the Silja Super Sea Cat #4, which was going to take us to Helsinki. We boarded around 9:00 and set sail soon after. The boat (made in Italy) was quite nice. And very fast, it had a top speed of 38 knottical miles, and was able to bring us from Tallinn to Helsinki, port-to-port in only 1 hour and 40 minutes.
On board we did a little duty free shopping. Eicca bought himself some Vodka, and a bottle of Canadian Club, while I got a 50ml bottle of Hypnôse for my girl friend, and a 300€ Versace wallet for myself.
Here are some picturess of, and on the boat.
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A view of the boat from the harbour in Helsinki
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A view of the bar on the boat
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The wake of the boat. We guessed that it must have been jet powered, but were not 100% sure.
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A view of the Super Sea Cat #3 going in the opposite direction.
Date - Tuesday October 17th, 2006
Location - Helsinki, Finland
After docking in Helsinki, we left our luggage in a locker, since we needed to be back at the harbour at 17:00 for our boat to Stockholm. We only had a few hours to kill so we went shopping at the forum, then to a big park near the opera house that Banzai says is called the "Töölön lahden ranta" or "The beach of Töölön bay"
Here are some pictures of the park
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After that, we did some shopping at the new Forum, had a lunch at McDonald's then spent our last hour or so at the Helsinki Molly Mallones.
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Then it was a twenty minute walk back to the dock, where we boarder the Silja Serenade (sister ship to the Symphony) and waited to leave for Stockholm.
Here is a picture of the atrium on the boat, just to give you a scale of how big it is.
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After we got settled into out cabin, we went and did a bit more tax free shopping, then watched a pretty immpressive gymnast girl do some pretty amazing dances on some silk ropes tied to the roof. Pretty immpressive to see soemone dancing thrity feet in the air, with no saftey wires. Unfortuanetly we both forgot our cameras so no pictures of this :(
Later on in our Cabin Eicca got this pic of me, not quite sure what I was doing, but here it is.
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I wanted to get his photo, but he is notoriously camera shy, and refused, so I didn't. His loss I guess.
We then watched a few episodes of "House" on TV then went to bed.
Date - Wednesday October 18th, 2006
Location - Stockholm, Sweden
We got off the boat at 9:55 and hailed a cab the Slussen area of Stockholm, which is just near Gamla Stan, or the old part of the town. Did a bit of sight seeing downtown, since he has never really seen it.
Here is a picture of a really nice building near the royal palace on one of the islands in the downtown.
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After that, we went to my grandmother's apartment for the afternoon. Here are some pictures taken from her fifth story balcony.
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This is unfortuanetly, where my film ran out, and I didn't feel like buying a one time use camera, so no more pics unfortuanetly.
After this, and a lunch, we took a train about 40 mins north to a suburb called Märsta, to visit some of my friends (This is also where I will probably be moving when I move to Sweden next spring)
And had a simple dinner at a nice small cosy Irish pub, then took the train back to Stockholm later in the evening. But before heading back to my Grandmother's Eicca and I stopped into my favourite pub in Stockholm called Limmerick, to watch the Chelsea FC vs. FC Barcelona Champions League match. After some really healthy beer, and Nacho's, and a fair amount of cursing after watching Diddier Drogba (My least favourite Footballer ever) score the only goal in the 47th minute. We none the less left feeling pretty good, since even though Chelsea did win, it was still a really entertaining game. We aren't really Barca fans, we just don't like to see Chelsea win, and I'm sure a lot of you are the same hehe.
Date - Thursday October 19th, 2006
Location - Stockholm, Sweden
Another early day, followed by a 45 minute, 500 SEK taxi to the airport, I bid Eicca adieu as he left for his flight back to Turku, and I waited for my flight back to Frankfurt, then continuing on to Calgary. Nothing really too exciting happened on this day. Spent a long time travelling, tried to sleep on the long flight, but couldn't due to a sick Polish girl beside me who kept waking me up with her constand coughing, and trips to the washroom, but w/e It wasn't a huge deal.
Date - Thursday October 19th, 2006
Location - Calgary, Canada
Landed back in Calgary, went out for dinner with some freinds, then promptly went to sleep for almost twelve hours.
--THE END--
Well, that's about it. Hope you guys have at least some fun reading this, since it sure was a blast, and I highly reccommend Tallinn, to any of you wanting to travel somewhere but aren't sure where. Aside from Budapest, it is probably the nicest city I have been to
Anyway, until next time,
See ya,
Auf Wiedersehen,
Hej då,
Head Aega,
Viszontlátásra.
Mánníng Þamánð :)