In (former) Soviet Russia....

Hi everyone, sorry for being so 'postless' the last couple days, it's been crazy and I have barely had any time to write. Besides that, I was lucky enough to be one of the 300,000 stranded travelers out of London this week! So I'm just getting around to working on some blog posts of the remainder of our trip. Here goes...

Tallinn, Estonia
We arrived early in the morning, a murky thick fog covering the water, we didn't see the city until we were almost upon in. Okay, just kidding, we got in around 10 in the morning and walked into the brilliant northern sun along the Baltic coast. And so started our adventure in Tallinn. Fun fact: Tallinn, is the most Northern locations I have ever been on  Earth, it's also the northernmost capital of the European continent (not including Scandinavia).

Sunday
After getting checked in to our surprisingly upscale hotel near downtown Tallinn, I immediately went back to bed for a few hours before heading out to see the city.
In the afternoon, we took a tour of Tallinn in a few different groups and discovered some different parts of the city. My group learned about Medieval Tallinn. The city has numerous old fortifications and interesting buildings that have been around for centuries. It's amazing that many of them are still standing as Estonia has been ruled by other countries until only 1991. Our walk took us through the old town area and we tried some traditional food, saw some old shops and talked with a few locals. We got lost a couple times on our journey, but that just proved to be an experience all its own. After our tour was finished we regrouped to talk about our tours and show the pictures we had taken.
By this time we were all famished and headed to get some food at a pancake place recommended to us by a local for cheap, filling meals. Now when I think pancakes I think of light fluffy dough with butter and maple syrup. I don't think they've ever heard of maple syrup in Estonia. These pancakes were something completely different, they were easily a foot across, and folded up into quarters after being stuffed with different things, like chicken, fish, cottage cheese, shrimp, anything really. It was really a 'one pancake meal'.

After dinner we took another nice walk around the town to see what we might find and ended up taking some great pictures over the town and out toward the Baltic before heading back to the hotel.

Monday
We were up and fed early for a meeting with a Canadian (in Estonia?) Andres Kasekamp, about Estonian relations with the EU and Russia. The meeting was pretty intersting and provided us with some good information on Estonia that we would not have known otherwise.

After my academic lunch, where we eat with a teacher and talk about what we've done on the trip so far, we went to the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We had 3 different meetings about Estonia's role in the world through organizations and the EU. Being such a small country, both geographically and demographically (there are only 1.5 million people in Estonia, 300,000 of whom are Russian), Estonia has to try very hard to make itself heard. It was interesting to learn that Estonia thinks of itself more like a Nordic country, similar to Finland and Sweden than it does a Baltic country.
In the evening, though it felt more like the afternoon as the sun was still high in the sky because we were so far north, just south of the 60th parallel, my friends, Nao, Tyler, Matt, and I headed out to see the Estonian singing grounds. This was the location of the 1989 "Singing Revolution" that separated the Baltic states from Russia. The song grounds would fill with up to 400,000 people who would all sing together. I can only imagine how moving it might have been to see it.
We did not, however, get to the song grounds in a timely fashion, we managed to get lost on the Tallinn bus system. After taking the wrong numbered bus, we ended up quite literally in former Soviet Russia. We were surrounded by old empty warehouses and dilapidated railways. It literally looked like we had jumped back 30 years in time. After a little confusion and reversal of our route we did manage to get back to the main bus station and onto the right bus. Quite the adventure.

Our detour may have also been a blessing however, because by the time we got to the Song grounds the sun was just beginning to set and we were able to take some very good pictures of the song grounds, amphitheater, and stroll along the Baltic coast during sunset. The Baltic isn't the prettiest sea I've ever seen, the area around it is trash filled and the sea bed is filled with old chemicals and pesticides. In recent years there have been efforts to reverse the negative effects and keep the sea a clean and safe place. This is important as many of the people in this region depend on the Baltic for their welfare.
We headed back into town and had some dinner, some excellent, and hearty dishes with some authentic Estonian beer.

Tuesday

Our final day in Tallinn, we headed to meet with a local professor about the impacts of the EU on everyday Estonian life an the support for the EU in Estonia. We did have a bit of free time before we headed to London, so several of us decided to visit the Museum of Occupation. This 1 room museum shows the chronology of occupation in Estonia from the Russians, the the Nazis, to the Russians again. The Estonians initially treated the Nazis as liberators when they first came because of the previous years of Russian oppression. However the occupation didn't last long and at the end of the Second World War Estonia became part of the USSR for the next 40 years. The museum has some interesting artifacts of the occupations including old telephone booths, suitcases, prison doors, and even a copy of Mein Kampf. 
After the museum we took one more stroll around old town Tallinn before collecting our luggage and heading to London.
We arrived very late to London and got started early the next morning - More about London in my next post!

Overall Thoughts
Estonia is a country that's very different from other European countries and has developed in a very different way. Because of it's tormented past and numerous occupations, the Estonians are rather mistrustful of other and are slow to open up. They are however very excited to meet Americans, as many of them have never seen one in real life. We met a guy on our cruise who was so excited to meet us and take pictures with us. He told us how much he loved America and that he wanted to go there someday. It was kind of a nice change of pace from the Germans and French who just wish we would go away sometimes...
The city of Tallinn is an odd mix of 3 or 4 time periods, from it's medieval old town, to it's 18th and 19th century churches, to the blocks of Soviet built apartments and office buildings, to the new downtown area with high-rise glass banks. It's a city that cherishes the old, but also loves the new, and as a result is a city with a rich and troubled history, but also a very modern look, feel, and approach to life. It quite possibly seemed less "Eastern European" than even Prague was, surprising, as it was actually part of the USSR, not just a satellite state.
 They're also incredibly technologically advanced. Every citizen can cast national ballots online using a special identity card, they created Skype, and are working to give every citizen internet access in the coming years.
Overall Tallinn was a nice surprise as a city and a culture. I leaned a lot about somewhere that is usually skimmed over in every history book ever printed.