TALLINN, ESTONIA
A woman was being arrested for
having the black plague for the fourth time in the last hour. It was getting
late though, and the town square had mostly emptied of the throngs of tourists
that filled the square earlier. The heart of the old city in Tallinn feels
remarkably like a Renaissance Festival but without the turkey legs and
face-painting. The restaurants on the square make for a pleasant enough place
to sit and people watch. A smattering of locals cross the square with
purposeful strides, but the old town is dominated by tourists, most travelling
as large packs straight off a cruise ship or tour bus. Around the periphery,
local kids work their first jobs as touts for the restaurants, wearing period
costume pieces slipped over their skinny jeans and chuck taylors, perfecting
their English by pitching traditionally Estonian faire and extensive wine
lists.
Narrow cobblestone streets
stretching out from the square are home to more restaurants and dozens of
souvenir shops, all promising authenticity and affordable shipping in a dozen
languages. A little further out are the wool shops slightly less popular with
the average tourist and an increasing number of bookshops and museums and quiet
residential alleys. My favorite part of the day comes at night when the big tour
groups have gone. Under the midnight sun, the crepuscular light warms the
colored buildings highlighting the brightly painted shutters and doors, I trip
over the uneven cobblestones, my attention turned upward to the flowers
spilling from window boxes, the peaked and turreted rooftops, and birds silhouetted
against the sherbet sky. It’s impossible not to be completely enchanted by this
storybook town.
After a few days in Tallinn, I
took the train south to Tartu. My time in Estonia was short, but I wanted to
see more than just the capital. Tartu bore many of the same qualities of
Tallinn- a cobblestone, pedestrian-only center, colorful stucco buildings from
another century. But Tartu also felt just a little more weathered than Tallinn.
Some combination of geography and its UNESCO World Heritage status means that the
old city in Tallinn is both impeccably preserved, and also receives many more
tourists than Tartu. In Tartu, the boundaries between old and new are a little
more muddled without the physical boundary of a city wall to mark the
transition between modernity and antiquity. The heart of the city boasts far
fewer trinket shops, and more shops and restaurants catering to locals. I don’t
see a single medieval costume.
Tartu is sleepy thanks to the Midsummer
holiday. Other country’s holidays always seem like a fun time to travel, but
the reality can be a little disappointing- everything is closed, residents
retreating to their family’s and friend’s homes for celebrations, leaving few
options for those of us passing through. I had expected things to be closed on
Saturday for Midsummer day, but had not anticipated that museums and shops
would remain closed on Sunday, and since most are normally dark on Monday, what
was left was a four-day span of time when a handful of cafes and restaurants
were the only things open. The trip to Tartu felt a little bit like a bust,
though the lack of other distractions gave me a chance to catch up on work.
Perhaps an afternoon in a café overlooking the square was not such a terrible
way to spend an afternoon. The dreamy iced coffee in front of me helped too, a
sweet coconut coffee concoction that arrived as the solution to the waiter’s
confusion over my request for milk and sugar in my iced coffee.
So two days later I took the
train north again, past community gardens and tiny greenhouses, distant church
steeples rising in distant green fields, and thick carpets of gold and purple
wildflowers. I mentally add Estonia to the list of places to return, possibly with
a vehicle as much for the possibilities for wider exploration as for the option
to buy yarn with abandon.
