Tallinn, Estonia

With less than twenty four hours spent in Riga I was whisking myself off northwards into the third and final country of the Baltic states: Estonia. Even though it is often grouped together with Latvia and Lithuania because of their common geographic location and shared twentieth century history at the hands of the Ruskies, the similarities end there. The Estonian language is in fact unrelated to the Baltic languages, being not of Indo-European origin but rather belonging to the Finno-Ugric group of languages. Its closest relatives are Finnish and to a lesser extent Hungarian. I have it on good authority that a Finnish person reading Estonian finds it hilarious, perhaps in the way that I find Dutch so snigger-inducing as an English and German speaker.

Estonia had fared the best of the Baltic countries since absorption into the EU, with particular strength in the technology and electronics sectors. Apparently the country’s technical pioneers had pushed to encourage copious wireless internet availability across the country. It sounded like a perfect place to lay up and work for a few days whilst I prepared for my assault on Russia.

As the bus entered Tallinn, the capital city, I was open-mouthed at the sights I saw. Sparkling new offices, neon-lit Toyota garages and crisp, clean buildings stood tall as we bussed it through the New Town, all evidence of the economic strength of the Baltic Tiger. From the bus station I navigated my way into a wholly different environment: the Old Town, which in complete contrast looked to have been plucked straight out of the Middle Ages.

Tallinn wasn’t short of hostels, and I had spent plenty of time doing my research and picking the best for my needs (cheap, with wifi in room). The dorm was a tiny box, little more than two sets of bunk beds with just enough room to walk between them, and was meant to house four people. One of my dormmates was already about, a Russian girl who didn’t speak English. Since I was yet to cultivate any Russian beyond Cold War terms such as perestroika and glasnost, an iron curtain hung around the room until the other two inhabitants wandered in.

I did a double-take when I saw them; they were none other than the two girls who had followed me from the bus to the hostel in Vilnius! Of all the hostels in all of, er, Tallinn… quite a coincidence. I wasn’t quite sure who was stalking who. We had a good old chat and swapped contact details, as they were off in the morning on the ferry to Helsinki.

I was astounded at the alarm wake-up call they had organised; a loud and lengthy barrage of fireworks outside. They certainly had pulled out all the stops in order to catch their ferry. Then I realised that they actually just firecrackers being set off to celebrate the Chinese New Year. I gave them a sleepy wave and nodded off back to sleep.

I made Tallinn my working base for around a week. I was happy to have found myself a comfy, cheap office, but more importantly, something about Tallinn seemed to breed quality travellers. I met a friendly mainland Chinese traveller called Zhao Yu who was studying Chemistry in Europe and taking a trip between semesters to see more of the continent, as well as a British chap who was learning to be a stage hypnotist, of all things.

Inevitably, Zhao Yu and I agreed to be hypnotised. As both fairly skeptical scientific types, it worked to varying degrees. Hypnotising us to glue our hands to our face, or to imagine a balloon tied to our hands slowly raising them up worked a treat – I was amazed – but trying to get us to forget the number 5 or our own names just didn’t work at all for either of us. The pinnacle was the chap getting me to imagine there was a parrot on my finger. He then told me it had doubled in size, and again, and again, until it filled the room. Then he shrank it back down to the size of an ant and flicked it off my finger and out the window. The bastard… he had no right to do that to my parrot! Of course, I knew it wasn’t really there, but I could picture exactly what he was saying and it felt perfectly normal to be going along with it. An utterly bizarre experience.

After hallucinating about an obese Norwegian Blue I felt my time in Tallinn really couldn’t get any more surreal, until a couple of days later I met a couple of British guys in their early twenties over on holiday, one of whom once starred in the Johnson’s baby shampoo adverts. I have to say – back when I was 8 and sat in front of the box waiting for an episode of Dangermouse, it never occurred to me that in 22 years’ time there was a chance I would be sinking pints in an Eastern European capital city with one of those little nippers having their hair washed on telly… never in a million years!