Estonia
East European Estonia
by James on Dec.18, 2007, under Estonia, OE
Susan was quite keen to see some snow and Christmas markets.. and I was just keen to cut the number of outstanding unseen webber.net.nz European destinations to a mere 18 countries.
So we decided on Tallinn in Estonia (just under Finland).
I sense you may be wanting to ask:
But James isn’t it cold in the middle of winter?
The answer is yes very!
On Friday the sun was out so things weren’t to bad.. but the minute the weather turned overcast we were done for. The 2-3 degrees seemed much colder than the -20 we had experienced in Norway. Susan and I spent the weekend surviving on mulled wine. The wine there is quite a bit stronger than we were used to. Either this is the Russian influence or just down to the fact that the people making it had boiled all the water off.
On Friday we looked round the old town checking out the Russian Orthodox church and climbed up the old town gate and spires. After looking at a few museums we had dinner in a small Estonia basement restaurant looked around the Christmas market in the evening. There were two main product groups on offer.
Anything knitted, preferably with a reindeer on it (socks, scarf’s, jerseys, ties you name it)
Anything made of wood, usually juniper (cups, bowls, toys, ties you name it)
Rather foolishly we decided that on Saturday we would go for a walk around Kadriog Park. Even the ducks had been effected by the colder weather and despondently waddled along the top of their frozen pound.
In the afternoon we visited Museum of Occupation and Fight for Freedom. Here we really got a glimpse of the rough deal the Estonia people got during and after WWII both by the Russians, then Germans then Russians again. Also at the museum was a special exhibit on The Ukrainian famine (1932-1933). I hadn’t appreciated how many people had been killed by the soviet policies. It left people so desperate that people resorted to cannibalism and there were reports of parents eating there dead children
On a more upbeat note, on Sunday we visited an open air museum in the outer Tallinn suburbs. It wasn’t overly exciting however I did manage to get the Pea and Ham soup I had been craving.
Next we would like to push further eastward into Russia, so hopefully our plans there come to fruition.
