#6. Various bowls/cups/etc. that I got from a store at COMPLETELY different times like.. years apart from each other | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ahntravels · 6 years

Text

Tallinn, condensed.

Where did I leave off...Oh, yes. Passed Customs, train, and then eventually, I landed here.

I should backtrack a little bit. The train from St. Petersburg to Tallinn isn’t actually 7.5 hours in terms of actual moving time. You are stopped for about 40 minutes at the border in Russia while officers search your cabin (literally, search) and then bring a dog around to sniff your luggage.

In NYC, the drug-sniffing dogs look like this:

The dogs are usually German Shepherds, or some other similar breed. The dog that came into my cabin looked like this:

Except the dog was short and old. I thought it was a loose pet at first until I saw the Putin-esque guy following him and I realized he was on police business.

After we past Russian customs, we had to go through Estonian customs, which took ANOTHER 40 minutes. The good bit is that they come to you, so you don’t have to get out of the train or move your luggage. You just sit there and do whatever you are doing and they ask for your passport and stare at you suspiciously.

The hallway to your train car

I bought a 2nd class ticket, which is one step above 3rd class and one behind 1st (obviously). In my cabin, there is the potential for four people to be here: 2 on the bottom (I bought a bottom ticket) and 2 in the bunks above. Luckily for me I was alone in my car, so I was able to nap above and spread out how I wished. Not sure how this would have been sharing with 3 other people, but kind of glad I didn’t have to find out.

They provide pillows, blankets, slippers, toothbrush, and wash cloth. There is a restroom at the end of the corridor, along with a microwave and tea cups for coffee/tea if you wish. I just wanted to sleep; honestly, I was really tired and felt like I was getting a cold.

Okay, so fast forward, I landed in Tallinn, got an Uber, and made it to my hotel/apartment!

It’s a really cute space. I didn’t go through an Airbnb because I really didn’t want to deal with tracking the owner down and getting keys, etc. This place kind of works like Airbnb in the sense that this is an apartment more than a hotel, but there are hotel amenities (housekeeping, 24-hour front desk, etc).

The view from my window is pretty awesome:

Where my hotel is located is 5 minutes from Old Town. I didn’t realize this, but Tallinn is where Skype was founded. There are many startups and other cultural ventures that originated here, so it is a pretty well-connected city. That, coupled with the architecture and well preserved churches and historical landmarks, Tallinn is like...movie perfect.

Case in point:

Fall is a really pretty time in Tallinn, with the leaves changing and a light mist hanging over the city. If you are looking to have a relaxing, no stress vacation, come here. Everyone speaks English, and the food and culture are really healthy. Healthy in the sense that they value quality products here; they pride themselves on selling items created in Estonia.

After wandering around yesterday, I made reservations at a VEGAN RESTAURANT! They have vegan restaurants here!

This was a “seafood” sampler: Seaweed hummus, seaweed salad, dulse, spiraled cucumbers, and “lox” carrots. Yes, surprisingly those carrots tasted like smoked salmon...the only difference was the texture. Smoked salmon has a creamer texture. But it was still yummy!

Then I had some yellow curry:

Overall, the food was delicious and I was so happy to get something that was completely vegan.

I will say that, at this point, my body is starting to rebel a little bit. It’s not happy with the 10-mile a day traversing the city travel, cross-country transportation, and questionable foreign food. And lack of sleep. I woke up today feeling the effects, and tried to talk myself out of it.

I heard about this pancake place called Absolut that has really cheap but tasty food. Even though I was feeling a little sick, I dragged myself out and decided to try it.

Guys. I will never eat another pancake again. Story time.

I’m not sure if my dad remembers, but there was this one time years ago when we went to San Diego and I think we were going to the Renaissance festival. That morning, we went to some beach place for breakfast, and they had this like...”WE DARE YOU TO EAT ALL THESE PANCAKES” advertisement. Or maybe it was like “BIGGEST PANCAKE CHALLENGE”. Anyway, I told my dad I could eat all the pancakes and he was like...okay, but you have to eat it if you order it. And I ordered it and the pancake breakfast was like 3 pancakes each a foot in diameter and they were like...WHEAT or something really dense and drowning in syrup. And I didn’t want to show that I was weak so I just kept eating them until I felt like I was going to vomit. I ended up spending the whole day at the Renaissance festival feeling absolutely horrible. My brother was able to eat one of those huge roasted turkey legs and those used to be my favorite. I was so sad I couldn’t eat it.

Sigh. I think I was always a mess.

Anyway, after that day, I really couldn’t look at breakfast the same again. Quite honestly, that experience probably contributes to why I hate eating in the morning. I just remember going a whole day feeling ill from one bad meal, and I rather avoid that.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I ordered these “pancakes”. They had all sorts of pancakes: savory and sweet. I thought a safe order was “apples and vanilla sauce” but didn’t expect what you see in that photo. The pancake was HUGE; stuffed full of warm apples and this cold vanilla sweet icing. I don’t know how people finish it. It was tasty, but definitely not vegan, and I managed halfway through before flashbacks happened to the last pancake fiasco and I just literally stopped eating and left. Oh, and that whole meal was about $6.00.

(I forgot to mention, but Estonia is on the euro. I HATE being on the euro. Basically, it’s an additional $.15 to one euro. I hate doing that math)

After that, I knew I needed to get some air and walk it off. I was still feeling kind of sick, but walking helped. I did some shopping and bought some local crafts. I then decided to just spend the day walking and exploring, and covered a good amount of land:

It says I did 7.9 km, but I did at least almost double that. I spent a lot of time exploring landmarks and areas by the water:

BTW, if you haven’t noticed, there is this weird clash of old ruins with graffiti with high rises. The old, the modern, and the bohemian.

For whatever reason, whenever I am gazing out to the water, I think about “Pirate Jenny” from The Threepenny Opera by Brecht. Specifically the Lotte Lenya version. I mean, I don’t really wish murdering a whole city first before jumping ship to my freedom, but we can all understand the sentiment of living as indentured servants to some THING.

Um, anyway. Isn’t Tallinn quite a drastic change from Russia?

This is apparently the first Estonian submarine, made out of wood. Not sure how this worked, but innovation has to start somewhere.

I took a stroll through a park, and decided to visit a nearby mall. There was supposedly a thrift store somewhere in there, and thought it may be a good place to find more trinkets.

Look how cute their shopping carts are! Everything is so clean and efficient here.

There was a grocery store in this mall, and I bought some vitamin C, B-12, and B-6. I basically just took a bunch of vitamins and about 30-minutes later felt 100 times better. With the lack of control of my food intake, I was probably suffering from vitamin deficiency, which is why I felt bad.

The other thing I noticed (I noticed it because I have to, and because I am a minority) is that the whole time I have been here I have only seen 2 black people and 1 Asian (both the black individuals and the Asian were with white people). That was it. Everyone is glaringly white here. In terms of finding any sort of ethnic restaurant or market, I found that none existed. I mean, I know there must be some because I saw that there were 3 Korean restaurants outside the city, but overall, within the city, there weren’t like any Ethiopian or Jamaican restaurants. There are a few Indian and PanAsian or EuroAsian or whatever the hell that is, but nothing like...authentic, from what I can tell.

I’m really missing ethnic food. That’s the one thing I will say that I take for granted in America; America really is a melting pot. Obviously, not everywhere in America, but for the most part you can travel anywhere within the States and see various types of people from various cultures coming together. There are ethnic markets where you can source spices and ingredients and create dishes that remind you of home. I woke up today and really wanted some good kimchi, or a big bowl of bibimbap or a nice burrito from the burrito truck near my apartment with the fresh tomatillo salsa. It’s a bit...sterile here, which isn’t a bad thing at all, just seemingly predicable.

Overall, this place is probably the closest to like...idealistic I have experienced from an objective standpoint. Good food, nice people, serene backdrop, creative, artistic, and safe. Great place to retire or take a sabbatical.

But man. I never want to eat another freaking potato again.

Tomorrow I have to check out of here at 11 AM and my boat leaves at 6PM for Stockholm. The hotel will let me store my luggage here while I wait for my ferry. So, I must sleep, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow!

0 notes