BE 3000: tallinn, estonia

Wow. What a simply brilliant trip. Wrote a diary, which went a little something like this:

2 June

We've arrived in Estonia. We are in fucking Estonia. Think about that for a second. ESTONIA. God I love travelling to obscure places. Most people I know have never heard of it. Dicks.

So it seems we've flown to the Arctic circle, because the sun is just not setting. I mean, it's midnight and the sun has just gone down - I think - because the sky is now a darker blue.

We've unwittingly booked into a place that doesn't believe in curtains. Ordinarily I wouldn't care, but when the sun comes up at 3am, and starts blazing through the windows, it's kind of startling. We're on like two hours of sleep.

So we are in Tallinn, the capital city. And home of Skype, weirdly enough. It's a small, compact little city that's easy to walk across. I love that. After sprawling, huge London where it's a mission to get anywhere, this is awesome.

We are staying in the Old Town, which is like a freakin' open museum. It's pristine, and completely breathtaking. Spires and onion domes everywhere, you can see the Russian influence pretty clearly, as well as the Nordic vibe. Helsinki, in Finland, is a boat ride away, so lots of Finns come across to booze on the cheap. It's a place that feels like its trying hard to be Scandinavian.

We arrived and went to a pub on Viru Street to celebrate the start of BALTIC EXTRAVAGANZAH 3000. Immediately managed to garner unwanted male attention, even though we were dressed in granny gear.
Drunk Russians and Finns are scary motherfuckers. One wanted to dance with Dove, and when she said that I was her lesbian lovah, he just got more intense. So we found a really staunch looking mafia dude and said we were with him. 


3 June


What can one do at 3am? I'm not joking - you could fucking SUNTAN at this ungodly hour; the sun is on FYE-YER. 

We have packed a lot in today, well I suppose one would, when the day is 20 hours long. 
Wandered around the Old Town taking loads of photos and still saying things like, "Dude. We are in Estonia."
Then we stopped in a little cobbled alleyway and got onto the red wine. While it's sunny, they give you blankets to dine in here. You sit down, get handed a blanket and a book of alcohol that serves as a menu.


We drank two ginormous glasses of red wine, then made a stop at a shop, bought a pair of Estonian shorts - not just any shorts, fuckin' Estonian shorts - and then found this bike tour.


After two large glasses of Cote du Rhone, was a little wobbly riding a bike over cobbles. The dude put us in high visibility jackets and took us around the greater area of Tallinn. We saw the awesome Communism blocks on the outskirts of town, and rode through the greenest forests.

I love Communism vulgarity. The brutal, shockingly oppressive modern blocks that are built in such places to house lots of people. I'm flat out weird, sure, but Dove finds these interesting too, perhaps because we studied it.

It started raining and soon we smelt like a pair of wet dogs, while stopping at the National Museum where a whole heap of ex-Communist statues had been discarded at the back of the building. Just lying there; Stalin, Lenin, factory workers looking pleased with themselves, that sort of stuff.

We stood on Stalin. That shit would've got us shot 20 years ago. See? Standing on Stalin. Right here:

Then after the bike tour, we did something unspeakable. We suddenly got raaally hungry. So we went to...MacDonalds. And ate cheeseburgers. Inhaled them. We will never speak of this again. Eating MacDonalds in a foreign country is something I would personally punish myself for. 

To undo this unforgivable and INFURIATING crime, we ate at a medieval restaurant for dinner. Salads. The thing I've noticed, is that they don't serve you a plate of green leaves here without a giant block of goat's cheese in it. Salads in Estonia----> A wheel of goat's cheese on a bed of lettuce.