My next couch hostess Mare ('sea') and I had a hard time finding
each other at the bus station in Tallinn. Her profile picture shows a blonde
with a big grin, yet here was a worried-looking brunnette. We circled each other
tentatively: 'Alexa?' 'Mare?' and then boarded a tram to her neighborhood by the
harbor. Big cruise ships from Scandinavia! (Some Swedes make the trip to have
their hair done cheaply!) As a 'pensioner' my fare was free. Mare cooked a
lunch of orange mushrooms and potatoes in her beautifully remodeled flat in an
old building. I met her daughter, a film student, who lent me an English book to
read, Solar by Ewan McGregor, a comic look at the energy crisis. Then we
walked through the old town as Mare returned to work - ramparts, towers,
medieval lanes, churches and cafes in picturesque squares. I visited a photo
museum in the old jail and loaded up with supplies from a supermarket, only
getting slightly lost going 'home'.
Mare was married to a Bulgarian and
does Bulgarian/Estonian translations besides her day job with the choral
society. Estonia has a big national song festival every four years. She told me
about a Bulgarian man who was dropped off in Estonia. He thought he was headed
for Sweden or Switzerland for work, but he was certain he was still in Bulgaria,
being illiterate. Mare sorted all this out for the police. Her son was soon
returning from the States where he had a terrible job for an outfit called
Southwest, trying to sell books door to door. I had the same miserable
experience briefly with encyclopedias.
Mare gave up
her pretty bedroom and slept in the kitchen. I was gatekeeper for the cat who
used the bedroom window to go in and out. We went to an intimate medieval
concert in an old tower with songs by Purcell and original instruments, Hornus
Musicus (Garden of Music). Later we had mulled wine in a cafe frequented by
Couchsurfers. Rain ruined a planned excursion to the country but then the
weather cleared and we found an open house event for the opening of the
ballet/opera/orchestra season with free performances of all three. At the end we
all joined hands for a satellite photo of the event, circling the national
theatre. Then we boarded a tram to the outskirts to see Tsarina Katherine's
palace and gardens (closed for renovations), her husband Peter the Great's
humble cottage, and the massive site of the national song celebration near the
sea. Warm delicious soup, then back home for tea and sweets to meet my next
couch, a Russian woman, Svetlana, her boyfriend Alex, and at her modern flat
outside the city, her son Andre, who attends a Russian school and doesn't speak
Estonian.
Mare had told me the Soviets had broken up families, sending
Estonians to Siberia, men separated from their wives and children, many never to
return. Estonia was a free nation until the Second World War, when part of the
old city was bombed by the Russians, though they denied it. Russian is widely
spoken and many were imported to this country with a higher standard of living.
In the Middle Ages the blackhead guilds prospered and eventually became part of
the Hanseatic League, never having a king. Germany was a favored partner until
the war. But you can hardly blame present day Russian speakers for the crimes of
their parents or grandparents.
At Svetlana's, on the outskirts, I
learned to take the bus to the tram into the city and bought a three-day Tallinn
card for forty euros but only by using the costly hop-on-hop-off doubledecker
red buses could I justify the expense. The Kumu Art Museum near Katherine's
closed palace took a day to see. Very haunting was a room full of sculpted
heads, including Lenin's, with a recording of chatter as if all those heads were
endlessly arguing. And I was spellbound by a seventy-minute video of a large
black and white drawing of an old mansion on a river that slowly transformed
with the odd leaf falling, bird flying, boat passing into a forested ruin and
back again to a crumbling mansion.
I visited the
museum of the occupation (WWII until l99l) where rows of old suitcases and
documentary films told the sad story. I explored a medieval tower, the Tallinn
and Estonian history museums and an outdoor museum of thatched farmhouses,
churches and schools from all over the country. The place to eat was Lido, a
cafeteria of Estonian dishes. I could sit in the lobby of the biggest hotel and
catch up on my Kindle Fire. I doggedly got my free coffee, marzipan bar and
reduced unfiltered beer to get the last value from my Tallinn card.
My
last day in the city I caught a cold and Svetlana gave me ginger tea and let me
sleep. She had uploaded hundreds of photos (will you ever see them?) onto Picasa
web, generous with her time for such a busy working mother. She left me at
Mare's office the day I took the bus to Riga so I could look around one last
time unencumbered by my luggage. But I left my camera behind, and Mare kindly
sent it on to me.
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