Tales from Talinn - Old meets new in Estonia

A few months ago Ivy Broadhead set off to Helsinki on a year-long University Exchange. While there she’s determined to see as much of and as many surrounding countries as possible. First stop Tallinn, the capital of Estonia which lies just across the Gulf of Finland. You can easily do it in a day, but she decided to book a hostel and stay overnight to really get a taste of the city

People have lived in Tallinn for around 5,000 years, but getting off the ferry I had the strange sensation of having arrived at some kind of medieval Disneyland, with costumed waiters and waitresses beckoning from every restaurant, and ye olde Estonian food, drink and souvenirs to buy on every street corner. You can eat hearty old-fashioned fare from wooden plates, served by smiley young women in bonnets and shawls. When we stopped for lunch at a restaurant which was also a microbrewery, our flagons of beer were brought to us by men in knee breeches. It was a strange experience. The food was as I’d expected, simple and heavy on the meat and potatoes, but good nonetheless.

We saw the main sites in a couple of hours – starting with the ornate Alexander Nevsky Russian Orthodox cathedral, where we accidentally interrupted a Sunday service. This was an experience in itself for someone used to the more basic Church of England deal; all mysterious chanting and flickering candles, with head-scarfed women crossing themselves in front of ornate altars. Like Finland, Estonia was once part of the Grand Duchy of Russia, and from some of the architecture the link is clear to see. There is also the plainer Lutheran Toomikirk, and the Estonian Parliament Building, which was once the Royal Palace, as well as the old city walls, now home to various stallholders. The old, walled part of the town is small enough to be able to set off on an aimless wander and find yourself back at your hotel half an hour later, but it’s a lovely city to walk around or sit and enjoy
some café culture and watch the world go by. Busy and hectic it isn’t, but it has an old-world, sleepy charm that certainly makes it worth a visit, although a day or two might be enough.

Locals claim that Santa Claus lives in Estonia and Tallinn’s Old Town hosts a traditional Christmas market from the end of November to the beginning of January every year, when you can try traditional Estonian holiday fare, and meet Mr Claus himself. The month before, Tallinn is taken over by the International New Music Festival for five days or so in October, which throws a spotlight on choirs, orchestras, dance theatre and the rest, with work by new and well-known musicians, composers and choreographers.

As a small country with plenty of coastline to attack, Estonia has a history of being invaded and occupied. They’ve all been there, from the Danes to the Russians to the Swedes, and of course the forces of the Third Reich during World War II. In the parcelling out of territory which followed German’s defeat, Estonia became part of the Soviet Union from whom it gained independence in 1991. It is already much more prosperous (and so less cheap) than other Eastern Bloc countries. The recession has hit Estonia hard, but when we visited the tourist industry still seemed to be going strong.

We stayed at the Old Town Alur Hostel which was cheap and basic; we paid the equivalent of about £10 for a room with twelve people sharing, about five minutes away from the main square, Raekoja Plats in the lower part of the old town. The hostel itself wasn’t wheelchair accessible, but the Estonian tourist board website assures me that there is more accessible accommodation on offer.

The newer part of the city seemed to be okay on access, although some might struggle in some parts of the old town – cobbles were a prominent feature, so expect bone-juddering if you do use a wheelchair. There are buses and trams, and tickets can be bought in kiosks or from the driver, although the city centre is certainly small enough to cover by foot.

The Estonian language is notoriously difficult; along with Finnish and Hungarian it is part of the Finno-Ugric group of languages, which are pretty much alien to any European language you can think of. Luckily, everyone speaks perfect English, and you can get by in all shops and restaurants without even opening a phrasebook let alone attempting to master the pronunciation. And again, although Estonia does have its own currency, the Estonian Kroon, you can use Euro in many of the main shops and restaurants, as well as on the ferry over (also a great way to use up leftover Kroon).

Just as Brits flock to Prague or Budapest for a cheap, boozy weekend, Finns head to Tallinn. It’s only a couple of hours away by ferry, quicker if you don’t mind paying a little more, and the limit for how much you can bring across the border seems to be however much you can possibly lift, drag or wheel onto the ferry. So quite a lot then. On the ferry back we queued up behind sweet-looking old ladies wheeling trolleys laden with Lonkkero (a kind of gin/mixer thing, very sweet, very Finnish), beer or the hard stuff. We caught the 8.55 ferry, and were impressed to see the Finns getting stuck into the booze already, and indulging in some good old Finnish tango on the dancefloor (not quite as fiery as the Argentinian version, predictably enough, but they do love their tango).

I have to admit that after weeks of complaining about extortionate Finnish prices I did rather take advantage of how cheap drinking is in Estonia, ignoring the tut-tuts of disapproving Estonian cashiers and security guards who have had quite enough of Finnish tourists turning up, getting drunk, making a mess of the place and jumping on the ferry home.

Tallinn isn’t all about drinking though, there’s also good wholesome food to be eaten, beautiful churches to look at, and traditional touristy crafty things to buy. The contrast between the old and new parts of the city is striking; towering skyscrapers a stone’s throw from quaint cobbled streets and churches and old city walls.

The city is home to about four hundred thousand people, but these are mostly concentrated in the newer part, which from what we saw was mostly shops, offices and tower blocks, and the old part of the city feels pretty small. We had hoped the cheap Estonian prices would extend beyond food and alcohol to clothes and other desirables, but from what we saw it was pretty similar to Finland, so a good £10-20 more expensive than the equivalent in the UK. If you’re after some cosy Estonian-knitted socks, fetching woolly jumpers or a hat made of bits of dead animal then go for it, but for more standard stuff I’d leave the shopping for when you get back home.

If you think Tallinn doesn’t warrant a trip for its own sake, good fast ferry links mean you can easily tie it in with a trip to Helsinki or Aland in Finland, Stockholm in Sweden or even Rostock in Germany. Of course there is more to see beyond just the capital city, and on the return ferry a French guy I’d met told me about his visit to the Klooga concentration camp to the north of Estonia, where up to 3,000 inmates at a time were held during the Nazi occupation, many of whom died at the camp. The stuff of a light weekend mini-break it might not be, but if you get the chance I’m sure it could be a moving and important experience.

Estonia is famous for its health spas, with over a dozen in the capital alone, offering treats like hot stone massages and chocolate body wraps.

There is also Pärnu, which is a little beach town on the southwest coast, where they have mud baths they claim can cure anything from joint disorders to dysfunctions of the nervous system, kind of like Lourdes I guess, but less clean. I can’t testify as to the truth of these claims, but if that’s what you look for in a holiday then good luck to you. For now I’ll stick to Tallinn, and maybe leave being “cured” of dwarfism for my next summer holiday.