During the raging flu virus, every journey becomes a difficult test for the psychological state. You look not so much at the list of attractions as at the reports from the fields of medical battles. In this regard, my August visit to Latvia and Estonia seemed ideal. The virus has spared these countries and nothing interfered with a quiet tourist vacation. He spent most of the trip in his native Riga, while he allotted only one day to Tallinn. Let's see what I managed to see there.
8:00 I
was going to arrive by bus from Riga at about midnight, so I wanted to find a hotel somewhere near the bus station to avoid unnecessary night stress. It is desirable to be inexpensive, clean and without a lot of negative reviews on the Internet. I wanted a lot and to my surprise, such a hotel was found easily, it turned out to be an ordinary chain "Ibis". Although, which means ordinary, I have not yet seen such advanced Ibis, the most gorgeous designer minimalism in every detail!
Everything is stylish, clean and nevertheless I will not recommend this hotel. The problem is location. It seems that Tallinn is a small town, but there are distances. So you have to walk and 1.5 km from the hotel door to the entrance doors of the old city (and all 2.5 km to the far corner of the old city) are not at all pleasing. Moreover, I did not notice any special sights between the hotel and the old town.
I noticed the views of the dull Soviet panel landscape. Even if in some places they tried to ennoble with art, it did not help, only a complete, ruthless "renovation"!
8:15 am
There is still some attraction within a 3-minute walk from the hotel. I'm talking about the old "Central" market. The attraction is controversial, not that it immediately smelled of the dark past with all its delights in the form of bazaar rudeness and rotten potatoes. No, I did not see anything particularly terrible in this market, but of course there is a mess and devastation.
I wanted coffee so I did not pass by the market cafe-kiosk. What can I say, I could safely walk by! The coffee was disgusting and the salmon and egg sandwiches look better in the photo than they tasted. And don't think that it was so cheap, I paid 3.5 euros for the composition "Breakfast at the Bazaar".
Tallinn Central Bazaar is a completely Russian-speaking place, but the language law is present here in the same way as in Latvia. Only if in Riga my remnants of Latvian are enough for me to distinguish a pie with meat from a pie with cabbage, then in Tallinn everything is more complicated. I had to ask again, what do I actually see?
8:45
After a short thought, he took a whitewash and did not regret it - it was at the level of the highest world whitewash standards! Believe me, I have something to compare with. Fresh hot baked goods, decent filling, what else should be in a good whitewash? Not surprisingly, the next morning I returned to the bazaar and took two twin brothers of this handsome man from the photograph to the airport. Well, yes, someone brings memories of beer from Tallinn, someone of fish, but I took away the taste of whitewash!
9:00
Next stop is the train station. It is three kilometers from the bazaar to the railway station, I had to get acquainted with the Tallinn tram. Everything is fine, but I still haven't figured out where to buy tickets. However, why buy them, if you can attach a credit card to such a sensor unit and, voila, minus 1.5 euros, plus complete peace of mind. I can't say how the control process takes place on a credit card. for 4 trips I was never checked.
9:10
The station itself did not interest me in the least. The purpose of the trip was near the train station and was called "Balti Jaama Turg", i.e. market of the balti station.
From one market I went to another and in 10 minutes of tram trip I managed to move 50 years that way! From the expensive depresnyak of the Soviet bazaar to the expensive modern hipster food mega-point.
Trade goes according to the laws of the genre, the image is our everything! If dumplings, then from the Vikings backlit.
If kvass, then definitely draft from a barrel, of course, at a completely non-kosher price.
Cakes with buttons, original.
9:40 am
Just behind the station market is another cultural landmark, the Telliskivi art-design district (ie brick)
Cafes on trams, on trains ...
If they could, a cafe was also organized in the cistern, but so far only so.
Wine bar for nudists. Bold, fresh, but what should the dressed guests do?
The only answer is to walk and look at the drawings on the brick walls.
I start to like Tallinn more and more. Belyashi, provocative graffiti, cakes with buttons and that I have not yet reached the real tourist spots.
In Soviet times, there was a huge electrical engineering plant named after Kalinin (the All-Russian headman worked on it in his youth). As you know, the time of Tallinn mercury rectifiers is in the past, now only art is produced on the site of the plant.
In the central factory building there is some kind of photographic exhibition with an entrance ticket for 15 euros, well, they nafig with such prices! I have already received my portion of art.
I'd better look at the hamsters again for free, so to speak, I'll fix the material.
The place in the hangars was taken by a flea market, i.e. sale of antique retro clothing.
10:20
Having made a circle around the design district, I went in the direction of antiquity, but modern art did not leave me.
10:40
There were no special goals in the old city. Pass one observation point, the second, look into the historical museum, and, of course, eat without it. It didn't take long to look for the observation point, ran through the station park, climbed the stairs and now I am considering the views from the Patkuli observation platform.
From here you can see only a small part of the old city, but the most tower one.
The station park is actually called "Dome" or "Šnelli" or "Toompark". What do they do, for each language has its own name of the park invented?
11:00
My first disappointment awaited me in the garden of the Danish king. The best historical museum in the city, the so-called museum of bastion passages, was closed. This was to be expected, since I arrived in Tallinn not on the most museum day - Monday.
Maybe with grief to look at the mystery of Masonic symbols?
11:20
No, Masons are not my topic, so I'll go to the next viewing point, it will be open on Mondays for sure. The Kohtuotsa site provides a wide-angle view of Tallinn, you can see, if not everything, then almost everything! True, there are also a lot of people, for about 15 minutes I tried to shoot a video of the city there without the shouts of children and their parents. Hard.
This shot was taken a few hours later when I returned to the set to take a panorama with better light. Chronologically incorrect, but I think you will forgive me such liberty.
11:50 am
You can already start thinking about food. The plans were to deal with nutrition in 2 stages. First, a light lunch in a pancake house, and in the late afternoon something authentically old. For this, I considered 2 options. The first is a relatively cheap medieval tavern "3 Dragons", hidden on the first floor of the town hall. Here it is interesting: "Food for 1 euro ..." is that a medieval belyash?
The second option was not the cheapest restaurant "Old Hansa". They won't offer anything for the euro. Pay attention, the Russian and Finnish menus of the restaurant were sorted out to zero. It is immediately clear who the main visitors are. I think you already understand what choice I made in the evening, but I will tell you about that later.
12:00
In the meantime, we will have a snack at the famous "Compressor" pancake house. Although she doesn't seem to be that famous, there were plenty of free tables at lunchtime. A crisis. The interior is modest, old battered furniture, pipes on the ceiling, toads on the walls.
I took potato balls with herring for a snack. Delicious, only the balls are something completely miniature.
The main dish was a pancake with salmon and cheese, quite good. Even cheap by Tallinn standards (5.80) I liked the rhubarb lemonade less, but you can drink it. All in all, quality food, for a quick bite to eat.
And in order to raise your cultural level, there are toads.
12:50
Instead of non-working bastion passages, I entered the working "fortress" passages. If I am not mistaken, the ride was called Hellemann Tower.
I strongly advise against going there, there is absolutely nothing to do in this tower. There are some logs inside, the neighboring roofs are barely visible outside - a waste of time! If it were not for the cashier, a sweet Estonian grandmother, who offers to try rotten apples (from her own garden), it would be quite dreary.
13:20
Nimble guys, each section of the wall comes at its own price! If you want to see the logs in the Hellemann tower, pay 3 euros, in the Epping tower, judging by the price, there are 2 times more logs.
13:40
"Broken Line", memorial to the victims of the shipwreck of the ferry "Estonia". Everything is correct, without unnecessary pathos. White cross and two bent beams.
13:50
The next stop of my walking tour is the former Lenin Concert Hall, built in Tallinn for the 1980 Olympics. An amazing concrete colossus. The building seems to have fallen into complete decay, but the atmosphere is off scale! Wide staircases, an alley of broken lanterns, graffiti, sea views - this is a unique place.
Construction is in progress nearby. It is possible that the Soviet concrete monster did not have long to scare foreign tourists.
Wonderful panorama. Abandoned road and snow-white liners. The only thing missing was the cries of the seagulls. Where did the seagulls go?
14:20
It is strange, it seems that I was going to look into the area of ​​modern architecture "Rottermani", i.e. I even looked into it, but did not take a single shot. At that moment, for some reason I was more worried about sweets in the Kalev brand store. By the way, I bought sweets, photographed the witches, and missed all the architecture.
I went out to the main pedestrian and began to slowly move towards the town hall.
Taking pictures of all the fun on the way.
The grass in rubber boots, is this already Estonian design, or is it just inside?
14:50
I got to the town hall square. It's time to close one more outlet - the oldest operating pharmacy in the world.
The pharmacy itself was not particularly memorable. An ordinary counter, a little more wood, a little less hospital smell, but especially for people like me, they arranged an additional room with items for photographing.
Medieval medicines struck with fantasy: burnt bees, earthworms in oil, hooves in a jar. How terrible it was to live!
Tell me, what can a stuffed hedgehog, flat feet, cure?
15:15
I made a circle around the old city and returned to the place where I started my trip, i.e. to the upper city, the Church of Alexander Nevsky and such a parliamentary castle with a tower "Long Hermann". Pay attention to the people brazenly spreading out straight on the parliamentary lawn. Not frightened people among them!
15:30
Again on the observation deck. Looked at the city, looked at the clock ... well, what should I do now? It’s half past three, but the plan is complete, the points are closed. The pancakes were eaten, the fortress walls were examined. A museum, well, yes, a museum is needed to complete the picture.
4:10 p.m.
I would choose a museum of modern art, but it is also not friendly with Mondays. Therefore, there was only one worthy option - to go to the bunker, where seaplanes were once built.
Not mistaken, there is something to do and something to photograph!
For example, toilets with clever scientific designs.
Remember, I loudly resented the 15-euro admission ticket to a photo exhibition in a designer "brick" district. A ticket to the maritime museum cost the same, but you will not hear a single word of criticism from me on this matter. Here it is at least clear where the money went - to the submarine!
The impression was that the main object of pride of the centuries-old Estonian shipbuilding was mines. What kind of mines have not been demonstrated: acoustic, hydrodynamic, magnetic, etc. etc.
In addition to mines and a submarine, there are not so many real exhibits: a couple of old Soviet cannons, some buoys, torpedoes, a replica of a seaplane. I will not reload the topic with photos of all this stuff. I will mention the main thing - a bold plus of the museum in its interactivity. Here you can climb the submarine to your heart's content, watch a funny movie in the bathyscaphe, fly on airplane simulators, or walk model ships in a small pool, and also all sorts of shooters, walkers, whistles ... a lot of different chips! Children can easily spend the whole day here. It took me 1.5 hours for everything, but I have my own express method of passing through museums.
17:40
The outdoor exhibition is even more interesting than the museum itself. There are about a dozen warships on the eternal dock. It is clear that one should not expect any aircraft carrier-battleships, but there are also amusing examples, for example, such an icebreaker steamer "Bolshoy Tõll".
I am not surprised that this is the most popular museum in Estonia, it would definitely not get lost in any European metropolis!
Symbols of the past flicker on the posters, I confess I did not know that the Tallinn Olympic regatta had its own ugly mascot. How did this miracle in a cap with a mustache rope pass the strict socialist control?
18:20
2 days before the events described, I walked a lot in the well-known Riga district of dilapidated wooden buildings. I must say that in terms of woodiness, an ordinary Tallinn street looked much more interesting than the advertised Riga quarter of Kalncema!
18:30
And one more comparison with the capital of Latvia. I strongly doubt that a tram with a short biography of Laima Vaikule runs in Riga. Moreover, with the text in a prohibited language, hmm, where does the language inspection look?
19:40
In the maritime museum, my phone could not stand the endless photographing and was discharged. I had to go to the hotel by tram "Anna Veski", but within an hour I was ready for new photographic achievements. Parking in front of the opera - taking pictures!
A monument to the friendship of peoples, to the gallery!
20:10
In total, I photographed more than 400 frames in Tallinn. Everything seemed interesting, but only 75 photos were included in this topic. One of them, my late lunch at The Three Dragons. The institution positions itself as a medieval tavern, i.e. minimum comfort, maximum authenticity. Well, the organizers did an excellent job with the task of arranging a minimum of comfort: a gloomy saleswoman, broken dishes, a lack of cutlery, crampedness and darkness. I have doubts about the authenticity of the dishes. The pies resembled the products of the confectionery department of the supermarket, cucumbers and sausages could easily come from there. In general, it was necessary to go to the "Old Hansa"! Yes, it's more expensive there, but it's better to pay for a quality product than to chew store cucumbers in a restaurant.
Cry from the heart.
Harsh medieval realities, did not hit the target - pay 50 euros!
20:50
I managed to run into the oldest cafe in the city called "Maiasmokk" (gourmet). There were only a few minutes left before closing, I looked for something authentic Estonian on the counter. Nothing interesting, solid eclairs rolls. Where is the national product? By the way, I found it a couple of minutes later in a nearby supermarket.
The Russian embassy has settled down quite well, right opposite the "Lakomka"!
21:00
There was an idea to go to the observation deck one more time and wait for the sunset, until which there were some 40-45 minutes. The old city in the rays of the setting sun must be beautiful, but by that time I had already been so busy that, having looked into the supermarket "Rimi" and touched by the sight of their European 80-gram whites, I went to the hotel.
22:00
"Bread soup" ate already in the room. I thought it was a purely Latvian dish, but surprisingly, the Tallinn shop dessert turned out to be one of the best "soups" I've ever tasted!
This was the end of my race in Tallinn. The next morning I was already flying out of the hospitable capital of Estonia. It's time to draw some conclusions. I visited Tallinn during the Soviet era, but now I have the feeling that I was in a completely different city then! Of course, it would be wrong to rely on the memories of a 10-year-old boy, but I remember exactly that behind the walls (as it seemed to me then) of the unkempt old city, quarters of some sheds and khrushchebs immediately began. Now, not only the entire old city has been cleaned to shine, but interesting modern buildings have begun to be erected instead of sheds. the city has changed! And if earlier I was 100% sure that the most beautiful city in the Baltic States is Riga, then after my recent visits to Vilnius and Tallinn, I already began to doubt it.