Rampant in Tallinn

I’m on a tour right now with the parents through the Northern Baltics. Our first stop yesterday was in Tallinn, capital of Estonia. It was my first visit to an ex-Soviet state, apart from Russia itself, but I can’t really give a fair account of the city. Landing in the afternoon after a flight to London, we were greeted with miserable weather, the grey skies giving way soon to a torrential downpour.

Tallinn has, reputedly, one of the best preserved mediaeval town centres of Europe, one worth checking out, without the hordes that now descend onto places like Prague, so I’m told. We did an afternoon walking tour through the city, past sites such as Toompea Castle, which serves as the current Parliament House, the Tall Hermann’s Tower next to it, and the Town Hall Square, reaching it only after winding our way through narrow and wet cobblestone streets.

This is a small country of less than a million and a half inhabitants, of which only about two thirds are ethnic Estonians. The rest are mainly Russians, who found themselves on the wrong side of the border when the Soviet Union disintegrated. In the run up to this trip, both countries had been involved in a cyberwar, with Russian hackers attacking parts of the Estonian electronic infrastructure, after the government in Tallinn decided to remove a memorial to Soviet soldiers from the Second World War from its prominent central location.

I guess it makes for difficult relations between both communities. Our guide, a former Estonian teacher, seemed pretty strident in her anti-Communism, even talking about how her family had once been scheduled for deportation. In fact, hearing her account of Estonian history, you’re reminded of the fate small countries invariably suffer from, with this small territory having been occupied successively by the Danes, the Swedes, the Germans and then the Russians. Apart from the interwar interlude, independence was only secured in 1991.


The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral – a Russian orthodox cathedral pictured above – occupied prime high ground, directly opposite Toompea Castle. It’s a striking building, worth celebrating for religious, historical and aesthetic reasons, but to Estonians, it serves only to remind them of earlier attempts to russify their country. Our guide, who seemed happy to take us into the nearby Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin – which was itself full of hatchments belonging to foreign nobility – was resolute in not entering the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral with us.

That evening, we had dinner at Olde Hansa – referring to the Hanseatic League – a charming mediaeval-themed restaurant, in which every part of the décor, the menu, even the loos, were done up to provide an atmosphere of ages past. If only I had taken a photo or two within. But never mind. The meat soup I had was good, as was my duck, and the bread with garlic butter. Plus, we had a very young and pretty waitress serving us, clad delightfully in mediaeval robes. Heh.

It’s not goodbye to Tallinn or to Estonia yet. We’ll be back in about five or six days, spending another night there before we return to London. Let’s hope the weather clears up by then. This city really deserves a much closer look. And I’ve not even gotten any souvenir pieces yet. I play the part of a tourist very well indeed.

Travel Notes: We journeyed to Estonia as part of a tour of the Northern Baltics, organized by Travel Editions in the UK. Direct flights from London Gatwick to Tallinn are available from Estonian Air, with good accommodation at the Grand Hotel Tallinn, located just outside the inner city.