I’ve wanted to take an international trip for a while and Estonia in particular (for reasons I can’t explain) has lately really interested me. Has anyone been there?
Haven’t been there, but back in the days of the Soviet Union, my Russian teacher told us all that if we ever visited the USSR we should renounce our Soviet citizenship first. The USSR would sometimes, she told us, announce that a tourist that struck them as valuable (such as a highly trained engineer) actually had Soviet citizenship for whatever reason, and would not be allowed to leave.
I’ve been to Tallinn only, and mostly the Old City because I’m a mediaevalist.
Walk the old town walls, and the Tower.
Definitely have a meal at the Olde Hansa.
If you can, get there on a market day. They have one of the best Christmas Markets I’ve experienced.
The red bus tour is a good way to get an overview of the city, and you can hop off it at the top of the Old City (by the Houses of Parliament) and walk down through the Old City that way.
I went there, about twenty years ago, so my impressions are probably out of date.
A lot of people spoke English. Nobody was interested in speaking Russian. About a third of the population was ethnic Russian (or Ukrainian). The Estonians don’t like them much, they were planted there in communist time. They tended to have the worst jobs, worst housing.
The place was rapidly modernising, and there was no shortage of anything, if you had money in your pockets.
Buildings built in communist time were falling to pieces, and it wasnt that old, either, mid 1970s.
We went to Talinn on a cruise stop, just for the day, and went to the Museum of the Occupation, which recounts oppression by the Russians. (In case anyone wonders why the Estonians don’t like the Russians very much.) It was very informative. One great thing is that they took old busts of Communist leaders and put them in the dingy hallway outside of the bathrooms in the basement.
It’s one of the places I wouldn’t mind going back to.
You must really like bathrooms😁. But really, all of this sounds great.
We also went to Tallinn on a cruise. We were in St Petersburg for two days before that. Talin was a pretty laid-back city with a lot of interesting sights.
Do not buy any amber jewellery - it’s mostly an expensive scam. Otherwise, it is pretty nice and they are in Euroland which makes things easier.
I also went to Talinn for a weekend trip. The old part is beautiful although one of the things that sticks with me is our walk towards the port area and exploring some Soviet brutalist architecture on the coast.
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Go in the summer, when the days are super-long and the weather is at its best.
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Take one of the “free” (tip-based) walking tours of Tallinn’s Old Town.
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Make sure to see the Estonian Open Air Museum, which is a bit out of the Tallinn city center. Have a traditional lunch at the museum’s “inn” (and try the kama, which is kefir mixed with powdered grains).
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The Seaplane Harbor museum is really impressive – it includes a 1930s submarine you can board.
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While you’re in the region: Riga, Latvia, is five hours away by bus, maybe four if you rent a car, and makes a rewarding comparison/contrast with Tallinn.
Tallinn was the first stop of our Nordic trip in the summer of 2019.
We stayed in the Old Town and spent most of our time there, but did wander into the rest of the city. We had an amazing meal at
which is on the Baltic Sea and has earned a Michelin star since we ate there.
The Museum of Occupations and Freedom was incredibly moving:
We also saw a very interesting exhibit in the old train station of life in Soviet times, but I believe that was not a permanent exhibit.
Also, some of the best bread in the world is in Talinn. I would go back just for the bread.
You could look up my mother’s family… Just kidding. She was born in Narva but got sent alone (possibly) to Finland in 1939. We have no idea if any of her family survived WW2.
There are National Parks you can visit.
Amen! Estonian black bread was the culinary high point of my visit to the Baltic.
BTW, the books say that people in Helsinki hop on the ferry to Talinn in order to party, but I can’t personally testify to the quality of the Talinn night life.
I did the walking tour also, definitely a good way to start.
Did any of you folks use the STEP system? Or is getting in contact with your embassy only needed in more potentially volatile countries or in the movies?
We took the ferry to Estonia from Helsinki. It’s not so much to party, as to drink, and stock up on much cheaper booze in Tallinn. Then back the same day.
That’s a very Northern Europe thing. People living close enough to a border go to the next country to get cheaper booze, as booze. It goes roughly like this (although the war has, of course, disrupted these supply chains):
Norway - > Sweden - > Finland - > Estonia (+Latvia and Lithuania) - > Poland - > Belarus or Ukraine.
From the very north of Norway people go to Finland or Russia.
From the south of Sweden the chain is: Sweden - > Denmark - > Germany - > Poland ASF.
Do you mean that, even if you were purely an American-only citizen, or a British-only, French-only, citizen, the Soviets could still nab you and declare Soviet citizenship over you anyway?
I’m Canadian, but in the age of smartphones I can’t imagine bothering. Everyone in my family would know where I was and I would probably get CNN OR New York Times news alerts long before I would hear from the local consulate.
Even pre-cell phone I never used a service like that.
I, too, spent a day in Talinn. I was taking a boat from Finland to St Petersburg, and the boat stopped in Talinn long enough for us to walk around in the old city and have lunch there.
I was impressed at how much it had been modernized, in a good way. I can’t add much, except to agree that Talinn is a very nice place to be a tourist.
Right! This is what she was saying. Proactively saying you were not Soviet before you even entered the USSR provided some kind of protection against them doing that.