Old town during the day
The very Russian Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
Old town at night
My Baltic journey began in Estonia, the most modern country of the Baltic states. The first two days we were in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. I can see why they call it the beautiful capital, because not only is it charming and beautiful, but it is also where all the beautiful people gather. I have never seen such a large number of 6" blonds, they must grow on trees here. It has an interesting mix of Scandinavian, Russian, and Finnish influence, due to its previous Swedish and Russian rule. Thus there is a very Scandinavian Old town, a la Gamla Stan, Stockholm, but there's also an Orthodox cathedral, and lots of Finnish signs everywhere.
As a country that was just liberated from Soviet rule 10 yrs ago and just joined the EU, the heart of Tallinn is surprisingly modern. It has all the same luxury shops and infrastructure of a first-tier city, and most everyone I met spoke English embarrassingly well. No wonder Skype is basing its operations out of Estonia. Estonian's Finn-Uric linguistic origins does make it extremely difficult to learn, as it has no Latin or Greek roots and I couldn't even attempt to guess at what the words meant. My attempt at Estonian was pretty pathetic on the other hand, I only managed to pick up "Hello" and "Thank you" by the end of my stay, where as I was able to pick up a lot more French and German last time. I am always impressed by how multilingual Europeans are, especially those from small countries like Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and now Estonia. And of course it always makes me feel pathetic at how linguistically challenged I am, living in the US. It always reminds me of how ethnocentric it can be to live in the US at times, where the majority American just has a warped (at least a very self-centered) world view, where they see no need to learn about others' languages, cultures, or history. It is quite refreshing to get out and be in an environment when a country sees itself as one of many in this world, in multiple contexts and relationships that it has to delicately navigate, rather than enforcing its will as the reference country that everyone else has to live by. Granted, small countries need to be more circumspect in establishing their presence, but it's refreshing nonetheless.
We stumbled upon an unknown cafe during the day that was totally off the beaten path. Its entrance is hidden in this cavern from a side street. It's a pretty chill cafe during the day, serving some light food. But at night it turns into really cool bar where the locals gather. The night we were there happened to be a jam night for a bunch of jazz students from the Estonian Music Academy, so they gathered from all over Scandinavia and it was totally awesome. The drummer was from Sweden, bassist from Norway, and pretty much these kids gathered from all over to take this one class and study in Tallinn for the summer, so this is their regular jam session where the local students all come and hang out. I guess this has been an inspiring trip so far, first I saw Tick tick boom, then now watching these kids totally got me amped up, I've accomplished so little and squandered so much time, there is so much left to be done.
I am slogging through J.M. Roberts' History of Europe right now. I started it after last year's trip, and am hoping to finish it before this trip is over. It is a great read; analytical, systematic, and insightful, though it makes for extremely slow reading (Someone who uses more subordinate clauses in their writing than I do!) I think the distinguishing feature of a great historian is the ability to sift through and rise above all the facts and chronology to identify key themes, trends, ideologies, and paradigms which have driven world events. I think Roberts does a great job at this, as he is able to clearly articulate the key ideas around which one can construct a framework to analyze history, to understand why A, B, C, happened because of L, M, N, and how it led to X, Y, Z of today. It really helps one to understand why the world is the way it is today.
Hey, mommy he looks like me!
Statue of the Kissing Students in Tartu, one of the most romantic statues I've ever seen
One, two, three...Argh, the cafe is kicking us out, I'll have to write more later.
