April 2019
This trip was part of my first "euro tour" for my birthday, during which I visited:
Helsinki - Tallinn - Tartu - Riga - Jurmala - Vilnius - Warsaw
First thing you should know: back then I thought travel stories were best told through video. That's not true, but you can watch the video here:
It was my first time taking a ferry from Helsinki. Ferry impressions:
- incredibly spacious inside, you could even host concerts there
- Finns are a bit crazy when it comes to alcohol and slot machines
- people sprawled out on the floor
- you can barely tell the ferry is even moving
Getting off the ferry gave me an unforgettable impression. I hadn't been to Russia for 6 years at that point. I walk out and hear endless schoolyard Russian profanity along the way. Mom, I'm home.
Note from 2022 - I get the same shock when walking through the park near Museum metro station in Prague 2022. Don't know what the deal is, but there's some kind of schoolkid spawn point there.
In the morning we went for a walk. The surprises continued - the pie sellers were unfriendly. We honestly tried speaking English. Nope, either Russian with a sour face, or nothing at all.
Went to see nature. Here it's all about the sea. Chilly. Interesting fact: public transport is free for locals. Not for us. I honestly tried to pay the driver and buy tickets in English. The driver said in Russian that it wasn't necessary.
Why I'm writing about this - because for some reason even in 2019 I felt ashamed inside and wanted to be as European as possible, kind and smart. Unfortunately, Europe and our ideas about it rarely match.
Tallinn is very noisy because of cars, the noisiest in the whole trip. The city is a bit abandoned in places, but you can feel from a kilometer away that rich Swedes and Finns will come here, buy everything up and rebuild it all.
Didn't want to live in the city, despite everything, but being there was very pleasant
The center is beautiful, non-standard, somehow black
There are hipsters, I found some perfume, really liked it, but was too cheap to buy it
Black color - the main impression of Tallinn
At the end, a mandatory note. A tourist from Prague will see 2 types of people and 2 types of life in Tallinn.
If you look closely, some people are walking around, looking ordinary.
But sometimes you look - and they're literally smiling, beautiful dogs on leashes, all blondes.
Observation: the more a person smiled, the greater the chance that there are people around them and they're all speaking Estonian together. When you start thinking about it, you can see it from a kilometer away and guess it almost with certainty.
Unpleasant. Especially considering that Estonians seem to live, well, happily. And Russians, even with Estonian passports, well, not really.