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After yesterday’s tumultuous day I’m a tiny bit glad to leave Westminster village behind. I think I have literally gossiped myself out - I have been feeling a bit subdued while travelling today. No will to elbow fellow passengers in the ribs or anything.
I am in country 25 but I hope tomorrow I will be able to furnish you with a better picture, tonight we were very much still finding our feet.
Things I do notice about this new country:
- The locals are frighteningly beautiful
- The tourists are frighteningly ugly - mainly English lads on the razz
- The combined logic of these two facts mean there is unfortunately quite a few gorgeous and normal young women selling their bodies in slightly tacky bars. Not professionals but office girls trying to supplement their income. Cripes!
Nonetheless the place has a really nice vibe - the Russian contingent are quite distinct - think Simon Cowell waistbands and aligator shoes. But the Latvians are way more chilled, stylish and easy going. The city is a bit Eastern Europe meets Paris and I look forward to inestigating more tomorrow.
Night night
Jen
I had the best night’s sleep all year in the Moomin bed and woke up 55 minutes before the ferry was due to leave for Tallinn. I hadn’t even bought a ticket, country 24 was looking beyond my grasp. After the £12 kebab incident I was determined to grab a croissant at the breakfast buffet. In the end I filled my pockets with fruit and pastries like a nan and even found time to make a Bavarian ham sandwich. I did exactly the same the next day since it had worked so well.
I jogged along the dock and threw myself on the check in desk 5 mins before the departures closed. They sold me a cheap last minute ticket that was 40 euros return - half the price I was expecting. The ‘Superstar’ Baltic sealiner is pretty amazing. Every seat on it - all 2,000 of them is in a bar or restaurant. It’s a party boat for vodka tourists and most people are drunk before the boat leaves the harbour at 10.30am.
Tallinn itself is a mini Prague, perfectly preserved and strangely at odds with the kind of tourists who go there. When I arrived it was utterly deserted but when I went into a church I realised that’s where everyone was hiding. The first church was very strange and methodist seeming- TVs everywhere broadcasting what huge spartan pillars obscured; a sermon delivered simultaneously in Estonian and US telly evangelist. I climbed the tower there and you can see the pic on my Flickr of me clinging onto the steeple in fear.
The second church I went into Alexander Nevsky Cathedral was stranger still. It’s a St Petersberg style domed confection on top of the hill that represents a Russian dominated period in history that the locals would rather forget. I hadn’t twigged that this was Russian Orthodox Easter Sunday and when I when inside I was completely overwhelmed by plumes of incense. I hoped they had a fire warden on hand as the bank of candles was throwing off a fierce heat. All the signs were in Russian and people were swinging baskets of painted eggs and pictures of saints. I stepped outside and was once more alone in an empty square standing next to that funny Russian Tardis.
Everyone feels a bit special in airports - especially the box man I saw who waltzed into a perspex box, had his retinas scanned and then walked on past the line of 200 people, waving smugly in our direction. Not so much the second guy; he thought he’d give it a shot but the box got angry. He was penned and thrashed like a bear, apparently worried he’d get tazered or something.
It turns out anyone can sign up for this new eye-scanning thing to bypass security. I suppose in 6 months time it will be as normal as scanning your own groceries but for now I’m hoping to beat the crowd and shave a few valuable minutes of my transit time.
I like to think I’m getting good at going through airports faster. I’m perfecting the art of the single overnight bag. Although pride comes before a fall - I bought an elegant bottle of vanilla vodka in Tallinn then realised you can’t take it in hand luggage. In the end I made a show of presenting it to the hotel staff who gave me local tips.
Finland is a fine country with friendly boozy people and gorgeous well-designed stuff. At one point I sat down on a park bench and couldn’t believe how ergonomic, comfortable and stylish it was. Later I crossed the road to check out a chic converted brewery and then saw it was in fact a primary school.
Travelling alone was fun, I zipped all over town without hacking off my friends -going in search of an obscure Marimekko factory shop to get a cheap(er)handbag http://www.marimekko.fi/eng. And nobody was there to mind me being the ‘Poolarazzi’ & snapping away http://tinyurl.com/dfcnco. On the downside I still feel a bit weird eating alone in restaurants and I couldn’t afford to eat Finnish anyway - the restaurants serving trad cuisine were about 50 Euros a pop and I glumly settled on a £12 (12 pounds!) kebab.
In the hotel I had an extremely comfortable bed with a Moomin pillow and a booklet explaining how well my neck would be supported and offering me a choice of ear plugs, soothing music or bedtime stories ‘In a choice of languages’. Did I mention this was a 3* hotel?
You would think the Finns would be a bit smug with all their beautiful, practical objects and their social equality and whatnot. But I understand they leave that to the swedes. Helsinki’s population is about 50% students and as a city they party pretty hard. I went out to a ‘Culture Factory’ http://www.korjaamo.fi/ on the Saturday and the drunk and friendly locals almost made up for the price of the drinks.
I think everyone should go there - perhaps when we’ve joined the Euro!
Ok ok yes I know it’s no more a country than Jersey or the Isle of Man. But it’s a different place with different people and a passport control. I made up the game and I made up the rules…
My Speechy friends often say it’s a trait of being employed to draft rhetoric that you learn to divide things into a binary “People who do X” vs “People who do Y”. Since I have returned from Gibraltar I can divide my friends by their reaction to my telling them that I a baby Barbary ape climbed on my head and started combing my hair for fleas before using one of my pigtails as a rope ladder to swing down from. My friends are divided into “WHOAHHH COOOL” and the “EWWW GROSSSS!!!”. Laura and Jessamy were more of the “Ewww gross” category and at the time were more sensible than me about not getting too close to these wild animals.
The Rock itself is stunning and the caves and tunnels (all 70 km of them) are awe-inspiring. If anyone knows anyone who works at MoD, I’m keen to know if they do private tours of the MoD tunnels - they own about half the rock I think.
The tour guide people were pretty cool with the apes and had a good rapport. The place is legendary for huge bird migrations - Eagles, Hawks and Storks mainly. They had noticed these migrations coming earlier and earlier each year - a bit sobering environment-wise.
Down in the town it’s a totally different world. A different decade seemingly - the shops smelt of WH Smiths in the 1980s. We encountered some xenophobic nans. But it was still fun to experience this strange alternative universe - a bit like in the Philip Pullman books where it’s Oxford but skewed.
Having been in four different countries in 24 hours (including my own) made one day seem like a lifetime. I definitely think that if - like me- you’re a bit worried about life passing you by too quickly then doing this kind of stuff is the answer.
I just hope my numbers 23 through 30 will bring such excitement. Jenny
