Tallinn continued

Another day begins... finally got sleep.. we went for breakfast which I will talk about later... but first I got a hold of a map... to explain where I was ... and what the city is about ... click on the map!

Map of Tallinn

So Narva Mnt. is one of the major streets... at least it was for our group... the next one kind shows the rest of the street and where we stayed.... But for the map above... it mainly shows the old town... I dont even think I need to include this picture in the stolen picture credits down below... Viru takes you right to the Town Square (I talked about it in the previous post) Raekoja Plats!... if you keep going on Viru past the church on to the Dunkri street on your right is an amazing smoking lounge... which has authentic Cuban cigars... it was actually only the second time I got to taste them (Cubans)... but that comes later on... when we were in Tallinn the first time, I got the Romeo y Julieta Churchills Cigars.. a strong but smooth cigar... loved it...
http://www.cigars-review.org/Romeo-y-Julieta-Churchills.htm

Back to them maps...

Click on the MAP!
The green dot is where we lived... our hostel.. the red dot is the cafe where we had breakfast daily... The blue dot I am going to talk about later in this post... you keep going left on Narva and you hit the old town as shown in the previous map... I am sure this description of the map really helped you guys understand the city(Right!)... I might try again in other posts... or not....

Anyways... I am losing trace of all the things we did... and the order... but I am gonna try my best...

Breakfast....Rye bread... as I told before they love this one... kinda has a sweet taste to it... I found it different from any bread I have ever tasted... different from India, US or France for that matter...

Black and sweet! :P

Information Society and e-Government in Estonia lectured by Dr. Arvo Ott, Director of the E-Academy... 10-11:30 (I still got my itinerary)
The whole country is totally connected and managed by an excellent online system. An interesting fact here is that 90% people do their taxes online. This supports tha fact that Estonia holds the first place in Internet Banking. A smart number, similar to a social security number in US, is an expensive and highly sophisticated technology adopted here for its overshadowing benefits. It combines every government related matter with personalized web pages to create a system, run by the government (Estonians trust their government). Other similar topics were discussed here as well.

So ... the blue dot on the map was a place called Kohvik something :D... dont remember...
George, Marika(other instructor) and I went to get lunch here after the lecture, while the girls stayed by the campus to get a pizza... why?... I ask WHY would you get a pizza in Estonia... This is what I had :D


Kuileib... probably spelled something else... cold fish and egg on rye bread...
Eesti Vocab 3 - Leib means Bread


Crab Salad.. and then the potato salad as well with some coffee...

Later we went for the next lecture with Matt. Russian Foreign Policy by Mr. Marko Mihkelson. Mr. Mihkelson is a member of the Parliament and Head of the European Affairs Committee and one of the best experts in Europe on contemporary Russian politics. A four hour lecture re-defined Russia, for me atleast. He started off with a history of Russia and the not so understood democracy. "Democracy is a western tool to control Russia." Origin of KGB and its involvement in the Russian politics was then discussed in detail. Which led us to Putin.

"Putin joined the KGB in 1975 upon graduation from university, and underwent a year's training at the 401st KGB school in Okhta, Leningrad. He then went on to work briefly in the Second Department (counter-intelligence) before he was transferred to the First Department, where among his duties was the monitoring of foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad, while using the cover of being a police officer with the CID." -Wiki

Putin, according to Mr. Mihkelson, used a Tsarist-Soviet legacy to build a different Russian identity depicting to a lot of similarities between Russia and Soviet Union. Though the whole point of the lecture was to understand an intelligent and up to date. The Georgian war was briefly discussed in the end, as the four hours designated to the lecture proved to be not enough.

Later we went on a city tour which was conducted by a very informative guide. Some pictures

The lady who showed us around...
she had an amazing devil dance story which I have completely forgotten now...

Once ruled by them

The old town as a walled city here

HA!

The day ended smoothly with us back in our hostel...

* If the flow of this post seems broken here and there... its because it actually is... I should have written this while I was on the trip!

Tallinn

So I arrived at the airport, got the baggages, took a right out of the exit and was greeted by Matt, one of my instructors for the trip. As we sat in the taxi, Matt pulled out his i-phone and said 17 in Estonian. We drove through the city, it did not seem much different from a regular suburb of Chicago just a little less crowded... saw the Olympic casino... didnt think much of it then... but apparently it is very huge and popular not just in Estonia but in Latvia too...anyways... we reached the hostel... hauled my suitcase and the bag pack up a set of stairs to the counter... the person at the counter checked my passport and gave me a key... I had to return the key everytime I left the dorm... as the key was shared by my room mate... I didnt really know if I had a room mate till I got to my room and saw the two single beds... Matt didnt know either... but anyways... the beds looked kinda clean... but I used my own bedsheets anyway :P

The hostel, as from the outside, looked dark and dingy... climbers on the walls... untamed yard... with weeds growing all over... the site was not that pretty that night... but it wasnt the worst either....

Eesti Vocab 1 - Aitäh means Thank you (the most used word by our group)

I kept babbling on and on about this as the first impression is an important one...

DAY1
Breakfast in a cafe a little ways away from the hostel... a picture of the chandelier was taken :D

Bread made of rye apparently is the staple food of Estonians with soup of course... bread... sprouted beans... and juice, yogurt, coffee were the most edible items on the table... I was just glad it was there... had like 5 hours of sleep in total during the travel hours... was starving...

Eesti Vocab 2 - Tere means Hello (T in Estonian is pronounced as Th, the closest thing I could think of, in English and त in Hindi, not as ट)

Anne Mai was our Estonian guide for the trip... she took us from the cafe to the European Commission for a meeting with the Head of Commission from Estonia Mr. Tovio Klaar...
I can be spotted without a hint.... the girls sitting in the front are from Michigan Tech... the rest are from San Diego University and other places... the person in the middle is Tovio Klaar.
The next paragraph is going to be about his lecture.. you can totally skip it... but he was the first guy who let us know about the European Union and how Estonia was so proud of becoming a member in 2004....

He gave a nice introduction about Estonian relations with the EU. The headquarters of the EU are at Brussels and that is where the sessions are held and Mr. Klaar was not a big fan of the place. The EU, as stated in the lecture, was formed to basically prevent a war between grance and Germany. Its formation helped disperse the power of resources like coal and steel which are needed to make arms and other things which could have increased the tensions.

The second lecture was in half hour so we were taken straight from there to the University of Tartu campus (Tallinn) rite away. Dr. Andres Kasekamp, a professor pf political science at the University of Tartu and Head of the Foreign Policy Institute, gave the students a nice understanding of the Estonian presence in NATO. Starting with how Estonia became what it is today to an indepth knowledge of the EU, an overall Estonian poltical system was cleared.

An interesting fact about the EU inclusion of Estonia was discussed as well. When a country is about to join the EU the sugar prices rise up, this probably due to the fact that sugar is shared equally among the EU countries. Also the EU decided to keep checks on sugar stocks and fine countries holding big surpluses to prevent companies stocking up on and then selling EU subsidised sugar that was imported before accession. Under the sugar regime—which is essentially a price support system—each member state is allocated two quotas, an “A” quota and a “B” quota. The total A quota equals, in principle, the Community’s annual sugar consumption. The B quota is intended to provide a surplus, so that demand can be met even in the event of crop failure. Any sugar production above the A and B quotas is referred to as “C” sugar, which must be either sold on the world market or stored and used as part of the following year’s A and B quotas. The Council determines what portion of the total A and B quotas will be assigned to each member state. The quotas allocated to each country are then divided among national sugar producers by individual country governments.

Estonia had to pay 72 million dollars as a fine for keeping a surplus stock. Though this fact did not have a lot of affect on the Estonians and their respect for the EU.

Matt took us to Old town to get some food between the lectures...

Estonian urban towns are all divided in to two parts, the Old Town and the Downtown. Old Town is always the cooler one though HA! We saw a Lamborghini and settled at a cafe to have some food.

Chicken Cesar Salad... with bitter lettuce

The view... Russian Orthodox Church in the center... will put up a better view later...

The nice lady who was serving the food that day...

After lunch we went off to the Museum of Occupation which is a privately owned and run institute. The tour guide had a short little story for pretty much all the exhibits in the museum.

The person who took us to tour the museum

A phone-booth from the occupation times

Some prison doors from different times of different Occupations

In short, Estonia was a Swedish kingdom in the middle ages. Later on it was occupied by the Germans in 1941 and the Soviet entered Estonia for the sake of fighting of the Germans.who didnt leave untill 1991 when Gorbachev produced the preistroika and glasnost notions. The different coins, uniforms and everything else can be seen in the museum. Try wiki for more info.

Matt, George and I went to the old town to get some beer while the girls went to the mall, after the museum. Matt took us around to different viewpoints from the Old Town and we had some nice beer at the end of the walk.

Liquor/Beer Count 2 - Saku Orignaal (g pronounced here as in "good", beer - better than Bud Select not as great as Heineken)

Eesti Vocab 3 - Õlu means Beer (A word I used a lot :D)

*I am no beer expert, its all as how I feel it*

The tall tower is the Devil's Church

The tall tower here is the Angel's Church and in the background is the Downtown

The Hare Krishna Hare Rama group in Estonia :D

Sarree! The town square in the background

Did you know that Estonians got their freedom from the Soviet by singing a song. No bloodshed whatsoever. The song festival which started off in 1869 gave the people courage to stand up, paired with Gorbachev's policy they pulled through. Google Song Revolution to learn more :P. Though I will tell you this, that this not the last time you will hear about it here.

A dinner at the Peppersack restaurant gave a perfect ending to the day.

The table, the food, the ambience, the skit put up by the people at the restaurant... Perfect!

I couldnt take a picture of the food, but let me tell you it was delicious. We had chicken on the table as we sat to enjoy the evening. More beer! And I think it was mutton or something of that effect which was served to us. Its hard to recall as I was too engrossed in eating :D
And before I end this post


Liquor/Beer Count 3 - Saku Tume (6.7% alcohol, got a sweeter taste to it)

Eesti Vocab 4 - Tume meansDark (used alot of times in reference to beer haha!)

Mamashri... here is a start!
Slept in my own bedsheets.

Helsinki

So... I didnt really do a whole lot of packing for the trip ... but I did some... Going to Finland.... to Estonia... and back.... Some one from the University of Tartu was supposed to meet me at the airport in Tallinn... So I set out... family dropped me off at the airport... nothing out of the ordinary happened....

I got to Helsinki... had a 10 hours layover.... so I thought I would take my chances on the Schengen visa... and arrive at the Helsinki airport.... talked to some people about it and finally decided to do it... I was really skeptical... you know the first time I was gonna do that with the visa... talked with the immigration personnel too... and he said all I needed to get to Tallinn was the boarding pass and my passport... and then I set out...

In flight as I was browsing through the stale collection of movies and tv, I had come across this travel channel show with Helsinki as its topic of the day... I had watched it ... and from that I had gotten to know about the place called the Senate Square, a central place with harbour nearby and a beautiful St. Nicholas Cathedral at the center.... So as soon as I got out of the airport with my bag pack... all I could tell the taxi driver was "Senate Square"... Reached there in certain period of time... started roaming about... saw loads of people sitting on the stairs to the Cathedral... though I might do the what the locals are enjoying... :D

Picture... when I climbed to the top of the stairs...
there were more people on the other side :P

And the other side was the cathedral

The harbour... roamed around here for a long time... looking at things...

One thing about the people here... they speak a lot of English... So this nice lady offered to try
some fish... I didnt really realize what she was giving... tasted like fish... but anyways... I took a whole box of it with some potato on top... It smelled really nice.... I went atop the same stairs and sat down to have a nice greasy lunch involving potatoes and fried fish... and then it happened....

The fish were looking at me... and by all means please click and enlarge the picture... I ate, the one looking straight at me, first... it had to be stopped.... would have ruined my whole lunch had it been left to look and judge... and another one... and another one... with every bite I could feel it... you know the feeling... when the food has a face... Anyways... ate the whole damn thing... with the fried oil and everything... it was delicious... felt like throwing up after it...

Some picture depicting the rest of the place and the inside of the cathedral

The organ

The Palace of the Council of State... designed by Carl Ludvig Engel

Statue of Alexander II backside!

Museum of Contemporary Art... I wanted to visit this one... but didnt really have time... or that is what was going on in my mind.... you know the Schengen visa and all....

So I took another taxi from the Senate Square to the airport... the taxi driver was pretty cool and more fluent in English than the last one... so I started asking about the cool places around town... he said he would drop me off to this one mall near the airport in Vantaa.... Helsinki, Vantaa and two others form like this metropolitan area.... the airport itself is called the Helsinki-Vantaa... so I thought what better to take a look at the teenage population roaming the mall and the shops, brands.... It was called Jumbo for some reason... it looked like it though... the mall was cool.... it was like one of the malls in US... you know not the great ones... but the normals ones... where you have grocery stores as well... sat at the bar in one of the restaurants.... ordered some Lapin Kulta.... good beer.... 4.8% alcohol....

Liquor/Beer Count 1 - Lapin Kulta

I kinda got the feeling, then, that the whole trip was gonna be full of good times with alcohol involved in most.... after some "people watching" as one of my friend says... I set off to the airport... prepared to be surprised by the Schengen laws... but everything sailed smoothly... and at the end of the day I was in the plane to Tallinn... it was one of the last flights... the whole airport was empty... felt a little creepy... but oh well... the day well spent in a different country... on a different soil... among different people.... felt good... another hour to Tallinn.... More later... from Pig ears to cream liquor to the beach to the twisted art to KGB... I need sleep now.