Tallinn - Days 166-167

It's all about chillin' in Tallin these last couple of days.

Sleeping in, grabbing brunch, walking around town, cooking dinner, surfing the internet, repeat... Right now I'm watching old episodes of "Friends" on Bryan's computer.

Tallinn is quite a small city with only about 400,000 inhabitants and the compact city center is easily explored in a day or two. So I went out to some of the areas surrounding old town - still touristy but less so. Yesterday I walked to the western side of the city with a large municipal park and many historical homes and also the president's palace. Estonia is a parliamentary democracy so the president only goes around attending official functions and cuts ribbons. At least that's what I was told today on the free Tallinn walking tour. It ended up being a huge group with a rather awkward guide, but still 2 solid hours of interesting information. Turns out Tallinn literally means "Danish Town" and the city has made some horrible financial decisions/investments, namely two public toilets that cost $200k each with a $35K annual maintenance fee. Pretty embarrassing considering they only generate about $3K per year...

Off to Helsinki tomorrow on an afternoon ferry. This will officially mark my last portion of the trip. Only 4 more Scandinavian countries left before heading back to the US. Of course it's also the most expensive part of the trip, and I am NOT looking forward to exorbitant prices.

Riga/Tallinn - Days 163-165

I discovered a free walking tour in Riga and decided to try it out on my last day there since my previous experiences in Sofia and Krakow were so positive. There are actually several organization who run these free tours in various cities and they are typically staffed by young volunteers and offer a more alternative experience from the typical historical city tour. And they work only fro tips so a few bucks should cover you. Plus they generally last anywhere from 2-3 hours - not a bad deal!

In Riga, the cool guide thankfully took us out of the old town and explored the "Moscow" neighborhood next door, which is a run down place with lots of history and homeless people. My host recommended it to me as a complete contrast to old town, so I was glad to walk through it with someone knowledgeable and who had lived there for a couple of years. That area also served as the Jewish Ghetto during WWII and now holds a monument dedicated to the "Latvian Oskar Schindler" - Janis Lipke. 

Later that evening I went out with my host Agnese and walked around Riga's biggest park and had some Latvian food for dinner, which is basically some kind of meat, potatoes, and salad combination. 

Now I'm in Tallinn, Estonia and arrived by bus (also around 4.5 hours from Riga) yesterday. I'm currently hosted by an American guy from Ohio, Bryan. He is a professional online poker player :) First one I've met in my life. He was also simultaneously hosting another Bryan, also an American from California who is on a bike tour of Estonia and had ridden around for a month already. 

So far in Tallinn it's been about meeting tons of new people. The first night I was here I cooked dinner for the boys (never thought I'd hear myself say that) and we went out to an Inter-Nations meet up, which is a community of expats. Then went to a salsa bar where Bryan #2 gave me a mini lesson. Then yesterday the three of us went out to grab brunch and then just sat in an outdoor cafe for a couple of hours soaking in the sun. I walked around old town by myself and then met up with them again at the weekly Tallinn CS meet up picnic. In my opinion, that was a much cooler crowd and we hung out until after 11pm and then moved the crowd to a local pub when it became too cold. That's an Estonian summer for you. When Bryan and I were walking back to the apartment at 2am, the sky was still not dark.