Tallinn – I’m back!

• By admin
• July 29, 2016
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The next morning, we cycled into Tallinn. I was keen to try the new folding bike but felt the need to unfold it somewhere private, avoiding the audience of the previous day. The cycle into town was an easy, pleasant, and flat ride along the sea front. We entered the old Town via one of the city gates in the original city wall next to a tower delicately called ‘Fat Margret’s Tower’. Estonia has the smallest population of any EU country at 1.3 million and a quarter live in Tallinn. The population grew last year by 5000 leading to a net growth last year for the first time since independence, due to immigration.

The Old Town is a beautiful and charming with tall church spires, onion domes of the orthodox cathedral and a wonderful legacy of medieval town houses. Walking the cobbled streets one is constantly approached with handouts for events or eateries – there appears to be a lot of theatre and music including a production of Midsummers Night Dream, performed in the equivalent of Tallinn’s Globe Theatre.

As with most of eastern Europe there is a long history of occupation by various other countries but mainly Germany and Russia. Tallinn and the other two Baltic states of Latvia and Lithuania, gained their (hopefully) final independence in the early 1990’s, joining the EU and NATO in 2004. We visited the Occupation Museum in Tallinn; a grey soviet building with concrete suitcases outside of the building, leading to a fascinating and poignant exhibition conveying the bleak and tragic history of deportations to Siberia, the loss of freedom and of whole families. The outer areas of the town present a strong hangover from the Soviet period, the architecture remains, dour, imperial, often derelict, and neglected. We also walked past the former KGB headquarters where dissidents facing deportation to Siberia were kept incarcerated. Apparently, during soviet times, the locals joked that it was the tallest building on the globe as it was possible to see Siberia from the basement.

We cycled back along the coast and spent another entertaining evening with our American neighbours. A lone German cyclist joined the party and was even include in the boiled egg allocation which Barbara generously cooked and distributed each morning.

Having spent a second day in Tallinn, this time experiencing not the local culture but the Italian food. A plate of perfectly cooked ravioli, the pasta amazing and the filing and fungi sauce equally so.  With such delicious food and neighbours it was difficult to tear ourselves away from the delights of Tallinn but late afternoon we packed up and headed to the west coast.