i don't know how thorough i will be here, since i'm used to typing this the day things go down... so...
(yesterday,) i woke up and packed my bag. i got to the ferry terminal, lockered my backpack and bought a ticket for the ferry to Helsinki in the evening.
i then decided to start my museum tour of Tallinn. the first stop: the Marine Mine Museum. that's right. i decided to see a museum of old mines pulled from the Baltic Sea.
before i entered, however, i decided to buy a Tallinn pass, which would get me a free walking tour and entry to all museums (more or less). that required passing the museum, hiking into the center of the Old Town and buying the pass from the tourist office. so, i hiked through Old Town, passed a chocolate shop that smelled gooooood and headed for the tourist office. by the time i got there, however, i decided that the tour wasn't such a good idea and that was where a bulk of the money for the pass would go, so i decided to pass on the pass... which was all for the better, since the tourist office was closed, being sunday 'n' all. not to mention, most museums were also closed - if they hadn't been, i would've surely gone to the firefighter museum and the human health museum, which supposedly has some pretty graphic displays and photos designed to frighten children away from drugs (and probably sex as well). but they were closed... alas...
i circled around and ended up going to the chocolate shop for a coffee and an extremely rich piece of cake before going to the mine museum.
upon entering the small but filled-to-the-roof mine museum, the old caretaker got excited and started spurting out his limited knowledge of english. as i progressed through the small but filled-to-the-roof exhibit, he occasionally popped in on my browsing and offered some vague, very broken-english explanations of what i was looking at. it was an entertaining museum, to say the least.
i left the museum and headed towards Kiek in de Kök (or "Peak in the Kitchen"), a tower built in the 1400 and 1500's into the city walls. on the way, i stopped into an "antik" shop that is run by some russians. and russian it was, since it had a very large selection of soviet and nazi memorabilia. in a way, this was cheaper, faster and easier than going to Tallinn's occupation museum.
i don't remember if i've posted this or not, but i am very torn by the iconography of both the soviet and nazi eras. on one hand, the actual items themselves are fantastic and one can understand why people were persuaded by the propagandistic elements of those respective systems. the medals and clothes were consistent and symetric and there is beauty in symmetry, not to mention the symbols evoke nostalgia in a way. this feeling, to me, is proof that the propaganda still works even though the systems are dead. on the other hand, the meanings and feelings associated which each of the movements/governments/regimes are so negative and so disconcertingly evil, i can't help being simulatneously appalled by my attraction to the icons.
growing up, i (an american) was exposed to much more biased history that was anti-nazi than i was anti-soviet, so it's much harder for me to distance myself from the iconography of the soviet-era. in a sense, the evil underlying that time is less powerful or motivating on me, which is sad. plus, the idea of a true communism (or socialism, moreover) still has limited appeal as well. it's just too bad that the communism espoused by the soviets (or any other communist country) is really not communism ideologically speaking.
anyway, after the antik shop, i moved on to Kiek in de Kök which is a large tower that was built to dwarf all of the other (some 30-some) towers along the city walls. whereas the earlier towers could hold up to 8 artillery weapons, Kiek could hold 32. a big difference, if you couldn't imagine, when it came to defense. the tower was refurbished a few times and still has 6 cannonballs embedded in the walls from one of the two attacks by Ivan IV (aka Ivan the Terrible).
the tower also houses a museum which documents the history of the tower (and a little bit on Tallinn, the city) and the Livonian War. there's also an interesting video presentation by an Estonian historian. awkwardly enough, even though my guide says that Russians are not particularly liked in Estonia to this day, the video was in Russian with English subtitles and not Estonian.
after that tour, i walked around the town a little bit more, had something to drink at the cafe in the Town Hall in the main square ("Town Hall Square", strangely enough) and headed for a restaurant. in the restaurant (African cuisine), i met a German living in Aachen and an American from New Orleans who, coincidentally, is moving to Prague to teach English... and, what's more, he'll be doing so at my old school. weird coincidence, indeed.
after dinner, it was time for my ferry... or, in reality, it wasn't. you see, my scheduled ferry was cancelled. so i either had to switch my ticket for the 21:30 one, which would get me to Helsinki way too late (23:00, when i was scheduled to be actually at my hostel) or i had to take another cruise line. which i did, but i had to hike around half the harbor not knowing if there would be room before it left.
the ferry was stupid. i'm used to ferries with open air decks, at least, which this one didn't have - so i could take no photos, even though there was a spectacular sunset. this one had seats and a set-up almost like an airplane, which was ridiculous and cramped. it was only an hour and a half trip and it wasn't even full. give me a break.
arriving in Helsinki, i walked the 3 or so kilometers (plus some, since i went the wrong way for a short time) to my hostel which is, by the by, in the Olympic stadium built for the 1952 (i think) games.
Posted by iain at August 22, 2005 04:21 PM