Tallinn

Oops. I sort of fell off the planet for a while. I'm back now. Here's what's been going on.

Under other circumstances, like summer, I think I would like Tallinn a lot. I don't hate it. But it was snowing when I arrived and it pretty much kept snowing. It's been a long time since my feet were so cold they hurt and I worried that my toes might actually fall off. Not a good feeling.

The center of Tallinn is lovely and the gift shops (where we spent a lot more time than I usually would because it is too goddamn cold to stay outside for long) want you to think that Estonians spend their time knitting socks by fireplaces. (Well, when they're not busy glaring at you as you look around their shop. Old Estonians are not very friendly. The young people are nice, anyway.) I like the image even if it's probably not at all accurate. And falling snow really is kind of pretty. But it mostly makes me want to sit by a fireplace and knit socks, not go exploring and have adventures.

But we are tough. Ish. We can do this. We tromped out of the center to the big important art museum; my bad map reading meant we also had to scale a small steep snowy hill and hike along the sidewalk-less snowy side of a highway for a bit. We earned that Estonian art. But the guide book listed its summer hours not winter hours and when we finally arrived it was closed and we wanted to cry. My hero Peter the Great lived in Tallinn for a while and you can (sometimes) visit his old house but that was closed, too. You couldn't even see in the windows. Well, I couldn't. Peter the Great was something like seven feet tall and I guess they were built for him.

I did feel like I pulled off a little coup when the woman at the bus station didn't speak English and I bought tickets in Russian. But then someone accidentally chain-locked us out of our otherwise cozy hotel/room-above-a-restaurant and no one answered the door or any of the three phone numbers and eventually it was 1am and there was nothing left to do but get another hotel and by the time anyone showed up the next morning to let us in we had already missed that bus.

Joder. We tried to like you, Tallinn, but you did not make it easy.